Chapter XXIX…

Chapter XXIX

Evert Winthrop had felt that her words were a prayer, that she was praying still.

Against what especial danger she was thus invoking aid, he did not know; before he could speak, old Rose had opened the door, and Margaret, springing up, was going forward to meet the Rev. Mr. Moore, who with his usual equable expression entered, hat in hand, to pay Mrs. Harold a short visit; he had been obliged to come over to the river that morning on business, and had thought that he would take the occasion for a little social pleasure as well.

Margaret put out her hands eagerly; "It's wonderful--your coming now! You will stay with me, won't you?--I am in great trouble."

Mr. Moore took her hand; all the goodness of his nature came into his long narrow face, making it lovely in its sympathy as he heard her appeal. She was clinging to him--she had put her other hand on his arm. "You will stay?" she repeated urgently.

"If I can be of any use to you, most certainly I will stay."

Upon hearing this, she made an effort to recover herself, to speak more coherently. "I shall need your advice--there are so many things I must decide about. Mr. Winthrop will tell you--but why should I leave it to him? I will tell you myself. My husband has gone north, he is going abroad again. You will understand--it was so sudden. I did not know--" She made another effort to steady her voice. "If you will stay with me for a day or two, I will send over to Gracias for anything you may need."

"I will stay gladly, Mrs. Harold."

"Oh, you are good! But I always knew you were. And now for a few minutes--if you will excuse me--I have only just heard it--I will come back soon." And with swift step she hastened from the room.

Mr. Moore, his face full of sympathy, turned to Winthrop.

But Evert Winthrop's expression showed only anger; he walked off, with his back turned, and made no reply.

"Is it true, then?" said Mr. Moore, infinite regret in his mild tones.

Winthrop was standing at the window, he bit his lips with impatience; he was in no mood for what he would have called "the usual platitudes," and especially platitudes about Lansing Harold.

It could not be denied that Mr. Moore's conversation often contained sentences that were very usual.

"Perhaps he will return," pursued the clergyman, hopefully. "Influences might be brought to bear. We may be able to reach him?" And again he looked at Winthrop inquiringly.

But Winthrop had now forgotten his presence, at this very moment he was leaving the room; he was determined to see Margaret and speak to her, if but for a second. He found Rose, and sent her with a message; he himself followed the old woman up the stairs, and stood waiting in the upper hall as she knocked at Margaret's closed door.

But the door did not open; in answer to Rose's message delivered shrilly outside the door, Margaret replied from within, "I can see no one at present."

Rose came back. "She can't see nobody nohow jess dis minute, marse," she answered, in an apologetic tone. Then, imaginatively, "Spec she's tired."

"Go back and tell her that I'm waiting here--in the hall, and that I will keep her but a moment. There is something important I must say."

Rose returned to the door. But the answer was the same. "She done got mighty tired, marse, sho," said the old servant, again trying to clothe the refusal in polite terms, though unable to think of a new apology.

"Her door is locked, I suppose?" Winthrop asked. Then he felt that this was going too far; he turned and went down the stairs, but with a momentary revival in his breast all the same of the old despotic feeling, the masculine feeling, that a woman should not be allowed to dictate to a man what he should say or not say, do or not do; in refusing to see him even for one moment, Margaret was dictating.

He walked down the lower hall, and then back again. Happening to glance up, he saw that old Rose was still standing at the top of the stairs; she dropped one of her straight courtesies as he looked up--a quick ducking down of her narrow skirt; she was much disturbed by the direct refusal which she had had to give him.

"I can't stay here, if they are going to watch me," he thought, impatiently. He turned and re-entered the sitting-room.

Mr. Moore was putting more wood on the fire. His mind was full of Margaret and her troubles; but the fire certainly needed replenishing, it would do no one any good to come back to a cold room, Mrs. Harold least of all; Winthrop therefore found him engaged with the coals.

Mr. Moore went on with his engineering feats. He cherished no resentment because Winthrop had left him so suddenly. Still, he had observed that such sudden exits were sometimes an indication of temper; in such cases there was nothing better than an unnoticing, and if possible an occupied, silence; so he went on with his fire.

"It's most unfortunate that there's no one who has any real authority over her," Winthrop began, still smarting under the refusal. Margaret had chosen the clergyman as her counsellor; it would be as well, then, to indicate to that gentleman what course should be pursued.

"You have some plan to recommend to her?" said Mr. Moore, putting the tongs away and seating himself. He held out his long hands as if to warm them a little by the flame, and looked at Winthrop inquiringly.

"No, I don't know that I have. But she is sure to be obstinate in any case." He too sat down, and stared moodily at the flame.

"You think it will be a great grief to her," observed the clergyman, after a while. "No doubt--no doubt."

"No grief at all, as far as that goes. Lanse has always treated her abominably." He paused. Then continued, as if there were now good reasons for telling the whole tale. "Before he had been married a year, he left her, she did not leave him, as my aunt supposes; he went abroad, and would not allow her to come to him. There had never been the least fault on her side; there hasn't been up to this day."

"I cannot understand such fickleness, such dark tendencies towards change," said Mr. Moore, in rebuking wonder.

"As far as regards change, I ought to say, perhaps, that there hasn't been much of that," Winthrop answered. "What took him abroad was an old interest--something he had felt long before his marriage, and felt strongly; he has never changed in that respect."

"Do you allude--is it possible that you are alluding to an interest in a person?" asked Mr. Moore, in a lowered tone.

"It certainly wasn't a thing; I hardly think you would call a beautiful French woman of rank that, would you?"

Mr. Moore looked at him with a stricken face. "A beautiful French woman of rank!" he murmured.

"That's what is taking him abroad now, this second time. She threw him over once, but she has evidently called him back; in fact, he admits it in his letter to me."

"Oh, sin! sin!" said Middleton Moore, with the deepest sadness in his voice. He leaned his head upon his hand and covered his eyes.

"I suppose so," answered Winthrop. "All the same, she is the only person Lanse has ever cared for; for her and her alone he could be, and would be if he had the chance, perhaps, unselfish; I almost think he could be heroic. But, you see, he won't have the chance, because there's the husband in the bush."

"Do you mean to say that this wretched creature is a married woman?" demanded the clergyman, aghast.

"Oh yes; it was her marriage, her leaving him in the lurch, that made Lanse himself marry in the first place--marry Margaret Cruger."

"This is most horrible. This man, then, this Lansing Harold, is an incarnation of evil?"

"I don't know whether he is or not," Winthrop answered, irritably. "Yes, he is, I suppose; we all are. Not you, of course," he added, glancing at his companion, and realizing as he did so that here was a man who was an incarnation of good. Then the opposing feeling swept over him again, namely, that this man was good simply because he could not be evil; it was not that he had resisted temptation so much as that he had no capacity for being tempted. "An old woman," he thought.

He himself was very different from that, he knew well what temptation meant! A flush crossed his face. "Perhaps Lanse can't help loving her," he said, flinging it out obstinately.

"A man can always help a shameful feeling of that sort," the clergyman answered, with sternness. He drew up his tall figure, his face took on dignity. "We are not the beasts that perish."

"We may not be altogether beasts, and yet we may not be able to help it," Winthrop answered, getting up and walking across the room. Margaret's little work-table stood there, gay with ribbons and fringes; mechanically he fingered the spools and bright wools it held.

"At least we can control its manifestations," replied Middleton Moore, still with a deep severity of voice and eyes.

"You would like to have all sinners of that disposition (which doesn't happen to be yours) consumed immediately, wouldn't you? for fear of their influencing others," said Winthrop, leaving the work-table and walking about the room. "In the days of the burnings, now, when it was for strictly wicked persons of that tendency, I suspect you would have brought a few fagots yourself--wouldn't you?--even if you hadn't taken a turn at the bellows."

Mr. Moore turned and surveyed him in unfeigned astonishment.

"I beg your pardon," said the younger man, "I don't know what I'm saying. I'll go out for a while, and try the fresh air."

When he came back half an hour later, Margaret had returned.

"Ah! you have had a walk? The air is probably pleasant," said the clergyman, welcoming him kindly. He wished to show that he had forgotten the bellows. "I was on the point of saying to Mrs. Harold, as you came in, that in case she should be thinking of leaving this house, I will hope most warmly that she will find it consistent with her plans to return to us at Gracias."

"I should much rather stay here," responded Margaret. "I could have Dinah's son Abram to sleep in the house, if necessary."

"You could never stay here alone, you ought not to think of it," said Winthrop. "We know better than you do about that." He had seated himself at some distance from her. Mr. Moore still kept his place before the fire, and Margaret was beside him; she held a little fan-shaped screen in her hand to shade her face from the glow.

"I am sure Mr. Moore will say that it is safe," she answered.

"I included him; I said 'we,'" said Winthrop, challengingly.

Mr. Moore extended his long legs with a slightly uneasy movement. "I regret to say that I fear Mr. Winthrop is right; it would not be safe at present, even with Abram in the house. The river is no longer what it was" (he refrained from saying "your northern steamers have made the change;") "the people who live in the neighborhood are respectable, but the increased facilities for traffic have brought us dangerous characters."

"Of course you will go back to East Angels," Winthrop began.

"I think not. If I cannot stay here, I shall go north."

"North? Where?"

"There are plenty of places. There is my grandmother's old house in the country, where I lived when I was a child; it is closed now, but I could open it; I should like to see the old rooms once more." She spoke quietly, her manner was that she was taking it for granted that the clergyman knew everything, that Winthrop had told him all. She was a deserted wife, there was no need for any of them to go through the form of covering that up.

"That would be a perfectly crazy idea," began Winthrop. Then he stopped.

"We should be exceedingly sorry to lose you, Mrs. Harold--Penelope would be exceedingly sorry," said Mr. Moore, in his amiable voice. "I can understand that it would afford you much pleasure to revisit your childhood's home. But East Angels, too--after so long a stay there, may we not hope that it presents to you a friendly aspect?"

"I prefer to go north," Margaret answered.

Mr. Moore did not combat this decision; he did not, in truth, know quite what to advise just at present; it required thought. Here was a woman who had been cruelly outraged by the scandalous, by the incredibly abandoned conduct of the worst of husbands. She had no mother to go to (the clergyman felt this to be an unspeakable misfortune), but she was not a child; they could not dictate to her, she was a free agent. But women--women of refinement--were generally timid (he glanced at Margaret, and decided that she was timid also); she might talk a little about her house at the north, but probably it would end in her returning to East Angels after all.

"If I find that I don't care for the country-house, the life there, I can go abroad," Margaret continued. She rose and went out.

This was not much like returning to East Angels!

"Is she thinking, do you suppose, of going to him?" asked the clergyman, in a cautious voice, when the door was closed.

"I don't know what she is thinking of. She is capable of the most mistaken ideas!" Winthrop answered.

"She is possessed of a wonderful sense of duty, if she does go; I mean, in case she is acquainted with the cause of his departure?"

"She is acquainted with everything."

Margaret came back and sat down again. "You decidedly think, then, that I cannot stay here?" she said to the clergyman.

"Do you wish to stay so very ranch?" he asked, kindly.

"Yes, I should much rather stay, much rather make no change; this is my home."

"How can you talk in that way?" said Winthrop. He had risen again, and begun to walk up and down the room; as he spoke, he stopped his walk and stood before her. "You came here against your will; you disliked the place intensely; you said so of your own accord, I heard you." "I know I have said so. Many times. Still, I should like to stay now."

"You cannot. Even Mr. Moore tells you that."

"Yes," said the clergyman, conscientiously, "I must say it though I do not wish to; the place is unusually lonely, it stands quite by itself; it would be unwise to remain."

"I must give it up, I see," Margaret answered; "I am sorry. But at least I can retain the house; I should like to keep it open, too; the servants could stay here, I suppose."

Winthrop turned and looked at her, a quick surprised suspicion in his glance.

"I could do that, couldn't I?" she repeated, addressing Mr. Moore.

Again the clergyman looked uncomfortable. He crossed his legs, and extending the pendent foot a little in its long, thin-soled boot, he looked at it and moved it to and fro slightly, as if he had been called upon to give an opinion upon the leather. "I fear," he said, as the result of his meditation, "that it might not be altogether prudent. The negroes have much hospitality; with a large house at their command, and nobody near, I fear they might be tempted to invite their friends to visit them."

"The place would swarm with them," said Winthrop.

"At any rate, I shall keep the house even if I close it," said Margaret. "It must be ready for occupancy at any time."

"Then you are thinking of coming back?" Winthrop asked. His face still showed an angry mistrust.

"I may come back. At present, however, I shall go north; and as I prefer to go immediately, I shall set about arranging the rooms here so that I can leave them. It will not take long, two days, or three at most; it would be a great kindness, Mr. Moore, if you would stay with me until I leave--by next Saturday's steamer, probably."

"I hardly think you will be able to accomplish so much in so short a time," answered the clergyman, a good deal bewildered by this display of energy. To Mr. Moore's idea, a woman who had been deserted by her husband, even though that husband had been proved to be abnormally vicious, could not well be in the mood for the necessary counting of chairs, for the proper distribution of gum-camphor among carpets and curtains, all so important.

Then, reading again the deep trouble in Margaret's face, under all the calmness of her manner, he dismissed his objections, and said, heartily, "In any case, I will stay with you as long as you wish."

"Possibly one of your difficulties is that I am here," said Winthrop to Margaret. "You cannot expect me to leave you entirely, as long as you are still in this house, I am, after all, your nearest relative; but of course I could stay at the hotel." He spoke with extreme coldness.

Margaret, however, did not try to dissipate it by asking him to remain.

He showed that he felt this, for he said, "Perhaps I had better go up at once and see to getting quarters there."

She did not answer. He walked about aimlessly for a moment or two, and then left the room.

"Will you go over the house with me now, Mr. Moore--I mean this afternoon?"

"Certainly. It would be better, I think, to make a list," Mr. Moore answered, in an interested voice. Mr. Moore enjoyed lists; to him an index was an exciting object; in devising catalogues, or new alphabetical arrangements, he had sometimes felt a sense of pleasure that was almost dissipation.

"You will have three enemies to encounter," he began with much seriousness. "They are, first, the Mildew. Second, the Moth. Third, the Damp; the Mouse, so destructive in other climates, will trouble you little in this. We shall need red pepper."

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Chapter XXX

A week later, Margaret was still in the house on the point, she had not been able to complete as rapidly as she had hoped the arrangements necessary for leaving it in safe condition behind her. This was not owing to any lingering on her own part, or to any hesitation of purpose; it was owing simply to the constitutional inability of anybody in that latitude, black or white, to work steadily, to be in the least hurried. The poorest negro engaged to shake carpets could not bring himself, though with the offer of double wages before him, to the point of going without a long "res'" under the trees after each (short) "stent." Mr. Moore, with his lists, made no haste--Mr. Moore had never been in a hurry in his life.

But now at last all was completed; the house was to be closed on the morrow. No one but the clergyman was to sleep there on this last night; the negroes, generously paid and rejoicing in their riches, were going to their own homes; in the morning one of them was to return to dismantle Mr. Moore's room, and then the clergyman himself was to bar the windows, lock the doors, and carry the keys to the hotel, where they were to be kept, in accordance with Margaret's orders. She herself was to sleep at the hotel, in order to be in readiness to take the sea-going steamer, which would touch at that pier at an early hour the next morning.

Evert Winthrop had returned to East Angels. Five days he had stayed at the hotel, coming down every morning to the house on the point; not once had he been able to see Margaret alone. Mr. Moore was always with her, or if by rare chance he happened to be absent, she was surrounded by the chattering blacks, who with the jolliest good-humor and aimless wandering errands to and fro, were carrying out, or pretending to, the orders of "Mis' Horrel."

Winthrop chafed against this constant presence of others. But he would not allow himself to speak of it, pride prevented him. Why should he be kept at a distance, and a comparative stranger like Mr. Moore consulted about everything? Mr. Moore! He looked on with impatience while the clergyman gave explanations of Penelope's excellent methods of vanquishing the Mildew, the Damp, the Moth; with impatience grown to contempt he heard him read aloud to Margaret and check off carefully the various items of his lists. Mr. Moore had even made a list of the inhabitants of the poultry-yard, though Margaret intended to present them in a body to Dinah and Rose.

"One brown hen spotted with white," he read; "one yellow hen, spotted with brown. A black hen. A duck."

He had never seemed to Winthrop so narrow, so given up to little details, as now.

On the fourth day Winthrop (perhaps having found pride, in spite of the dignity it carried with it, rather unfruitful) suddenly resolved to overpower the dumb opposition, make himself master of this ridiculous situation--"ridiculous" was his own term for it. Margaret was evidently determined not to see him alone; after their long acquaintance, and their relationship (he insisted a good deal upon this rather uncertain tie), she should not be allowed to treat him in that way; he would not allow it. Of what, then, was she afraid?

It came across him strongly that he should like to ask her that question face to face.

He rode down to the house on the point. He found her in the sitting-room, the blacks coming and going as usual.

"Go away, all of you," he said, authoritatively. "Find some work to do in another room for half an hour; I wish to speak to your mistress."

Margaret looked up as she heard this imperative command. She did not contradict it, she could not come to an open conflict with him before her own servants. He knew this.

Closing the door after the negroes, who, in obedience to the thorough master's voice which had fallen upon their ears, had shuffled hurriedly out in a body, Winthrop came over to the writing-table where she was seated. She had kept on with her writing.

"You don't care any more about that list, about any of these trifling things, than I do," he began; "why do you pretend to care? And why do you make it so impossible for me to speak to you? What are you afraid of?"

She did not answer. And he did not get the satisfaction he had anticipated from his question, because her face was bent over her paper.

"Why are you going north?" he went on, abruptly.

"I need a change."

"You cannot live all alone in New York."

"I shall not be in New York. And I could easily have a companion."

"Your best companion is Aunt Katrina. I admit that she is selfish; but she is growing old, and she is ill. Who, after all, is nearer to you?"

"No one is nearer. I have always been alone."

"That is cynical--and it is not true." He paused. "Every one likes you."

"Well they may! When have I been--permitted myself to be disagreeable? When have I ever failed to be kind? I have always repressed myself. What is the result? I have been at everybody's beck and call, I have been expected to bear everything in silence; to listen, always to listen, and never to reply." She spoke with bitterness, keeping on with her writing meanwhile.

"It is perfectly true--what you say, and I think you have done too much of it. Are you getting tired of the role?"

"I am tired at least of East Angels; I cannot go back there."

"You think Aunt Katrina will talk about Lanse in her usual style--about this second going away of his? I myself will tell her the whole story--it is time she knew it! She will talk about him no more."

"It isn't that." She threw down her pen and rose. "I need a complete change, I must have it. But I shall arrange it myself. The only thing you can do for me is to leave me free; I should like it if you would go back to East Angels--if you would go to-day; you only trouble me by staying here, and you trouble me greatly."

"Margaret, it's outrageous the way you treat me. What have I done that I should be thrust off in this way? And it's a very sudden change, too; you were not so that night in the swamp."

"It's kind to bring that up. I was tired--nervous; I wasn't myself--"

"You're yourself now, never fear," he interpolated, angrily.

--"Will you do what I ask?"

"You really wish me to go?" His voice softened. "You don't want me to see you off? It's very little to do--see you off."

"I should be grateful if you would go now."

"You are throwing us overboard together, I see--all Lanse's relatives; you think we are all alike," he commented, in a savage tone. "And you, well rid of us, free, and determined to do as you please, are going north alone--you do not even say where?"

"There will be no secret about that; I will write. You talk about freedom," she said, breaking off suddenly, "what do you know of slavery? That is what I have been for years--a slave. Oh, to be somewhere!"--and she threw up her arms with an eloquent gesture of longing,--"anywhere where I can breathe and think as I please--as I really am! Do you want me to die without ever having been myself--my real self--even for one day? I have come to the end of my strength; I can endure no longer."

Winthrop had been thrilled through by this almost violent cry and gesture. Coming from Margaret, they gave him a great surprise. "Yes, I know," he began; "it has been a hard life." Then he stopped, for he felt that he had not known, he had not comprehended; he did not fully comprehend even now. "I am only harsh on account of the way you treat me," he said; "it galls me to be so completely set aside."

"You can help me only by leaving me, I have told you that."

"But where is the sense--"

"I cannot argue. There may be no sense, but your presence oppresses me."

"You shall not be troubled with it long." He went towards the door. But he came back. "Give me one reason."

"I have no reason; it is instinct."

He still stood there.

She waited a moment, looking at him. "If you do not leave me, I shall leave you," she said, "I shall refuse to see you again. You are the best judge of whether you believe me or not."

"Women are absurd," exclaimed Winthrop; "they must always have vows, renunciations, eternal partings--nothing less contents them. Oh, I believe you! you would keep a vow or die for it, no matter how utterly senseless it might be. Of course I want to see you again; so I will go now--that is, for a while; I will go back to East Angels."

He took her hand, though she did not extend it. "You have been extremely unreasonable," he said. Though he obeyed, she should feel that he had the mastery still.

He left her, and rode back to the hotel. Mr. Moore learned a few hours later, that he had returned to East Angels.

This had happened three days before. It was now late in the afternoon of the third day, and the house was prepared for "Mis' Horrel's" departure. Mr. Moore, standing on the low bank, waved his hand in farewell as the boat, rowed by two old negroes, carried her down the river.

The five miles seemed short. When the men turned in towards the hotel, twilight had fallen, the river had a veil of mist. Margaret's eyes rested vaguely on the shore; suddenly, in a low voice, she said, "Stop!"

The men obeyed. She strained her eyes to see more clearly a figure under the trees near the landing; it was a man, dressed in gray clothes, he was walking up and down; they could see him as he moved to and fro, but he could not see their low boat, pausing out there in the fog.

Margaret appeared to have satisfied herself. "Row out now into the stream," she said, briefly.

And in a few minutes the shore, left behind them, was but a dark line.

"I have changed my mind, I shall not sleep at the hotel, after all. You can take me back home--to the house on the point. Then, to-morrow morning, you can be there again at dawn, and bring me up in time for the steamer; it will do quite as well."

The old men, without comment either of mind or tongue, patiently rowed her back down the river.

When they reached the point, Margaret, after charging them to be punctual, dismissed them, and walked up the path alone towards the house. No lights were visible anywhere. There was a young moon, and she looked at her watch, it was not yet nine o'clock; Mr. Moore had apparently gone to bed at a very early hour.

The truth was that during all this visit of his on the river Mr. Moore had kept much later hours than he was in the habit of keeping at home. At home Penelope, who believed that he needed a great deal of sleep, was in the habit of saying, about ten o'clock, "Now, Middleton--" And Middleton, as Dr. Kirby once expressed it, always "now'd."

On the present occasion, after partaking of the supper which Dinah had prepared for him, he had sent the old woman to her home; then, remembering that he had a week of arrears to make up, he had gone to his room, though there was still a gleam of sunset in the west.

Margaret understood what had happened, she determined that she would not disturb him; probably it would not be difficult to find a way into the house. As she had expected, among the numerous windows on the ground-floor she found one which she could raise; light and lithe, she easily effected an entrance, and stole on tiptoe to a room up-stairs in the south wing, where she knew there was a lounge whose pillows had been left in place. She had her travelling-bag with her, but she did not intend to undress; she would take what sleep she could on the lounge until dawn, covered by her travelling shawl. But she was more weary than she knew, and nature was kind that night at least; very soon she fell asleep.

The figure she had seen on the shore, was, as she had thought, that of Evert Winthrop. He had come back.

It might have been that he did not consider a return to the river prohibited, so long as he did not go down to the house on the point; there was no law, certainly, against a man's travelling where he pleased. He had not been down to the house on the point, he had stayed at the hotel all day. He had seen her trunks when they arrived, and he knew from their being there that she must be expecting to take the next morning's steamer, northward-bound; was she coming herself to the hotel to sleep? After a while he made the inquiry; his tone was careless, he asked at what hour they expected her.

"I will be surprised if she is not here by supper-time," was the answer he received.

At sunset he went down to the shore and strolled to and fro. But though he thus kept watch, he did not see the boat that stole up in the fog, floated off-shore for a moment, and then disappeared.

That night, at three o'clock Middleton Moore woke with the feeling that he had been attacked by asthma, and that Penelope was trying to relieve him with long smoking wisps of thick brown paper, her accustomed remedy. Then consciousness became clearer, and he perceived that there was no Penelope and no candle; but that there was smoke. He sprang up and opened the door, there was smoke in the hall also. "The house is on fire," was his thought; "how fortunate that there is no one here!" He threw on his clothes, drew on his boots, and seizing his coat and hat, ran down the hall. His room was on the ground-floor, he looked into the other rooms as he passed; there was smoke, but no flame; yet he could distinctly perceive the odor of burning wood. "It must be up-stairs," he said to himself. He unlocked the house door, and ran across the lawn in order to see the upper story.

Yes, there were the flames. At present only little tongues, small and blue, creeping along under the cornice; they told him that the fire had a strong hold within, since it had made its way outward through the main wall. It would be useless for him to attempt to fight it, with the water at a distance and no one to assist. The old mansion was three stories high. "It will go like tinder," he thought.

His next idea was to save for Margaret all he could; jamming his clerical hat tightly down on his forehead, he began to carry out articles from the lower rooms, and pile them together at the end of the lawn. He worked hard; he ran, he carried, he piled up; then he ran again. He lifted and dragged ponderous weights, the perspiration stood in drops on his face. But even then he made a mental list of the articles he was saving: "Six parlor chairs. One centre table of mahogany. A work-table with fringe. A secretary with inlaid top. A sofa." In the lower rooms the smoke was blinding now. Outside, the tongues of flame had grown into a broad yellow band.

Presently the fire burst through the roof in half a dozen places, and, freed, rose with a leap high in the air; heretofore there had been but little noise, now there was the sound of crackling and burning, and the roar of flames under headway; the sky was tinged with the red glow, the garden took on a festal air, with all its vines and flowers lighted up.

Mr. Moore did not stop to look at this, nor to call the flames "grand." In the first place, he did not think them grand, eating up as they were a good house and a large quantity of most excellent furniture. In the second, he had not time for adjectives, he was bent upon saving a certain low bookcase he remembered, which stood in the upper hall. He had always admired that bookcase, he had never seen one before that was unconnected with associations of step-ladders, or an equally insecure stepping upon chairs.

He jammed his hat hard down upon his forehead again (he should certainly be obliged to have a new one), and ran back into the house. But the flames had now reached the lower hall, they had burned down as well as up; he was obliged to content himself with a hat-stand near the door. As he was dragging this out he heard shouts, and recognized the voices as those of negro women; when he had reached the lawn, there they were, Dinah and Rose and four other women; they had seen the light, and had come running from their cabins, half a mile down the shore. They were greatly excited; one young girl, black as coal, jumped up and down, bounding high like a ball each time; she was unconscious of what she was doing, her eyes were on the roaring flames, every now and then she gave a tremendous yell. Old Rose and Dinah wept and bewailed aloud.

"Dar goes de settin'-room winders--ow!"

"Dar goes de up-steers chimbly--ow!"

Another of the women, a thin old creature, clapped her hands incessantly on her legs, and shouted, "De glory's a-comin', de glory's a-comin', a-comin'!"

Mr. Moore deposited his hat-stand under a tree, and standing still for a moment, wiped his hot forehead. He did not attempt to stop their shouting, he knew that it would be useless; he thought with regret of that bookcase.

And now there came a shout louder, or at least more agonized, than any of the others, and round the corner of the house appeared the boy Primus; he ran towards them, shouting still, with each step he almost fell--"She's dar--Mis' Horrel!"

He too had seen the light, and, approaching the place from the south, he had passed, in running towards the front, the narrow high south wing; here at a window he had seen a face--the face of Margaret Harold.

Mr. Moore was gone at the boy's first cry. The others followed.

The south wing was not visible from the front. Its third story was in flames, and the back and sides of the ground-floor had caught, but at a second-story window (which she had opened) they all saw a face--that of Margaret Harold; the glare of the main building showed her features perfectly. They could not have heard her, even if she had been able to call to them, the roar of the fire was now so loud.

"She cannot throw herself out, it's too high; and we have no blanket. There's a door below, isn't there? And stairs?" It was Mr. Moore's voice that asked.

"Yes, passon, yes. But it's all a-bu'nin'!"

Mr. Moore clasped his hands and bowed his head, it did not take longer than a breath. Then he started towards the wing.

"Oh, passon, yer dassent!"

"Oh, passon, yer can't help her now, de sweet lady, it's too late. Pray for her yere, passon; she'll go right straight up, she's wunner der Lawd's own chillun, de dove!"

"Oh, passon! de Lawd ain't willin' fer two ter die."

The negro women clung about him, but he shook them off; going hastily forward, he broke in the door and disappeared. His moment's prayer had been for his wife, in the case--which he knew was probable--that he should not come from that door alive.

The gap he had made revealed the red fire within; behind the stairs the back of the wing was a glowing furnace.

The negroes now all knelt down, they had no hope; they began to sing their funeral hymn.

The fire had reached the second story; Margaret's face had disappeared.

A bravery which does not reason will sometimes conquer in the teeth of reason. One chance existed, it was one amid a dozen probabilities of a horrible death; it lay in swiftness, and in the courage to walk, without heeding burned feet, directly across floors already in a glow.

Middleton Moore crossed such floors; he went unshrinkingly up the scorching stairs. He found Margaret by sense of touch in the smoke-filled room above, and tearing off his coat, he lifted her as she lay unconscious, wrapped her head and shoulders in it, and bore her swiftly down the burning steps, and through the fiery hall, and so out to the open air. His eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair were singed, his face was blistered; brands and sparks had fallen like hail upon his shoulders and arms, and scorched through to the skin; his boots were burned off, the curled leather was dropping from his burned feet; his breath was almost gone.

He gave Margaret to the women, and sank down himself upon the grass; he could not see, he felt very weak; something was tightening in his throat. The boy Primus, with great sobs, ran like a deer to the well for water, and bringing it back, held a cupful to the lips of the blinded man.

Margaret, though still unconscious, appeared to be unhurt. The skirt of her dress was burned in several places. The women chafed her hands, and bathed her face with the fresh water; once she opened her eyes, but unconsciousness came over her again.

With a crash the northern wing fell in.

"De front'll go nex'," said Primus. "We mus' git 'em 'way from dish yer."

The women lifted Margaret tenderly, and bore her to the end of the lawn. Mr. Moore rose on his burned feet, and, leaning on the boy's shoulder, slowly made his way thither also; their forlorn little group, assembled near the piled-up furniture, was brightly illuminated by the flame.

Presently the front fell in. And now, as the roar was less fierce, they could hear the gallop of a horse, in another minute Evert Winthrop was among them. He saw only Margaret, he knelt by her side and called her name.

"De passon done it," said Primus,--"de passon! He jess walk right straight inter de bu'nin', roarin' flameses! En brung her out."

Mr. Moore had not seen Winthrop, he could see nothing now. He seemed besides, a little bewildered, confused. As Winthrop took his hand and spoke to him, he lifted his face with its scorched cheeks and closed eyes, and answered: "There was some furniture saved, I think. I think I saved a little. Six parlor chairs--if I am not mistaken; and a centre table--I was sorry about that bookcase."

"Hear de lamb!" said one of the negro women, bursting into fresh tears.

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Chapter XXXI

Margaret Harold was sitting on a bench at the East Angels landing. She was in walking dress; her large hat, with its drooping plumes, made her face look like that of a Gainsborough portrait. A bunch of ferns which she had gathered had slipped from her lap to her feet. Carlos Mateo, very stiff, stood near. It was sunset; a mocking-bird was pouring forth a flood of notes, rioting in melody, it was marvellous to realize that such a little creature could produce from his tiny throat matchless music like this.

Coming down the live-oak avenue appeared the figure of Celestine.

"If you please, Miss Margaret, Mrs. Rutherford has sent me to look for you."

"Yes, I know; I am late to-night, I will come in now."

"There's no occasion for haste," Celestine answered, bestowing a short glance of general inspection upon the lagoon, the tinted sky, and the stiff figure of the crane. "What a pagan bird that crane is!"

"You hear, Carlos?" said Margaret.

But Carlos was never conscious of the existence of Celestine, he kept his attentions exclusively for his southern friends; the only exception was Margaret, whose presence he was now beginning to tolerate.

"You don't call that mocking-bird a pagan, do you?" Margaret asked.

"I don't care much for mocking-birds myself," Celestine responded. "Give me a bobolink, Miss Margaret! As for them leaves you've got there--all the sweet-smelling things in Florida--I'd trade the whole for one sniff of the laylocks that used to grow in our backyard when I was a girl."

"Why, Minerva, you're homesick."

"No, Miss Margaret, no; I've got my work to attend to here; no, I ain't homesick: you get home knocked out of you when you've traipsed about to such places as Nice, Rome, Egypt, and the dear knows where. But if anybody was really going to live somewheres (I don't mean just staying, as we're doing now), talk about choosing between this and New England--my!"

Margaret rose.

"There's no occasion for haste if you don't want to go in just yet," said Celestine; "she isn't alone, I saw Dr. Kirby ride up just as I came away. Well--she's got on that maroon silk wrapper."

"Nobody has such taste as you have, Celestine," said Margaret, kindly. "My aunt is always becomingly dressed."

There was a little movement of the New England woman's mouth, which was almost a grimace. In reality it expressed her pride and pleasure--though no one would have suspected it. It was the only acknowledgment she made.

Dr. Kirby was sitting with his esteemed friend when Margaret entered.

His esteemed friend's feeling for Margaret now seemed to be always a tender compassion.

"My dear child, I fear you have been out too long, you look pale," was the present manifestation of it.

"I have often thought what a variation it would make in the topics of my friends," said Margaret, as she drew off her gloves, "if I should take to painting my cheeks a little; think of it--a touch of rouge, now, and the whole conversation would be altered."

"I am sure that, for artistic purposes at least," said Dr. Kirby, gallantly, "rouge would be totally misapplied. We all know that Mrs. Harold's complexion has always the purest, the most natural, the most salubrious tint; it is the whiteness of Diana."

"Pray give those--those green things to Looth," Aunt Katrina went on, languidly; "I hope they are not poison-ivy?" (Aunt Katrina lived under the impression that everything that came from the woods was poison-ivy.) "And do go to my room, dear child, and sit down there a while before the fire--there's a little fire--and let Looth change your shoes, and make you a nice cup of tea. Later--later," Aunt Katrina went on, more animatedly, "we'll have some whist." She spoke as though she were holding out something which Margaret would be sure to enjoy.

There were very few evenings now when Aunt Katrina did not expect her niece to make one at the whist-table drawn up at her couch's side, the other players being Dr. Kirby, Betty, or occasionally Madam Ruiz or Madam Giron. The game had come to be her greatest pleasure, she had therefore established and set going in her circle of friends the idea that it was an especial pleasure to Margaret also; Aunt Katrina was an adept in such tyrannies.

"How is Mr. Moore to-day?" Margaret inquired, not replying to the change of shoes.

"He improves every hour, it's wonderful! He is getting well in half the time that any one else would have taken. He will walk as lightly as ever before long--or almost as lightly. He is rather uncomfortably comfortable just now, however," the Doctor went on, laughing, "he doesn't know how to adapt himself to all his new luxuries; he took up an ivory-handled brush this morning almost as though it were an infernal machine."

"I should hardly think Mrs. Moore would approve of useless luxuries," said Aunt Katrina, not with a sniff--Aunt Katrina never sniffed--but with a slight movement of the tip of her very well shaped nose; she followed the movement with a light stroke upon that tip with her embroidered handkerchief.

"Penelope nowadays approves of everything for her Middleton," said Dr. Kirby, laughing again. "I believe she'll deck him out with pink silk curtains round his bed before she gets through."

"Yes--but ivory-handled brushes," said Aunt Katrina, confining herself, as usual, to the facts. "And his hair is so thin, too!"

"I must confess I roared--if you will permit the rather free expression. But the brushes came with the other things that nephew of yours sent down; I believe he's trying to corrupt the dominie."

"I am glad, and very thankful to hear that Mr. Moore is going on so well," said Margaret, "there is nothing I care so much about." Carrying her plumed hat in her hand, she left the room.

"He is an excellent man, Mr. Moore--most excellent," observed Aunt Katrina, a little stiffly; "of course we can never forget our obligations to him."

"I should think not, indeed," answered Reginald Kirby, for the first time losing some of his gallantry of tone.

"I am sure we have shown that we do not forget them," Aunt Katrina went on, with dignity. "Margaret has shown it, and Evert; between them they have made Mr. Moore comfortable for life."

"There wouldn't have been much life left in any of you without him," said Kirby, still fierily.

"I beg your pardon, I am not so dependent upon my niece, dear as she is to me, as that; I think such dependence wrong. You must remember, too, that I have already been through great sorrows--the greatest; my life has not been an easy one." The gemmed hand was gently raised here; then dropped with resignation upon the maroon silk lap. "I esteem Mr. Moore highly--haven't I mentioned to you that I do? surely I have. But I cannot be deeply interested in him; Mr. Moore is not an interesting man, he is not an exciting man. I am afraid that when I care for a friend," said Aunt Katrina, frankly, "when I find a friend delightful, I am afraid I am apt, yes, very apt, to make comparisons." And she glanced at the Doctor with a gracious smile.

"Pardon my ill temper," murmured the Doctor, completely won again. "After all," he said to himself, with conviction, "she's a deucedly fine woman still."

Three months had elapsed since the burning of the house on the river.

Mr. Moore had remained for four weeks in the neighboring hotel, his wife and Dr. Kirby constantly with him. They had then decided to take him on a litter to Gracias; they crossed the St. John's in safety, and came slowly over the pine barrens.

As they approached the town, Dr. Kirby, who, with Winthrop, was accompanying the litter on horseback, a little in advance, saw a number of people in the road.

"They have come out to meet him," said the Doctor, angrily. "How senseless! how wicked! In his present state the excitement will kill him; I shall ride forward and tell them to go back."

"No, don't," said Winthrop; "I think you're mistaken, I think it will do him good. He has never in the least understood how much they care for him; he has been kept both mentally and physically too low. What he needs now is a richer diet."

"Are you turning into a doctor yourself?" inquired Kirby, with impatience, yet struck, too, by the suggestion. "It is true that I have always said he'd be twice the man he was if he had a glass of port with his dinner."

"This will be the glass of port."

Mr. Moore's litter had curtains, which were down, he had not yet seen the assemblage. His improvised couch was swung carefully across a large wagon, which was drawn by Winthrop's horses on a walk, a man leading them; Penelope followed in another carriage, which Winthrop had also provided.

"I declare--it's all Gracias!" exclaimed the Doctor, as they came near the assembled groups. "Not only our own people, but Our Lady of the Angels' people have come too--there's Father Florencio at the head."

Penelope had now discovered the assemblage, and had bidden her coachman hasten forward. Descending with her weak step, she herself fastened back the curtains of the litter; "Dear," she said, tenderly, "they have come out to meet you--the Gracias people. I know you will be glad."

She kissed him, and rearranged his pillows; then she let Winthrop help her back into her carriage, which fell behind again. Penelope agreed with him, evidently, in thinking that excitement would do the injured man good.

Winthrop, who had dismounted, gave his horse to Tom, and walked himself beside the litter; the Doctor rode on the other side, and thus they went on their way again towards the waiting people.

These people were showing more sense than the Doctor had given them credit for; they had drawn themselves up in two lines, one on each side of the narrow pine barren road, on the right the congregation of St. Philip and St. James, with their senior warden at the end of the line; and, opposite, the flock of Our Lady of the Angels, led by their benign, handsome old priest, Father Florencio. Then, farther on, at a little distance, came the negroes, drawn up also in two lines.

The whites were very still; they did not cheer, they bowed and waved their hands. Mr. Moore looked from one side to the other, turning his head a little, and peering from his half-closed eyes, as his litter passed on between the ranks of friends. It had been agreed that nothing should be said--he was too weak to bear it; but all the people smiled, though many of them felt their tears starting at the same moment, as they saw his helpless form; they smiled determinedly, and winked back the moisture, he should see none but cheerful faces as he passed. At the end of the line the senior warden, in their name, stepped forward and pressed the rector's hand. And then from the other side came Father Florencio, who heartily did the same.

Penelope, looking from the open carriage behind, was crying. But Mr. Moore himself was not excited. He thought it very beautiful that they should all have come out in this way to meet him, it was the sign of a great kindness.

It did not occur to him that it was the sign of a great admiration as well.

When the litter came abreast of the two long lines of blacks, they could not keep back their demonstrations of welcome quite so completely as the whites had done; the Baptist minister of their own race, who was the pastor of most of them, stood, in his Sunday clothes, with his hand up warningly, in order to check their exuberance. One broad gleam of white teeth extended down the entire line, and, "He's come back fum de gold'n gate!" "Bless de passon!" were murmured in undertones as the litter passed. And then, behind it, there were noiseless leaps, and hats (most of them battered) in the air; next, they all ran forward over the barren in a body, in order to precede the procession into Gracias.

"Don't shout--do you hear me?--no shouting," said Dr. Kirby, imperatively. He had been obliged to leave his place beside the litter, there was no room for his horse between the close-pressing ranks; now he rode forward in order to keep a control, if possible, over the joyous throng. "If you shout, it will be very bad for him," he went on, threateningly. He had stopped his horse and was addressing them from the saddle; the litter was some distance behind.

"But we gotter do sumpen, marse," said one of the men, protestingly.

"Dance, then! But make no noise about it; when he's safely in his own house again, then go down to the pier, if you like, and shout as much as you please."

This was done. The negroes preceded the litter through the streets of Gracias, and waited in sympathetic silence until Mr. Moore had been carried into the rectory, and the door was closed behind him; then they adjourned to the pier, and danced and shouted there as if, old Mrs. Kirby declared, with her hand over her little ears--"as if they meant to raise the dead."

"No, ma, no; they mean to raise the living if they can," said her son, when he came in.

He had been more affected than he would confess by that welcome out on the barren. He had not known himself how much attached he was to the mild-voiced clergyman until it had become probable that soon they should hear that voice no more. The danger of death was now averted, he hoped, though the illness might be a long one; in his own mind he registered a vow never to call any one "limp" again;--he had called Mr. Moore that about once a week for years. "There's a kind of limpness that's strength"--thus he lectured himself. "And you, Reginald Kirby, for all your talk, might not, in an emergency, be able even to approach it. And turning out your toes, and sticking out your chest won't save you, my boy; not a whit!"

Fond as Aunt Katrina was of the position of patroness, she was not altogether pleased with some steps that were taken, later. "A proper acknowledgment, of course, is all very well," she said. "But you and Margaret, between you, have really given Mr. Moore a comfortable little fortune. And you have put it in his own hands, too--to do what he likes with!"

"Whose hands would you have put it into?" Winthrop asked.

"A lawyer's, of course," Aunt Katrina answered.

"I am afraid Margaret and I are not always as judicious as you are, Aunt Kate."

Aunt Kate was not quick (it was one of the explanations of the preservation of her beauty). "No, you're not; but I wish you were," she responded.

Mr. Moore knew nothing of the increase of his income; it was Penelope who had been won over by Winthrop's earnest logic--earnest in regard to the comfort of the poor sufferer lying blinded, voiceless, helpless, in the next room. What Winthrop was urging was simply that money should not be considered in providing for him every possible alleviation and luxury. His illness might be a long one (at that stage--it was while Mr. Moore was still in the river hotel--no one spoke of death, though all knew that it was very near); everything, therefore, should be done to lighten it. If the rectory was gloomy, another house in Gracias should be taken--one with a large garden; two good nurses should be sent for immediately; and, later, there must be a horse, and some sort of a low, easy vehicle, made on purpose to carry a person in a recumbent posture. Many other things would be required, these he mentioned now were but a beginning; Mrs. Moore must see that neither his aunt, Mrs. Harold, nor himself could take a moment's rest until everything was done that could be done, they should all feel extremely unhappy, miserable--if she should refuse them. If she would but stop to think of it, she must realize that.

Penelope agreed to this.

She had cried so much that she was the picture of living despair, she was thinking of nothing but her husband and his pain; but she forced a momentary attention towards Winthrop, who was talking so earnestly to her, trying to make some impression.

He could see that he did not make much.

"Your husband gave his life--it amounted to that--to save Margaret's; she was nothing to him--that is, no relative, not even a near friend, yet he faced for her the most horrible of deaths. If it had not been for him, that would have been her death, and think, then, Mrs. Moore, think what we should be feeling now." He had meant to say this steadily, but he could not. His voice became choked, he got up quickly and went to the window.

Penelope, who, tired as she was, and with one hand pressed constantly against her weak back, was yet sitting on the edge of a hard wooden chair, ready to jump up and run into the next room at an instant's notice, tried again to detach her mind from her husband long enough to think of what it was this man was saying to her; she liked Margaret, and therefore she succeeded sufficiently well to answer, "It would have been terrible." Then her thoughts went back to Middleton again.

"Don't you see, then," said Winthrop, returning, "that, standing as we do almost beside her grave, your husband has become the most precious person in the world to us? How can you hesitate?" he said, breaking off, "how can you deny us the pleasure of doing everything possible--so little at best--to help him in his great suffering?"

"Oh yes--his suffering! his suffering!" moaned the wife, the tears dropping down her white cheeks without any distortion of feature. Her eyes looked large; singularly enough, though she was so exhausted, her countenance appeared younger than he had ever seen it; under the all-absorbing influence of her grief its usual expressions had gone and one could trace again the outlines of youth; her girlhood face--almost her little-girl face--had come strangely back, as it does sometimes after death, when grandchildren see, with startled, loving surprise, what "grandma" was when she too was only sixteen.

Winthrop took her thin worn hand and carried it to his lips; her sorrow was very sacred to him. "For you too," he urged--"you who are so tired and ill--let us help you all we can. Do not refuse us, Mrs. Moore; do not."

The door into the next room now opened softly, and Dr. Kirby entered, closing it behind him. "No--sit still," he said, as Mrs. Moore started up. "There's nothing to be done for him just now; he's asleep." He called it "sleep," to pacify her. "I came in to say," he went on--"I knew you were here, Mr. Winthrop--that there must not be so much noise on this floor; I have no doubt the people of the house are as careful as they can be, in fact, I know they are; but there are others here."

Winthrop turned to Penelope. "Now will you consent?" he said.

(She looked at him; she was thinking only of the blessed fact that Middleton was asleep.)

"You hear what Dr. Kirby says?--the house must be kept more quiet. I can clear it immediately of every person in it. The noise is bad for your husband--don't you understand? It will make a difference in his--in his recovery."

"Oh! do anything, anything!" said the wife, wringing her hands.

He pursued his advantage. "You are willing, then, that I should do everything possible--for his sake, you know? You consent."

"Yes, yes," she answered.

"By--all--means," said Dr. Kirby, impressively. "Consent? Of course you consent, Penelope." He had never called her Penelope before in his life. After that he never called her by any other name.

It seemed to Reginald Kirby a natural thing (and a small one too) that these northerners should wish to do everything they could for the dying hero in there; at that time the Doctor thought that the clergyman must die.

Twelve hours later, with the exception of the proprietors and their servants, there was no one save Mr. Moore and his friends in the river hotel. And the house was held empty as long as he remained there. Aunt Katrina never could find out how much those weeks cost her nephew.

But she did find out that her nephew and Margaret together had given the Moores that "comfortable little fortune," though it was not in Mr. Moore's hands, as she supposed; it was in Penelope's.

Penelope herself knew but little about it even now, save the fact (a great one) that where she had once had a dollar to spend in a certain time, she now had ten; they had lived on six hundred a year, they now had six thousand.

Mr. Moore noticed his new luxuries; he knew that Evert Winthrop had sent many of them down from New York, and he felt very grateful; he asked Penelope if she had sufficiently thanked him.

"Why, Middleton dear, he's grateful to you," Penelope answered.

She never confessed that it was she herself who had asked for the ivory brushes. Once let loose on that track, her imagination had become wildly lawless; she had not considered the rectory gloomy, as Winthrop had suggested, but there was no doubt but that she would have suspended pink silk curtains round Middleton's bed if the idea had once occurred to her. She had always had a secret admiration for velvet coats--which she associated in some way with King Charles the Martyr--and she now cherished a plan for attiring Middleton in one (when he should be able to be attired), and had even selected the color--a dark wood brown; it would not do for church work, of course; but while he was still an invalid, now--And she lost herself in dreams of satin linings.

On the day after the fire Margaret had left the river.

It was now thought that she had caused the fire herself; she had wakened, feeling somewhat chilled, and had gone across to a store-room in the main building to see if she could get a blanket; having no candle, she had taken a box of matches from her travelling-bag, and had used them to light her way, and probably some spark or burning end had fallen among the stored woollens, and the fire had smouldered there for some time before making its way out.

She was suffering from nervous shock, she knew that she should be of no use as a nurse, at least for the present; Dr. Kirby and Mrs. Moore had reached the hotel, and Winthrop was to remain with them. She could not travel far, but she could cross over to East Angels; she decided to do that.

When she reached the house, Aunt Katrina's voice greeted her: "Oh, Margaret! Margaret! what a horrible fright you have given me!"

Celestine, however (there were certain emergencies when Celestine did not scruple to interrupt Aunt Katrina), appeared promptly upon the scene from somewhere, took Margaret up in her arms as though she had been a child, and carried her off to her bedroom.

"Oh, Miss Margaret!" she said, weeping over her one or two big tears as she laid her down on the bed--"oh, Miss Margaret!"

"There's nothing the matter with me, Minerva, except that I am tired," Margaret answered.

And she did look tired; she was so exhausted that she had not laughed over Celestine's idea of taking her up and carrying her, she was glad to be carried.

But having shed her tears, Celestine was now the nurse again. "Don't speak another word!" she said, peremptorily. And then, with careful hands, she undressed Margaret and put her to bed.

At the end of the third day Margaret was able to present herself again in Aunt Katrina's sitting-room.

"I suppose you've got to get it over some time," was Celestine's reluctant assent.

"But how in the world, Margaret, did you ever come to go back to that house all alone, late at night, and without letting a soul know?" demanded Aunt Katrina, in the course of her cross-examination. "I've tried to conceal what I thought of such a freak!"

"It was not late," Margaret answered, "it was early. I changed my mind about sleeping at the hotel, I thought I should rather sleep in my own house, after all; so I went back. Then when I found that Mr. Moore had already gone to bed, early though it was, I decided not to disturb him."

"What a piece of craziness!--and to think, too, that at your age you should have gone wandering about with matches! Well, I am glad that I at least have no such tastes; when I say I am going to sleep in a place, I sleep there, and you have no idea what sacrifices I have made sometimes, when travelling, to keep my word--keep it merely to myself; it is so much better to do what you say you're going to, and not keep changing your mind. I can never be thankful enough that Lanse was not there; he could never have escaped so easily as you did, poor fellow; it really seems almost providential--his having gone off on that journey just at that time. And as to the wandering about with matches, Margaret (for it all comes back to that), it's an excellent rule for people who have those manias never to allow themselves to get out of bed (until the next morning, of course) after once they're in; now do promise me that you will make it yours, at least as long as you are staying here; otherwise I shall be so nervous."

"I wasn't in bed at all," said Margaret.

"A lounge is the same thing; don't quibble," said Aunt Katrina, severely.

Here Betty, hurrying in, fell on Margaret's neck and kissed her, holding her closely in her affectionate arms. "Oh, my dearest child! restored to us from that dreadful danger, thank God! To think how near you came--Oh, my dear, dear girl!" She kissed her again, and got out her handkerchief to dry her brimming eyes. "We're going to have prayers in the church, my dear--thanksgiving."

"What a pity it is, Betty, that you are so demonstrative! Can't you be glad to see Margaret without boohooing? And when my head is in such a state, too."

"I am very sorry, Kate, I'm sure," Betty answered. She sat down on the sofa beside Margaret; as there was a table in front of her which concealed the movement, she put out her hand furtively and took Margaret's in hers, holding it with tenderness, and giving it every now and then a motherly pressure. In the mean while, she talked as usual to her dear Kate. This was not duplicity on Betty's part; on principle she never opposed Kate now, she was such an invalid, poor thing! In her heart lurked the conviction that if Kate would only "let her figure go," and be just "natural," as she (Betty) was, her health would immediately improve. People's figures altered as they grew older, it was useless to say they didn't; no one could retain a slim waist after forty-five; dear Kate was over sixty,--really it was not seemly to be so girted in.

If dear Kate could have suspected these opinions, there is no doubt but that she would have risen from her couch, figure and all, and turned her uncinctured Elizabeth from the room.

On the fourth day Winthrop came over from the river.

Learning from Celestine that his aunt was in a fairly comfortable condition, he had fifteen minutes of serious conversation with her; he told the truth about Lansing Harold's relations with his wife, as well as his relations with another person.

Aunt Katrina was greatly overcome. She cared more for Lanse than for any one; much as she cared for him, she had always admired him even more. She cried--really cried; her handsome face became reddened and disfigured, and she did not think of it. "He was such a dear little boy," she said, sobbing. Then she rallied. "If he had had another sort of wife, he would have been different."

"That's what is always said about such men. In any case, there's nothing gained by going back to that now."

"I think something is gained; justice is gained--justice for Lanse. And, mark my words, Evert, Margaret Cruger has not suffered."

"Whether she has or not, she is going to leave us."

"What?" said Aunt Katrina, quickly, turning towards him her altered countenance. He scarcely knew it, with its reddened eyes and spotted look.

"You thought, I believe, that she was only going to be absent a short time," he went on; "that it was merely that she wished a change. But it was more than that; she has a plan for opening that old house of hers near Cherry Valley, and living there."

"And me?" said Aunt Katrina, in angry amazement. "Does she cut herself free from me in that way? In my state of health?"

"It appears so."

Aunt Katrina remained speechless. Pure dismay was now conquering every other feeling.

"The truth is, Aunt Katrina, you have not been kind enough to Margaret, ever."

"Kind!" ejaculated the lady.

"No. She has done everything for you for years, and you have constantly illtreated her."

"Illtreated! Good heavens!"

"She has therefore decided--and I am not much surprised--that she would rather have a home of her own."

"And you abet her in this?"

"Not at all, I think she had much better stay with you; I am only explaining to you how she feels."

"I don't know that I care to understand Margaret Cruger's feelings."

"Exactly; you don't. And therefore she is going."

Aunt Katrina was evidently struggling with her own thoughts. He left her to the contest.

At last, "Poor child!" she said, sighing, as she gently pressed a handkerchief to different parts of her disordered countenance--"poor child!"

Winthrop waited for further developments; he knew they would come.

"It is natural that I should have been cold to her, perhaps, feeling as I did so keenly how unqualified she was to make a congenial home for Lanse. But, as you say, probably she cannot help it, it is her disposition. And now, to think what she must be feeling!--she has, in her way, a strict conscience, and to-day she faces the fact that, by her own utter want of sympathy (which I suppose she really cannot help), she has driven her husband away a second time, sent him a second time into bad courses! I realize, indeed, that it is the moment when I ought to do everything I can for her, when I should stifle my own feelings, and treat her with the greatest tenderness; don't you agree with me?"

"Fully. But even then I don't know that you can induce her to stay."

"Really--the more I think of it, the more sorry I feel for her, she is deeply to be pitied; I can imagine how crushed I should have felt if Peter had deserted me! But if he had done so, I should have gone immediately, of course, to stay with some older relative--it is the only proper way. You might represent to Margaret how much better it would look if she should continue, as before, to reside with me."

"Perhaps she won't take so much pains about the 'look' of anything, this time; perhaps she will let people know the real facts; she has always concealed them before."

"They would only be her own condemnation, in any case; everybody would perfectly understand that it was some lack in her," answered Aunt Katrina, with decision. "But I think you had better speak to her, and immediately; it is so much more desirable, on her own account, that she should remain with me. I don't fancy she cares much for you, or she would never have tried to engage you to that odious Garda Thorne; still, you are a relative--- after a fashion, and she ought to listen to you; you might tell her," she added, her voice falling into a pathetic key, "that probably I shall not be left to her long."

"My dear aunt, you will outlive us all," said Winthrop, rising. "I will see her, and do what I can," he added, as he left the room.

At first he could not find Margaret, she was not in any of the usual places; he began to fear that she was in her own room, and that he should not find her at all. At last he met Celestine. "Do you know where Mrs. Harold is?" he said.

"Well, Mr. Evert, she's in the garden," Celestine answered, with some reluctance. "I've fixed her up nicely in an easy-chair on a rug, and I've told everybody to keep away, so that she can just rest--that's what she needs. I've let her have one book--an easy-looking story that didn't seem exciting. And I'm going out after her in about an hour, to bring her in."

"I won't be any more exciting than the easy-looking story, Minerva; I promise you that."

Celestine watched him go, she was not pleased, but she could not help herself. She shook her head forebodingly, with her lips pursed up; then she went about her business--as she would herself have said.

Margaret was sitting under the rose-tree, in the easy-chair Celestine had mentioned, a rug spread under her feet. She had a parasol beside her, but the tree gave a sufficient shade; over her head Celestine had folded a Spanish veil.

"I thought perhaps we should see you to-day," she said.

"Yes, it hasn't been possible to come before. But of course you have had my letters--I mean about Mr. Moore? I have written twice a day. Is that the book Minerva said was an easy-looking one, not exciting--'Adam Bede?' What do you suppose she calls exciting?"

"The 'Wide, Wide World,' I presume."

He sat down on the bench near her. Carlos stalked out of the bushes, surveyed them, and then, with great dignity, secluded himself again.

"He misses Garda," Margaret said.

"I suppose Garda is still pursuing her triumphant career over there?"

"I don't know what you mean by triumphant. She is very happy."

"That's what I mean; it's extremely triumphant to be so happy, isn't it?"

"I am sure I don't know."

"You mean you have never been either?--Margaret, I have come to speak about your going away. Are you still thinking of going?"

"Yes; as soon as I am a little stronger."

"Aunt Katrina has sent me to plead with you; of course that's the last thing she calls it, but it's pleading all the same. I don't make any plea for her, because I don't think, as far as you are concerned, she deserves the least fragment of one; but I will say that I have told her the whole truth about Lanse at last, and that it has been a great blow to her, I have never seen her so much overcome. She has rallied however, she has taken her line; her line is the tenderest pity for you, because you must feel it all to be so entirely your own fault!--you see how much that allows her? But she is so exceedingly anxious--abjectly anxious, to keep you with her, that I think you need fear no unpleasant manifestations of it."

"Aunt Katrina does not really need me. And for myself a change is indispensable."

"But it is so safe for you here--so quiet and protected. It is a species of home, after all. I like to see you, as you are at this moment, sitting in this old garden; it seems to me so much pleasanter for you--with this restful air to breathe--than that bustling, driving New York."

"It may be so. But I need change."

"You cling to that." He paused. "I believe you simply mean freedom."

"Yes, I do mean it. But we are going over the same ground we have already been over; that is useless."

"Everything is changed to me since then," said Winthrop, abruptly. "I have seen you brought back from the very threshold of death, I cannot pretend to be the same."

"I am the same."

"Yes; you didn't see yourself--"

"Don't talk about it, please. It is true that, personally, I do not realize it. But when I think of Mr. Moore, I do; and it makes me ill and faint."

"Why shouldn't you begin your freedom--yes; but begin it here?" he went on, returning to his argument. "Aunt Katrina has taken a new line about you. Why shouldn't you take one about her? And about everything? The people here are tiresome, of course; but people are tiresome everywhere, sooner or later, unless one leads a life of just dipping in, never staying long enough in any one place to get much below the surface. You could set up your own horses, your own servants; you could rearrange half the house to please yourself; you could carry it all out, as regards Aunt Katrina, with a high hand; she wouldn't make a murmur, I'm confident! And you could easily take some pleasant trips too from here--to New Orleans and Cuba; there's really a great deal to see. And if you are tired (as I should think you might well be) of always saying where you are going, and where you have been, how long you have stayed or intend to stay, and why, you could lay down a rule that no one should ask you a question. If they should continue to do it, you might throw something at them." His plan seemed to him so good as he unfolded it that it made him jocular.

She returned no answer.

"You don't care at all for what I think, or wish."

"No, I don't."

He looked at her as she sat there with face averted, his expression was that of angry helplessness. "All I want," he went on, trying to curb his irritation, "is to feel that you are safe."

"I shall be safe wherever I am."

"No, you won't, a woman like you cannot be, alone. Of course you will do all that is best and proper, but you are far too beautiful to be knocking about the world by yourself."

"Aren't you confusing me a little with Garda?"

"Your sarcasms have no effect; if I were as innocent in other matters as I am with regard to that effulgent young person, I should be quite perfect. But we won't speak of her; we'll speak of you."

"I am tired of the subject." She looked towards the gate as if in search of Celestine.

"She won't be here for some time yet. Bear with me a little, Margaret, don't be so impatient of the few minutes I have secured with you; what we're deciding now is important--your whole future."

"It is already decided."

He dashed his hand down upon his knee. "There's no use trying to argue with women! A woman never comprehends argument, no matter how strong it may be."

She was silent. Her face had a weary look, but there were in it no indications of yielding.

"You appear to be determined to go," he began again; "if you do go, Aunt Katrina will have the mental exercise of learning to get on without either of us."

She looked up quickly; his eyes were turned away now, straying over the tangled foliage of the crape-myrtles.

"I am sick of everything here," he went on--"East Angels, Gracias, the whole of it. If you are tired of seeing the same few people always day after day, what must I be? There are two spinster cousins of Aunt Katrina's who might come down here for a while, and I dare say they would come if I should ask them; with these ladies to manage the house, with Dr. Reginald and Betty, Celestine and Looth, Aunt Katrina ought to be tolerably comfortable."

Margaret had listened with keen attention. But she did not answer immediately; when she did reply, she spoke quietly. "Yes, I should think you would be glad to go north again, you have been tied down here so long. I am sure we can assume now that there is at least no present danger in Aunt Katrina's case; both of us certainly are not needed for her, and therefore, as you did not speak of going, I thought I could. But now that you have spoken, now that I see you do wish to go, I feel differently, I give you the chance. The change I wished for I will create here, I will create it by buying this house from you--that will be a change; I can amuse myself restoring it, if one can say that, when it's not a church."

"You would do that?" said Winthrop, eagerly. Then he colored. "I see; it means that you will stay if I go!"

"I shall do very well here if I have the place to think about," she went on, "I shall have the land cultivated; perhaps I shall start a new orange grove. Of course I shall lose money; but I can employ the negroes about here, and I should like that; as to the household arrangements, Aunt Katrina would be staying with me, not I with her; that would make everything different."

"Yes; I could not come here as I do now, bag and baggage."

"I should not ask you," she answered, smiling. "I believe in your heart you like no woman to lead a really independent life."

"You're right, I do not. They're not fitted for it."

"Oh--"

"And they're not happy in it."

"It's so good of you to think of our happiness."

"All this is of no consequence, Margaret, it's quite beside the mark. The real issue is this: if I stay, you go; if I go, you will stay."

"I thought you didn't like repetitions; you're always so severe on poor Aunt Betty when she indulges in them."

"You've got the upperhand, and you know it, and are glorying," he said, sullenly.

"Glorying!" said Margaret, with a sudden drop in her voice. "Well, we will say no more about it," she added.

"Excuse me, we will say plenty more. I would do a great deal to keep you here, there's no doubt of that. If I must, I must, I suppose! You may have the place--though I'm fond of it still."

"It must be quite fair?" she said, looking at him hesitatingly.

"You mean that I am not to come back and hang about in the neighborhood? Oh, rest content; I've had enough of the Seminole for a lifetime."

"I presume you will be in a hurry," he went on. "You will expect to have the deeds made out to-morrow."

"Yes, I should rather have it done soon."

"Of course.--How you hate me!" He rose.

She did not speak.

"But I'm not surprised--stubborn fool, ineffable prig as I must have seemed to you all these years! Take the place. And I'll go."

The gate clicked, Celestine was coming towards them.

"But though I acknowledge my own faults, don't imagine I admire such perfection as you always exhibit," he went on. "It's too much, you're too faultless; some small trace of womanly humility would be a relief, sometimes." He left the garden. Celestine, coming up, found her patient looking anything but rested. The next moment she put her hand over her eyes, physical weakness had conquered her.

"Just what I expected, men haven't a spark of gumption," said Celestine, indignantly. "He might have seen you weren't fit for talking; anybody could have seen. There, Miss Margaret, there; don't feel so bad, you'll soon be stronger now." And Celestine put one arm round her charge tenderly.

The touch made Margaret's tears flow faster; leaning her head against her faithful New England friend, she cried and cried as if her heart would break.

"You're clean tuckered out, I declare," said Celestine, half crying herself. "Everybody plagues you--I never see the beat! And they all seem to think they've got a right to. Just get real mad, now, Miss Margaret, for once; and stay so. My! wouldn't they be surprised?"

This was three months before. Margaret was now the owner of East Angels.

On the evening when she had returned from the landing with her ferns, and had found Dr. Kirby talking with Aunt Katrina, she went to her own room; here she threw off the long, closely fitting over-garment of dark silk, and gave it and the Gainsborough hat to her maid; she had a maid now.

"If you please, Mrs. Harold, there are five letters for you; they are on the dressing-table."

"Very well; you need not wait, Hester, I shall not need you at present."

The woman went out with noiseless step. Margaret turned over the letters, glancing at the superscriptions rather languidly. She did not care much for what the mails brought her at present, excepting Garda's short, rapturous notes with various foreign headings.

The last envelope of the pile--it is always the last letter that strikes the blow--was inscribed in a handwriting that made her heart stop beating. "Mrs. Lansing Harold" was scrawled there, in rather large, rough letters; and within, at the end of the second page--there were only two filled--the same name was signed without the "Mrs."

Lanse had come back to America. He was coming back to Florida. He was on his way at that moment to Fernandina, having selected that place because he had learned that she had "burned down the house on the point," which, he thought she would allow him to say, was inconsiderate. He had made up his mind not to take her by surprise, he would go to Fernandina, and wait there. He was a cripple indeed, this time. And forever. No hope of a cure, as there had been before. It wasn't paralysis, it was something with a long name, which apparently meant that he was to spend the rest of his days in bed, with the occasional variation of an arm-chair. This last journey of his abroad had been a huge mistake from beginning to end (the only one he had ever made--he must say that). But he didn't suppose she would care to hear the particulars; and he should much prefer that she should not hear them, it wasn't a subject for her. He had come home this time for good and all, it would never be possible for him to run away again, she might depend upon that. In such afflictions a man, of course, counted upon his wife; but he wished to be perfectly reasonable, and therefore he would live wherever she pleased--with his nurses, his water-pillows, and his back rest--yes, he had come to that! At present it wasn't clear to him what he was going to do to amuse himself. He could use his hands, and he had thought of learning to make fish-nets. But perhaps she could think of something better? And then, with a forcible allusion to the difficulties of his present progress southward, and a characteristic summing up of the merits of the hotel where he, with his two attendants, was resting for a day, the short two pages ended abruptly with his name.

His wife had sunk into a chair, she sat staring at it.

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Chapter XXXII

A week later, Margaret was out to walk on the barren.

She had walked far, though her step had been slow; it seemed to her that her step would always be slow now, her effort must be to keep it steady. She had reached a point where there rose on the green level a little mound-like island of a different growth, its top covered with palmetto-trees. She made her way to the summit; though the height of the little hill was low, the view one obtained there was extensive, like that from a small light-house in a salt-marsh. Where she stood there was a cleared space--the ground had been burned over not long before; on this brown surface the crosiers of new ferns were unrolling themselves, and when tired of the broad barren, her eyes rested on their little fresh stalks, green and woolly, though she no longer stooped to gather them. She did not come home now laden with flowers and vines to plant in the old East Angels garden; the life she had been trying to build up there was suddenly stopped, a completely different one was demanding her. She had been very free, but now she was called back--called back to the slavery, and the dread.

Oh, blessed, twice blessed, are the women who have no very deep feelings of any kind! they are so much happier, and so much better! This was what she was saying to herself over and over again, as, with one arm round a slender tree, so that she could lean her head against it, she stood there alone on the little island, looking over the plain. Not to care very deeply, too deeply, for anything, any one; and with that to be kind and gentle--this was by far the happiest nature for women to have, and of such the good were made. Mothers should pray for this disposition for their daughters. Anything else led to bitter pain.

She thought of her own mother, of whom she had no recollection. "If you had lived, mother, perhaps I should have been saved from this; perhaps I should not be so wretched--" this was her silent cry.

She heard a sound, some one was coming through the high bushes below; a moment more, and the person appeared. It was Evert Winthrop.

"You?" she said, breathlessly. "When did you come? How could you know I was here?"

"For once I've been fortunate, I have never been so before where you were concerned. I reached East Angels half an hour ago, Celestine said you were out on the barren somewhere, and Telano happened to know the road you had taken; then I met some negro children who had seen you pass, and, farther on, a boy who knew you had come this way; he brought me here. But I saw you a mile off myself, you are very conspicuous in that light dress on the top of this mound."

"We had no idea you were coming--"

"I couldn't let you know beforehand, because I came myself as quickly as a letter could have come; as soon as I knew you would need help, I started."

"Help?"

"Yes, about Lanse."

"Lanse is not here."

"Oh, I know where he is, he is in Fernandina; established there in the best rooms the hotel affords, with three attendants, and everything comfortable. But this time he did not tell me his plans; he arrived in New York, and then came southward, without letting me know a word of it. I heard of him, though, almost immediately, and I started at once."

Margaret did not reply.

"You will need help," he went on.

"No, I think not."

"Then he has not written to you?--has made no demands? I shall think better of him than I had expected to think, if that is the case; I supposed, from his coming south, that he had intentions of molesting you."

"It would not be molesting."

"Has he written to you?"

"Yes."

"What demands, then, does he make--is it money?"

"He wishes me to come back to him, as I did before. But he will live wherever I prefer to live. He is quite willing to leave the choice of the place to me." She spoke slowly, as though she were repeating something she had learned.

"Very good. I suppose you told him that wherever you might prefer to live, there would at least be no place there for Lansing Harold?"

"I haven't told him anything yet. He was willing to wait--he wrote that he would give me a month."

"A month for what?"

"For my answer," she said, drearily.

"It won't take a month. That is what I have come down for--to answer in your place."

She began to look about for the best way to descend.

"I sent the boy who brought me here to East Angels for the phaeton; it will come before long, you won't have to walk back. Now, Margaret, let us have no more useless words; of course you do not dream of doing as Lanse wishes?"

"Yes, I think I shall do it."

"Do you mean to tell me that you wish to go back to that man--after all he has done?"

"I do not wish to. But I must."

"You shall not!" he burst out. His face, usually so calm, was surprisingly altered; it was reddened and darkened.

"Nothing you can say will make any difference," she answered, in the same monotonous tone. Even his rage could not alter the helpless melancholy of her voice.

"Do you think he deserves it--deserves anything? You actually put a premium on loose conduct. You reward him for it, while--while other men, who are trying, at least, to lead decent lives, are thrust aside."

"He is my husband."

"So good a one!"

"That has nothing to do with it."

"Nothing?"

"No; not with my duty."

"I believe you have lost your wits, you are demented," he said, violently.

"Oh, I wish I were demented! Then my troubles would be over."

The despair of these words softened him. She had turned away, he followed her. "Margaret, listen to reason. In some cases it is right that a wife should go back to her husband, almost no matter what he has done. But yours is not one of them, it would kill you."

"No more than it did before."

"But it's worse for you now."

"It's exactly the same."

"He left you a second time."

"I have only to thank him for that, haven't I? It gave me a respite. Over there on the river, when I learned--when I knew--that he had really gone, I could scarcely hide my joy--I had to hide myself to do it! It was the relief, the delight, of being free."

"The law, you know, would free you forever."

"I shall never take advantage of it."

"Do you think you know better than the law?"

"Yes; the law only touches part of the truth. Its plea would not do for me."

"This is pure excitement. Womanlike, you have wrought yourself up to this new view; but it is without a grain of foundation in either justice or common-sense."

"It isn't a new view, I have always known what I should do. That was the reason I wished to keep the house on the river--so that it could be ready in case he should come back. For I felt that he might come at any time, I was never deceived as to any permanent improvement in his health. I have thought it all over again and again; there isn't a loop-hole of escape for me. Let us say no more."

"I shall say a great deal more."

She put out both hands towards him, with a desperate repelling gesture. "Oh, leave me!" she cried.

"I shall not leave you until you have given me an explanation that is reasonable; so far, you have not done it. Time and time again you have put me off, to-day you shall not."

Her own cry had seemed to restore to her her self-control.

"Very well," she said. She folded her arms in her mantle. "What explanations do you wish?" she asked, coldly.

"Why are you going back to Lansing Harold, when you are not in the least forced to go?"

"I am forced; my marriage forces me."

"Not after the ill treatment you have received from him."

"He has never illtreated me personally; in many ways he has never been unkind, many men called good husbands are much more so. He does not drink. If he drank, that would be an excuse for me--an excuse to leave him; but he does not, I have never had a fear of that sort, he has never struck me or threatened me in his life. And I have no children to think of--whether his influence over them would be bad. That too would have been an excuse, a valid one; but it is not mine. He leaves me my personal liberty as he left it to me before. In addition, he is now hopelessly crippled--he has sent me his physician's letter to prove it; his case is there pronounced a life-long one, he will never walk, or be any better than he is now. Are these explanations sufficient? or do you require more?"

"No explanations can ever be sufficient," Winthrop answered. He stood looking at her. "Oh, Margaret, it is such a fearful sacrifice!" He had abandoned for the moment both his anger and his efforts at argument.

"Yes; but that is what life is, isn't it?" she said, her voice trembling a little in spite of herself.

"No, it's not. And it shouldn't be. Why should an utterly selfish man of that kind, who has forfeited every claim upon you a hundred times over--why should he be allowed to dictate to you, to wither your whole existence? Yes, I am beginning again, I know it; but I cannot help it! It is true that I have always talked against separations--preached against them. But that was before my own feelings were brought in, and it makes a wonderful difference? When a woman you care for is made utterly wretched, you take a different view, and you want to seize your old preaching-self, and knock him against the wall! It is not right that you should go back to Lanse, it is wicked, as murder is wicked. He does not strike you--that may be; but the life will kill you just as surely as though he should give you every day, with his own hand, a dose of slow poison. You have an excessively sensitive disposition--you pretend you have not, but you have; you would not be able to throw it off--the yoke he would put upon you, you would not be able to rise above it, become indifferent to it; you would never grow callous, he would always have the power of making you unhappy. This would wear upon you; at last it would wear you out; you would die, and he would live on! And, besides, remember this--it isn't as though he really depended upon you for personal care; he doesn't need you, as far as that goes, he says so. Give him your money, if you like; give him houses and nurses and servants, every luxury, all you have; but do not, do not give him yourself."

She remained silent. She had steeled herself, so it seemed, against anything he could say.

"You are counting the minutes before the phaeton comes," he went on; "that is your only thought--to get away! Very well, then, you shall have the whole, which otherwise I would have kept from you; I love you, Margaret, I have loved you for a long time. If it is horrible to you that I should say it, and force you, too, to hear, bear this in mind: though I say it, I ask for nothing, I do not put myself forward. I tell you because I want you to understand how near your best interests are to me--how I consider them. I deserve some mercy, I have tried hard to hold myself in check--did I say a word all that night in the swamp? You may imagine whether I am happy, loving you hopelessly as I do! It began long ago; when I thought I disliked you so bitterly, that was the beginning; it was a dislike, or rather a pain, which came from your being (as I then supposed you were) so different from the sweet woman it seemed to me you ought to be--ought to be with that face and voice. I watched you; I was very severe in all I said; but all the time I loved you, it was stronger than I. I feel no shame in telling it; it has made me a better man--not so cold, not so sure of my own perfection. And now, if you will only tell me that you won't go back to Lanse, I will go. And I will stay away, I will not try to see you, I will not even write. And this shall last as long as you say, Margaret--for years; even always, if it must be so. What can I do or say more?"

She had stood still, looking at the ground, while he poured forth these urgent words; she might have been a statue.

"There's an icy stubbornness about you--" he began again. "What is it I ask? One promise, and for your own good too, and then I go out into the world again, bearing my pain as best I can, leaving you behind, and free. I don't believe you know what that pain is, because I don't believe you know, or can understand even, how much I love you. I am almost ashamed to put it into words--I am no longer a boy. I had no idea I could love in that way--an unreasoning, headlong feeling. There's no extravagant thing, Margaret--such as I have always laughed at--that I would not do at this moment; and to feel your cheek against mine--I would die to-morrow."

He had not moved towards her, but she shrank back even from his present distance; white-faced, with frightened eyes, she turned; she looked as if she were going to rush away.

"Don't go,--I will not say another word; I only wished you to know how it was with me, it is better that you should know."

He wished to help her, but she would not allow it, she pushed the close bushes aside with trembling hands, and made her way down alone. They reached the barren; the phaeton was approaching.

"I cannot bear to see you so frightened," he said.

"--I believe you are sorry for me," he went on--his voice was gentle now. "And that is why you are afraid to speak--lest you should show it."

She gave him one quick glance; her eyes were full of tears.

"That is it, you are sorry. I thank you for that; and I shall think from it that you have forgiven me those years when I made your life so much harder even than it was, than it need have been."

The phaeton was drawing near.

"I am going to trust you, Margaret, I believe that I can. You will not speak, you think I ought not to have spoken. But if I go away at once, and do not return, perhaps you will be influenced by what I have said, and by what is really the best course for you;--perhaps you will not go back to Lanse. At any rate I shall be showing you that I am in earnest,--that I can, and will keep my promise."

The phaeton drew up before them.

"You must not come with me," she murmured.

"You are to drive, Telano," said Winthrop, as he helped her take her place. He stood there until the light carriage had disappeared.

Then he walked northward to Gracias.

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Chapter XXXIII

"I said I would not write. And I will not, after I once know that your refusal has been sent. It does not seem to me that I am asking much, it cannot long be kept a secret in any case, and, in my opinion, should not be. Let Aunt Katrina write me what has happened; she won't do you any too much justice--you can be sure of that! I left Gracias that same day, as I said I would. I have come back here and gone to work again; a man can always do that."

This letter of Winthrop's was from New York. He had been there two weeks, and there were now but ten days left of the month which Margaret had said her husband had allowed for her answer. He did not speak of this in his letter; but it engrossed all his thoughts.

On the day when he could have had a reply from East Angels, there was no letter from the South. He waited twenty-four hours to allow for delays or accident.

Still nothing.

Margaret did not then intend to reply; it was a case where she would have written immediately (or asked Aunt Katrina to write), if she had intended to reply at all.

"I am not worthy even to be spoken to, it seems; I am the mud under her feet. But it shall not be so easy as she thinks!"

He took the next train bound for Washington, Richmond, and the St. John's River. It was the third time he had made the long journey within the space of four weeks.

He was in such a fever now--fever of irritation and anxiety--that he did not any longer try to keep up his trust in her, to be certain, as he had endeavored to be during the intervening time, that she had been influenced by what he had said, or by her own more deliberate reflections, and that in any case, whether he was to be informed of it or kept in ignorance, she was not going back to Lanse. It now seemed to him possible that, in her strange self-sacrificing sense of duty, she might go. He ground his teeth at the thought.

The leisurely train was crossing the pine lands of North Carolina, making such long waits at grassy little stations to take on wood that those passengers who had a taste for botany had time to explore the surrounding country for flowers. A new thought came to him; it was that he need not have counted so carefully the days of the month, or depended upon that; perhaps she had not waited for the whole time to pass, perhaps she had gone to Fernandina, was already there. Meanwhile--the train crept.

"Oh, can you tell me--will I reach Fayetteville before dark?" said a girl behind him. He knew it was a girl by the voice. She was speaking, apparently, to some one who shared her seat.

This person, an older woman (again judging by the tone), was well informed as to the methods of reaching Fayetteville, the trains, and the hours. This matter settled, they went on talking.

"I have been up in the mountains teaching," the older woman presently remarked.

"Oh," said the girl, sympathetically (falling inflection).

"I have been there a year, and I trust when I came away I left light behind."

"Oh yes."

"At present I have no situation, though I have one in view. They are most anxious to have me, but I say to myself, 'Will I do the most good there? Is it a place where my influence will carry the most weight?' For we should all do the best we can with our talents, it is a duty; I do the best I can with mine."

"Oh yes, I reckon so. And you speak so beautifully too. Perhaps you've spoken?--I mean before people?"

"Never in public," answered the other voice, reprovingly; "to my pupils, but never in public. I think a woman should always keep her life secluded, she should be the comfort and the ornament of a purely private home. We do not exhibit our charms--which should be sacred to the privacy of the boudoir--in the glare of lecture-rooms; we prefer to be, and to remain, the low-voiced, retiring mothers of a race of giant sons whom the Muse of History will immortalize in the characters of soldier, statesman, and divine."

"Oh yes," said the girl's voice again, in good-natured, if inattentive, acquiescence.

Winthrop glanced back. The young girl was charmingly pretty, with a sweet indifference in her eyes. The older woman--she was over fifty--was of a martial aspect, broad-shouldered, large-boned, and tall; her upper lip was that of a warrior, her high cheek-bones had an air of resolute determination. Comfort and ornament of a purely private home, as she had just proclaimed herself, it seemed almost as if her powers would be wasted there; she was a woman to lead an army through a breach without flinching. The giant sons in her case were presumably imaginary, for she gave her name to her companion as they parted: "Miss Louisa Mearns--they call me Lulette." Her voice was very soft and sweet.

"Southerner, of course, with those lovely tones," was Winthrop's mental comment as she passed, stepping rather delicately, and, tall as she was, without any stride. "But she's got a thorough soul of Maine, though she doesn't dream of it. There must have been transmigration somewhere among her ancestors." And then from sheer weariness and restlessness he went into another car.

His feeling was that this train would be in North Carolina a week. But it got on. It traversed South Carolina and Georgia, it passed through the cotton country, it crossed beautiful rivers rolling slowly towards the sea, then it made a wide detour round Okefinokee swamp, and at last brought him again to the margin of the broad St John's. It seemed to him that half a lifetime had passed since he left it.

He reached East Angels in the afternoon. Cindy appeared. Yes, Mrs. Rutherford and Mrs. Harold were both at home; they were in Mrs. Rutherford's sitting-room up-stairs. But when she had preceded him and opened the door of that apartment, only Aunt Katrina was there.

"Mercy, Evert! where did you come from?" she exclaimed, in a key rather higher than her usual calm tones. It seemed to him that she looked frightened.

"From New York, of course. You are alone? Where is Margaret?" He spoke abruptly.

"Oh, she's here," responded Aunt Katrina, quickly, in a reassuring voice.

But her emphasis told him that it might not be "here" long, it might be some other word. Would that word be "Fernandina?"

At any rate, Margaret was not yet gone.

"What do you mean by 'here?' She's not in the room."

"She doesn't spend every moment with me; I want some time for my own reading and--and meditation. She's in the garden, or the drawing-room, I suppose--somewhere about."

"Aunt Katrina, tell me in so many words--is she going back to Lanse?"

"Why--er--why, yes, I believe so." Aunt Katrina's voice fairly faltered.

"You have had a hand in this: you have urged her."

"Well, Evert, she's Lanse's wife, you know."

"Where is she?"

"I have told you already that I don't know."

"Not gone?" he said, with quick-returning suspicion.

"Oh dear no! What are you thinking of?"

"I'm thinking that I cannot trust either of you! When is she going, then?"

"Well, there has been a good deal about that. Back and forth, you know; letters and--"

"When?" he repeated, imperatively.

"To-morrow," answered Aunt Katrina, in almost the same tone as his own. "How you do storm, Evert!"

But he had left the room before her words were finished.

Margaret was not in the drawing-room, she was not in the garden. He met Pablo. "Do you know where Mrs. Harold is?" he said.

"She's in der yorrange grove, sah. I ben dar myse'f looken' arter der place a little, as I has ter, en I see her dar." Pablo meant the old grove--his grove; the new grove was on the other side of the house, and was as ugly as a new grove always is. Down to this hour old Pablo had never become satiated with the delight of working in the old grove at his own pleasure and according to southern methods alone; poor little Melissa Whiting's voice had long been stilled, but Pablo was rioting yet.

The old grove was in bloom. It was not so productive now as it had been in Mrs. Thorne's day, but it was more beautiful; Pablo's rioting had not included steady labor of any sort, there had been no pruning, and very little digging; the aisles were green and luxuriant, the ground undisturbed. The perfume of the blossoms filled the air; on some of the trees blossoms and ripe fruit were hanging together.

Winthrop walked on under the bright foliage and bride-like bloom. But there was no sign of Margaret.

"Of course she would not be here," he thought, "or at least she would not stay; it's far too sweet."

At length he saw her light dress. She was not in the grove, as he had thought; she was in a glade beyond it. Here there was an old nondescript pillar, crowned by a clumsy vase. She was leaning against this ornament, with her back to the grove; one arm lay across the top. She wore no gloves, and he could see her pretty hand with its single ring, the band of plain gold. In front of her there was the low curb of an old well, overgrown with jessamine; she appeared to be looking at it.

His footsteps had made no sound on the soft earth, he came upon her before she discovered him.

"I don't think you can be much surprised to see me," he said; "you have waited here to the last hour of your allotted time. You might have gone days ago, and then I should not have seen you at all; but you have waited. It looks quite as if you expected me to come, as if you wished to give me one more final thrust before you joined your excellent husband. Of course I deserve nothing better."

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Chapter XXXIV

"Yes, I have waited. But it was because I have been trying to--to arrange something," Margaret answered.

She had taken her hand from the old pillar, she stood erect now, with the white shawl she was wearing folded closely round her.

"Something nicely calculated to make me suffer more, I suppose; I haven't been punished enough for speaking as I did."

"It wasn't anything that concerned you."

"That everlasting self-possession of yours, Margaret! Here I come upon you suddenly; you're not a hard-hearted woman at all, and yet, thanks to that, you can receive me without a change of expression, you can see all my trouble and grief, and talk to me about 'arrangements!'"

"You asked me--you accused me--" Her calmness was not as perfect as he had represented it.

"What are the arrangements?" he said, abruptly.

"Do you think we had better discuss them?"

"We will discuss everything that concerns you. But don't be supposing I haven't heard; I have seen Aunt Katrina, and forced it out of her, I know you intend to go back to Lanse--intend to go to-morrow."

She did not reply.

"You don't deny it?"

"No, I don't deny it."

"And the arrangements?"

"I--I had thought of living here."

"Here, at East Angels, you mean? Oh, you wish to bring him here? An excellent idea; Aunt Katrina would not be separated longer from her dear boy, and Lanse and his retinue would fit in nicely among all the comforts and luxuries we have between us collected here. Yes; I see."

There was a quiver for an instant in Margaret's throat, though her face did not alter. "My only thought was that perhaps it would be more of a home for me," she answered, looking off over the green open space and the thicket beyond it.

His hardness softened a little. "Of course it would. You surely cannot have had the idea of living at Fernandina?"

"That would be as Lanse says."

"You are determined to go back to him?"

"Yes."

He changed his position so that he could have a better view of her face. "Bring him here, then!" he exclaimed. "Anything is better than to have you wandering about the world, homeless!"

"You would let me come and see you now and then?" he said, beginning again. He spoke in what he himself would have called a reasonable tone. "I could help you in a good many ways; of course, in saying this, you understand that I agree to accept Lanse--as well as I can."

"You must never come."

"Do you mean that?"

"I mean it unalterably."

"It's because I spoke as I did--this is my punishment. But if I promise never to speak in that way again?"

"You must not come."

"Tell me just what it is you intend to do--we'll have it out now. Tell me the whole, you needn't spare."

"After to-day, I wish--I intend--never to see you again--that is, alone. It is hard that you should make me speak it out in this way."

"Oh--make; you are capable of saying whatever you please without being made; whatever will do me the most good and hurt me the most--the two are synonymous in your opinion--that is what you delight in."

She had turned away with bent head.

"You are not as strong as you thought you were; it does hurt you, Margaret, after all, to say such things to me."

There was an old stone seat, with a high back, near the pillar; she sank down upon it.

"What you wish is to have me leave you--tire you and vex you no more. But I cannot go quite yet. I tell you that I will accept Lanse, as well as I can; I promise never again to open my lips as I did that last day; and still you are going to shut your door in my face, and keep it shut; and you assure me it is forever. This is unreasonable--a woman's unreason. Why shouldn't I come occasionally?--what are you afraid of? You will be surrounded by all your safeguards, your husband at the head. But your own will is a safeguard no human power could break; you are unassailable, taken quite by yourself, Mrs. Lansing Harold."

She did not look up.

"And you wouldn't be able, either, to carry it out--any such system of blockade," he went on. "Aunt Katrina would send for me; leaving that aside, Lanse himself would send; Lanse doesn't care a straw what my real opinion of him may be, so long as he can get some talk, some entertainment out of me, and it will be more than ever so now that he is permanently laid up. And if you should tell him of my avowal even, what would he say? 'Of course you know how to take rubbish of that sort'--that is what he would say! And he would laugh delightedly to think of my being caught."

Still she did not move.

He walked off a few paces, then came back. "And here, again, Margaret, even if you should be able to influence both Aunt Katrina and Lanse against me, do you think that would prevent my seeing you--I don't mean constantly, of course, but occasionally? Do you suppose I should obey your rules--even your wishes? Not the least in the world! I should always see you, now and then, in some way. I shouldn't make myself a public annoyance; but--I give you warning--I shall never lose sight of you as long as I breathe, as long as I am alive."

She stirred at last, she looked up at him.

"Yes, I see you are frightened; you wish to go--escape, go back to the house and shut yourself up out of my reach, as you usually do. But this time I'm merciless, I feel that it's my last chance; you cannot go (you needn't try to pass me) until you have told me why it is that you wish not to see me again, never again, in spite of the safety, the absolute unapproachableness of your position."

She sat there, her eyes on his hard, insistent face.

"Why do you make me more wretched than I am?" she asked.

"Because I can't help it! There is a reason, then?"

"Yes." She had bent her head down again.

"I thought so. And I am prepared to hear it," he went on.

His voice had altered so as he brought this out that she looked up. "What is it you expect to hear?" she asked in a whisper.

"It's a new idea, I admit--something that has just come to me; but it explains everything--your whole course, conduct, which have been such a mystery to me. You love Lanse, you have always loved him; that is the solution! In spite of the insult of his long neglect of you, his second desertion, you are glad to go back to him; there have been such cases of miserable infatuation among women, yours is one of them. But you do not wish me to see the process of your winning him over, or trying to; so I am to be sent away."

She got up. "And if I should say yes to this, acknowledge it, that would be the end? You would wish to see me no more?"

"Don't flatter yourself. Nothing of the kind. Recollect, if you please, that I love you; with me, unfortunately, it's for life. You may be weak enough--depraved enough, I might almost call it--to adore Lanse,--do you suppose that makes any difference in my adoring you? Do you think it's a matter of choice with me, my caring for you as I do? That I enjoy being mastered in this way by a feeling I can't overcome?"

"I am going to tell you my life," she said, abruptly.

"I know it already.--How beautiful you look!"

"I ought to look hideous." She walked about for a moment or two, and finally stopped, facing him, behind the old stone seat.

"It will make no difference what you say, I can tell you that now," he said, warningly.

"I think it will make a difference. You are not cruel."

"Yes, I am."

"I never loved Lanse," she began, hurriedly. "In one way it was not my fault; I was too young to appreciate what love meant, I was peculiarly immature in my feelings--I see that now.

"When the blow came, the blow of my discovering--what Lanse has already told you, I was crushed by it,--I had never known anything of actual evil.

"He told me to 'take it as a lady should.' I didn't know what he meant.

"I had no mother to go to. I felt even then that Aunt Katrina wouldn't be kind. In the overthrow of everything, the best I could think of to do was to hold on to one or two ideas that were left--that seemed to me right, and one of these was silence; I determined to tell nobody what had really happened; I would be loyal to my husband, as far as I could be, no matter what my husband was to me.

"So I went back to Aunt Katrina (as Lanse preferred). And I told nothing.

"I have no doubt I appeared cold enough. In the beginning there was a good deal of coldness, though there was always suffering underneath; but later it wasn't coldness, it was the constant effort to hide--I had thought my life difficult. But I had yet to learn that there was something more difficult still. I had not loved Lanse--no; but now I was finding out what love meant, for--for I began to love--you."

Winthrop started, the color rushed up and covered his face in a flood; in his eyes shone the transforming light of a happiness which had never been there before. For this man, in spite of his successes, had never attained much positive happiness for himself in life; Lanse, Lucian, many another idler, attained more. Happiness is an inconsistent goddess, by no means has she always a crown for strenuous effort; very often she seems to dwell longest with those who do not think beyond the morrow; there she sits and basks. However, she had come to Winthrop now, and royally, bringing him that which he cared the most for. He thanked her by his glowing face, his ardent eyes.

"It's nothing to be glad about," Margaret had said, quickly, when she saw the change in his face. "I tell you because I cannot endure that you should believe of me what you thought--about Lanse. And also because I am weak--yes, I confess it. You said you intended to see me, follow me; but now that you know how it is with me, you won't do that."

Winthrop's face remained triumphant. "Odd reasoning, Margaret."

"The best reasoning. So long as it was only you, you could do as you pleased. But now that you know that--that others will suffer too--" She paused. "I am sure I have not trusted you in vain?" she said, appealingly.

But he shook his head, the triumph still animated him. "You can trust me in one way; I won't take advantage, that is, not now. But you needn't try to make me think, Margaret, that it's not something to be glad about--to know that you care for me." He laughed a little from his sheer satisfaction; then, in his old way, he put his hands compactly down in the pockets of his coat, and stood there looking at her.

"Is it anything to be glad about--my wretchedness?" she asked, strengthening herself for the contest.

"It makes you wretched? Strange!"

"I am so wretched--I have been wretched so long--that only my firm belief that my Creator knows best has enabled me to live on, has kept me from ending it."

"Why should you be more unhappy than I am? Nothing could make me end my life now."

She looked at him in silence.

"If you look at me in that way--" Winthrop began.

She left her place. He stood where he was, watching her, but he was not paying much heed to what she was saying, now. He had the great fact, man-like, he was enjoying it; it was enough for the present--after all these years.

She seemed to see how little impression she had made. She came back to the old stone a second time to complete her story. "I tried so hard--I was so glad when I saw how you disliked me," she began.

"It wasn't dislike."

"I thought it was; and I was miserably glad. What did I take charge of Garda for but because I thought you loved her? That should be my penance, she should be like my own sister, and I would do everything that I possibly could for her, for her sake and yours. She was so very beautiful--"

He interposed here. "Yes, she was beautiful; but beautiful for everybody. Your beauty is dearer, because it is kept, in its fullest sweetness, for the man you love."

But no blush rose in her face, she was too unhappy for that; she was absorbed, too, in trying to reach him, to touch him, so that he would see what must be, as she saw it. "I did all I could for her," she went on, earnestly--"you know I did; I tried to influence her, I tried to love her; and I did love her. I was sure, too, that she cared for you--"

"It isn't everybody, you must remember, that has your opinion of me," interrupted her listener, delightedly.

"But she herself had told me--Garda had told me that she---- However, I begin to think that I have never comprehended Garda."

"Don't try."

"I love her all the same. That afternoon when she was on her way to Madam Giron's to see Lucian, and I took her place, it seemed to me that day that an opportunity had been given to me to complete my penance to the full, and crush out my own miserable folly. I could save her in your eyes, and I could lose myself; for, after that, you could have, of course, only contempt for me. I believed that you loved her, I didn't see how you could help it (I don't see very well even now). And I believed, too, that under all her fancies, her real affection was yours; or would come back to you."

"All wrong, Margaret, the whole of it. Overstrained, exaggerated."

"It may be so, I was very unhappy, I had brooded over everything so long. Next, Lanse came back. And that was a godsend."

"Godsend!" said Winthrop, his face darkening.

"Yes. It took me away from you."

"To him."

"You have never understood--I was only the house-keeper--he wished to be made comfortable, that was all. It was a great deal better for me there."

"Was it, indeed; you looked so well and happy all that time!" His joyousness was gone now; anger had come again into his eyes.

"I could not be happy, how could I be? But at least I was safe. Then he left me that second time. And you were there; that was the hardest of all."

"You bore it well! I remember I found it impossible to get a word with you. The truth is, Margaret, I have never known you to falter, you are not faltering in the least even now. I can't quite believe, therefore, that you care for me as you say you do; you certainly don't care as I care for you, perhaps you can't. But the little you do give me is precious; for even that, small as it is, will keep you from going back to Lanse Harold."

"Keep me from going back? What do you suppose I have told you this for? Don't you see that it is exactly this--my feeling for you--that sends me, drives me back to him? On what plea, now, could I refuse to go? The pretense of unhappiness, of having been wronged?" She paused. Then rushed on again. "The law--of separation, I mean--is founded upon the idea that a wife is outraged, insulted, by her husband's desertion; but in my case Lanse's entire indifference to me, his estrangement--these have been the most precious possessions I have had! If at any time since almost the first moment I met you he had come back and asked for reconciliation, promised to be after that the most faithful of husbands, what would have become of me? what should I have said? But he did not ask--he does not now; I can only be profoundly grateful."

"Yes, compare yourself with a man of that sort--do; it's so just!"

"It is perfectly just. I am a woman, surrounded by all a woman's cowardice and nervousness and fear of being talked about; and he is a man, and not afraid; but at heart--at heart--how much better am I than he? You do not know--" She stopped. "I consider it a great part of my offense against my husband that I have never loved him," she added.

"The old story! Go on now and tell me that if you had loved him, he himself would have been better."

"No, that I cannot tell you; even if I had cared for him, I might have had no influence." She spoke with humility.

"Lanse knew perfectly that I did not love him, he knew it when I didn't," she went on. "And I really think--yes, I must say it--that if I had cared for him even slightly, he would have been more guarded, would have concealed more, spared me more; in little things, Lanse is kind. But he knew that I shouldn't suffer, in that way at least. And it was quite true; my real suffering--the worst suffering--has not come from him at all; it has come from you. At first I had plans--I was too young to give up all hope of something brighter some time. But my plans soon came to an end; when I knew--discovered--that I was beginning to care for you, all my hope turned to keeping in the one straight track that lay before me. I did not think I should fail--"

"I can well believe that!" he interrupted.

"Oh, do not be harsh to me! you do not know--You think my will is strong. But oh! it isn't--it isn't. When Lanse left me that second time, and you were there with me, I knew then that there was nothing for it but to go as far away from you as possible, and to go instantly; anything less, no matter how I should disguise it, would be staying because I wished to stay. And I did try to go; I would not enter that hotel when I saw you on the shore--I went back to the empty house. I dared not stay then. I will not now."

"You do well to change the terms," he answered, with unsparing bitterness, "it's nothing but will to-day, whatever it may once have been. I don't believe about your not daring; I don't, in fact, believe--that is, fully--anything you have said."

"Why, then, should I stay here talking longer?" She left the place and entered the orange grove, which she was obliged to pass through on her way to the house.

But he overtook her, he stepped in front and barred the way. "You have been remarkably skilful. I demanded an explanation, I was evidently going to make trouble. So you gave me this one: you said that you had, unfortunately for yourself, begun to love me, that was the explanation of everything; you threw me this to stop me, like a bone to a dog, so that you could get comfortably away. But I have this to tell you: if you had really loved me, you couldn't have argued quite so well! And you couldn't go now, either, so self-complacently, leaving me here in my pain."

"So be it," she said. She looked through the blossoming aisles to the right, to the left, as if in search of some rescuer, some one.

"But what does a woman like you know of love, after all--real love?" he went on, with angry scorn. "As a general thing, the better she is, the less she knows. And I have never denied that you were good, Margaret."

She moved to pass him.

"Not yet. You have reasoned the whole case out too well, there was rather too much reason; a lawyer couldn't have done it better."

"I have had time to think of the reasons. How often each day do you suppose I have gone over everything--over and over? And how many days have there been in these long years?"

"It isn't the time. It's your nature."

"Very well. It's my nature."

"But you needn't suppose that your having that nature will stop me," he said, with a certain violence of tone roused by her agreement with these accusations. "You have confessed to some sort of liking for me, I shall take advantage of it as far as it goes (not far, I fear); I shall make it serve as the foundation of all I shall constantly attempt to do."

Her arms dropped by her sides. "Constantly? I believe there is nothing in the world so cruel as a man when he pretends to care for you." She moved off a step or two. "I do not love you, you say? I adore you. From almost the first day I saw you--yes, even from then. It is the one love of my life, and remember I am not a girl, it's a woman who tells you this--to her misery. And it is everything about you that I love--that makes it harder; not only what you say and how you say it, what you think and do, but what you are--oh! what you are in everything. The way you look at me, the tone of your voice, the turn of your head, your eyes, your hands--I love them, I love them all. I suffer every moment, it has been so for years. I am so miserable away from you, so desperate and lonely! And yet when I am with you, that is harder. Whichever way I turn, there is nothing but pain, it is so torturing that I wonder how I can have lived! Yet would I give it up? Never."

The splendor of her eyes, as she poured forth these words, her rapt expression, the slight figure, erect and tense--he could no more have dared to touch her then than he could have touched a shining seraph that had lighted for an instant in his path.

Her eyes suddenly changed. "When I have hurt you," she went on, "it has been so hard to do it--so hard!" She was the woman now; a mist had suffused the blue.

He came towards her, he sank down at her feet. "I am not worthy," he murmured, in real self-abasement.

"No, you are not. But--I love you."

He sprang up. "I will be worthy. You shall do all you think right, and I--will help you."

"Yes, help me by leaving me."

"For the present--I will go."

"For always."

"Margaret, do not be hard. And now, when I know--"

"You do believe me, then?" she interrupted, with winning sweetness.

"Yes, I believe you! It makes me tremble to think what it would be if we were married; they say people do not die of joy."

She came out of her trance. Her face changed, apprehension returned--the old fear and pain. She rallied her sinking courage. "We will not talk of things that do not concern us," she said, gently. "All my life--that is, the peace of it--is in your power, Evert, now that you know the truth about me. But I am sure I have not put faith in you in vain."

"Don't you remember saying to me 'Do you wish me to die without ever having been my full self once?' So now I say to you, Margaret, do you wish to die without ever having lived? You have never lived yet with anything like a full completeness. I am not a bad man, I declare it to you, and you are the most unselfish of women; you have a husband who has no claim upon you, either in right or law; Margaret, let us break that false tie. And then!--see, I do not move a step nearer. But I put it before you--I plead--"

"And do you think I have not felt the temptation too?" she murmured, looking at him. "When Lanse left me, over there on the river, don't you remember that I went down on my knees? It was the beating of my heart at the thought of how easily after that I could be freed--freed, I mean, by law--that was what I was trying to pray down. To be free to think of you, though you should never know it, even that would have been like a new life to me."

"Take it now," said Winthrop. He grasped her hand.

But she drew it from him. "Surely you know what I believe, what all this means to me--that for such mistakes as a marriage like mine there is, on this earth at least, no remedy."

"We'll make a remedy."

Again she strengthened herself against him. "Do you think that a separation--I will use plain words, a divorce--is right when it is obtained, no matter what the outside pretext, to enable two persons who have loved each other unlawfully to marry?"

"Unlawfully--you make me rage! Lanse is the unlawful one."

"That doesn't excuse me."

"Don't put the word excuse anywhere near yourself when you are talking of Lanse; I won't bear it. And nothing is wrong that we cannot possibly help, Margaret; any one would tell you that. If it is something beyond our wills, we are powerless."

"Against my love for you I may be powerless--I am. But not against the indulgence of it."

"You are too strong," he began, "I couldn't pretend--" then he saw how she was trembling.

From head to foot a quiver had seized her, the lovely shoulders, the long lithe length of limb which gave her the step he had always admired so much, the little hands, though she had folded them closely as if endeavoring to stop it, even the lips with their sweet curves--the tremor had taken them all from her control; she stood there helpless before him.

"I can't reason, Margaret, and I won't; in this case reason's wrong, and you're wrong. You love me--that I know. And the power for good of such a love as yours--you magnificent woman, not afraid to tell it--that power shall not be wasted and lost. Have you I will!" It was more than a touch now; he held her white wrists with a grasp like iron, and drew her towards him. "I hold you so, but it won't be for long. In reality I am at your feet," he said.

She had not struggled, she made no effort to free herself. But her eyes met his, full of an indomitable refusal. "I shall never yield," she murmured.

Thus they stood for a moment, the two wills grappled in a mute contest.

Then he let her hands drop.

"Useless!" she said, triumphing sadly.

"Though you love me."

"Though I love you."

"It's enough to make a man curse goodness, Margaret; remember that."

"No, no."

"Oh, these good people!" He threw his arm out unconsciously with a force that would have laid prostrate any one within its reach. "You are an exception--you are going to suffer; but generally these good people, who are so hard in their judgment of such things,--they have never suffered themselves in the least from any of this pain; they have had all they wish--in the way of love and home, and yet they are always the hardest upon those who, like me, like you, have nothing--who are parched and lonely and starved. They would never do so--oh no! they are too good. All I can say is, let them try it! Margaret"--here he came back to her--"think of the dreariness of it; leaving everything else aside, just think of that. We are excited now; but, when this is over, think of the long days and years without anything to brighten them, anything we really care for. That breaks down the best courage at last, to have nothing one really cares for."

She did not answer.

"I could make you so happy!" he pleaded.

Her face remained unmoved.

"I long for you so!" he went on; "without you, I don't know where to turn or what to do." He said it as simply as a boy.

This overcame her; she left him, and hurried through the grove on her way to the house, he could hear her sob as she went.

Dr. Kirby's figure had appeared at the end of one of the orange aisles; when he saw Margaret hurrying onward, he hastened his steps. Winthrop had now overtaken her, her foot had slipped and he had caught her. Both her hands were over her face, her strength was gone.

The Doctor came panting up. "My dear Mrs. Harold--" he began.

But she seemed to hear nothing.

The Doctor put his hand on her pulse. "Will you go to the house for help to carry her in?" he whispered. "Or shall I?"

"I can carry her myself," said Winthrop. He lifted her. Unconsciousness had come upon her, her head with the closed eyes, her fair cheek, the soft mass of her hair lay against his shoulder.

The Doctor went on with them for some distance; he was not sure that Winthrop's strength would hold out.

But Winthrop's strength appeared to be perfect.

"I will hurry forward then, and warn them," said the Doctor. And he set off at a round pace.

Winthrop walked steadily; at last he reached the end of the white-blooming fragrant aisles, the path entered a thicket that lay beyond.

The fresher unperfumed air brought Margaret to herself. She stirred, then her eyes opened; they rested uncomprehendingly on his face.

Beyond this thicket lay the garden, where they would be in full view; he was human, and he stopped. "You fainted. The perfume of the grove, I suppose," he said, explaining.

Then everything came back to her, he could see remembrance dawn in her eyes, her fear return.

She tried to put her hand up. But it fell lifelessly back.

This sign of weakness struck him to the heart,--what if she should die! Women so slight in frame, and with that fair, pure whiteness like the inside of a sea-shell, were often strangely, inexplicably delicate.

Her eyes had closed again. He held her closely; but now, save for the holding, he would not touch her. For it seemed to him that if he should allow himself to yield to his longing wish and put his lips down upon hers, she might die there, after a moment, in his arms. It would be taking advantage; in her present state of physical weakness her will might not be able to help her as it had helped her before; she was powerless to resist, and she loved him,--oh yes, he knew it fully now, she loved him. But as soon as she should become conscious that she had yielded, then the reaction would come. Between her love and her sense of duty, this proud will of hers had held the balance. It seemed to him that if he should break down by force that balance, her life might go as well.

He went on therefore, he bore her through the garden towards the house. Her face in its stillness had now an expression that frightened him, it was like the lassitude of a person who has struggled to the utmost, and then given up.

The Doctor and Celestine were waiting at the lower door.

Winthrop refused their aid, he carried Margaret up the stairs to her own room, and laid her down upon the bed.

"I will wait below, Doctor. Come and tell me, please, what you make out."

The Doctor had divined a good deal during this last quarter of an hour, in this stricken woman, this abruptly speaking man, he felt the close presence of something he fully believed in, old though he was--overwhelming love; placed as they were, it could bring only unhappiness. He had no confidence whatever in Winthrop, simply because he was a man. In such situations men were selfish (he himself should have been no better); of course at the time they did not call it selfishness, they called it devotion. But in Margaret his confidence was absolute. And it was with a deep, tender pity for her, for all she had still to go through, that he now bent over her.

Winthrop had gone down-stairs; he paced to and fro in the stone-flagged hall below. The door stood open, the deep soft blue of the Florida sky filled the square frame. "If only she doesn't die!" This was the paralyzing dread that held him like a suffocation. He kept thinking how like a dead person she had looked as he laid her down. "If she comes to,--revives, I will go away, and stay away." In his fear, he could consent to anything.

The Doctor came down after a while. They were two men together, so their words were few; they were just enough to answer the purpose. "I think I can assure you that she will come out of it safely," the Doctor said. "She seems unaccountably weak, she will have to keep her bed for a while; but I am almost positive that it is not going to be one of those long illnesses which sometimes follow attacks of this sort."

"But at best it's rather serious, isn't it?" Winthrop asked.

The Doctor looked at him. "Yes," he answered, gravely.

"If you would let me know from time to time? This is my New York address. It will be more satisfactory to hear directly from you. You can tell her I have gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes; back to New York."

"Oh," said Reginald Kirby. Then, "Ah," he added, this time with the accepting falling inflection.

Winthrop was behaving much better than he had thought he would. All the same, it was now the part of every one to speed him on his way. "I will write with great regularity," he said, extending his hand in good-by. "I will write three times a week," he added, with heartiness; he wanted to do something for the man, and this was all he could do.

He returned to his patient. Winthrop went out to order the horses.

He came back while the negroes were making ready. The lower door still stood open, the house was very quiet; he stole up-stairs and listened for a moment near Margaret's room. There was no sound within; he had the man's usual fear--non-comprehension--of a woman's illness. "Why are they so quiet in there?" he thought; "why don't they speak? What are they doing to her?"

But there was a very good reason for the stillness; the Doctor had given Margaret a powerful sedative, and he and Celestine were waiting for the full effect.

Winthrop at length left the door; he realized that this was not a good beginning in the carrying out of his promise to himself.

As he passed down the hall on his way to the stairs he happened to have a glimpse into a room whose door stood partly open; here, ranged in order, locked and ready, were Margaret's trunks, prepared for the journey to Fernandina.

Well, if he was to get away at all, he must go at once!

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Chapter XXXV

Two weeks passed before the Doctor would allow Margaret to begin her night without an opiate, which should numb her constant weariness into some semblance of rest. During this time he himself did not leave East Angels.

At the beginning of the third week the pale woman in the darkened room began to recover some vitality; she spoke to them, she asked to have the curtains drawn aside; she refused their opiates, even the mildest. The Doctor, relieved, went up to Gracias to see his other patients.

That night, about one o'clock, Margaret spoke. "Celestine?"

A tall figure appeared from a dark corner.

"I told you not to sit up to-night; I feel perfectly well."

"There's a lounge here, Miss Margaret. I can lay down nice as can be."

"No, you are not to stay; I do not wish it."

Celestine demurred; but as Margaret held to her point, she yielded finally, and went out. Some minutes after the door had closed, with a slow effort Margaret raised herself. Then she sat resting for a while on the edge of her bed. Her hair, braided by Celestine in two long plaits whose soft ends curled, gave her the look of a school-girl; but the face was very far from that of a school-girl, in the faint light of the night-lamp the large sad eyes and parted lips were those of a woman. She rose to her feet at last, feet fair on the dark carpet, her long white draperies, bordered with lace, clung about her. With a step that still betrayed her weakness, she crossed the room to a desk, unlocked it, and took something out,--a little picture in a slender gilt frame. She stood looking at this for a moment, then she sank down beside the lounge, resting her arm and head upon it, and holding her poor treasure to her heart. She held it closely, the sharp edge of the frame made a deep dent there. She was glad that it hurt her, that it bruised the white flesh and left a pain. At first her eyes remained dry. Then her wretchedness overcame her, and she began to cry; being a woman, she must cry. Her life stretched out before her,--if only she were old! But she might live forty years more--forty years! "And I have sent him away from me. Oh, how can I bear it!"--this was what she was saying to herself again and again.

If the man whose picture she held upon her heart could have heard the words she spoke to him that night--the unspeakable tenderness of her love for him, the strength, the unconscious violence almost, of its sweet overwhelming tide--no bolts, no bars, no promises even, could have kept him from her.

But he could not hear. Only that Unseen Presence who knows all our secrets, our pitiful, aching secrets--only this Counsellor heard Margaret that night. This silent Friend of ours is always merciful, more merciful than man would ever be; for the unhappy wife, now prone on the couch, shaken with sobs; now lying for the moment forgetful of reality, her eyes full of adoring dreams; now starting up with the flush of exaltation, of self-sacrifice--only to fall back again in stubborn despair--for all these changes the Presence had no rebuke; the torturing longing love, the misery, the relapses into sullen rebellion, and then the slow, slow return towards self-control again, all these it beheld with pity the most tender. For it knew that this was a last struggle, it knew that this woman, though torn and crushed, would in the end come out on the side of right--that strange hard bitter right, which, were this world all, would be plain wrong. And Margaret herself knew it also, yes even now miserably knew (and rebelled against it), that she should come out on that hard side; and from that side go forward. It would be blindly, wretchedly; there could be for her no hope of happiness, no hope even of resignation; she scorned pretenses and substitutes, and lies were to her no better because they were pious lies. She could endure, and she must endure; and that would be all. She could see no farther before her now than the next step in her path, small and near and dreary; thus it would always be; no wide outlook but a succession of little steps, all near and all dreary. So it would continue, and with always the same effort. And that would be her life.

She did not come fully to this now, her love still tortured her. And then at last the merciful Presence touched her hot eyes and despairing heart, and with the picture still held close, she sank into a dreamless lethargy.

When Celestine ventured to steal softly in before dawn, she found her charge like a figure of snow on the floor, the lamplight shining across the white throat, the only place where its ray touched her.

The New England woman bent over her noiselessly. Then she lifted her. As she did so the little picture dropped; she had no need to take it up to know whose face was there. "Poor child?"--this was the gaunt old maid's, mute cry. She had the pity of a woman for a woman.

She placed Margaret in bed; then lifting the picture with a delicate modesty which there was no one there to see, she put it hurriedly back in her hand without looking at it, and laid the hand where it had been, across the fair breast. "When she comes to, first thing she'll remember it and worry. And then she'll find it there, and think nobody knows. She'll think she went back to bed herself." Thus she guarded her.

Grim old Celestine believed ardently, like the Doctor, in love. But like the Doctor, too, she believed that marriage was indissoluble; the Carolina High-Churchman and the Vermont Calvinist were agreed in this. Mistakes were plenty, of course; but when once they had been made, there was no remedy in this life; of this she was sure. But how if one happened to be bound upon the rack meanwhile--a woman whom one loved?

The dress-maker, after looking at Margaret again, went off to a dark corner to "offer prayer." But for the first time in her life she found no words ready; what, indeed, should she pray for? That Margaret might die? She was too fond of her for that. That Lanse might be taken? That had a murderous sound, even if you called it "taken." That Margaret's love might cease? But she knew very well that it would not. So all she said was, "O Lord, help her!" very fervently. Then she got up, and set about applying restoratives.

A week later, when Margaret had left her room for the first time, Celestine, at work there, restoring for her own satisfaction that speckless order in which her soul delighted, found upon the hearth, mixed with the ashes, some burned bent metal fragments that had once been gilded--the top of a little frame; she knew then that the last sacrifice had been accomplished. A small one, a detail; but to women the details are hardest.

The Doctor had kept Winthrop strictly informed of Mrs. Harold's health. At first the letters were all the same. But after a while he had written that he was glad to say that she was better. For a long time to come, however (he added), any over-pressure would be sure to exhaust her, and then, in case of a second attack, he should not be able to answer for the consequences. Later he wrote that Mrs. Harold's strength would not now be taxed by any more "untoward interruptions;" she had made her intended journey to Fernandina, he was glad to say, and had returned in safety, Mr. Harold having returned with her. Everything was now comfortably arranged at East Angels; Mr. Harold had the west rooms, and the men he had brought with him--he had three at present--seemed to understand their duties fairly well. Mr. Harold was carried every evening into Mrs. Rutherford's sitting-room, which was an agreeable change for all. Mrs. Rutherford herself had improved wonderfully since her nephew's arrival.

Concerning these letters of his to Evert Winthrop the Doctor felt such a deep sense of responsibility that, short as they were, he wrote them and rewrote them, inspecting each phrase from every possible point of view before his old-fashioned quill finally set it down.

This last result of his selection of the fittest, Winthrop received one morning at breakfast. He read it; then started out and went through his day as usual, having occupations and engagements to fill every hour. But days end; always that last ten minutes at night will come, no matter how one may put it off. Winthrop put off his until after midnight; but one o'clock found him caught at last; he was alone before his fire, he could no longer prevent himself from taking out that letter and brooding over it.

He imagined East Angels, he imagined Lanse; he imagined him in Aunt Katrina's pleasant room, with the bright little evening fire sparkling on the hearth, with Aunt Katrina herself beaming and happy, and Margaret near. Yes, Lanse had everything, he had always had everything. He had never worked an hour in his life; he had pleased himself invariably; he had given heed to no one and yielded to no one; and now when he was forced at last by sheer physical disability to return home, all comfort, all devotion awaited him there, bestowed, too, by the very persons he had most neglected and wronged. "Unjust! unjust!"--this was his bitter comment.

If it had not been for the fear that kept him fettered, he would have thrown everything to the winds and started again for Florida that night, he would have swept the woman he loved out of that house, and borne her away somewhere--anywhere--and he should have felt that he was justified in doing it. But Margaret--he had always to reckon with that determination of hers to do right, even in the face of her own despair. And as to what was right he had never been able in the least to confuse her, to change her, as a man can often change the woman who loves him; just the same she saw it now, and had seen it from the beginning, in spite of all his arguments and pleadings, in spite of all her own.

She loved him. But she would not yield. And these two forces, both so strong that they bent her and swayed her like torturers--if the strife should begin again between them, as it must if he should go to her entreating, was there not danger (as the Doctor, indeed, had written) that her slender strength would give way entirely? He had never forgotten the feeling in his arms of her inert form as he laid it down that day. He should never be able to overpower--he felt that he should not--that something, something stronger than herself, which he had seen looking from her eyes that day in the orange grove; this would remain unchanged, unconquered, though he should have carried her away from everybody, to the ends of the earth, and though--she loved him.

He buried his face in his hands. No, first of all she must not die. For there was always the chance that Lanse himself might die; this did not seem to him a murderous thought, as it had seemed to Celestine. It came across him suddenly that Lanse would probably be quite willing to discuss it with him; he would say, "Well, you know, I perfectly appreciate how convenient it would be." Lanse had no fear of death. He called it "a natural change;" none but a fool, he said, could fear the natural.

Winthrop got up at last and went to the window. The brilliantly lighted street lay below him, but he was not thinking of New York. He was thinking of that old gray-white house in the South, the house he had been fond of, but whose door was now closed to him, perhaps forever. For, unexplainably, though he hoped for Lanse's death, he had not the slightest expectation of it in reality; both he and Margaret had the sense of a long life before them. There would be no change, no relief; only the slow flight of the long days and years, and that would be all. He came back to his hearth; the fire had died; he sat down and stared at the ashes.

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Chapter XXXVI

"How will she appear?" said Mr. Moore. He sat in his arm-chair, his eyes were following the pattern of the red and white matting on the floor.

"'How,' Middleton?" said Penelope, looking up from her knitting reproachfully. "Why, broken-hearted, poor child!"

"Yes, broken-hearted, I fear; broken-hearted," answered Middleton.

Two years had passed since the burning of the house on the point. Mr. Moore was now quite well again, save that he would always be obliged to walk slowly and support himself with a cane. The rectory was more comfortable than it had been in former years, the rector's clerical coat was a better one; but the rector's wife, with that unconsciousness of her own lacks, which, when it is founded (as in this case) upon a husband's unswerving admiration, is not without its charm--the rector's wife was contentedly attired in the green delaine. Penelope indeed had many causes for contentment; it was so delightful to be able to give five-sixths of one's income to the poor.

At the present moment the Moores were listening for the sound of wheels; not the usual rattle, but the muffled grind through sand which came from the roadways of Gracias.

"Hark!" said Penelope, lifting a forefinger. "Yes--there they are!"

Seizing a little head-covering of green wools, the product of her own crochet-needle, she put it hastily on, and giving Middleton his hat and stick, went with him down the path towards the gate. A carriage had stopped, Dr. Kirby was helping some one to descend from the high, old-fashioned vehicle; the young figure in black, the bright hair under the veil, the overwhelming burst of sobs when she saw their familiar faces--yes, this was Garda who had come back to them, come back home, as they fondly called it; she had been widowed for more than a year, Lucian had died in Venice nineteen months before.

They brought her in, tenderly Mrs. Moore took off the crape bonnet; the girl cried bitterly, her head on Penelope's shoulder. There were tears in the eyes of the two men also; it seemed so strange that this bowed black figure should be their Garda, the beautiful, idle, young girl who had had such a genius for happiness that she had been able to extract full measure of it from even an old hammock and a crane.

Lucian had died suddenly of fever. Garda herself, prostrated by her grief, for months afterwards had scarcely raised her head. Dr. Kirby had started immediately, he had been with her through the worst of her illness. But she had not been alone; her devoted friends in Venice were two sisters and a brother, who, singularly enough, were cousins of Rosalie, Lucian's first wife, and of the same name, Bogardus. These staid, stout people had been fascinated with the Spensers from the first.

And when came the overwhelming blow of Lucian's death, the two ladies, Alicia and Gertrude, immediately took charge of the stricken young wife, and did it with a tenderness which even Dr. Kirby pronounced touching, when he himself arrived in Venice--as soon as was possible, but some weeks later. When Garda at last began to improve a little, her lassitude continued; it was evident that she would not be able to travel for some time to come. Meanwhile the poor Doctor's money was running out. Garda did not think of this; at present she thought only of her sorrow, and then, as had always been said of Garda, she never remembered money at all. Of course the Doctor would not confide to these strangers the embarrassments of his position. And no Bogardus, left to himself, would have been able to conceive the idea that a man, in his senses, could have started to come to Venice from the United States with so small a sum in his pocket as the Doctor had been able to provide. But the facts remained the same; Garda could not travel, the Doctor was obliged to say at last that he must go. In this emergency, Trude and Lish-er, as their brother called them, offered to remain with Mrs. Spenser for the present, to bring her by slow stages across Europe to England, and thence to New York, when she should be able to travel; while Dick Bogardus growled, "Much the best plan! much the best plan!" behind them.

The Doctor had never been able in the least to comprehend Dick, he considered him an extraordinary person; Dick was sixty, short in stature, gruff, and worth five millions. Dick, on his side, was sure that the Doctor was a little out of his mind. But Lish-er and Trude would be very kind to Garda, there could be no doubt of that; they showed an almost tyrannical fondness for her even now--the "thwarted maternal instinct" the Doctor in his own mind called it. And so at last it was arranged, and the anxious guardian started on his long journey homeward, with just enough money to carry him to Charleston (where he could borrow of Sally), and barely a cent to spare.

Lish-er and Trude took their time, they had not been so much interested in anything for years; they said to everybody that Garda was like their "own child." This, of course, was a great novelty. But in reality she was more like their doll--a very beautiful and precious one. Garda herself remained listless and passive. But her mere presence was enough for the two old maids; it was a sight to see them purchasing new mourning attire for her in Paris; to such friends as they met they announced that they were "so extremely occupied" that they hardly knew how they should "get through." But it could not last forever, even the buying of clothes in Paris, and at length they were forced to bring their charge over the ocean to New York--where all the other Bogarduses came to look at her, to see for themselves, if possible, what it could be which had roused such abnormal enthusiasm in "Dick and the girls."

"It's amazing how that Garda Thorne always contrives to make everybody serve her turn," was Aunt Katrina's comment, meanwhile, down in Gracias. "Here's a whole New York family--of our best people, too--waiting upon her slavishly, and bringing her across Europe like, like I don't know what;--like Cleopatra down the Nile!"

"I suppose you mean, then, that Dick Bogardus is Antony?" said Lanse, working away at his fish-net. He had learned to make his nets rapidly now, and was extremely proud of his handiwork; he gave away the results of his labors to "fishermen of good moral character;"--it was necessary that they should be moral.

At the moment when Garda was entering the rectory, Margaret, at East Angels, was coming down the stone stairway on her way to the lower door, where the phaeton and Telano were waiting; she was about to drive to Gracias. As she paused a moment on the bottom step to button her gloves, a long shadow darkened the flags at her feet; she looked up; Adolfo Torres was standing at the open portal. After making one of his formal bows he came towards her; a motion of his hand begged her to remain where she was. "I thought you would be going there," he said. "I have therefore brought these--will you take them for me?" Flowers were abundant in Gracias, but the roses he held towards her were extraordinarily beautiful; all crimson or pink, they glowed with color, and filled the hall with a rich cinnamon scent.

"I will take them if you wish, Adolfo," Margaret answered. "But they are--they are very--"

The roses looked indeed as if intended for a joyous occasion; they were sumptuous, superb.

"You mean that they are bright. I know it; I intended them to be so." He still held them towards her.

"Wait a while," she said.

His face changed. "I know you are my friend," he murmured, as if he were saying it to convince himself. His eyes had dropped to his rejected blossoms.

She could see that he was passionately angry, and making one of his firm efforts to hold himself in control. "I will take them if you wish it," she said, gently, and she extended her hand. "I leave it to you. They are wonderfully beautiful, I see that."

"They came from Cuba; I have been watching them growing for nineteen months--for this."

"It is a house of mourning, you know, that I am going to," she said. "It was, as you say, nineteen months ago--a long time; but the remembrance will be very fresh at the rectory this afternoon."

His anger suddenly left him, he raised his eyes from his roses to her face, and smiled. "It's always fresh to me!" he answered. The glow in his dark countenance, as he brought this out, appalled her, it was like a triumph--triumph over death. He walked to the door and tossed the roses into the sunshine outside. "You are right," he said. "I can afford to wait--now!" And, with a quick salutation, he pulled his hat down over his brows and walked away.

Telano drove Margaret up the water-road to Gracias. It was late in the afternoon when she reached the rectory; Dr. Kirby was watching for her, he came down to the gate to meet her.

"She has gone to her room," he said; "we have persuaded her to go and lie down for a while, as she has done nothing but cry since first seeing the Moores.--I am afraid it will be even worse when she sees you," he added, as they went up the path.

Crossing the veranda, he stopped with his hand on the door, looking at his companion for a moment before entering.

There was no one in the world whom the Doctor now admired so much as he admired Margaret Harold; for the past two years he had secretly given her his unswerving help and support. He thought hers, among women, the most courageous and noble nature he had ever known. And the sweetest, also--ah, yes, in its hidden depths, overwhelmingly, enchantingly sweet! The delicacy of her physical constitution, too (and she did not grow stronger), her nearness to breaking down at times--these things had endeared her to the Doctor greatly; for it touched him to see, month after month, her fair youthfulness growing a little less youthful, her sweet face more faint in color, while at the same time, hour by hour, he saw her perform her full task so completely, in all its details as well as its broader outlines. He knew that she constantly suffered, and that it must be so. With his own eyes he saw how she endured. As a physician, if nothing else, he was aware how infrequent is quiet effort, maintained evenly, day after day, in a sex which can upon occasion perform single actions that rise to the height of the superhuman, and are far beyond the endeavors of any man. But here was a woman capable of the steady effort; it was not merely that she had remained with her husband, had allowed him to take possession again of her life and her home; she had made this home as pleasant to him and to Aunt Katrina as so quiet a place could be made to two such persons. She never secluded herself, she was always ready to talk, she brought others to amuse them; she read aloud, she played backgammon and checkers, she tied the ends of the fish nets and kept an account of them. She accepted and acted upon all Lanse's suggestions regarding her dress; she smiled frankly over his succinct stories, which, as has already been mentioned, were invariably good--Aunt Katrina generally managing to comprehend them by about the next day; in addition she directed the complicated household so that no jars made themselves felt; and during all this time, these long two years, no one had heard a syllable from her lips that was sharp in sound; nay, more, that was not sweet.

There are women who are capable of sacrificing themselves, with the noblest unselfishness in great causes, who yet, as regards the small matters of every-day life, are rather uncomfortable to live with; so much so, indeed, that those who are under the same roof with them are driven to reflect now and then upon the merits of the ancient hermitages and caves to which in former ages such characters were accustomed to retire. These being out of fashion, however, the relatives can only wish (with a certain desperation of fancy) that their dear self-sacrificing companions might imbibe from somewhere, anywhere, such a dose of selfishness as should render their own lives more comfortable; and, as a sequence, that of the household, as well.

The Doctor had had these saints as his patients more than once, he knew them perfectly. But here was a woman who had sacrificed her whole life to duty, who felt constantly the dreary ache of deprivation; but who yet did not think in the least, apparently, that these things freed her from the kindly efforts, the patience, the small sweet friendly attempts which made home comfortable.

The Doctor had been witness to all this, as he had been witness also that day in the orange grove, when Evert Winthrop lifted this same woman in his arms, where she lay speechless, tortured by the pain of parting with him.

Her pain was the same now--he knew that; but she had learned to bear it. Unspeakably he honored her.

And now this woman had come to see Garda in her trouble, Garda who was so infinitely dear to him, though in another way. He felt, as he stood there with his hand upon the door-knob, that he must for once--for once--acknowledge the difference between these two natures; he could not be content with himself without it. "I know you will be very good to her," he said--"our poor Garda, our dear little girl; she is suffering greatly, and we must tide her over it as well as we can. Yes, tide her over it; for you and I know, Mrs. Harold, that deep as her sorrow is--undoubtedly is, poor child!--it will pass."

He opened the door, and Margaret entered. Then he closed it from the outside, and made his escape. He felt like a traitor; yet he had had to say it--he had had to say it!

But the next moment he was taking himself to task as he walked violently homeward across the plaza. "Don't you want it to pass, you great idiot, that sorrow of hers? How much good can a woman do sitting all her life upon a tomb? she can't even be ornamental there, in my humble opinion. No; it's a thorough waste, a thorough waste!" He entered his old house, still revolving these reflections; he came bursting in upon Ma.

"Ma," he announced, as the little old lady in her neat widow's cap looked up in surprise--he spoke with emphasis, as he was still suffering sharply from having had, as it were, to denounce Garda--"I am convinced, Ma, that it would have been infinitely better for you, infinitely, if you had married again."

"Mercy on us, Reginald!" said astonished little Ma.

Margaret entered Garda's room with a noiseless step, the Moores had thought it better that she should go alone. The blinds had been closed, but a gleam of the sunset entered between the slats, and made a line of gold across the floor; the motionless figure on the lounge had been covered (by Penelope) with that most desolate of all draperies, a plain black shawl. Though Margaret had entered so quietly, Garda seemed to know who it was; she was lying with her face turned away, but she spoke instantly--"Margaret?" And Margaret came and took her in her arms.

"Margaret, I cannot bear it," Garda said, calmly; "I have tried, but it is impossible. And if you cannot tell me how to--you the only one I really believe, I shall not try any more. It is decided."

"Time will tell you how, Garda," Margaret answered, putting her hand upon the girl's head as it lay against her breast. "Time, I think, is the only thing that can help us--women, I mean--when we suffer so."

"But it's nineteen months already," Garda went on, in the same desperately calm tone. "And to-day I've suffered just as much as I did in the beginning--exactly as much."

"Yes--the coming home. It will be different now."

"But now's now," said Garda, sitting up, and looking at her friend, her face hardened, her lovely lips set in her pain.

"I mean soon, dear."

"I won't believe it unless you swear it to me," Garda went on. She got up and stood looking at Margaret. "If you will swear it to me I will try to believe it, because you know me, and you speak the truth."

"Very well, then; listen: I am absolutely sure of it," Margaret answered.

"Sure that I shall stop caring so much? stop feeling so dreadfully?"

"Yes, sure."

"But when will it begin?" the girl demanded, shaken with fresh sobs; she leaned down as she spoke, pressing her hands on Margaret's shoulders and looking at her insistently, as if she would draw from her by force a comforting reply.

"To-morrow, perhaps," said Margaret, answering her almost as one answers a suffering child.

"Well--you mustn't leave me."

"I won't leave you to-night at least."

This gave Garda some slight solace, she sat down and rested her head on Margaret's shoulder. "He was buried in Venice--on that island, you know. Margaret, I want to go down to East Angels to-morrow, mamma is there; do you remember dear little mamma?"

But this quiet did not last long. Suddenly she sprang up again, and began walking about the room, clinching her hands.

Margaret went to her.

"I told you I could not bear it," Garda cried, flinging her off. "You said it would stop, and it hasn't stopped at all. It suffocates me, it's a sort of dreadful agony in my throat that you don't know anything about, you--you!" And she faced her friend like a creature at bay. "When shall I begin to forget him?--tell me that. When?"

"But you do not wish to forget him, Garda."

"Yes, I do, I wish I might never think of him on earth again," said Garda, fiercely, giving a stamp with her foot as one does in extremity of physical pain. "Why should I suffer so? it's not right. If you don't help me more than you've done (and I relied upon you so), I shall certainly go to him--go to Lucian. He'll be glad to see me, he thinks more of me than you do--you who haven't helped me at all! But it will be easy to end it, you will see; I've got something I shall take. I relied upon you so--I relied upon you so!"

Margaret took her hands. "Give me another day, Garda," she said.

"Only one," answered Garda.

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Chapter XXXVII

One afternoon, six months later, Margaret, under her white umbrella, opened the gate of the rose garden at East Angels. She came through the crape-myrtle avenue, at the end of its long vista, on the bench under the great rose-tree, she saw Garda; the crane, outlined in profile against the camellia bushes, kept watch over his mistress stiffly; another companion, in bearing scarcely less rigid, stood beside her--Adolfo Torres.

His Cuban slips had served their destiny after all, Garda's lap was full of roses. Crimson and pink, they lay on her black dress a mass of color, contrasting with the creamy hue of the paler roses above her head.

There was always the same interest in Margaret; as soon as Garda saw her friend, she left the bench and came to meet her. The roses tumbled to the ground; Adolfo did not glance at his fallen blossoms, but Carlos, stalking forward, pecked at the finest ones.

"Oh, have you got through at last--that everlasting reading aloud and fish-nets?" Garda inquired. "To think that I should have to give way to fish-nets?"

"I was to tell you--Lanse hopes that you will come in before long," Margaret answered.

"Hopes are good. But I shall not come in." And Garda linked her arm in her friend's. "Or rather, if I do, I shall go and sit in your room with you--may I? Good-by, Adolfo; you are not vexed with me for going?" she added. And, leaving Margaret, she went back to him, extending her hand.

He bowed over it. "Whatever pleases you--"

"You please me," answered Garda, promptly. "After they have carried off Mr. Harold to bed, those terrible men of his--about ten o'clock generally--then I never have very much to do for an hour. From ten to eleven, that is the time when I am in want of society."

"But you don't expect poor Mr. Torres to go stumbling home through the woods at midnight, just for the sake of giving you that?" Margaret suggested.

"Yes, I do. Mr. Torres never stumbled in his life. And I don't think he is at all poor," Garda answered, smiling.

He had kept her hand, he bowed over it; he did not appear to think he was, himself.

"Yes--from ten to eleven, that is much the best time. Couldn't you come then, and only then?" Garda went on. "Margaret doesn't mind, she's always late."

"Yes, I've a wretched habit of sitting up," that lady acknowledged.

"It is impossible that any habit of Mrs. Harold's should be wretched," announced the Cuban, with gravity. "She may not always explain her reasons. They are sure to be excellent."

"Come, Margaret, we can go after that," said Garda. "If you should tell him that you had a little habit of scalping--small negroes, for instance--he would be sure that your reasons were perfect. And gather up the scalps." Smiling a good-by to Torres, she drew her friend away with her, going down the myrtle avenue. "What are you going to do?" she asked. "May I come and sit with you till dinner?"

"I have accounts to look over; I shouldn't be much of a companion."

"Always something."

"Yes, always something."

"Well, I shall come, all the same."

An hour later she entered Margaret's room, selected a low chair which she liked, and seated herself. This apartment of Margaret's, which was called her dressing-room, though in reality she never dressed there, contained her own small library, her writing-table, the rows of account-books (with which she was at present engaged), and sewing materials--all articles which Garda declared she detested. "It looks like an industrial school," she said; "you only need shoe-brushes."

"Why shoe-brushes?" Mrs. Harold had inquired.

"They always make them--in industrial schools," Garda had responded, imaginatively.

The mistress of the house had not lifted her head when Garda entered, she went on with her accounts. Garda had apparently lost nothing of her old capacity for motionless serenity; leaning back in her chair, she swayed a feather fan slowly to and fro, looking at the top of a palmetto, which she could see through the open window, shooting up against the blue; her beauty was greater than ever, her eyes were sweeter in expression, her girlish figure was now more womanly. After musing in this contented silence for half an hour, she fell asleep.

Some minutes later, Margaret, missing the soft motion of the fan, looked up; she smiled when she saw the sleeping figure. It was a warm day, Garda had changed her thin black dress for a white one; through the lace, of which it was principally composed, her round arms gleamed. She had dropped her fan; her head, with the thick braids of hair wound closely about it, drooped to one side like a flower.

Margaret had smiled to see how easily, as a child does, she had glided into unconsciousness. But the next moment the smile was followed by a heavy sigh. It was a sigh of envy, the page of figures grew dim, then faded from before her eyes, she dropped her head upon her clasped hands in the abandonment of the fresh, the ever-fresh realization of her own dreariness. This realization was never long absent; she might hope that she had forgotten it, or that it had forgotten her; but it always came back.

It happened that at this instant Garda woke; and saw the movement. She came swiftly across to her friend. "Oh, I knew you were unhappy, though you never, never say so! But now I have caught you, I have seen it. And oh, Margaret, you are so changed!--you are the loveliest woman in the world still,--but you have grown so thin; look at your hands." And she held up one of Margaret's hands against the light to show its transparency.

But Margaret drew her hand away. "If I'm thin, I am only following out my privilege as an American woman," she answered, lightly. "Don't you know that we pride ourselves upon remaining slender?"

"Slender--yes; that is what you were. Your arms were always slender, and yet round. But now--" She pushed up Margaret's sleeve. "See your poor wrists. Oh, Margaret, I do believe that before long even hollows in your pretty neck will begin to show!"

"How can they, if I always wear high dresses?" said Margaret, smiling.

She rose as she spoke. But if her motive was to escape from further scrutiny, she was not successful; Garda took hold of her and made her sit down on a couch near one of the windows, and standing in front of her to keep her there, she continued her inspection. "Yes, you are thinner. There are little fine lines going down your face. And your face itself has grown narrow. That makes your eyes too large, I don't like your eyes now; they are too big and blue."

"They were always blue, weren't they?"

"Now they are the kind of blue that you see in the eyes of golden-haired children that have got to die," pursued Garda, making one of her curiously accurate comparisons.

Suddenly she held Margaret's hands down with her own left hand, and with her right pushed back swiftly the dark hair; it was the hair that lay low over the forehead; for Lanse's taste was still consulted, his wife's dusky locks rippled softly above her blue eyes, having now certainly nothing of the plain appearance to which he had objected.

The forehead thus suddenly exposed betrayed at the temples a wasted look, with the blue veins conspicuous on the white. "I knew it!" said Garda. She sat down beside her friend, and kissed her with angry tenderness. "What is the matter with you?" she demanded, putting her arms round her and giving her a little shake. "You shall tell me. What is the matter?"

"A very natural thing; I am growing old, that is all." And Margaret tried to rearrange the disordered hair.

"Leave it as it is, I am determined to see the worst of you this time. You--with all that pretty hair and your pretty dresses--you have managed to conceal it." And again with searching eyes she examined her friend. "You don't care at all!" she announced.

"Oh yes, I do," said Margaret.

"You don't care in the least. But I care; and something shall be done. They have worn you out between them--two invalids; I shall speak to Mr. Harold."

Margaret's face altered. "No, Garda, you must not do that."

"But he likes me," said Garda, insistently; "he will say yes to anything I ask--you will see if he doesn't."

And Margaret felt, like a wave, the conviction that he would; more than this, that he would always have said yes if Garda had been the wife instead of herself. Garda would never have been submissive, Garda would never have yielded. But to Garda he would always have said yes.

"I shall certainly speak to him," Garda persisted. "Why shouldn't I not mind what you say, if it is for your good?'

"It would not be for my good."

"But he is kind to you, I know it, because I see it with my own eyes. He thinks you are lovely, he has told me so; he says you are a very rare type. And he himself--he is so agreeable; he says unusual things; he never tires anybody; his very fish-nets are amusing. I like him ever so much; and though he is crippled, he is very handsome--there is such a golden light in his brown eyes."

"He is all that you say," Margaret answered, smiling at this enumeration.

She could talk about her husband readily enough now. As Garda had noticed, he was always kind, his manner had been steadily kind (though not without many a glimpse of inward entertainment gleaming through it) ever since he entered East Angels' doors; he appeared to have taken his wife under his protection, he told Aunt Katrina once for all, and authoritatively (to that lady's amazement), that she must hereafter, in his presence at least, be "less catty" to Margaret. During the one visit which Evert Winthrop had paid to Florida in the same period, Lanse announced to him (in the tone of the old Roman inscription)--"I'm as steady as a church, old lad. I make nets for the poor. I talk to Aunt K. I'm good to the little people about here. I'm a seraph to Margaret."

Garda's present visit at East Angels had begun but two days before. She had been spending some time in New York with Lish-er and Trude. These ladies having written once a week since their first parting with her, to say that they were sure that she must by this time be needing "a drier air," Garda had at length accepted the suggestion; and tried the air. It proved to be that of Ninth Street; and was indeed remarkably dry. This visit to Margaret was her second one; six months before she had made a long stay at East Angels--so long that Aunt Katrina began to fear that she would never go away. The violence of the grief that had accompanied her first return to Gracias had subsided with singular suddenness; she said to Margaret, in an apathetic tone, "I had to kill it, you know, or else kill myself. I came very near killing myself."

"I was much alarmed about you," Margaret answered, hesitating as to whether or not to say more.

Garda divined her thoughts. "Did you think I was out of my mind? I wasn't at all; it was only that I couldn't bear the pain. Let us never speak of that time again--never! never!" She got up, and for a moment stood trembling and quivering. Then, with the same rapidity and completeness, she resumed her calm.

Margaret never did speak of it again. "But how was it that she killed it--how?" was her dreary thought.

During that first visit, Lanse and Mrs. Spenser had become fast friends; every evening she played checkers with him, and she was the only person with whom he did not bluster over the game; she contradicted him; she made sport of his fish-nets; she used his Fielding for her footstool; she put forward the proposition that her own face was prettier than his Mino outlines.

Lanse denied this. "My Mino outlines are not in the least pretty. But then you are not in the least pretty yourself."

"Not pretty!" said Garda, with a protesting cry. "Why, even a little pussy cat can be pretty."

"I have not been able to discover a trace of prettiness in you." He paused. "You are simply superb," he said, looking at her with his deep bold eyes. "What makes you stay on here?" he added in another tone, surveying her curiously.

Garda turned; but Margaret had by chance left the room. "I was going to point to Margaret," she answered; "I stay because I love her--love to be with her."

"Well, you'll have a career," Lanse announced, briefly.

The next day he said to Aunt Katrina, "I should like to have seen that girl before she was married; there's such an extraordinary richness in her beauty that I don't believe she ever had an awkward age; she was probably graceful at sixteen."

"She was designing at sixteen."

"No! For whom could she have been designing down here?"

"Evert."

"And the idiot let her slip through his fingers?"

"Deliver us!" said the lady. "If I've got to hear you admire her too!"

Late in the evening of the day when she had threatened to speak to Lanse about his wife's health, Garda came and knocked at Margaret's door. "I wanted to see you," she said, entering.

Adolfo had gone an hour before, and she had been in her own room meanwhile; but she had not taken off her white lace attire, or loosened the braids of her hair. Margaret too was fully dressed.

"What have you been doing?" Garda demanded, suspiciously, as she looked at her. "Not crying?"

"I think I have forgotten how to cry."

"Well, your eyes are dry," Garda admitted. She closed the door, then went to one of the windows and looked out. There had been a heavy rain during the evening, and the air was much cooler; it was very dark. She closed the shutters of all the three windows and fastened them. "It's so gloomy out there! Pine cones? What luck! we'll have a fire."

"Garda--we shall melt!"

"No, the room is too large." She piled the cones on the hearth and set fire to them; in an instant the blaze flared out and lighted up all the dusky corners. "That's better. Only one poor miserable little candle?" And she proceeded to light four others that stood about here and there.

"Are you preparing for a ball?"

"I am preparing for a talk. I'm lonely to-night, Margaret, and I can't bear to feel lonely; how long may I stay? Are you sure you haven't got to go and do something?--say good-night to Mr. Harold, for instance?"

"He has been asleep these two hours. He always has one of his men in the room with him."

"Yes, I know. But why haven't you undressed, then, all this time?" Garda went on, with returning suspicion.

"Why haven't you? But have you no conscience, thinking of poor Adolfo banging into all the trees and falling into all the ditches on his way home?"

"No, Adolfo and I are not troubled about conscience,--Adolfo and I understand each other perfectly. It's in the blood, I suppose; we belong to the same race," said the daughter of the Dueros.

She had been standing watching her fire; now she drew up a chair before it and sat down. "I did not say anything to Mr. Harold about you, after all," she said.

"I thought you wouldn't when I told you I did not wish it."

"I shall do it to-morrow; you are to come north with me the next time I go."

"I shall not leave East Angels."

"I saw Evert in New York," Garda began again, after a short silence. "I wrote a note asking him to come. He came--he came three times. But three times isn't much?" And she glanced towards Margaret.

Margaret had kept her place on the sofa where she was sitting when Garda entered; but she had drawn forward on its casters a tall screen to shield herself from the fire, and this threw her face into shadow. "No, not much," she answered from her dark nook.

"I love to tell you things," Garda resumed, gazing at the blaze. "Well--he wouldn't like me--what would you say to that? I had thought that perhaps he might; but no, he wouldn't."

This time there was no answer from the shadow.

"I used to think--long ago--that it was because he couldn't," Garda went on; "I mean, couldn't care for any one very much; care as I care. But I was mistaken. Completely. He can care. But not for me."

She got up and went to the long mirror, in the bright light her face and figure were clearly reflected; here she stood looking at herself for some time in silence, as if touched by a new curiosity. She moved nearer the glass, so that she could see her face; then back to get a view of the image as a whole; she turned half round, with her head over her shoulder, in order to see herself in profile. She adjusted the ribbon round her supple waist, and gave a touch, musingly, to her hair; she lifted her white hands and looked at them; dropping them, she clasped them behind her, and indulged in another general survey. "Such as I am, he cares nothing for me," she said at last, speaking not in surprise, but simply, as one who states a fact.

She looked at herself again. "I don't say he's not a fool!" And she gave a good-humored laugh.

She left the glass and came towards Margaret. "I've got to tell you something," she said. "Do you know, I tried. Yes, I tried; for I like him so much! You remember I thought everything of him once, when we were first engaged, long ago? I appreciate him better now. And I like him so much!" While she was saying these last words she came and knelt down beside the sofa in her old caressing fashion, her clasped hands on Margaret's knees. But her movement had pushed the screen, and it rolled back, letting the fire-light shine suddenly across Margaret's face.

"Merciful Heaven!" cried Garda, springing to her feet as she saw the expression there; "do you care for him?--is that it? The cause of all--the change in you, and in him too? Oh, how blind I have been!--how blind! But I never once suspected it. Don't think of a word I have said, he didn't look at me; I tried, but he wouldn't; he despises me, I know. I like him better than any one in the world, now that Lucian is gone," she went on, with her bare frankness. "But he will never care for me; and a very good reason, too, when it is you he cares for!"

Margaret had bowed her head upon her arm, which rested upon the sofa's back. Garda sat down beside her. "How many times have you comforted me!" she said. "If I could only be of the smallest comfort to you, Margaret!"

Margaret did not answer.

"And it has been so all these long years," Garda murmured, after sitting still and thinking of it. "You are better than I am!"

"Better!"

"There isn't an angel in heaven at this moment better than you are," Garda responded, vehemently. "But you mustn't keep on in this way, you know," she added, after a moment.

"I can't talk, Garda."

"That is it, Evert has talked! He has tired you out. I can imagine that when once he is in earnest--Margaret, let me tell you this one thing: you can't live under all this, you'll die."

"It's not so easy to die," answered Lansing Harold's wife.

"You think I don't know about Mr. Harold. But I do. Lucian heard the whole in Rome; I even saw her myself--in a carriage on the Pincio. I know that he left you twice to go to her--twice; what claim has he, then, upon you? But what is the use of my talking, if Evert has been able to do nothing!"

Margaret sat up. "Go now, Garda. I would rather be alone."

But Garda would not go. "I could never be like you," she went on. "And this is a case where you had better be more like me. Margaret! Margaret!" and she clung to her, suddenly. "Such a love as his would be!" she whispered--"how can you refuse it? I think it's wicked, too, because it's his whole life, he isn't Lansing Harold! And you love him so; you needn't deny it; I can feel your heart beating now."

"Go," said Margaret, drawing herself free, and rising. "You only hurt me, Garda. And you cannot change me."

But Garda followed her. "You adore him. And he--And you give all that up? Why--it's the dearest thing there is, the dearest thing we have; what are you made of?" She kept up with her, walking by her side.

Margaret was pacing the room aimlessly; she put out her arm as if to keep Garda off.

The girl accepted this, moving to that distance; but still she walked by her side. "And don't you ever think of the life he's leading?--the life you're making him lead?" she went on. "He's unhappy--of course he didn't tell me why. He's growing hard and bitter, he's ever so much changed; remember that I have just seen him, only a few days ago. It's dreadful to have to say that he has changed for the worse, because I like him so much; but I am afraid he has,--yes, he has. You see he needs some one--I like him so much."

"Marry him yourself, then, and be the some one," answered Margaret, sharply. And by a sudden turn in her quick walk she seemed to be again trying to get rid of her.

"I would, if he would marry me," Garda answered; "yes, even if he should keep on caring for you just the same, for that doesn't hurt him in my eyes. I should be content to come after you; and if I could have just a little edge of his love--But he wouldn't look at me, I tell you--though I tried. He is like you, with him it is once. But you are the one I am thinking of most, Margaret. For you are fading away, and it's this stifled love that's killing you; now I understand it. Women do die of such feelings, you are one of them. Do you think you'll have any praise when you get to the next world "--here she came closer--"after killing yourself, and breaking down all the courage of a man like Evert, like Evert--two whole lives wasted--and all for the sake of an idea?"

Margaret's face had been averted. But now she looked at her. "An idea which you cannot comprehend," she said. And she turned away again.

"Yes, I know you think me your inferior," Garda answered; "and I acknowledge that I am your inferior; I am nothing compared with you, I never was. But I don't care what you say to me, I only want you to be happier." She waited an instant, then came up behind Margaret, whose back was towards her, and with a touch that was full of humility, took hold of a little fold of her skirt. "Listen a moment," she said, holding it closely, as if that would make Margaret listen more; "I don't believe Mr. Harold would oppose a suit at all. He couldn't succeed, of course, no matter what he should do, for it's all against him, but I don't believe he would even try; he isn't that sort of a man at least, malicious and petty. If he could be made comfortable here, as he is now? It's very far away--Gracias-a-Dios; that is, people think so, I find; they thought so in New York; so he could stay on here as quietly as he pleased, and it would make no difference to anybody. He could have everything he liked; why, I would undertake to stay for a while at first, stay and amuse him, play checkers and all that. It's a pity Mrs. Rutherford dislikes me so," Garda concluded, in a tone of regret.

"Perhaps you would undertake to marry him, by way of a change?" said Margaret, leaving her again, with another sharp movement that pulled the dress from the touch of the humble little hand.

"There are some things, Margaret, that even you must not say to me," Garda answered, smiling bravely and brightly, though the tears were just behind.

And then Margaret's cruel coldness broke; she came to her, took her hands, and held them across her hot eyes. "Forgive me, Garda, I don't know what I am saying. You don't mean it, but you keep turning the knife in the wound. I shall never do any of the things you talk of, I shall go on staying here. I must bear my life--the life I made for myself, with my eyes open; no one made it for me, I made it for myself, and I must bear it as well as I can. I have said cruel things, but it was because--" She dropped the girl's hands. "I have always thought you so--so beautiful; and if you care for him, as you now tell me you do, what more natural than that he--" But she could not finish, her face contracted with a quiver, and took on suddenly and strangely the tints of age.

"I am not worthy to tie your shoe!" cried Garda, in her soft voice, which even in high excitement could not rise above its sweet tones.

But Margaret had controlled herself again, the spectre face had vanished. "When you tell me that he has changed so much, that he is growing harsh, hard,--that is the worst for me," she said. "I can bear everything about myself, everything here; but I cannot bear that." She paused. "Men are all alike"--she began again. Then she put that aside too--her last bitterness. "Garda," she resumed, "I shall go on living here, as I have said; and it is for always; I am, I intend to be, as far removed from his life as though I were dead. And now--if you will marry him? You are so beautiful he cannot help but love you, you needn't be afraid! You must never come here--I tell you that in the beginning. And he must never come. But"--she moved swiftly forward and took the girl in her arms with a passionate tenderness--"but your little children, Garda, if you should have any, if they could come, it would be good for me; my life would not be so bitter and hard; I should be a better woman than I am now, yes, I am sure I should be better." She put her face down upon Garda's for a moment. Garda could feel how very cold it was.

Then she released her; she began moving about the room, setting the chairs in their places, she extinguished some of the candles; she was quite calm.

Garda stood where she had been left; her face was hidden.

Margaret crossed to one of the windows and threw open the shutters; the cool night air rushed in, laden with the perfume of flowers. Then she came back to Garda. "I will go with you to your room," she said; "it is very, very late." She put her arm round her to lead her away. Garda submitted, though still with her face hidden; they went together down the hall.

There was a light in Garda's room. Margaret kissed her before leaving her. "Good-night," she said.

"I am ashamed," Garda murmured.

"Ashamed?"

"Ashamed of being glad."

Margaret went swiftly away, she almost seemed to flee. Garda, standing on her lighted threshold, heard her door close. Then she heard the sound of the bolt within, as it was shot sharply forward.

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Chapter XXXVIII

"Did you ever hear of anything so absurd?" said Aunt Katrina. "How she will look at sea!--Those prunello gaiters of hers on deck when the wind blows!"

"Jolly old soul," commented Lanse. He was playing solitaire, and had paused reflectively with a card in his hand while he gazed at the spread-out piles before him. "Jolly old soul!--I am glad she is going to see something at last, before she dies."

"What expressions you do use, Lanse! one would think she was ninety. As for seeing, she'll see nothing but Garda Thorne, and have her hands full at that."

"Her eyes, you mean," said Lanse, slipping his card deftly upon a pile which contained already its legal three, and fitting the edges accurately as he did so to those of the card beneath, in order to cheat himself with the greater skill.

Aunt Katrina's comments were based upon some recent tidings. Betty had journeyed down to East Angels that afternoon in the black boat of Uncle Cato to convey to her dearest Kate a wonderful piece of news: Garda had suddenly decided to go abroad for the winter--to Italy, and she had written from New York, where she was staying with Lish-er and Trude, to beg Betty to come north immediately and go with her, "like the dear, kind old aunt" that she was. Betty's mind, driven into confusion by this sudden proposal, was a wild mixture of the sincerest regrets at leaving dear Kate, of the sincerest gratification at this proof of Garda's attachment, and the sincerest (and most dreadful) apprehensions concerning the ocean passage.

Garda's second visit at East Angels--a very short one--had terminated only six weeks before; at that time she had no intention of going to Italy. This, then, was some sudden new idea, and Lanse had amused himself imagining causes for it. He imagined them on such a scale of splendor, however, that Aunt Katrina declared at last that she could listen to no more of them; they were too ridiculously silly.

She brought herself to listen, however, when, four months later, Betty, having survived a recrossing of the ocean, came down to East Angels, with the lion carpet-bag, to tell "everything" to her friend.

Poor Betty had been so homesick in foreign lands that Garda had not had the heart to detain her longer. "And she said that she had hoped I would stay with her a long time, perhaps always," narrated Betty. "And of course I enjoyed being in New York ever so much, of course; and Rome too--Rome was so instructive. But then you know, as I told the dear child, Rome is not my home, nor can I make it so at my age, of course."

"It's not age; it's experience," said Kate.

"Very likely you're right, Kate; but then, you know, I've had so little experience; since I came from Georgia with Mr. Carew, ever so many years ago, I've never put my foot outside of Florida until now, and I suppose I've grown like those Swiss exiles we read about, who can't hear that call for cows, you know, that Ranz something, without getting so homesick, though to everybody else it's a dreadfully yelling sound,--though I ought to say, too, that as we've next to no cows in Florida, the comparison isn't a very good one; but then there were next to no cows in Rome either, for that matter, though it was there that a cow brought up little Castor and Pollux, who built the city--no, no, I'm mistaken, that was Romulus and Remus; Castor and Pollux tamed the horses on the Quirinal; but in either case it shows that the milk must have been good, because they were so strong, you know."

"Are we talking of milk, Elizabeth?" asked Kate, in despair.

"Of course not," answered Elizabeth, good-naturedly; "how could you think so? I know you never cared for milk in the least, Kate, and I shouldn't be likely, therefore, to bring it up.--And right there in the Forum I'd see my own flower-garden. And in the Colosseum I'd see our little church here, and even hear the bell."

"Absurd!" said Kate.

"I reckon it was absurd," Betty agreed, though wiping her eyes at the same time. "And at the Vatican, there among the statues, Kate--do you know I was always seeing likenesses to you."

"Oh, well--that," responded Kate, as if there might be grounds for associations of that nature. "And Garda Thorne, by this time, I suppose, is living there quite alone?" she went on, comfortably.

"Oh no; she has a companion, Madame Clementer."

"Clementi," said Lanse; "I know her--an American, Miss Morris. He ran through all her money."

"Yes, that is the one; the Bogarduses arranged it by letter; they know her very well."

"She's a cousin of theirs, and a very nice woman; about fifty-five. Nothing could be more respectable," Lanse went on, glancing with an amused eye at Aunt Katrina's unwilling face. "You were there some time, Mrs. Carew; I suppose you saw some men?"

"The population seemed to me to consist principally of men," Betty answered, naively; "the streets were always crowded with them."

"That's because the Italian women don't knock about. But some of these men came to see you, I suppose?"

"Oh, you mean gentlemen? Yes, a good many came; but for my part, I was always gladdest to see Adolfo Torres. He wasn't so foreign."

"Is he there?" said Lanse, with a delighted laugh; "has he followed her all that distance? Bravo for Adolfo!"

"I don't see where he got the money to go," remarked Aunt Katrina, with one of her well-bred sniffs.

Betty flushed at this. "Mr. Torres has property, Kate," she said, with dignity. Then her usual humble sincerity came back to her. "I don't reckon it's much," she went on. "I've no idea where he stayed, nor anything about it; but I'm sure, whenever he came to see us, he always looked like a dignified gentleman."

"Naturally," said Lanse. "Because that is what he is. Well, I give him my vote."

As this conversation was beginning, word was brought to Margaret that Mr. Winthrop was in the drawing-room, and wished to see her. Celestine was the messenger.

"Has he come to stay? You and Looth must put the east room in order, then," said the mistress of the house. "Have you told the others?"

"Yes'm," said Celestine, disappearing.

When Margaret entered the drawing-room, twenty minutes later, Winthrop was there alone. Celestine had told nobody. Minerva Poindexter, meanwhile, sweeping a remote corridor, had had a tussle with her conscience; and gagged it.

"No one here?" said Margaret in surprise. "Where are the others?"

"I didn't come to see the others," Winthrop answered.

Though many months had elapsed since their last meeting, no greeting passed between them beyond this; they did not even shake hands. She had seen upon entering that angry feelings had possession of him, that this time he would not go through any of the forms. This made her only the more anxious to keep to them strictly herself.

"I hope you have come to stay with us a while," she said.

He paid no attention to this. "Shall we go out--to the garden, or somewhere? I wish to see you alone."

"We couldn't well be more alone than this, could we?" she answered, looking about the room.

"But they may interrupt us. If they do, I shall ask you very soon to come out, and you must come." He crossed the room and closed the door. "You got my letter?"

"I was answering it when you came."

"I didn't want a written answer. It came over me, after I had sent mine, that I knew just what you would write in reply--the very words. Not that you have written so often; in two years and a half I think three notes of six lines each would about sum it up. But I know every written phrase of yours just the same; so I have come to get an answer in person--a more sensible and reasonable one."

She did not say, "There will be nothing more reasonable." It was what was in her thoughts; but it seemed wiser not to express her thoughts now.

"How changed you are!" he said; "even in eighteen months so much changed."

"No one here sees such a change." She faced his gaze proudly.

"The same old look! Of course they don't; so long as you keep everything going smoothly and everybody comfortable, they don't want to see any; they never will see one till you're in your coffin."

He was still gazing at her. "Arrange your life as you like," he went on, abruptly, "but at least come away from here. You can do that. And I shall insist upon it."

The fear of him that she had felt from the time of entering was increasing. He had never looked quite as he did at this moment; his voice had never had quite these tones before. The long months that had stretched into years had made no difference, then; everything was to be as hard, perhaps harder than ever!

Her fear caused her to answer with something like appeal. "But I do not wish to go away. I like it much better here than I should like being in New York. It is quiet; I am of some use; I am--I am really contented here."

"Since when have you learned to speak so falsely? You are probably afraid of me! You see, and correctly, that I am not to be put off this time, as I was when I came before--put off with a little preaching, a few compliments and exhortations. You are afraid I shall smash the pretty glass walls you have built up round your sham life here, your charming domestic life, your happy home circle."

"I don't think you have any right to take that tone."

"Yes, I have; the right of our love."

"We must forget that. We are not growing any younger; at least I am not. Men are different, perhaps."

Winthrop laughed. "Very well done, Margaret. But not well enough. You are trying to pretend that you have outlived it; and that I have. But our two faces contradict that; yours is wasted and drawn, and look at me--have I the appearance of a man who is even moderately happy?"

She had not trusted herself to look at him much; she remembered too vividly Garda's description--"changed," "bitter," "hard." But involuntarily now she did look at him. And she saw all that Garda had described; and more.

"What is it you wish me to do?" she asked, hurriedly.

"Come away from here."

"But where?"

"Anywhere you like.--Where I could see you sometimes."

"No--no."

"Very well, then; anywhere you like. And I won't see you."

"It wouldn't do me any good!" These words burst from her almost unconsciously. She dropped into the nearest chair.

He came and seated himself near her in silence.

"You saw Garda before she went abroad?" she said, beginning again.

"Yes."

"She wished to see you, I know."

"How you say that--how timidly! Garda, at least, is not troubled by timidity."

"Perhaps you will go abroad again yourself?"

"Not to see Mrs. Lucian Spenser! Would you like to have me go?" he added.

"Yes."

"I am very much obliged to you. It's a plan, is it?--you wouldn't have spoken of her otherwise. I see; I am growing older, I'm lonely, I'm sad; perhaps I'm wicked. A 'home,' therefore, is the thing I need--you women think so much of a home--and so you've planned this. It's very ingenious. But unfortunately I don't fall in with it. Don't waste any more time talking of Garda," he said, sharply.

Margaret's head was bent.

"It isn't possible that you have thought I could care for her, Margaret--such a woman as that. Why, you're trembling" (he rose and pulled down her shielding hand), "you're relieved! You have really dreamed, then, that it might happen!"

"It makes me hate myself," he went on, a mist showing itself in his eyes--"to see your unselfishness; you have thought of this because you believe that it would be better for me, that I should be happier. And if you had succeeded, if it could really have come about, how you would have lived up to it! To the very last hour of your life you wouldn't have swerved."

He looked at her; he seemed to be studying her. Then he grew sarcastic again, perhaps on account of her continued silence. "Garda, on her side, is perfectly capable of having a real affection for me for a while--real while it lasts; she hasn't any especial mission on her hands just now, so that would have done very well. You planned it together, I suppose. You are certainly a wonderful pair! May I ask how far did the plan extend? You would have pampered me up between you (she temporarily); you would have arranged what was 'best' for my life, like two Sunday-school teachers over a case of reform! Once and for all, Margaret, let us put Edgarda Thorne aside; she has nothing whatever to do with the matters that lie between you and me; she is no more to me than an old glove."

He walked about the room impatiently. "Of course I might lie to you," he went on; "I might say that if you persist in your present course--keeping me entirely off, separating your life utterly from mine--I should go to the bad. But it wouldn't be true; I shall not go to the bad, unless becoming hard and disagreeable is that. Later, if you still go on in this way, I shall become callous and selfish probably--self-indulgent. I shall never be vicious or low-lived, I hope; but I am not a woman, I can't live on air--as you will do. Don't see me at fifty-five--I'll give you that advice! For you will always remain the same; with the exception of growing paler and thinner, you'll be the same till you die; and I really think it would be a greater blow to you than even what we're bearing now to find me like that--selfish, fond of my ease, slow to disturb myself for anybody, mightily taken up with my dinner!--But you don't believe in the least what I am saying to you; I can't bring it before you. I love you--love you at this moment with every fibre of my being." He sat down and folded his arms doggedly. "But I shall not stay sentimental; no man does after a certain age, though women always expect it, as you expect it now."

"What do you intend to do?" he continued, as she did not answer any of this.

"Just what I have been doing."

"You have no mercy, then?" He looked at her with angry gloom.

"If I can bear it, surely you can."

"No, that doesn't follow. Women are better than men; in some things they are stronger. But that's because they are sustained--the ones of your nature at least--by their terrible love of self-sacrifice; I absolutely believe there are women who like to be tortured!"

"Yes--sometimes we like it," answered the woman he spoke to, a beautiful, mysterious, exalted expression showing itself for a moment in her eyes.

He sprang from his chair. But the look of his face as he came towards her, frightened her, brought her back to the actual present; moving hurriedly, she put her hand upon the cord of the bell.

"No, not that, that's cruel, that humiliates me--don't, don't. See, it isn't necessary, I shall be perfectly quiet and reasonable now. Here are two chairs; come and sit down. Now listen. I will do all that is proper here--see the people, and make a little visit; then I will go back to New York. After that, in due time, you must tell them that you are tired of Florida, that you need a change; you certainly do need a change, as a plain matter-of-fact; and I see no reason, in any case, for your spending your entire life here. Of course it will be an uphill undertaking to get Aunt Katrina started; she will believe that it would kill her instantly. But it won't kill her; she is stronger than she thinks. As for Lanse, he can make the journey up as well as he made it down; he's certainly no worse. Both of them, if you are firm, will end by doing as you wish, because you are indispensable to their comfort. The thing is that you must hold firm. Once established in New York, or near there, I could see you now and then--I mean see you all; Lanse would ask nothing better than to have me about again. I speak in all honor, Margaret--I'm not a vile hypocrite, whatever else I may be. I am growing older; see, I will take your view of that, you are growing older too; why shouldn't we, then, see each other in this way at intervals? where would be the harm? It would brighten our lives a little; and as for the 'home' you wished me to have, its good influences and all that, I could find them there."

"I shall never see you again," Margaret answered, strangely. She had not seated herself in the chair he had placed for her; she stood with her hand resting upon its back.

"What do you mean?"

"All you have said I believe; I believe you would keep to it, carry it out. But with me it would be different--it would be too much pain; I would far rather not see you at all. I love you too much," she added. A burning blush covered her face and throat as she met his eyes. Then it faded suddenly to so deathly a white that his old fear rushed back upon him. He had almost forgotten this fear in the lapse of time; but these terrible waves of color and of pallor, these overwhelming emotions that made her unable to stand--they brought back to him the old conviction, "She has no strength, she will not be able to endure it; she will die!" He took her in his arms and laid her down upon the cushions of a couch, made sick at heart as he did so by the lightness of her weight. Anything but that--that she should go from earth forever; anything but that!

As he bent over her, his heart full of his dread, she looked up; she saw his fear.

"Why--I am not dying," she said, reassuringly, smiling for an instant with almost a mother's sweetness; "it is nothing,--only the faintness that very often seizes me; it has been so all my life, it amounts to nothing. And now will you go? And promise me not to come back?"

"Margaret--that is too much."

"It is the only way; surely I have shown you--told you--in all its shame, my weakness." And again came the burning blush.

He had knelt down beside her. "Weakness!" He bowed his head upon her hand.

"Go," she repeated softly.

"I cannot go!"

She tried to rise, but he prevented her. "Margaret!" he said.

"And must I always be the one?" She did rise, she moved from his grasping hands. "You talk about my dying--that would make me die, to have you pursue me, ungenerously, brutally, when I have already such hard pain to bear." With a step that swayed with her exhaustion she went towards the door. "I can only appeal to you, Evert," she said when she had reached it, looking back at him over her shoulder--"I can only appeal to you not to try to see me again. It will be the same with me always, and so I appeal to you for always. I shall never change; and I should never yield; so you can see that it will only make me suffer more."

She turned the latch. "Perhaps, sometime--the years that we give up to duty here--" She went hastily out.

They never met again.

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Epilogue

It was eight years later at East Angels. Penelope and Middleton had come down for an afternoon visit; Betty was already there, Betty was generally there.

Dr. Kirby had just gone; he had brought to them the surprising tidings that Garda had turned her back upon her many admirers, and was about to bestow her hand upon Adolfo Torres.

The Doctor having gone, "I'll believe it when I see it!" Kate declared.

"But, Kate dear, you can't see all the way to Paris," said Betty.

That same evening, Margaret was sitting beside the lamp in the drawing-room, embroidering something which took her close attention.

Lanse had had his sofa drawn up to the open door of the little high balcony; he was smoking and looking out upon the moonlight.

He, too, spoke of the rumor about Garda. "I wonder why Evert didn't try for her?" he said.

His wife made no reply.

"Never married all this time--yet he was the very fellow for it! Steady, you know; good; a little stupid. It's outrageous the way he treats us--never coming here!"

Lanse was still crippled; but his face remained handsome. Save for his crippled condition, he appeared well and strong.

After a while he turned from the moonlight and sat idly watching his wife's hand move over her work. "Do you know that you've grown old, Madge, before your time?"

"Yes, I know it."

"Well--you're a good woman," said Lanse.

THE END.

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