MABEL'S MISTAKE.
BY
MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

AUTHOR OF "FASHION AND FAMINE," "THE SOLDIER'S ORPHANS,"
"DOUBLY FALSE," "SILENT STRUGGLES," "THE OLD HOMESTEAD,"
"THE REJECTED WIFE," "THE HEIRESS," "THE GOLD BRICK,"
"MARY DERWENT," "THE WIFE'S SECRET," ETC., ETC.

"Imagine something purer far,
More free from stain of clay,
There friendship, love, or passion are,
Yet human still as they:
And if thy lips for love like this
No mortal word can frame,
Go ask of angels what it is,
And call it by that name."

PHILADELPHIA:
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;
306 CHESTNUT STREET.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

ANN S. STEPHENS' WORKS.

Each work complete in one vol., 12mo.

THE CURSE OF GOLD.

WIVES AND WIDOWS.

THE REJECTED WIFE.

FASHION AND FAMINE.

THE GOLD BRICK.

SILENT STRUGGLES.

THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

MARY DERWENT.

THE SOLDIER'S ORPHANS.

THE WIFE'S SECRET.

MABEL'S MISTAKE.

DOUBLY FALSE.

THE HEIRESS.

Price of each, $1.75 in Cloth; or $1.50 in Paper Cover.

Above books are for sale by all Booksellers. Copies of any or all of the above books will be sent to any one, to any place, postage pre-paid, on receipt of their price by the Publishers,

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,

306 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

TO
MY DEAR, YOUNG FRIEND,
MISS EUDORA J. HART,
OF NEW YORK,
THIS VOLUME
IS
MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

ANN S. STEPHENS.

Washington, D. C., October 17, 1868.

CONTENTS.

MABEL'S MISTAKE.

CHAPTER I.
THE STEP-MOTHER AND STEP-SON.

It was autumn, one of those balmy Indian summer days which, if the eyes were closed, would remind you of Andalusia when the orange trees put forth their blossoms with the matured fruit still clinging to their boughs, burying its golden ripeness among cool, green leaves, and buds of fragrant snow. Still, save in the delicious atmosphere that autumnal sunset would not have reminded you of any land but our own. For what other climate ever gave the white wings of the frost the power to scatter that rich combination of red, green, gold and dusky purple upon a thousand forests in a single night? What other land ever saw the sun go down upon a world of green foliage, and rise to find the same foliage bathed in a sea of brilliant tints, till the east was paled by its gorgeousness?

Indeed, there was nothing in this calm, Indian-summer twilight to remind you of any other land, save its stillness and the balm of dying flowers giving up their lives to the frost. But the links of association are rapid and mysterious, and the scenes that awaken a reminiscence are sometimes entirely opposite to the memory awakened.

Be this as it may, there was something in the landscape suddenly clad in its gorgeous fall tints—in the river so coldly transparent twelve hours before, now rolling on through the glowing shadows as if the sands and pebbles in its bed had been turned to jewels, which reminded at least one person in that old mansion house, of scenes long ago witnessed in the south of Spain.

The old mansion house which we speak of, stood some miles above that gorge in the Harlem River which is now spanned by the High Bridge. This region of Manhattan Island is even yet more than half buried in its primeval forest trees. Hills as abrupt, and moss as greenly fleecy as if found on the crags of the Rocky Mountains, still exist among the wild nooks and wilder peaks which strike the eye more picturesquely from their vicinity to the great metropolis.

At the particular spot I wish to describe, the hills fall back from the Hudson, north and south, far enough to leave a charming little valley of some two or three hundred acres cradled in their wildness and opening greenly to the river, which is sure to catch a sheaf of sunbeams in its bosom when the day fires its last golden salute from behind the Palisades. Sheltered by hills, some broken into cliffs, some rolling smoothly back, clothed in variously tinted undergrowth and fine old trees, the valley itself received a double charm from the contrast of cultivation. It was entirely cleared of trees and undergrowth, save where a clump of cool hemlocks, a grove of sugar maples, or a drooping elm gave it those features we so much admire in the country homes of old England.

In the centre of the valley was a swell of land sloping down to the river in full, grassy waves, which ended at the brink in a tiny cove overhung by a clump of golden willows.

Crowning the swell of this elevation stood the old mansion commanding a fine view of the river, with a glimpse of the opposite shore, where the Weehawken hills begin to consolidate into the Palisades. A score of picturesque and pleasant little nooks were visible from the numerous windows, for it was an irregular old place, varying as much as an American house can vary in its style of architecture. The original idea had undoubtedly sprung from our Knickerbocker ancestors, for the gables were not only pointed, but notched down the steep edges after a semi-battlemented fashion, while stacks of quaint chimneys and heavy oaken doors bespoke a foundation far antecedent to the revolution.

But in addition to these proofs of antiquity, were balconies of carved stone, curving over modern bay windows, which broke up the stiff uniformity of the original design; and along one tall gable that fronted on the river, French windows, glittering with plate glass, opened to a verandah of stone-work, surrounded by a low railing also of stone; and if these windows were not one blaze of gold at sunset, you might be certain that a storm was lowering over the Palisades, and that the next day would be a cloudy one.

Another gable facing the south was lighted by a broad arched window crowded full of diamond-shaped glass, tinted through and through by the bloom and glow of a conservatory within. In short the mansion was a picturesque incongruity utterly indescribable, and yet one of the most interesting old houses in the world.

Whatever might be said of its architecture, it certainly had a most aristocratic appearance, and bore proofs in every line and curve of its stone traceries, both of fine taste and great wealth, inherited from generation to generation. Time itself would have failed to sweep these traces of family pride from the old house, for each century had carved it deeper and deeper into the massive stone, and it was as much a portion of the scenery, as the stately old forest trees that sheltered it.

But we have alluded to one who sat in a room of this old mansion, looking thoughtfully out upon the change that a single night had left upon the landscape. Her seat, a crimson easy-chair, stood near one of the broad bay windows we have mentioned. The sashes were folded back, and she looked dreamily out upon the river and the opposite shore. The whole view was bathed in a subdued glow of crimson and golden purple; for the sun was sinking behind the Palisades, and shot sheaf after sheaf of flashing arrows across the river, that melted into a soft glowing haze before they reached the apartment which she occupied.

The room behind was full of shadows, and nothing but the light of a hickory-wood fire revealed the objects it contained. She was looking forth upon the sunset, and yet thinking of other countries and scenes long gone by. Her mind had seized upon the salient points of a history full of experience, and she was swept away into the past.

No, she was not young, nor beautiful even. The flush of youth was gone for ever. Her features were thoughtful, almost severe, her form stately and mature.

No, she was not beautiful. At her age that were impossible, and yet she was a woman to fix the attention at a glance, and keep herself in the memory for ever—a grand, noble woman, with honor and strength, and beautiful depths of character, apparent even in her thoughtful repose.

But this woman shakes off the reverie that has held her so long in thrall, and looks up at the sound of a voice within the room, blushing guiltily like a young girl aroused from her first love thoughts. She casts aside the remembrance of black fruited olive groves and orange trees sheeted with snowy fragrance, and knows of a truth that she is at home surrounded by the gorgeous woods of America, in the clear chill air inhaled with the first breath of her life.

"Did you speak, James?"

She turned quietly and looked within the room. Near her, sitting with his elbows on a small table and his broad forehead buried in the palms of his hands, sat a man of an age and presence that might have befitted the husband of a woman, at once so gentle and so proud as the one who spoke to him; for even in the light produced by the gleams of a dull fire and the dusky sunset, as they floated together around his easy-chair, you could see that he was a man of thought and power.

The man looked up and, dropping his hands to the table with a sort of weariness, answered, as if to some person away off—

"No, I did not speak—I never did speak!"

It was a strange answer, and the lady's face grew anxious as she looked upon him. Certainly he had uttered some sound, or she would not have asked the question. She arose and moving across the room, leaned her elbow upon his chair, looking thoughtfully down in his face.

He started, as if but that moment conscious of her presence, and arose probably to avoid the grave questioning of her look.

"Of what were you thinking, James?" she said almost abruptly, for a superstitious thought forced the question to her lips almost against her will.

"I was thinking," said the man, resting his head against the oak carvings of his chair, "I was thinking of a time when we were all in the south of Spain."

"Of your mother's death?" inquired the lady in a low voice. "It was a mournful event to remember. What is there in this soft twilight to remind us both of the same thing, for I was thinking of that time also!"

"Of my mother's death?" inquired the gentleman, lifting his eyes to her face suddenly, almost sternly. "I was not thinking of that, but of my father's marriage."

The lady did not speak, but her face grew pale, and over it swept a smile so vivid with surprise, so eloquent of mournfulness, that she seemed transfigured. Her hand dropped away from the chair, and walking back to the window she sat down, uttering a faint sigh, as if some slumbering pain had been sharpened into anguish by the few words that had been spoken. Twenty years had she lived in the house with James Harrington, and never before had the subject of her marriage with his father been mentioned between them, save as it arose in the discussion of household events.

Her marriage with his father, that was the subject of his gloomy thoughts. Had she then failed to render him content in his home? Had she in anything fallen short of those gentle duties he had received so gratefully from the mother that was gone? Why was it that thoughts of Spain and of events that had transpired there, should have seized upon them both at the same time?

She arose again, pale and with a tremor of the limbs. The balmy air grew sickening to her—his presence an oppression. For the first time she began to doubt if she were not an object of dislike to her husband's guest. He saw her pass from the room without turning a glance that way, and followed her with a look of self-reproach. He felt pained and humiliated. After a silence of so many years, why had he dared to utter words to that woman—his best friend—which could never be explained? Had all manhood forsaken him? Had he sunk to be a common-place carper in the household which she had invested with so much beautiful happiness? Stung with these thoughts he arose and sought the open air also.

CHAPTER II.
OLD MR. HARRINGTON.

An old man sat in a room above the one just deserted by its inmates. He was watching the sunset also, with unusual interest, not because it brought back loving or sad memories, but with an admiration of the sense alone. With tastes cultivated to their extremest capacity, and a philosophy of happiness essentially material, this old man permitted no hour to pass by without gleaning some sensual enjoyment from it, that a less egotistical person might never have discovered. An epicure in all things, he had attained to a sort of self-worship, which would have been sublime if applied to the First Cause of all that is beautiful. His splendid person was held in reverence, not because it was made in the image of his God, but for the powers of enjoyment it possessed—for the symmetry it displayed, and the defiance which it had so long given to the inroads of time.

As a whole and in detail, this old man was a self-worshipper. Like all idolaters he was blind to the defects of his earthly god, and if a gleam of unpleasant self knowledge would occasionally force itself upon his notice, the conviction only rendered him more urgent to extort homage from others.

The room in which this old man sat, was a library fitted up expressly for himself. It was one of his peculiarities that his sources of enjoyment must be exclusive, in order to be valuable. He would not willingly have shared a single tint of that beautiful sunset with another, unless satisfied that the admiration thus excited would give zest to his own pleasurable sensations.

Thus, with the selfishness of an epicure and the tastes of a savant, he surrounded himself with the most luxurious elegance. The book-cases of carved ebony that run along two sides of the apartment, were filled with rare books, accumulated during his travels, some of them worth their weight in gold. Doors of plate glass protected their antique and often gorgeous bindings, and medallions of rare bronzes were inlaid in the rich carvings of the cornices.

Over the mantle-piece of Egyptian marble, carved to a miracle of art, hung an original by Guido, one of those ethereal pictures in which the figures seem to float through the glowing atmosphere, borne onward only by a gushing sense of their own happiness.

The French windows opposite were filled, like the book-cases, with plate-glass pure and limpid as water, and two bronze Bacchantes, thrown into attitudes of riotous enjoyment, held back voluminous folds of crimson brocade that enriched the light which fell through them. A variety of chairs stood about, carved like the book-cases, cushioned with crimson leather and embossed with gold. The ebony desk upon which the old man's elbow rested, as he looked forth upon the river, was scattered over with books and surmounted by a writing apparatus of malachite, whose mate could hardly have been found out of the imperial salons of Russia.

Everything was in keeping, the luxurious room and the old man whose presence completed it. If the two persons we have just described seemed imposing in their moral grandeur, while they sat thoughtfully watching the sunset, this man with his keen, black eyes, his beard flowing downward in white waves from the chin and upper lip, which was curved exactly in the form of a bow, took from the material alone an interest almost as impressive.

The old man saw his wife pass down in front of the house and descend toward the river. The black dress and scarlet shawl which she wore, rendered her a picturesque object in the landscape, and as such the old man was admiring her. Directly after, his son followed, and another stately figure was added to the view; but his walk verged toward the hills, and he was soon lost among the trees.

The old man was vexed at this derangement in his picture; but directly there came in sight a little boat, ploughing through the golden ripples cast downward by the sun, and half veiled in the glowing mists of the river. He watched the boat while it came dancing toward the shore, and smiled when his wife paused a moment on the bank, as if awaiting its approach.

"She is right. A figure upon the shore completes the whole thing. One seldom sees a picture so perfect! Claude Lorraine!—why, his sunsets are leaden compared to this! Oh, she turns off and spoils the effect by throwing the willows between us! Why will women be so restless! Now a female caprice—nothing more—has destroyed the most lovely effect I ever saw; just as I was drinking it in, too. But the boat is pretty—yes, yes, that enlivens the foreground—bravo! Capital, Ben, capital!—that stoop is just the thing; and the youngsters, how beautifully they group themselves! Hallo! upon my honor, if that young scamp is not making love to Lina! I don't pretend to know what the attitude of love-making is!"

The old man fell back in his chair, and drew a hand over his eyes with a restless motion, muttering uneasily,

"Ralph and Lina? upon my word, I have been blind as a bat. How far has the thing gone? Has Mabel encouraged it? Does she know? What hand can James have had in bringing this state of things about? These two children—why, the thing is preposterous!"

The old man left his easy-chair, as these unpleasant conjectures forced themselves upon him, and, as if sickened by the landscape he had just been admiring, shut it out by a jerk of the hand, which brought the crimson drapery flowing in loose folds from its gilded rods, and gave the whole room a tent-like seclusion. In the rich twilight thus produced, the old man walked to and fro, angry and thoughtful. At last he took his hat and left the house.

CHAPTER III.
THE HILL SIDE ADVENTURE.

Ralph Harrington and Lina French had been out upon the river, since the shadow began to fall eastward upon its waters. The day had been so calm, and everything their eyes fell upon was so luxuriantly lovely, that they could not force themselves to come in doors, till the twilight overtook them.

Old Ben—or rather our Ben, for he was not so very old, after all—who considered himself master of the little craft which he was mooring in the cove, had aided and abetted this truant disposition in the young people, after a fashion that Mr. Harrington might not have approved; and all that day there was a queer sort of smile upon his features, that meant more than a host of words would have conveyed in another person. Never, in his whole life, had Ben been so obliging in his management of the boat. If Lina took a fancy to a branch of golden rod, or a cluster of fringed gentian upon the shore, Ben would put in at the nearest convenient point, and sit half an hour together in the boat, with his arms folded over his oars, and his head bowed, as if fast asleep. Yet Ben Benson, according to my best knowledge and belief, was never more thoroughly awake than on that particular day.

They were gliding dreamily along at the foot of the Weehawken hills, with their boat half full of fall flowers and branches, when Lina saw a tree so brilliantly red, that she insisted on climbing to the rock where it was rooted, in search of the leaves that were dropped sleepily from its boughs.

Ben shot into a little inlet formed by two jutting rocks, and Ralph sprang ashore, holding out his hand for Lina, who scarcely touched it as she took her place by his side.

"Now for a scramble!" exclaimed the youth, grasping Lina's hand tightly in his own; and away, like a pair of wild birds, the two young creatures darted up the hill.

The rock, behind which the tree stood, was scattered over with leaves of a deep crimson, brightening to scarlet on the edges, and veined with a green so deep, that it seemed like black. Among the endless variety of leaves they had discovered, these were the most singular, and Lina gathered them up in handfuls only to scatter them abroad again when a more tempting waif caught her eye.

"Wait a moment—wait, Ralph; oh, here is a whole drift of them; see how bright they look, quivering over the fleeces of moss that slope down the rocks. If I could but take the whole home, just as it is, for mamma!"

Lina was stooping eagerly as she spoke. A quick, rattling sound in the leaves struck her, and she called out, laughing—

"If it were not so late in the fall, Ralph, I should think there was a locust singing in the leaves."

That moment Ben, who had tied his boat, came scrambling up the hill. He took his place by Ralph upon a shelf of the rock, and began to sniff the air with his flat, pug nose, like a watch-dog scenting an enemy. The noise which interested Lina was over now, and he only heard her observation about the locust.

"Ain't there a strong smell of honey about here, Mister Ralph?" he said, looking anxiously around; "something between the scent of an old bee-hive and a wasp's nest?"

"There is a singular scent I fancy, Ben," answered the young man, following Lina with his eyes. "Not disagreeable, though!"

"Do you begin to guess what it means?" inquired Ben, anxiously.

"Not at all," answered Ralph, waving his hand and smiling upon Lina, who held up a branch of richly shaded leaves she had just taken from a maple bough, laughing gaily as the main branch swept rustling back to its place. "Not at all, Ben; it may be the frost-bitten fern-leaves—they sometimes give out a delicious odor. Everything in the woods takes a pleasant scent at this season of the year, I believe."

Lina, who was restless as a bird, changed her position again, and the movement was followed by another quick, hissing sound from a neighboring rock.

"So that is Miss Lina's idea of a locust, is it," muttered Ben, looking sharply around. "If that's a locust, Mister Ralph, the animal has got a tremenjus cold, for he's hoarse—yes, hoarse as a rattlesnake—do you hear, Mister Ralph? Hoarse as a rattlesnake!"

Ben was intensely excited, and looked eagerly around, searching for danger.

"Look!" he whispered, after a moment; "the sunshine on the red leaves dazzles the eyesight—but look stiddy on the rock there, where the green moss is fluttered over with them red leaves—don't you see the moss kinder a stirrin'?"

Ralph looked, and there, about six feet from Lina, he saw what seemed at first a mass of gorgeous foliage, quivering upon the green moss, for a glow of warm sunshine fell athwart it and dazzled his eyes for the moment. But anxiety cleared his vision, and he saw that the glowing mass was a serpent drawn from a cleft of the rock by the warm sun. Disturbed by Lina's approach, he was that instant coiling itself up for a spring. His head was erect, his tongue quivered like a thread of flame, and two horrible fangs, crooked and venomous, shot out on each side his open jaws. In the centre of the coil, and just behind the head which vibrated to and fro with horrible eagerness, the rattles kept in languid play, as if tired of warning her.

Ralph, pale as death and trembling all over, stooped down and seized a fragment of rock; but Lina was too near, he dared not hurl it. The young girl enticed by the floating leaves which the sun struck so brightly around the serpent, had her foot poised to spring forward.

"Lina!" cried Ralph, in a low voice, "Lina!"

"In one moment," cried the girl, laughing wilfully; "wait till I get those leaves drifting across the rock there."

The gipsy hat had fallen on one side; her hands were full of red leaves, and she was smiling saucily. This unconsciousness of danger was horrible. The young man shrunk and quivered through all his frame.

"Lina, step aside—to the right—dear Lina, I entreat, I insist!"

His voice was deep and husky, scarcely more than a whisper, and yet full of command.

Lina looked back, and her smiling lips grew white with astonishment. Ralph stood above her pale as marble; his hand grasping the rock was uplifted, his fierce, distended eyes looked beyond her. Wild with nameless dread the young girl stepped backward, following his glance with her eyes. Her breath was checked—she could not scream. The glittering eyes of the rattlesnake, though turned upon another, held her motionless. A prickly sensation pierced her lips through and through, as the snake loosened his coils and changed his position so abruptly, that his back glittered in the sunshine, like a mass of jewels rapidly disturbed, making her blind and dizzy with the poisonous glow. Still she moved backward like a statue recoiling from its base.

"Now," whispered Ben, "now give it to him."

A crash—a spring—and like a fiery lance the rattlesnake shot by her, striking her garments as he went, and, falling short of his enemy, coiled himself for a new spring.

Ralph's hand was uplifted as the fragment of rock had left it; and there, within a few feet, lay the rattlesnake making ready for a second spring, and quivering through all its folds.

She uttered a wild cry, stooped quick as lightning, seized a fragment of rock,—dashed it with both hands upon the rattlesnake, and, rushing by, threw herself before Ralph. Her eyes turned with horror upon the work she had done.

"Oh, have mercy! have mercy! he is alive yet!" she shrieked, as writhing and convulsed, the rattlesnake drew his glittering folds out from beneath the stone, and wound himself up, coil after coil, more venomous than ever.

"Step behind me—behind me, Lina," cried the young man attempting to force her away.

But she threw her arms around him, and with her eyes turned back upon the glittering horror, strove with all her frail strength to push him backward out of danger.

The brave generosity of this attempt might have destroyed them both; but, just as the rattlesnake was prepared to lance out again, Ben, who had torn a branch from an ash tree overhead, rushed fearlessly down and struck at him with the host of light twigs that were yet covered with delicate maize-colored leaves.

This act increased Lina's terror, for the blows which Ben gave were so light that a baby would have laughed at them.

"Don't be skeer'd, nor nothing," shouted Ben, gently belaboring his enemy with the ash bough, "I've got the pizen sarpent under, just look this way and you'll find him tame as a rabbit. Lord! how the critter does hate the smell of ash leaves! Now do look, Miss Lina!"

Lina clung trembling to Ralph, but turned her eyes with breathless dread toward the rattlesnake.

"Come close by—just get a look at him—the stiffening is out of his back-bone now, I tell you!" cried Ben, triumphantly. "See him a trying to poke his head under the moss just at the sight of a yaller ash leaf—ain't he a coward, now ain't he?"

"What is it—what does it mean?" inquired Ralph, reassured now that Lina was out of danger—"did the stone wound him?"

"The stone!" repeated Ben scornfully,—"a round stone covered over with moss like a pin cushion! Why, if this ere rattlesnake could laugh as well as bite, he'd have a good haw-haw over Miss Lina's way of fighting snakes. It takes something to kill them, I tell you. But I've got him—he knows me. Look at him now!"

Ralph moved a step forward and looked down upon the rattlesnake, towards which Ben was pointing with his ash branch, as unconcerned as if it had been an earth-worm.

The rattlesnake had loosened all his folds, and lay prone upon his back striving to burrow his head beneath the leaves and moss, evidently without power to escape or show fight.

"Wonderful, isn't it!" said Ben, eyeing the snake with grim complacency; "now I should just like to know what there is in the natur of this ere ash limb that wilts his pizen down so? Why, he's harmless as a catterpillar. Come down and see for yourself, Mister Ralph."

"No, no!" pleaded Lina, faint and trembling, for the reaction of the recent terror was upon her, and she grew sick now that the danger was over. "I am ill—blind—Ralph—Ralph!"

She spoke his name in faint murmurs, her head fell forward and her eyes closed. Ralph thought she was dying. He remembered that the rattlesnake had touched her in his first spring, and took the faintness as the working of his venom in her veins. He called out in the agony of this thought,—

"Ben! Ben! she is dying—she is dead—he struck her!"

Ben gave the rattlesnake a vigorous lash, which turned him on his back again, and sprang up the rocks.

"Have you killed him? Is he dead? Oh, Ben, he has struck her on her arm or hand, perhaps! Look, look—see if you can find the wound!"

Ben gave a hasty glance at the white face lying upon Ralph's shoulder, uttered a smothered humph, and with this emphatic expression turned to watch the common enemy. The snake had turned slowly over upon the moss and was slinking away through a crevice in the rocks. Ben uttered a mellow chuckling laugh as his rattles disappeared.

"Did you see him, the sneak? Did you see him steal off?" he said, looking at Ralph.

CHAPTER IV.
LINA COMES OUT OF HER FAINTING FIT.

Ralph lifted his white face to old Ben and broke forth fiercely:

"You should have crushed him—ground him to powder. He has poisoned all the sweet life in her veins. She is dying, Ben, she is dying!"

Ben threw down the ash branch and plunged one hand into a pocket in search of his tobacco box. With great deliberation he rolled up a quantity of the weed and deposited it under one cheek, before he attempted to answer either the pleading looks or passionate language of the youth.

"Mister Ralph, it's plain as a marlin-spike, you ain't used to snakes and wimmen. In that partiklar your education's been shamefully neglected. Never kill a rattlesnake arter he's shut in his fangs and turns on his back for mercy—its sneakin' business. Never think a woman is dead till the sexton sends in his bill. Snakes and feminine wimmen is hard to kill. Now any landshark, as has his eyes out of his heart, could see that Miss Lina's only took a faintin' turn, that comes after a skeer like hers, axactly as sleep stills a tired baby. Just give her here now, I'll take her down the river, throw a cap full of water in her face, and she'll be bright as a new dollar long before we get across."

The look of relief that came to the face of Ralph Harrington was like a flash of sunshine. A grateful smile lighted his eyes, but instead of resigning Lina to the stout arms held out by Ben Benson, he gathered her close to his bosom, saying in a proud voice,

"Why, Ben, I want no help to carry Lina."

Then he bore her down the hill, looking now and then upon her face so tenderly, that Ben, who was eyeing him all the way with sidelong glances, made a hideous face to himself, as if to capitulate with his dignity for wanting to smile at anything so childish.

"Sit down there," said Ben, pointing to the stern of his boat, "sit down there, Mister Ralph, and kinder ease her down to the seat; your face is hot as fire a carrying her. Now I'll fill my hat with water and give her a souse that'll bring the red to her mouth in a jiffy."

"No, no," said Ralph, arresting Ben as he stooped to fill his little glazed hat, "don't throw it, hold your cap here, Ben, and I'll sprinkle her face. How pale it is! How like a dear lifeless angel she looks?"

Ben stooped to the water, and Ralph trembling and flushed, bent over the pale beautiful face on his bosom, closer, closer, till his lips drew the blood back to hers, and her eyelids began to quiver like shadows on a white rose.

Ben had slowly risen from the water with the glazed hat dripping between his two great hands; but when he saw Ralph's position, the good fellow ducked downward again, and made a terrible splashing in the river, as he dipped the brimming hat a second time, while that grotesque suppression of a smile convulsed his hard features.

It was wonderful how long it took Ben to fill his hat this time. One would have thought him fishing for pearls in the depths of the river, he was so fastidious in finding the exact current best calculated to restore a young lady from faintness. When he did arise, everything about the young people was, to use his nautical expression, ship-shape and above-board. The color was stealing back to Lina's face, like blushes from the first flowering of apple blossoms, and a brightness stole from beneath her half-closed eyelids, that had something softer and deeper than mere life in it.

"It is not necessary, Ben; she is better, I think," said the young man, looking half-timidly into the boatman's face. "Don't you think she looks beauti——I mean, don't you think she looks better, a great deal better, Ben?"

Again, that grotesque expression seized upon Ben's features; and, setting down his hat, as if it had been a washbowl, he took Lina's straw hat from the bottom of the boat, where it had fallen, and began to shake out the ribbons with great energy.

"She grows pale—I'm afraid she is losing ground again, Ben," said Ralph, as the color wavered to and fro on the fair cheek beneath his gaze.

"Shall I fill the hat again?" answered Ben, demurely.

"It kinder seems to be the filling on it that brings her round easiest?"

"No, you're very kind, but I'll sprinkle her forehead—she has been so frightened, you know, I dare say she thought the snake had bitten—had bitten one of us, Ben! That is right, hold the hat this way."

Ben dropped on his knees in the bottom of the boat, crushing down a whole forest of Lina's wild flowers, and held up the hat reverently between his hands.

Ralph put back the masses of brown hair from Lina's face, and began to bathe it gently, almost holding his breath, as if she were a babe he was afraid of waking.

"Isn't she a dear, generous creature?" he said, at last, with a burst of admiration. "It took a fright like this, to prove how precious she was to us all!"

Instantly, a cloud of crimson swept over Lina's face and bosom, and with it came an illumination of the features, that made the young man tremble beneath her light weight.

"Lina, dear Lina!" he whispered.

She arose from his arms, crimson again to the temples, and sat down in silence, her eyes downcast, her lips trembling, as if a great effort kept her from bursting into tears.

Ralph saw this, and his face clouded.

"What have I done? Are you angry with me, Lina?" he whispered, as Ben pushed the boat off and gathered up his oars.

"Angry! No, I cannot tell. What has happened to us, Ralph?"

"Don't you remember, Lina?"

"Remember?—yes—now. Oh, it was horrible!"

"I, Lina, I shall always remember it with more pleasure than pain."

She lifted her eyes with a timid, questioning glance. The young man drew close to her, and as Ben dashed his oars in the water, thus drowning his voice to all but her, whispered—

"Because it has told me in my heart of hearts how entirely I love you, Lina."

Her maidenly shame was aroused now. She shrunk from his glance, blushing and in silence.

"Will you not speak to me, Lina?"

"What can I say, Ralph?"

"That you love me."

A little coquettish smile stole over her mouth.

"We have said that to each other from the cradle up."

"No, never before, never with this depth of meaning—my heart is broken up, Lina; there is nothing left of it but a flood of tender love—you are no longer my sister, but my idol; I worship you, Lina!"

Again Lina lifted her eyes, so blue, so flooded with gentle gratitude; but she did not speak, for Ben was resting on his oars, while the boat crept silently down the current.

"Why don't you steer for home?" asked Ralph, impatient of Ben's eyes.

"I see that ere old respectable gentleman on the bank, a looking this way, so I thought we'd lie to and refit more particularly about the upper story. If Miss Lina there'll just shake them ere curls back a trifle, and tie on her bonnet; and if you, Mister Ralph, could just manage to look t'other way and take an observation of the scenery, perhaps we should make out to pass with a clear bill and without over-haulin'."

"You are right," said Ralph after a moment, looking anxiously, toward the shore, where the stately figure of old Mr. Harrington was distinctly visible; "my father is a great stickler for proprieties. Here is your hat, Lina—let me fold this scarf about you."

As Ralph spoke, the flush left his face, and a look of fatigue crept over Lina. Ben still rested on his oars. He was determined to give the old gentleman ample opportunity to continue his walk inland, before the young people were submitted to his scrutiny. As they lingered floating upon the waters, a tiny boat shot from beneath a cliff below them, and was propelled swiftly down the river. In it was a female rendered conspicuous by a scarlet shawl, and in the still life around them, this boat became an object of interest. It was only for a moment, the young people were too deeply occupied with their own feelings to dwell upon even this picturesque adjunct to a scene which was now flooded gorgeously with the sunset. Ben, however, became restless and anxious. Without a word he seized his oars, and pushed directly for the cove in which his boat was usually moored.

Ralph and Lina went homewards with a reluctance never experienced before. A sense of concealment oppressed them. An indefinite terror of meeting their friends, rendered their steps slow upon the green sward. As they drew towards the house, Ralph paused.

"Speak to me, Lina, my heart is heavy without the sound of your voice: say you love me, or shall I be miserable with suspense?"

The young girl listened with a saddened and downcast look. A heaviness had fallen upon her with the first sight of old Mr. Harrington on the bank. True he had gone now, but his shadow seemed to oppress her still.

"Will you not speak to me, Lina? Will you not relieve this suspense by one little word?"

She lifted her head gently, but with modest pride.

"You know that I love you, Ralph."

"But not as you have done. I am not content with simple household affection. Say that you love me, body and soul, faults and virtues, as I love you."

Lina drew herself up, and a smile, sad but full of sweetness—half presentiment, half faith—beamed on her face.

"Your soul may search mine to its depths and find only itself there. I do love you, Ralph, even as you love me!"

Her answer was almost solemn in its dignity; for the moment that fair young girl looked and spoke like a priestess.

Ralph Harrington reached out his hand, taking hers in its grasp.

"Why are you so pale? Why tremble so?" he said, moving towards the house.

"I do not know," answered Lina, "but it seems as if the breath of that rattlesnake were around us yet."

"You are sad—your nerves have been dreadfully shaken—but to-morrow, Lina, all will be bright again."

Lina smiled faintly.

"Oh, yes, all must be bright to-morrow."

As they passed the iron gate that separated the lawn from the shore, Ben, who had seated himself in the boat, arose suddenly, and pushed his little craft into the river again. His weather-beaten face was turned anxiously down the stream. He seized the oars, and urging his boat into the current, pulled stoutly, as if some important object had suddenly seized upon him.

"Where can she be a going to? What on earth is she after? Has the old rascal broke out at last? Has she give way? But I'll overhaul her! Pull away, Ben Benson, pull away, you old rascal! What bisness had you with them ere youngsters, and she in trouble! Pull away, or I'll break every bone in your body, Ben Benson!"

Thus muttering and reviling himself, Ben was soon out of sight, burying himself, as it seemed, in the dull purple of the night as it crept over the Hudson.

CHAPTER V.
ON THE BANKS AND ON THE RIVER.

There are moments in every human life when we would gladly flee from ourselves and plunge into action of any kind, to escape from the recognition of our own memories. This recoil from the past seldom comes to early youth, for to that, memories are like the light breezes of April, with nothing but tender green foliage, and opening buds to disturb. With youth the past is so close to the present, that thought always leaps forward into the future, and in the first flush of existence that is invariably beautiful. But it is a different thing when life approaches its maturity. Then the spirit, laden down with events that have culminated, and feelings that have been shaken by many a heart storm, bends reluctantly to the tempest like the stately old forest trees laden with foliage, which bow to nothing but the inevitable tornado.

Mabel Harrington left the old Mansion House with a quicker movement and more rapid step than was natural to her, unless some strong feeling was aroused, or some important aim to be accomplished. At such times her action was quick, almost imperious, and all the evidences of an ardent nature, fresh as youth and strong as maturity, broke forth in each movement of her person and in every thought of her mind.

She walked more and more rapidly as the distance between her and the house increased, for the open air and wider country gave freedom to her spirit. As she walked her earnest grey eyes turned from the river to the sky and abroad upon the hills, as if seeking for something in nature to which her soul might appeal for sympathy in the swell and storm of feeling that a few simple words had let loose upon her, after a sleep of many years.

"Does he know what I have felt and how I have suffered, that he stings me with such words? His father's marriage! And was I not the spirit—nay, the victim of that marriage? Why should he speak to me thus? The air was enough—the calm sleep of the winds—the fragrance. I was a girl again, till his quiet taunt awoke me. Does he think that I have lost a thought or a feeling because of this dull heavy routine of cares? Why did he speak to me in that cold tone? I have not deserved it. Heaven knows I have not deserved it from him, or from any of them!"

Mabel uttered these words aloud, as she approached the banks of the river, and her voice clear and rich with feeling, was swept out upon the wind which bore it away, mingled with fragrance from the dying leaves.

"Does he think with common men, that the impulses of youth die out and are gone? As if the passions of youth did not become the power of maturity, and mellow at last into the calm grandeur of old age. If love were not immortal, how dreary even this beautiful world would seem, yet being so, I can but look forward to another, when the shackles of this life will fall away."

It was a relief to speak aloud. The sound of her own voice came back like the sympathy she dared to claim only of the wind and the waters, that flowed on with their eternal rush of sound, like the years of life that Mabel was mourning over. She stood upon the shore, stately and motionless, her eyes full of trouble, her lips tremulous with impulsive words that betrayed a soul at once ardent and pure. The wind rose around her, and seizing upon her shawl swept it in picturesque folds about her person, half drowning her voice, or she would not have dared to give her thoughts this bold utterance.

It was this picturesque attitude which had attracted the attention of her husband in the library, and that moment he resolved to join her on the shore.

As if this resolve had been expressed to her in words, a feeling of unrest seized upon Mabel, and long before the old man was ready to come forth, she was walking rapidly across the brow of a hill that bounded the valley southward, keeping along the bank, but concealed by the undergrowth.

She paused upon a rocky cliff that broke the hill side, breathing more freely as if conscious that she had escaped some unwelcome intrusion. A boat upon the river drew her attention, and she saw within it her son and Lina floating pleasantly down the stream together.

"How happy and how young they are!" she said with a gush of gentle affection. "No cares—no broken hopes—no wishes unexpressed—no secrets; oh! in this lies the great happiness of existence. Until he has a secret to keep, man is, indeed, next to the angels."

Mabel sat down upon a fallen tree, covered with a drapery of pale green moss. She watched the boat in a sort of dream, as it drifted toward her. How much of the suffering she endured might yet be saved to the young persons it contained! Was not that an object worth living and enduring for? Might she not renew her youth in them?

Renew her youth? What need was there of that? In all her existence had she ever been so full of life—so vigorous of mind—so capable of the highest enjoyment? In the very prime and glory of all her faculties—wise in experience—strong from many a silent heart-struggle, what could she gain by a return of youth? Nothing! surely nothing! Yet she watched those two young persons with a vague feeling of sadness. They had life before them, a thousand dreamy delusions—a thousand alluring hopes evanescent as the apple blossoms of May, but as sweet also.

Mabel was too noble for envy, but these thoughts subdued her excitement into silent mournfulness. At first, she thought to walk slowly back and meet the young people when they landed, but something withheld her and she sat still, dreamily watching them.

She saw the boat drifting idly upon the current. The gorgeous forest leaves with which it was literally carpeted struck her eyes in rich masses of colors, as if the young people had imprisoned a portion of the sunset around their feet. She could distinguish Ben stooping forward seemingly half asleep upon his oars. All in the boat seemed tranquil and happy, like creatures of another life afloat upon the rivers of paradise; she could almost see their faces—those happy faces that made the fancy still more natural.

As she watched them a strange pain stole to her heart. She rose suddenly to her feet, and sweeping a hand across her eyes as if to clear their vision, cast long searching glances toward the boat, striving to read those young faces afar off, and thus relieve her mind of a powerful suspicion.

"Why has this thought never presented itself before?" she said with a pang of self reproach. "Has this eternal dream blinded me, or am I now mistaken? Poor children—poor Lina—is this cruel destiny to fall on you also?"

The boat came drifting toward her now in the crimson light, again enveloped in purple shadows like those fairy skiffs that glide through our dreams. Mabel watched it till her eyes filled with tears, a strange thing—for she was not a woman given to weeping, save as tears are sometimes the expression of a tender or poetic thought. Pain or wrong were things for her to endure or redress; she never wept over them.

That night the interest which she felt in these young persons blended painfully with memories that had risen, like a sudden storm, in her nature. She felt as if they were destined to carry forth and work out the drama of her own life, and that this agency was just commencing. As she stood thus wrapped in turbulent thoughts, there came through the brushwood a crash of branches and a stir of the foliage louder than the wind could have produced.

Mabel Harrington was in no mood for companionship. She had fled from the house to be alone, and this approach startled her.

A little footpath led down the brow of the hill to a tiny promontory on which a few hickory trees were now dropping their nuts. She struck hastily into this path and descended to the river. Close to the bank, half hidden among the dying fern leaves that drooped over it, lay a miniature boat scarcely larger than an Indian canoe. It was a highly ornamented and symmetrical little craft, that any child might have propelled and which a queen fairy would have been proud to own.

Mabel sprang into the boat, and seating herself on a pile of cushions heaped in the centre, pushed out into the stream. There was no hardihood in this, she had been accustomed to action and exercise all her life, and could propel her little skiff with the skill and grace of any Indian girl.

Her boat ran out from the promontory and shot like an arrow across the water, for she trembled lest some voice should call her back, and urged her light oars with all the impetuosity of her nature.

At last, beyond hail from the shore, she looked back and saw a man standing upon the brow of the hill, leaning against the oak that had sheltered her a few moments before. Mabel paused and rested on her oars. The distance would not permit her to distinguish his features, but the size and air might have been that of her husband had his usual habits permitted the idea. She put it aside at once, nothing could have induced the General to climb the steeps of that hill. It must be James. These two persons were alike in stature and partook of the same imposing air. Yes, it must be James Harrington, and was it from him she had fled? Had he repented of the harsh words that had driven her forth and followed her with hopes of atonement? Her heart rose kindly at the thought. She half turned her little boat, tempted back by that longing wish for reconciliation, which was always uppermost in her warm nature.

But then came the wholesome after-thought which had so often checked these genial impulses. She turned the boat slowly back upon its course and let it float with the current, watching the rise of land on which he stood, with sad, wistful glances, that no one saw, save the God who knows how pure they were, and how much the resolution to go on had cost her.

As the boat drifted downward, she saw the person turn as if speaking to some one, and directly a female form stood by his side. They drew close together, and seemed to be conversing eagerly. His look was no longer towards the boat; he had doubtless forgotten its existence.

Mabel held her breath, the color left her lips and she grasped the oars with each hand, till the blood was strained back from her fingers, leaving them white as marble.

"Oh, not that! not that! I can endure anything but that! God help me! O my God, help me! if this is added to the rest, I cannot live."

Drops of perspiration sprang to her temples as she spoke. Unconsciously she expended the first strength of her anguish on the oars, and the boat shot like a mad thing into the rapids which swept round a projection of rocks, and like some tormented spirit, she was borne away from the sight that had wounded her.

There was danger now. The rush of the current, tortured by hidden rocks, sent the little craft onward, as if it had been a dead leaf cast into the eddy. Mabel liked the danger and the tumult. The rising wind blew in her face. The waters sparkled and dashed around her. The frail oars bent and quivered in her hands. It was something to brave and fight against; but for this scope of action the new anguish that had swept through the soul of that woman must have smothered her.

On the little boat went, dancing and leaping down the current, recoiling with a quiver from the hidden rocks which it touched more than once, but springing vigorously back to its flight, like a bird upon the wing.

"Oh, if this be so, let me die now. Why will it not strike? How came they to make the boat so light and yet so strong? It is true! It is true! I feel it in every throb of my pulse. After this, the life that I thought so dreary, will be a lost paradise, to which, plead as I may, there is no going back. I will know, God help me, but I must know if this is a wild suspicion, or a miserable, miserable reality!"

These words bespoke the concentration of some resolves. She grasped her oars more firmly, and with a sharp glance around, put her boat upon its course. It shot through hidden rocks; it cut across the eddies recklessly as before, but all the time a single course was pursued. At last the little craft entered the mouth of a mountain stream that came sparkling down a pretty hemlock hollow in the hills. The hollow was dusky with coming night, but the tree-tops were still brightened by a red tinge from the sunset, and there was light enough to find a footpath which wound upward along the margin of the brook.

CHAPTER VI.
THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE HILL.

Mabel left her boat and followed the path till she reached a natural terrace in the hills, narrow and green, upon which a small, one-story house was snugly bestowed. The terrace was uncultivated, save a small garden patch close to the house, where the soil was torn and uneven from the uprooting of vegetables from the rudely-shaped beds. Sweetbrier and wild honey-suckles gave a picturesque grace to the building, at variance with the untidy state of the grounds, and there was something in the whole place more suggestive of refinement than is usual to dwellings where the inmates work hard for their daily bread.

Mabel Harrington had never been in this place before. As she approached it, the cry of a whippowil came up from the hollow, as if warning her away. Everything was still within the house. There was no light; the rustle of leaves with the flow of waters from the ravine, joined their mournful whispers with the wail of the night bird.

Mabel was imaginative as a girl, and this solitude depressed her; still she moved steadily towards the house, and knocked at the door.

A woman opened it, whose person was seen but indistinctly, as she stood within the small entry, holding the door with one hand; but Mabel saw that she was dark and dressed as she had seen that class of persons in the south.

"I wish to see Miss Agnes Barker for a moment: is she in?" said Mrs. Harrington with her usual dignified repose of manner, for however much interested, Mabel was not one to invite curiosity by any display of excitement, and it must have been a close observer who could have detected the faint quiver of her voice as she expressed this common-place wish.

"She don't liv hear in dis shantee."

"I know. She lives at General Harrington's, up the river," replied Mabel, "but it is some weeks since she has been there, and I expected to find her with you."

"Missus, pears like you don't know as Miss Agnes is young lady, from top to toe, ebery inch ob her. Is you the Missus?"

"I am Mrs. Harrington," said Mabel, quietly.

"Oh!" exclaimed the woman, prolonging the monosyllable almost into a sneer, "jes come in. I'se mighty sorry de candle all burnt out an done gone."

Mabel entered the house, and sat down in the dim light.

"Is Missus 'lone mong dese hills?" said the woman, retreating to the darkest corner of the room.

"Yes, I am alone!" answered Mabel.

"All 'lone in de dark wid nothin but that whippoorwill to keep company; skeery, ain't it, Missus?"

If the woman had hoped to terrify Mabel Harrington by these words, she was mistaken. A vague feeling of loneliness was upon her, but she had no cowardly timidity to contend with.

"Don't pear skeery no how," said the woman.

"I am seldom afraid of anything," answered Mabel with a wan smile. "I came to inquire for Miss Barker, if she is not here, tell me where she can be found?"

"Done gone out to de hills, pears like she could not stay away from em."

"Was she your mistress in the south?" inquired Mabel, troubled by the woman's voice.

"Pears so, Missus."

"Some one has managed to give her a fine education—I have seldom known a young person so thoroughly accomplished," continued Mabel with apparent calm, but keenly attentive to every word that fell from the woman's lips. "General Harrington informed me that she came highly recommended, but her attainments surprised us all."

"Oh yes, young missus knows heap 'bout dem books an pianers. Done born lady, no poor white trash, gorry mighty knows dat."

"Her duties are more particularly with Miss Lina, Gen. Harrington's adopted daughter, who makes no complaint against her—for myself, our intercourse is very limited, but she pleases the General. We have expected her at the house for several days, and thought it strange that she did not return."

"Ben gone ebery day dis week, sartin sure, long walk, but her's ready for it. Nebber gets home fore dark—walk, walk, walk, in de woods wid Marsa James."

Mabel arose. A sickening sensation crept over her, and she went to the open door for air.

It was true then—that suspicion was all true! Agnes Barker had been in the neighborhood of her old home for a week, without the knowledge of its mistress. That very day the girl had met James Harrington in the hills. Her own eyes had seen them standing side by side in the sunset.

"'Pears like de Missus am sick," said the woman, coming toward her as she stood cold and shuddering under this conviction.

"No," answered Mabel, gathering up her strength, but pressing both hands upon her heart beneath the crimson folds of her shawl. "If Miss Barker comes to the house again she will have the goodness to see that I am informed. Miss Lina is anxious to renew her studies."

"Yes Missus."

"Give my message faithfully," answered Mabel. "I must speak with her before the duties of her situation are resumed. Good night."

"Good night to you," muttered the woman, as Mabel walked away. "I understand you, never doubt that. Agnes is beautiful, and keen enough for a dozen such as you. I thought it would work!"

Mrs. Harrington made the best of her way down the footpath which she had threaded, though the hollow was filled with gloom, and the whippowil called mournfully after her as she went.

Her boat lay where she had left it in the mouth of the creek. As she stepped into it a cry broke from her lips, and turning, she looked wildly up the hollow. A woman sprang over the boat as she stooped for the oars, and with a single leap cleared the bank, landing with a bound in the footpath above her.

One sharp glance she cast behind, then darted away as if eager to bury herself in the hemlock gloom.

The leap had been so sudden and the whole progress so rapid, that Mabel scarcely saw the woman, but she remembered after, that her dress was dusky red, and that a velvet cloak swept from her shoulders downward to the ground, half torn from her person in its abrupt movements. As she stood lost in amazement at this singular apparition, Mabel fancied that she heard the dip of oars, and could detect the dim outline of a boat making up the river.

She sat down mute, and troubled, looking after what seemed at best a floating shadow; the night had darkened rapidly, and instead of the new moon which should have silvered the sky, came billows of black, angry clouds, in which the thunder began to roll and mutter hoarse threats of a storm. Frightened by the brooding tempest, Mabel pushed her boat out from the shore, and began to row vigorously homeward; but she had scarcely got into deep water when the clouds became black as midnight; the winds rose furiously, lashing the waters and raging fiercely through the tree tops, while burst after burst of thunder broke over the hills. She could only see her course clearly when flashes of lightning shot at intervals through the trees, and broke in gleams of scattered fire among the waves, now dashing and leaping angrily around her.

Mabel was excited out of her anxieties by this turmoil. There was something in the force and suddenness of the storm that aroused all her courage. The vexed trees were bent and torn by the winds. The river was lashed into a sea of foam, over which her frail boat leaped and quivered like a living thing; but she sat steady in the midst, pale and firm, taking advantage of each gleam of lightning to fix her course, and facing the storm with a steady bravery which had no fear of death.

Still the tempest rose and lashed itself into fury from the rocky coast to the depths of the stream, and the little boat went plunging through it, keeping the brave woman safe. The oars were useless as rushes in her hands. The waves leaped upward as the wind lashed them, and at times rushed entirely over her. It was a fearful sight, that noble woman, all alone with the storm! so close to death and yet so resolute! Blacker and nearer grew the clouds torn by whirlwinds, and shooting out lurid gleams of lightning, that flashed and curled along the water like fiery serpents chasing each other into their boiling depths. So great was the tumult that another sound, which came like a smothered howl through the storm, seemed but a part of it. Thus Mabel was unconscious of this new danger, till a glare of lightning swept everything else aside, and bearing directly toward her, she saw a huge steamer ploughing through the tempest, on her downward course.

Scarce had she time to recoil with horror from the danger, when it was wrapped in darkness again, and she could only guess of its approach by the cabin windows that glared upon her nearer and nearer, like great fiery eyes half blinded by the storm. Mabel nerved herself, and with a desperate effort bent her strength upon the oars. But the heave of the waters tore one from her grasp, and the other remained useless. Human strength was of no avail now. She was given up to the tempest, and could only cling to the reeling boat mute with horror, still with a thought of those she loved vital at her heart. Another sheet of lightning, blue and livid, rolled down the hills, and in it, standing upon a spur of rocks, she saw James Harrington, either in life or in spirit, looking forth upon the river. His figure took the deadly hue of the light. His garments shook to the storm. The pale flame quivered around him a moment, and he was engulphed in darkness again.

Mabel flung up her hands with a cry that cut through the storm like an arrow.

"Save me! save me! oh, my God! my God!"

Her pale hands quivered in the lightning. The shrieks that rang from her white lips were smothered in the fierce wind. The tortured boat seemed flinging her out to utter despair.

A roar that was not of the elements, now broke through all the tumult. There came a rush—an upheaving of the waters, which flung her high into the darkness—a blow that made her little bark quake in all its timbers—a plunge—a black rush of waters. She was hurled beneath the wheels of the steamer—engulphed in utter darkness. It was her last struggle with the storm.

CHAPTER VII.
THE UNEXPECTED PASSENGER.

While Ben Benson was landing Ralph Harrington and Lina, he lost sight of the boat which had so effectually aroused his interest, and when he was ready to put out again, it was lost in the inequalities of the shore.

Ben put out into the river, bearing towards the opposite bank at first, but meeting with no signs of his object, he returned again, consuming time, and thus giving considerable start to Mrs. Harrington's little craft.

As Ben neared the land again, he saw a gleam of crimson garments through the evergreens that fringed the rocky shore, and remembering the shawl which Mabel had on, was overjoyed to know that she had landed, and was comparatively safe from the storm, which grew more and more assured in its signs.

With his anxieties thus appeased, Ben rowed his boat more securely to the nearest point that promised a safe landing, resolved to court the recognition of his mistress, and when she was weary of her ramble, convey her safely home again.

When he reached the desired point, Ben could see that the crimson garments were moving through the undergrowth with a pace more rapid than any mere rambler would have chosen; but what surprised him was the course pursued down the river. His mistress, if frightened by the clouds, would doubtless have turned homeward.

Ben stood up in his boat and waved his tarpaulin with energy.

"Hallo—Madam—Mrs. Harrington, I say, there's thunder and war ahead, I tell you. Don't go too far. Don't go out of sight. The water's a-getting roughish now, and the woods won't be safe after the clouds burst!"

Ben sent these words through an impromptu speaking trumpet made with one hand curved around his mouth. He was well pleased with the effect, for the red garments began to flutter, and he saw that the wearer was moving rapidly down the hill towards the point where he lay.

"That's what I call obeying signals at once!" said the honest fellow, seating himself in the stern of his boat. "But she knows as Ben Benson wouldn't take the liberty of hurrying her if he hadn't a good reason for what he's a-doin'—not he!"

And with this complacent reflection, Ben withdrew the tobacco from his mouth, and sent it far into the water, remembering Mrs. Harrington's objections to the weed, and ready to send his life after that, if it could afford her a moment's gratification.

"Ben," said he, looking after the tobacco as it was tossed from one wave to another, and shaking his fist after it in virtuous indignation, "that's a habit as you ought to be ashamed on, Ben Benson, a habit as no dog wouldn't take from you on any account, yet you've just kept it up chawing and chawing from morning till night, till she'll catch you at it some day, and then you'll have done for yourself, and no mistake. I should like to see her a-settin' in your boat arter that. Tobackee 'll be the ruin of you yit, Ben. Grog's nothing to it."

A light step upon the moss silenced the boatman, but he kept his position, resolved to be very severe with himself for his manifold sins, this of tobacco being uppermost.

"Mr. Benson, you are kind, I am so much obliged!"

Ben started. The voice was a pleasant one, but his rough heart sunk low with disappointment—the tones were not those of Mrs. Harrington.

"I could not possibly have reached home on foot," said the same sweet voice, and a young lady sprang lightly into the boat. "I hope the river will prove safe!"

"I was waiting for Mrs. Harrington, marm, and mistook you for her—that's all," said Ben, without lifting his eyes to the singular girl that stood close to him.

"Mrs. Harrington has gone down the river long ago—she passed that point of land with the last sunbeam," said the young girl, seating herself comfortably among the cushions.

"Are you sartin of that ere?" questioned Ben, taking up his oars hurriedly. "Just give me her bearing, and I'll show you what rowing is."

"You can't possibly have a better pilot than I am," answered the lady, laughing till a row of closely set but uneven teeth were visible in the waning light. "In searching for Mrs. Harrington, you will naturally take me homeward; when she is found, I will allow myself to be set ashore."

"The shore's no fit place for a young gal arter dark," said Ben gruffly, but pushing his boat out into the stream. "For my part, I can't make out what brings you up into the hills so often. Why don't you come home for good and all? Miss Lina don't want any more vacation, I reckon."

"Oh, my health isn't quite established yet, Mr. Benson," said the girl, looking at the boatman with a sidelong glance of her black, almond-shaped eyes, a glance that Ben was internally comparing to that of the rattlesnake, when he shrank off into a hollow of the rocks.

"I shouldn't think it very wholesome to be out so much at night!" said Ben.

"Oh, I live on fresh air, and love it best when moist with dew!" answered the girl.

"If it ain't moist with something stronger than dew afore long, I lose my guess!" muttered Ben, looking upward. "If this night don't see a reg'lar tornado, I'll give up—beat."

For a short time Ben plied his oars, casting anxious glances down the shore, hoping to find Mrs. Harrington and her boat safe in some inlet or cove, waiting for them.

"In course," said Ben, muttering as usual to himself. "In course, she'd know, as I was sure to come. What on the Lord's arth is Ben Benson good for, but to follow arter and tend on her? The king of all the Sandwich Islands couldn't have a higher business than that, let alone a poor feller of a boatman, as has circumwented his sea voyages down to a pair of oars and a passenger that's not over agreeable."

"Whom are you talking to, Mr. Benson?" inquired the young lady, wasting a smile on the moody boatman, though the threatening sky made her somewhat anxious about her own safety.

"To an individual as calls hisself Ben Benson. He's a feller as bears with my faults better than anybody else, as I knows on, and one as is rather particular about being intruded on, when he's holding a private conversation with hisself. That's the individual, Miss Agnes, as I was a holding a council with."

"And you would a little rather have no interruption—is that it?" said the lady. "Well, well, I can be silent, you shall see that!"

"Doubtful!" muttered Ben, using his oars with fresh vigor.

The girl he called Agnes, folded her cloak about her and settled down among the cushions, casting wistful glances at the sky. "Look," she said at last, pointing upward, "those small lead-colored clouds, how darkly they drift together! Did you ever see a flock of pigeons flying over the western woods, Mr. Benson?"

"Knew she wouldn't do it," muttered Ben, with his eyes bent on the clouds.

"See, see!" cried the girl. "The sky is black—I have seen the same thing!"

"But them was nothing but innocent birds a flying after something to eat," said Ben. "These ere clouds, Miss Agnes, has got a good many unroofed housen', and shipwrecks, and trees broken in two, and torn up by the roots, in 'em, to say nothing of this ere boat as may be upsot any minute."

The girl turned pale; her black eyes shone with sudden fear.

"Do you think there is really any danger, Mr. Benson?"

"Danger? Of course there's danger! What did I follow arter that little boat for, if there wasn't no danger?"

"Perhaps—perhaps," said Agnes tremulously, "it would be safer on shore. The walk will not be much now. What do you say to running ashore?"

"There'll be a howling among the rocks afore you get round the first point, that 'ud take your breath; besides, when the winds begin to rush there'll be a crashing down of trees, and broken limbs will be flying thick enough. No, no—unsartain as the river is, you'd better keep still. I don't want your death on my conscience, any how."

"But can you swim if we should capsize?" questioned Agnes, growing pale and cold.

"Swim, can Ben Benson swim?" cried the boatman with a hoarse laugh. "Well, I should think that he can swim a trifle."

The girl fixed her black eyes upon him. They were large and bright with terror.

"Fast, pull fast," she said, "let me help you—is there anything in which I can help you? How slow the boat goes—pull, pull!"

"We are agin the wind, and it's getting strongish," answered Ben.

"What can we do?" cried out the girl clasping her hands. "Hear how it howls—how the trees begin to moan! Is not the storm at its height now?"

"You'll see by and by," said Ben, bowing his moist forehead down to the sleeve of his jacket, and wiping away the perspiration that was now falling from it like rain.

"Oh, what will become of us?" shrieked the girl.

"What has become of her?" echoed Ben, casting sharp despairing glances toward the shore, which was now darkened, and in a turmoil.

"There is my home—there, there, on the side hill. A light is just struck in the window. Set me on shore—oh, Mr. Benson, do set me on shore!"

"Not till I find her," answered Ben, resolutely, "you would get in, so make the best of it."

The girl grew white as death.

"Let me ashore, or it will be my death—I am sick with terror," she pleaded.

Ben did not appear to listen. He was looking wildly down the stream, right and left, with despair in his glances.

"Where is she? What can have become of her?" he cried out at last, sinking forward on his oars, and allowing the boat to struggle for herself against the wind.

"At home, no doubt," answered the girl, struck with a selfish thought, in which there was hope of safety.

"How! What?" exclaimed Ben fiercely, "at home!"

"No doubt she left her boat in some cove and went home along the shore," persisted the girl. "She would be sure to put in somewhere!"

Ben's face lighted up, and his eyes glowed with hope.

"It may be—of course it is. She went back long ago, no doubt on it," he exclaimed, joyfully. "Why Ben Benson, what a precious old fool you was not to think of that. Miss Agnes, I'll set you ashore now anywhere you'll pint out, if the boat lives through it."

"Now, now!" cried the girl, breathless with terror, "strike for land anywhere—I know the shore. Only put me on dry land again—it's all I ask."

CHAPTER VIII.
OUT OF THE STORM.

Ben altered his course with a great effort, and forced a passage to the broken shore. He was too busy in preserving his boat from being dashed upon the rocks, to remark with what eager selfishness the girl left him, only uttering a quick ejaculation, and darting away without thanks. By the time he could look around she had plunged into a neighboring ravine, and he saw no more of her.

Though the current was running high, Ben had the whole force of the wind to urge him on, and his steady seamanship made the progress up stream less dangerous than the descent had been. But the toil was great and every muscle of his brawny arms rose to its full strain as he bent all his strength upon the oars. But with his greatest anxieties at rest, Ben cared little for this. With no life but his own at stake, the tempest was nothing to the brave man.

But it grew terrible. The boat was more than once hurled out of water. The waves dashed over him; the wind carried off his hat and beat fiercely against his head, sweeping the long hair over his face. Again and again the current wheeled his boat around, drifting it back with a force he could not resist, sometimes close to the shore, sometimes out in the torrent of waters. It was impossible now to see his course, except by the lightning. The entire darkness baffled him more than the storm.

Once when the boat was seized upon and hurled backward, Ben saw innumerable lights sweeping by in the fog between him and the shore, and he uttered a shout of wild thanksgiving that the steamer had not run him down. As the water heaved him to and fro, a glare of lightning revealed this monster boat, moving downward, and—oh, horror of horrors! Mabel Harrington, just as the vortex engulphed her. Two white arms were flung upward. Her hair streamed in the lightning. The deathly white face was turned shoreward.

The might of twenty men was in his arms then. He flung back the rushing waves with his oars, and from a will fiercer than his strength, forced his boat toward her. In a minute the darkness of death was around him. Blasts of wind and great gushes of rain swept over him. He shouted aloud. He beat the waters madly with his oars. He called upon God for one more flash of lightning.

It came. He saw a distant steamer, an up-turned boat and something darker than the foam heaving upon the waters.

"Hold on! Hold on!—I'm coming—I'm coming—it's Ben—it's Ben. Oh God, give me light!"

He was answered. A crash of thunder—a trail of fire—and an old cedar tree on the shore flamed up with the light he had prayed for.

It flamed up and Ben saw a man plunge from the rocks into the boiling waters. He bent to the oar, his boat rushed through the waves, and as he came one way, that white face moved steadily from the shore. The waters were buffeted fiercely around it. Some mighty power seemed to sweep back the storm from where it moved.

It disappeared, rose and sunk again. Ben pushed his boat to the spot where he had seen Mabel disappear. His bow dashed against the little boat already broken in twain, and its fragments broke upon the water. He looked wildly about. The face was gone. The dark heap which he had taken for Mabel, had disappeared. Ben's strong arms began to tremble; tears of anguish met the beating rain, as it broke over his face. Despair seized upon him. He dashed his oars into the bottom of the boat and stood up, ready for a plunge. He would never go back and say that his mistress had been suffered to drown before his face. His clasped hands were uplifted—the boat reeled under him—he was poised for the mad plunge!

No, his hands fell. A hoarse shout broke from him.

"Here, here I am! here—away!"

He seized the oars again, looking wildly around, for the voice that had hailed him by name, up from the deep, as it seemed. It came again, and close by the boat that grand head appeared struggling for life.

Ben struck out his oars.

"Do not move—do not strike, or you may kill her yet!"

"Is she there? Can you hold on?" cried Ben, trembling in every limb of his stout frame.

A hand seized one side of the boat. Close to the manly head he had seen, was the marble face of Mabel Harrington, half veiled by tresses of wet hair. Ben fell upon his knees, and plunging his arms into the waves, drew her into the boat.

"For the shore—for your life!" shouted James Harrington, refusing to be helped, but clinging to the boat. "No, no—strike out; I will hold on—pull—pull!"

Ben took off his coat, and rolling it in a bundle, placed it under Mabel Harrington's head. It was all he could do. The boat was a third full of water, and he had nothing else.

"Get in—get in—or she will be drowned over again!" he pleaded, seizing James Harrington by the shoulders, and dragging him over the side. "Get down, keep her head out of water, and it'll take a worse storm than this to drive me back."

Harrington fell rather than sat down, and took Mabel in his arms, close to a heart so chilled that it had almost ceased beating. But as her cold face fell upon his bosom, a glow of life came back to it, with a pang of unsupportable feeling. It was not joy—it was not sorrow—but the warmth in his veins seemed like a sweet poison, which would end in death.

He put the numb and senseless form aside with a great effort, resting the head upon Ben's coat. Twice he attempted to speak, but his trembling lips uttered nothing but broken moans.

"Take her," he said to Ben, "take her and I will pull the oars."

"You haven't life enough in you, sir," pleaded Ben, shrinking from the proposal.

"I am strong again," said Harrington, placing himself on the seat and taking the oars. "See!"

The boat plunged heavily shoreward. Ben held his mistress with a sort of terror at the sacrilege. His brawny arms trembled around her. He turned his face to the storm, rather than allow his eyes to rest upon her. But James Harrington had no compassion; he still kept to the oars.

At last they shot into a point of the shore, formed by two or three jutting rocks. Harrington dropped the oars, and the two men lifted Mabel Harrington from the boat, and bore her to a slope of the hill. No shelter was in sight. The sudden storm was abating, but rain still dropped in showers from the trees.

"Where can we convey her? What shall we do?" said Harrington, looking around in dismay. "She will perish before we can obtain warmth, if she is not already gone."

Ben had flung down his coat. They laid her upon it. James Harrington knelt upon the turf, and lifted her head to his knee. The face was pale as death; purple shadows lay about the mouth, and under the eyes; her flesh was cold as marble.

Again the deathly cold came creeping to Harrington's heart. He shuddered from head to foot, "She is dead—she is dead!" broke from his chilled lips.

"Oh, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Harrington, what can we do? What can we do?" groaned Ben, clasping his huge hands, and crying like a child over the poor lady. "She isn't dead—don't! That word is enough to kill a poor miserable feller, as wanted to die for her and couldn't."

His only answer was a low moan from James Harrington.

"Is there no house, no living soul near to give us help?" said James Harrington, lifting his white face to that of Ben Benson, while his voice shook, and his arms trembled around the cold form they half supported, half embraced. "If there is a spark of life left it will go out in this cold—if she is dead—"

"Don't! oh, Mister James, don't!" cried Ben wringing his hands with fresh violence, "them's cruel words to stun a poor fellow's heart with—she ain't dead, God don't take his angels up to glory in that 'ere way!"

James laid Mabel reverently from his arms, and stood up casting anxious glances through the storm.

"There is a light, yonder upon the hill-side,—you can just see it through the drifting clouds—go, Ben, climb for your life and bring us help!"

Ben stooped down, clapped a hand on each knee and took an observation.

"There is a light, that's sartin," he said joyfully, settling himself in his wet clothes and making a start for the hill; but directly he turned back again.

"If she's so near gone as you speak on, Mister James, it wouldn't be of no use for me to go up there for help—she'd be chilled through and through, till there was no bringing her back, long afore I could half-way climb the hill!"

"I fear it, I fear it!" said Harrington, looking mournfully down on the white face at his feet, "God help her!"

"See," said Ben stretching forth his hand towards the burning cedar, "God Almighty has gin us light and fire close by—the grass is crisped and dried up all around that tree. What if we carry the madam there? I'll go up the hill with a heart in it arter that!"

Ben stooped as if about to take the cold form of his mistress in his arms, but as his hands touched her garments some inward restraint fell upon him, and he drew back, looking wistfully from Harrington to the prostrate woman he dared not raise from the earth even in her extremity.

As he stooped a strange light had flashed into James Harrington's eyes, and he made a motion as if to push the poor boatman aside.

Ben did not see this, as we have said, his retreat was a voluntary impulse. He saw James Harrington take up the form he dared not touch, with a feeling of deep humiliation, submitting to the abrupt and stern manner which accompanied the action, as a well deserved rebuke for his boldness.

A small ravine separated the point of land occupied by the little party from the burning cedar, and towards this Harrington bore his silent burden. His cheeks grew deadly pale from a feeling deeper than fear or cold, and his eyes flashed back the gleams of light that reached him from the burning tree with a wild splendor that no mortal man had ever seen in them before.

He held Mabel closer and closer to his heart, which rose and heaved beneath its burden; his breath came in broken volumes from his chest, and an insane belief seized upon him, that though dead he could arouse her from that icy sleep, by forcing the breath of his own abundant existence through her lips.

Fired by this wild thought he bowed his head nearer and nearer to the pallid face upon his shoulder. But the voice of Ben Benson brought him back to sanity again.

"Be careful, sir! The hollow is full of ruts and broken stones! She is too heavy—You stagger and reel like a craft that has lost her helm! Steady, sir—steady, or she'll be hurt!"

James Harrington stopped suddenly, as if a war trumpet had checked his progress. His face changed in the burning light. His arms relaxed around the form they had clasped so firmly a moment before.

"Take her!" he said, with an imploring look. "Take her! I am very weak. You see how I falter—Take her, Benson. She is not heavy, it is only I that have lost all strength!"

Ben reached forth his brawny arms, as we sometimes see a great school-boy receive a baby sister, and folded them reverently around the form which Harrington relinquished with a sigh of unutterable humiliation.

Ben moved forward with a quick firm tread, following Harrington, who went before trampling down the undergrowth, and putting aside the drooping branches from his path.

CHAPTER IX.
THE BURNING CEDAR.

The cedar tree stood on a slope of the bank, and had cast its fiery rain over the herbage and brushwood for yards around, leaving them crisped and dry.

Harrington gathered up a quantity of the seared grass, and heaped a dry couch upon which Ben laid his charge within the genial heat that came from the cedar tree. Then they gathered up all the combustible matter within reach, and began to kindle a fire so near to the place where she lay that its heat must help to drive back the chill of death if there was a spark of life yet vital in her bosom.

Harrington knelt beside Mabel. He chafed her hands between his own, and wrung the water from her long hair. But it all seemed in vain. No color came to those blue fingers. The purple tinge still lay like the shadow of violets under the closed eyes,—no motion of the chest—no stir of the limbs. At last drops of water came oozing through the white lips, and a scarcely perceptible shiver ran through the limbs.

"It is life!" said Harrington, lifting his radiant face to the boatman.

"Are you sartin it ain't the wind a stirring her gown?" asked Ben, trembling between anxiety and delight.

"No, no—her chest heaves,—she struggles. It is life, precious, holy life; God has given her back to us, Ben!"

"I don't know—I ain't quite sartin yet, if she'd only open her eyes, or lift her hand!" exclaimed the poor fellow.

Here a faint groan broke from the object of his solicitude, and she began to struggle upon the ground.

"Go," said Harrington, "search out the light we saw—she will need rest and shelter more than anything now."

"I will, in course I will—only let me be sartin she's coming to."

The good fellow knelt down by Mabel as he spoke, and lifting her hand in his, laid it to his rough cheek.

"It's alive—it moves like a drenched bird put back in its nest—I'll go now, Mister James, but d'ye see I felt like thanking the great Admiral up aloft there, and didn't want no mistake about it."

"Yes, we may well thank God; she lives," said Harrington, looking down upon Mabel with tears in his eyes.

"Then I do thank God, soul and body, I thanks him," answered Ben, throwing his clasped hands aloft, "and if I was commander of the stoutest man-of-war as ever floated, I'd thank him all the same."

With these words Ben disappeared in the undergrowth and proceeded in search of help.

Admonished by the throes and struggles which proclaimed a painful return of life, Harrington lifted Mabel to a sitting posture and supported her there. His heart was wrung by every spasm of anguish that swept over her; yet at each one, he sent up a brief thanksgiving, for it was a proof of returning consciousness. Still she looked very deathly, and the sighs that broke through her pale lips seemed like an echo of some struggling pang within.

"Mabel," said Harrington, catching his breath as the name escaped his lips, "Mabel, do you understand?—are you better, Mabel?"

The name once spoken it seemed as if he could not repeat it often enough, it fell so like music upon his soul.

She struggled faintly—a thrill ran through her frame, and both lips and eyelids began to quiver.

"Who calls me?" she said, in a whisper. "Who calls and where am I?"

Her eyes were open now, and the refulgence falling around her from the burning cedar, seemed like the glory of heaven. In that light she saw only James Harrington bending over her. A smile bright and pure, as if she had been in truth an angel, stole over her face.

"Yes," she whispered with a sigh of ineffable happiness, "he may call me Mabel here."

He could not distinguish her words, but knew from the light upon her face, that she was very happy. His own features grew luminous.

"Mabel, have you ceased to suffer?" he said.

Her eyes were closed in gentle weariness now, but the smile came fresh upon her features, and she murmured dreamily:

"There is no suffering here—nothing but heaven and our two selves."

Oh, James Harrington, be careful now! You have heard those soft words—you have drank in the glory of that smile. In all your life what temptation has equalled this?

For one delirious moment the strong man gave himself up to the joy of those words: for one moment his hands were uplifted in thanksgiving—then they were clasped and fell heavily to the earth, and a flood of bitter, bitter self-reproach flowed silently from his heart. Mabel moved like a child that had been lulled to rest by the music of a dear voice. She thirsted for the sound again.

"Did not some one call me Mabel?" she asked.

Harrington was firm now, and he answered calmly:

"Yes, Mrs. Harrington, it was I."

"Mrs. Harrington," muttered Mabel in a troubled tone, "how came that name here? It is of earth, earthy."

"We are all of earth," answered James, strong in self command. "You have been ill, Mrs. Harrington, drenched through, and almost drowned—but, thank God, your life is saved."

"My life is saved, and am I yet of earth? Then what is this light so heavenly, and yet so false!"

"The storm which overwhelmed your boat struck this light. It is from a tree smitten with fire."

"And you?" questioned Mabel, but very mournfully. "You are General Harrington's guest, and I am his wife?"

"Even so, dear lady!"

Mabel turned her head and tears stole softly from beneath her closed lashes. How could she reconcile herself to life again? To be thus torn back from a sweet delusion, was more painful than all the pangs she had suffered.

They were silent now. For one moment they had met, soul to soul, but the old barriers were fast springing up between them, barriers that made the hearts of both heavy as death, yet neither would have lifted a hand to tear them away.

Mabel at last quietly wiped the tears from her eyes and sat up. She still shivered and her face was pale, but she smiled yet, only the smile was so touchingly sad.

"I must have been quite gone,—why did you bring me back?" she said.

"Why did we bring you back," repeated Harrington with a sudden outburst of passion, "why did we bring you back!" He checked himself and went on more calmly. "It is the duty of every one to save life, Mrs. Harrington, and to receive it gratefully when, by God's mercy, it is saved."

"I know, I know," she answered, attempting to gather up the tresses of her hair, "I shall be grateful for this gift of life to-morrow; but now—indeed I am, very thankful that you saved me."

"It was Ben more than myself—but for him you would have been lost," answered Harrington, rejecting her sweet gratitude with stoicism. "He followed you in his boat through all the storm, and was nearly lost with you!"

"Poor Ben!" she said, "faithful always, I had not thought of him, though he saved my life."

Harrington had claimed all her gratitude for Ben with resolute self-restraint; but when she acknowledged it so kindly, he could not help feeling somewhat wronged. But against such impulses he had armed himself, and directly cast them aside.

"How strange everything looks," she said, "are those stars breaking through between the clouds? They seem very pale and sad, after the light that dazzled me when I first awoke: then there is a mournful sound coming through the trees—the waters, I suppose. After all, this earth does seem very dark and sorrowful, to which you have brought me back."

"You are ill yet—you suffer, perhaps?"

"No, I am only sad!"

And so was he. Her mournful voice—the reluctance with which she took back the burden of life, pained him, yet he could offer no adequate consolation. Commonplaces are a mockery with persons who know that there are thoughts in the depths of the soul, which must not be spoken, though they color every other thought. Silence or subterfuge is the only refuge for those who dare not speak frankly.

Thus without a word, for they were too honest for pretence, the two remained together listening to the low sob of the winds and to the rain that dripped from the leaves, long after it had ceased to fall from the clouds. This hush of the storm was oppressive more to Harrington than the lady. She was languid and dreamy lying upon her couch of dry leaves, very feeble and weeping quietly without a sob, like a helpless child who has no language but tears and laughter. In this entire prostration of the nervous system, she forgot—if she had ever been conscious of the words that filled him with a tumult of painful feelings.

He moved a little from the place where Mabel lay, and burying his face in both hands, remained perfectly still, lifting a solemn petition heavenward from his silent heart, not that she might live—not even of thanksgiving—but a subdued cry for strength rose up with the might of his whole being, a cry so ardent and sincere, that its very intensity kept him still.

CHAPTER X.
HOME IN SAFETY.

While this was going on in that struggling heart a black shadow had crept close to the man, and Agnes Barker stood between him and Mabel, leaving her in the firelight, but shutting it out from him.

He did not feel the darkness, and the girl stood by him more than a minute before he looked up.

Mabel moved with a faint expression of pain, as if she felt the shadow of some evil thing falling athwart the light; but she did not unclose her eyes, and Agnes, who had been for some time within earshot, spoke before her presence was recognized.

"Is there anything I can do?" she said in her usual low tones.

James lifted his head, bowed almost to the dust in the humility of his prayer, and saw this strange girl standing before him, her red garments glowing in the firelight, her arms folded on her bosom, and her eyes glittering beneath their long lashes, like half-buried diamonds. She seemed so like an embodiment of the evil passions he had prayed against, that he sat mute and pale, gazing upon her.

"You look deathly. You are hurt," she said, stooping toward him with a gesture at once subtle and fascinating. "I saw her boat engulphed—I saw you plunge into the stream—the storm was raging through the woods, but I came through it all."

Still Harrington remained silent, gazing fixedly upon her, so astonished by her presence that he did not heed her words.

"The lady is not dead," continued the girl, looking over her shoulders, while her garment grew dusky, and lurid in the waning light. "I heard her speaking, but a few moments ago."

James Harrington arose to his feet with grave dignity.

"You have come in good time, Miss Barker," he said. "If your cloak is dry throw it around her; even in this warmth she shivers."

Agnes looked back as she drew off her short cloak, and held the garment irresolutely in her hand.

"But you are wet and cold, too, wrap the cloak around yourself. What life can be more precious!"

She said this in a low voice, and moved towards him. He put the garment aside, and passing Agnes, stooped over Mrs. Harrington, addressing her in a grave, gentle voice.

"Are you stronger, now, dear lady?"

"I think so!" answered Mabel, moving uneasily, "but some one else is here—I heard speaking!"

"It was me," answered Agnes, spreading her cloak softly over Mabel; "I saw your peril, dear Mrs. Harrington, and came to offer help. My old nurse lives upon the hill—if you can walk so far, she will be glad to shelter you."

Mabel attempted to sit up. The presence of Agnes Barker excited her with new strength. She pushed aside the cloak with a feeling of repulsion, and looked pleadingly on Harrington.

"You will not take me up there!" she said. "It is a dreary, dreary place!"

"But it is the only shelter at hand," urged Harrington.

"I know; but that woman—don't place me, helpless as I am, with that strange woman!"

"You will find a capital nurse there; I left her preparing a warm bed!" whispered Agnes, stooping toward Harrington, till her breath floated across his face; "the walk is a little toilsome, but short; between us, I think she could manage it."

Mabel heard the whisper, and sinking back on her bed of leaves, pleaded against the measure.

"I cannot go up there," she said with some resolution, "I could not rest with that woman near."

"Of whom does she speak?" inquired Harrington.

"It is impossible for me to guess; the fright has unsettled her mind, I fear," answered Agnes.

"No, I am sane enough," murmured Mrs. Harrington, "but I have been warned. No human voice ever spoke more plainly than that lone night bird, as I went up the hollow—he knew that it was unholy ground I trod upon!"

"But you are not strong enough to reach home," persisted the girl Agnes, "the river is yet rough—the wind unsettled."

"She is well enough to go just where she's a mind to, I reckon," said Ben Benson, crashing through the undergrowth, "and I'm here to help her do it."

"Thank you," said Mabel, gently, "I wish to go home!"

Ben turned towards Harrington, and, without regard to the presence of Agnes, spoke his mind.

"I don't like the cut of things up yonder, somehow. The woman looks like a female Judas Iscariot. She's eager but not kind. The madam is better off here with the old tree to warm her."

Agnes kept her eyes steadily on Ben as he spoke; when he had finished, she laughed.

"You are complimentary to my mammy!" she said, "I will tell her your opinion. But have your own way. We have offered hospitality to the lady in good faith—if she prefers other shelter, I dare say we shall find the means of reconciling ourselves to her wishes and to your very flattering opinion, Mr. Boatman."

Ben threw back his right foot and made the young lady a nautical bow, accompanied with an overwhelming flourish of the hand.

"Delighted to hear as you and the old woman is agreeable. Now if you'd just as lieves, we'll try and get madam down to the boat; I've just bailed it out. The river may be a trifle roughish yet, but there's no danger."

Ben directed this portion of his speech to Mr. James Harrington, who stood by in silence, without appearing to regard the conversation.

He now stepped forward, and stooping over Mabel, inquired if she was willing, and felt strong enough to attempt a return home by water.

"Yes," answered Mabel, sitting up and striving to arrange her dress, "I am stronger now—take me home by all means. General Harrington will be terrified by my absence, and Lina—dear, dear Lina, how grateful she will be to have her mother back again!"

"And your son!" said Harrington gently.

"Oh, if I did not mention him, he is always here!" answered Mabel, pressing a hand to her heart, and looking upward with a face beaming with vivid tenderness; "I never knew how much of love was in my soul before."

How unconscious the noble woman was of her dreamy wanderings of speech—how pure and trustful was the look which she fixed upon Harrington's face as she said this. A holy thankfulness pervaded her whole being; from the black deep she seemed to have gathered a world of beautiful strength.

"Come," she said, struggling to her feet and smiling in gentle derision of her weakness, as she felt her head begin to reel, "I am not afraid to try the boat again, if some one will help me."

Harrington did not move, and after a perplexed look from one to the other, Ben stooped his shoulder that she might lean upon it.

When they reached the boat, Mabel was almost exhausted, but she found strength to think of Agnes, who had silently followed them.

"Will you not get in?" she said, faintly, "I should be glad to have you with me."

"No," answered the girl, in the sweetest of all accents, "nurse would be terrified to death. I will return home."

"Not alone," said James Harrington, "that must not be."

"Oh, Mr. Harrington, I am used to being alone. It is the fate of a poor girl like me!"

There was something plaintive in her voice, and she drooped meekly forward, as if imploring pardon for having said so much.

Harrington remained a moment thoughtful; at last he addressed Ben.

"Proceed up the river," he said, "slowly it must be, for the stream is against you. I will see that Miss Barker reaches home safely, and overtake you."

Ben looked up in astonishment. "Why, Mister James, she's allers alone in these ere woods. No blackbird knows the bush better, what's the use?"

Mabel said nothing, but her eyes turned upon Harrington with a wistful and surprised look.

"No matter, she must not go through the woods alone," answered Harrington. "Keep snug to the shore, and be ready to answer my hail; I will overtake you in a few minutes."

Harrington moved away as he uttered these words, following Agnes into the woods.

Mabel looked after them with sadness in her eyes; then, bowing her face softly upon her folded arms, she remained motionless, save that her lips moved, and broken whispers which the angels of Heaven gathered and laid before the throne of God, stole through them. They had advanced some distance up the shore, when Harrington hailed the boat; Ben did not pretend to hear him, but Mabel, lifting her face, now full of gentleness, said, with a smile—

"Stop, Ben, he is calling for you!"

"Let him call and be——" Ben caught the profane word in his teeth, and swallowing it with a great struggle, commenced again—

"Let him call till he's tired, why didn't he stay with that old Judas and the young witch. To think of going off with sich like, and madame just a dying—halloo away, Ben Benson 'll sink afore he hears you!"

Ben muttered this between his teeth, and worked away at the oars, doggedly resolved to continue his fit of deafness, and give his master a midnight walk through the dripping and rough woods, but Mabel addressed him again with a quiet firmness which he could not find the heart to resist.

"Put on shore, Ben, and take your master in."

"I begin to thing he's took us all in a little too often!" muttered Ben; but he turned reluctantly for the shore, and Harrington, without speaking, took his place in the boat.

The moon had broken through the drift-clouds left by the storm, before the little party reached the cove below General Harrington's dwelling. The front of the house was entirely dark, but lights wandered to and fro along the hollow, and anxious voices were heard calling to each other along the bank.

"They're out searching for us!" said Ben, dropping his oars and making an impromptu speaking-trumpet of his hand. Directly his voice rang along the shore.

"Ben Benson, and passengers from down stream. All well!"

A shout answered from the shore, and directly eager voices and rapid footsteps rushed toward the little cove; first came Ralph, wild with joy, leaping downward like a panther.

"Is she safe! is she here!" he cried, pausing with dread upon the bank.

"Ralph, Ralph!"

He knew the voice. He sprang into the boat, and fell upon his knees before his mother.

"Thank God, oh mother, mother!"

He could say no more. Unspeakable joy choked his utterance. He kissed her hands, her face, and her wet robes.

"Mother, mother, tell me what has happened! You are cold—you tremble—all your clothes are wet—your bonnet is off—that dear pale face, oh mother, you have been in danger, and I not there!"

His love gave her strength. She took his head between her trembling hands, and kissed him again and again on the forehead.

"Oh, yes, my Ralph, I have been very near death—but with all this to live for, God would not let me die."

"No, no, he could not make us so wretched. Oh, mother, what would home be without you? It is only an hour or two since we missed you; but those hours were full of desolation. Tell me—tell me how it was!"

"They did it—they will tell you—I was in the depths of the river, but they drew me out."

"They, my brother James, and that blessed old rogue, Ben Benson, did they save you, mother, while I—I, your only son—was dreaming at home? Oh, James, must I thank you for my mother, with all the rest!"

"Thank God, Ralph, for He has saved your mother!"

His voice was impressive and solemn. It seemed like a rebuke to the ardent gratitude of the young man.

"I do thank God, brother James," he answered reverently, uncovering his head. "But, to be grateful to God's creatures is, so far, giving thanks to Him! How often have you told me this?"

"You are right," answered James gently, "but see, your mother needs assistance!"

Mabel had risen, and was making ready to step from the boat. Ralph turned, flung one arm around her.

"Lean on me, dear mother. Lay your head on my shoulder; don't mind the weight; I can carry you, if needful!"

Mabel submitted herself to the affectionate guidance of her son, with a sigh of pleasure, and proceeded towards the house.

CHAPTER XI.
GENERAL HARRINGTON IS SHOCKED.

The rigid ideas of female propriety which General Harrington enforced in his family, had been greatly outraged that day. This well-regulated home was thrown into disorder by the unaccountable absence of his wife and Lina from the tea-table. He had followed his wife to the bank of the river, and with a feeling of quiet indignation had watched her rowing her own boat down the stream like a wild gipsy. The gathering storm and the danger she was in scarcely impressed him, but the impropriety of the thing outraged all his fastidiousness.

Still he was glad to have her away for the brief time that he was in the hills, and but for her long absence this escapade on the river might have been forgiven.

A solitary evening, added to these causes of discontent, had greatly ruffled the general's equanimity of temper, and when his wife appeared deep in the night, her clothes in disorder, her hair disarranged, and her face pale as death, he felt her return in this state as a positive insult to his house.

"Madam," he said, with that quiet irony which was the gift of his cold nature, "it is rather late, and your toilet somewhat disarranged for the presence of gentlemen; allow me to lead you to a mirror." It was not necessary; Mabel had seen herself reflected in the great oval glass opposite, and shrunk back, shocked both by her appearance and the cold insult to which it had given rise.

James Harrington remained silent, but his eyes grew bright with indignation, while Ralph flung one arm around his mother's waist, and turned his bright face upon the general.

"My mother's life has been in peril—she comes back to us, father, almost cold from the dead."

"Indeed!" said the general with a look of cold surprise. "Surely, madam, you did not remain out in the storm? You have not been on the river all this time?"

"I have been in the depths of the river, I believe!" answered Mabel. "The boat was upset—I was dashed beneath the wheels of a steamer, but for—" She hesitated, and a red flush shot over her face; the noble woman recovered herself in an instant, "but for James, and Ben Benson."

An answering flush came to the general's cheek. He darted a quick glance at James.

"And how came Mr. Harrington so near you, madam? They told me you had gone upon the river alone."

"And so she did," answered James, stepping forward. "I saw her put out from the shore, apparently unconscious of the coming storm, and followed the course of her boat."

"Why did you not warn her, sir?"

"I did, more than once at the top of my voice, but the wind was against me!"

"And where did all this happen?" inquired the general, more interested than he had been.

"Near a ravine, some distance down the stream. You will not perhaps be able to recognize the place, sir," answered Mabel, "but it is nearly opposite the small house in which Miss Barker resides with her mother."

The general did not start, but a strange expression crept over his features, as if he were becoming more interested and less pleased.

"May I ask you what took you in that direction, madam?"

"Nothing better than a caprice, I fear," answered Mabel; "at first I went out for exercise and solitude, then remembering Miss Barker, I put on shore."

"Surely you did not go to that house!" cried the general, interrupting her almost for the first time in his life.

"Yes, I went," answered Mabel with simplicity.

"Indeed! and what did you find—whom did you see?"

"I saw a dusky woman, rude and insolent, who called herself Agnes Barker's nurse—nothing more."

"So you found an insolent woman."

"A very disagreeable one, at least, General Harrington, but I am faint and ill—permit me to answer all farther questions to-morrow!"

General Harrington's manner imperceptibly changed; he no longer enforced abrupt questions upon the exhausted lady, but with a show of gallant attention, stepped forward and drew her arm through his.

"You can go to your rooms, young men," he said, "I will attend Mrs. Harrington."

"Shall I have Lina called, mother?" said Ralph, following his parents, "she did not know of your absence, and I would not terrify her!"

Before Mabel could speak, the general answered for her—

"No, why should Lina be disturbed? Send Mrs. Harrington's maid," and with a gentle wave of the hand which forbade all farther conversation, the general led his wife from the room.

CHAPTER XII.
LOVE DREAMS.

Lina had slept sweetly through all this turmoil of the elements and of human passions. Beautifully as a dove she lay in her pretty white bed, with its snowy curtains brooding over her like summer clouds above opening roses. A night-lamp of pale alabaster shed its soft moonlight through the room, and when bursts of thunder shook the heavens, and the lightning flashed and gleamed around the single Gothic casement of her chamber, it only gave to this pearly light a golden tinge, and made Lina smile more dreamily in her happy slumber.

She was abroad upon the hills again, and in sleep lived over the bright hours that never return, save in dreams, to any human soul.

She had left Ralph in the hall, and hoarding up her new found happiness she stole away to her room, kindled the alabaster lamp that no broader light should look upon her blushes, and sat down lost in a trance of thought. She veiled her eyes even from the pure light around her, and started covered with blushes, when the happiness flooding her soul broke in murmurs to her lips.

She longed to speak over his name, to whisper the words with which he had blessed her, and ponder over and over the tone of those words. She was bewildered and astonished by her own happiness. Now she longed to steal into Mrs. Harrington's presence, and tell her of the great joy that had fallen upon her life, but the first motion to that effect brought the blushes to her cheeks, and made her cover them with both hands, like a child who strives to hide the shame of some innocent joy.

At last she began to undress, softly and bashfully, as if she had found some new value in her own beauty. Her hands lingered fondly among the tresses of her hair, and gathering them up beneath her pretty Valenciennes cap, she smiled to see its gossamer shadows fall upon her forehead, giving the whole face a Madonna-like purity.

With a gentle sigh, she pillowed herself upon the couch, and looked up through the cloud of snowy lace that overshadowed it with a wistful smile, as if she expected to see stars break through, revealing new glimpses of the Heaven already dawning in her young life.

Thus cradled in her own happiness, like a lily with its cup full of dew, she laid that beautiful head upon her arm, and slept. The wind had no power to arouse her, though it shook the old house in all its gables. The thunder rolled through her dreams, like the reverberating strains of a celestial harp, and when the lightning flamed through her room, it only kindled the volume of lace over her head into a cloud of golden tissue, under which she slept like a cherub in one of Murillo's pictures.

Thus Lina spent the night. In the morning she arose at the usual hour, and stole forth to walk. The household were astir in the kitchen, but she saw no member of the family, and went out unconscious of Mrs. Harrington's accident. When she came back, a shy terror seized upon her at the thought of meeting Ralph again in the presence of his relatives; and, evading the breakfast-room, she stole to her own chamber. But loneliness at length became oppressive, and, with a breathless effort at composure, she sought a little boudoir or private sitting-room, which opened from Mrs. Harrington's bed-chamber, and where that lady usually spent some hours of the morning. Lina unclosed the door softly and went in, trembling with a world of gentle emotions as she approached Ralph's mother.

Mrs. Harrington was seated in a large easy-chair. A morning shawl of pale blue cashmere flowed over an under-dress of French embroidery. The tint of these garments did not relieve the pallor of her cheek which would have been painful, but for the crimson glow reflected upon it from the brocaded cushions of the chair. Her foot rested upon an embroidered cushion; and she was languidly sipping chocolate from a cup of embossed parian which she had scarcely strength to hold. A beautiful Italian grey-hound stood close by the cushion, regarding her with looks of eager interrogation that seemed almost human.

Lina glided softly behind the easy-chair, and remained a moment gathering courage to speak. At last, she bent softly forward:

"Mother!"

Mrs. Harrington looked up kindly, but with a touch of seriousness. She had been wounded by Lina's seeming inattention.

Before another word could be spoken, the door opened noiselessly, and Agnes Barker hesitated upon the threshold, regarding the two with a dark glance. She stood a moment with the latch in her hand, as if about to withdraw again, but seemed to change her mind, and stepped boldly into the room.

Mabel was looking at her adopted daughter and the door opened so noiselessly that neither of them had observed it. Thus Agnes Barker remained some minutes in the room, listening to their conversation with breathless attention.

"Mother," repeated Lina, and her face flushed like a wild rose, "I have something to say; don't look at me, please, it makes me afraid."

"Afraid, my child!" said Mabel, smiling, "afraid of your mother! Shame, Lina!"

"But I can only remember that you are his mother now, dear Mrs. Harrington!"

"Dear Mrs. Harrington! Why child what has come over you?"

"Something—something so strange and sweet that it makes the very heart tremble in my bosom, dear mamma, and yet——"

"And yet you are afraid!"

"Yes, mamma; you have thought so highly of him—he is so much wiser and nobler than I am—he—"

Mabel drew a quick breath, and turned her eyes almost wildly on the face of the young girl.

"Of whom do you speak, Lina?"

Lina was terrified by her look, and faltered, "of—of Mr. Harrington, dear mamma."

The Parian cup in Mabel's hand shook like a lily in the wind. She sat it slowly down, and suppressing a thrill of pain that ran through her like the creep of a serpent, remained for a moment bereft of all speech. It was the first time that Lina had ever called Ralph, Mr. Harrington, and the mistake drove the very blood from the heart of her benefactress.

"Mr. Harrington? and what of him?" inquired the pallid woman, clasping her tremulous hands and striving to hold them still in her lap. "What of Mr. Harrington, Lina?" Her voice was low and hoarse; the very atmosphere around her froze poor Lina into silence.

"Nothing, indeed nothing at all!" she gasped at length. "I was so terrified, I don't know what I wished to say. It took me so by surprise, and—and—"

Mabel's face lighted. She remembered her adventure the night before, and again mistook poor Lina.

"Oh, yes, my own sweet child, I forgot that they kept my peril from you all night. Mr. Harrington did, indeed, save me."

"Save you, mamma? how? from what?"

"I see they have not told you how near death I was. Oh, Lina! it was terrible when that wheel plunged me into the black depths. In a single minute, I thought of everything—of my home, of Ralph, of you, Lina."

The young girl did not answer. She stood aghast with surprise and terror.

"I thought," said Mabel, still excited and nervous, "I thought of everything I had ever done in my life—the time, the place, the objects with which each act had been surrounded, flashed before me like a living panorama."

"Mother, how did this happen?" faltered Lina, trembling from head to foot.

Mabel lifted her face, and saw how pale and troubled the young girl was.

"Sit down, darling, here at my feet, and I will tell you all. Move, Fair-Star, and let your mistress sit down."

The beautiful Italian grey-hound that had been looking so wistfully at his mistress all the morning, as if he knew all the risk she had run, drew back from his place near the embroidered stool, and allowed Lina to seat herself thereon. Then he stole back to his position, contrasting the snowy folds of her morning-dress with the pretty scarlet housings, edged with black velvet, which he always wore in chilly weather.

"Why, how you tremble! how white you are, Lina! and I was but just thinking you neglectful."

"Neglectful—oh, mother!"

"Well, well, it was all a mistake, child; but what kept you from me so long?"

"I went out to walk."

"What, after hearing of——"

"Oh! mamma, how can you think so? I have seen no one this morning."

"Then you knew nothing of this accident?" questioned Mabel, thoughtfully.

"Indeed, indeed I did not. What could have kept me from your side, if I had known? Oh, it was terrible! What must have become of us all had you never returned—of me, of him?"

Lina could hardly speak, the whole thing had come upon her so suddenly, but sat wistfully questioning her mother with those tender blue eyes.

Mabel told her all, even to the false illumination of the cedar tree, and the appearance of Agnes Barker, like an evil shadow in the firelight. All? no, no! The facts she related faithfully, but feelings—those haunting spirits that fluttered in her heart even yet—those Mabel Harrington could not have spoken aloud even to her God.

When Mabel had told all, Lina's face, that had been growing paler and paler as the recital progressed, flushed with sudden thanksgiving; her eyes filled with great bright drops, such as we see flash downward when rain and sunshine strive together; and, creeping up to her mother's bosom, she began to sob and murmur thanksgivings, breaking them up with soft tender kisses, that went to Mabel's heart.

"You are glad to have me back again, my Lina?"

"Glad, mamma, glad? Oh, if I only knew how to thank God, as he should be thanked!"

"I think you love me, Lina," answered Mabel, and her face was luminous with that warm, tender light, which made her whole countenance beautiful, at times, beyond any mere symmetry of features that ever existed. "I think you love me, Lina."

The young girl did not answer but crept closer to Mrs. Harrington's bosom. A deep breath came in a tremor from her bosom, as odor shakes the lily-bell it escapes from.

Thus, for a little time, the two remained in each other's embrace, blissful and silent. All this time Agnes Barker looked on, with a dawning sneer upon her lip.

At length, Mabel lifted Lina's face from her bosom, and kissing the white forehead, bade her sit down and partake of the breakfast that stood upon a little table at her side. She filled a cup with chocolate from the small silver kettle, and pressed it upon the young girl.

"My heart is too full—I cannot taste a drop," said Lina.

"Nonsense, child," answered Mabel, and, with a laugh and a bright look, she hummed—

"Lips, though blooming, must still be fed,
For not even love can live on flowers."

Why did the rosy blood leap into that young face at the word "Love?" Why did those eyelids droop so bashfully, and the little hand begin to shake under the snowy cup it would gladly have put down? Lina remembered now that her secret was still untold, while Mabel, startled by her blushes, thought of the first words that had marked their interview, and grew timid as one does, who has suffered and dreads a renewal of pain.

Thus these two persons, loving each other so deeply, shrunk apart, and were afraid to speak. Poor Lina, with her exquisite intuition, which was a remarkable gift, drooped bashfully forward, the roses dying on her cheek beneath the frightened glance which Mabel fixed upon them, and her eyelids drooping their dark lashes downward, as the leaves of a japonica cast shadows.

At last Mabel spoke low and huskily, for, like all brave persons, she only recoiled from pain for the moment. Her heart always rose to meet its distresses at once, and steadily.

"Tell me, Lina, what is it? You have not heard of my escape, and yet something disturbed you."

"Yes, mamma!"

"And, what is it?"

Lina struggled a moment, lifted her eyes full of wistful love, and, dropping her head in Mabel's lap, burst into tears.

"You love some one?" said Mabel, with an instinctive recoil; "is that it?"

"Yes, yes; oh, forgive us!" burst out from among Lina's sobs.

"Forgive us—and who is the other?" There was a tremble in Mabel's voice—a premonitory shiver of the limbs. Oh, how she dreaded the answer that would come.

"You know—you must guess," pleaded poor Lina.

"No, who is he?"

"Mrs.—Mrs. Harrington, oh, don't send me away!"

There was no danger that Mabel Harrington would send the young girl away. Her nerves were yet unstrung, her strength all gone. A look of anguish, keen but tender, swept over her face. Her hand fell slowly on the bowed head of poor Lina. She struggled to sit upright and speak words of encouragement, but the brave true heart sunk back, repulsed in its goodness by the enfeebled body, and she fell back in her chair, white and still, like some proud flower torn up by the roots.

She was so still, that Lina ventured to look up. The deathly white of that face terrified her, and with a cry she sprang to her feet, looking wildly around for help.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE BROKEN CONFESSION.

Agnes Barker came coldly into the room, answering Lina's cry.

"Mrs. Harrington has only fainted," she said, closing the door which she still held slightly ajar, as if that moment entering.

"There is aromatic vinegar on the console yonder—do bring it, while I open the window."

Lina ran for the crystal flask pointed out, and began to sprinkle Mabel's face, sobbing and moaning all the time. Agnes opened the sash door, that led to a stone balcony full of flowers, and their breath came floating into the room.

"Shall I run? shall I call help?" questioned Lina, letting Mrs. Harrington's head fall back upon the crimson cushions of her chair, "I—I am sure Ralph would bring her to."

"Be quiet," answered Agnes Barker, dragging the easy-chair towards the window, where the fragrant wind blew clear and cold into that deathly face.

"If you call any one, let it be Mr. Harrington."

"The General?"

"No, Mr. James Harrington."

"I will go," answered Lina, eagerly.

But the name of James Harrington, even upon those lips, had reached the sleeping sense of Mabel. She made a faint struggle. Her lips quivered with an ineffectual attempt to speak. This brought Lina back.

"Shall I call help, dear mamma? Shall I call help?"

"No!"

The monosyllable was uttered so faintly, that nothing but a loving ear, like Lina's, would have heard it. The warm-hearted girl stooped and kissed Mabel softly upon the forehead, thanking God silently in her heart.

Mabel shrunk from that pure kiss, turned her head abruptly on the cushion, and tears stole through her eyelashes, leaving them dark and moist.

"Madam, is there anything I can do?"

As she spoke Agnes bent over the helpless woman, and shed her glances over that pale face, as the upas tree weeps poison.

The unaccountable dislike that Mabel felt for this girl, gave her strength, and she sat up, stung by the reflection that her weakness had so objectionable a witness.

"You here, Miss Barker!" she said with cold dignity; "I have always held this room sacred from all, but my own family."

"I come by invitation," answered Agnes, meekly. "Yesterday afternoon you left a message with my nurse, desiring that I should seek you before entering upon my duties again. This command brought me here, not a wish to intrude."

Mrs. Harrington arose, walked feebly back to the little breakfast-table, and taking up a small teapot of frosted silver, poured some strong tea into a cup which she drank off clear. Then moving back her chair, she sat down, evidently struggling for composure.

"I remember," she said very quietly, for Mabel had controlled herself, "I remember leaving this message with a woman who called you her mistress."

Agnes smiled. "Oh, yes, our Southern nurses always claim us in some form. 'My mammy,' I think she must have called herself that. Every child has its slave mammy at the South."

"Then you are from the South, Miss Barker?"

"Did not General Harrington tell you this, madam?"

"I do not recollect it, if he did," answered Mabel, searching the girl's face with her clear eyes; "in truth, Miss Barker, I made so few inquiries when you entered my family, that your very presence in it is almost a mystery to me. General Harrington told me you were well educated, and an orphan. I found that he was correct in the latter point, but was somewhat astonished yesterday afternoon to hear the woman whom I met, claim you as her mistress."

"You do not understand our Southern ways, Mrs. Harrington, or this would not appear so singular. With us the tie between a slave nurse and her child, is never broken."

"Then this woman is a slave?" questioned Mabel.

"She has been, madam, but though I had nothing else in the world, when I became of age, she was made a free woman."

"But she is not very black—at least, in the dim light, I saw but faint traces of it."

Again Agnes smiled a soft unpleasant smile, that one could put no faith in:

"Perhaps it was that which rendered her so valuable, but black or white, the woman you saw was a born slave."

"And how does she support herself in that solitary house?"

"She has a garden, and some poultry. The woods around afford plenty of dry fuel, and my own humble labors supply the rest."

Mabel became thoughtful and ceased to ask questions. The governess stood quietly waiting. All her answers had been straightforward and given unhesitatingly, but they did not bring confidence or conviction with them. Still Mrs. Harrington was silenced for the time, and remained in deep thought.

"May I retire, madam?" said the governess at last, drawing slowly toward the door.

Mabel started from her reverie.

"Not yet. I would know more of you, of your parents, and previous life. Where we intrust those most dear to us, there should be a perfect knowledge and profound confidence."

"Of myself I have nothing to say," answered Agnes, turning coldly white, for she was a girl who seldom blushed. All her emotions broke out in a chilly pallor. "Of my parents all that can be said is told, when I repeat that they left me with nothing but an honorable name, and this old woman in the wide world."

Her voice broke a little here, and this struck Mabel with a shade of compassion.

"But how did you chance to come North?"

"I entered a Louisianian family as governess, directly after my parents' death. They brought me North in the summer, recommended me to General Harrington, and I remained."

Nothing could be more simple or frankly spoken. Agnes, as I have said, was pale; but for this, she might have seemed unconscious that all this questioning was mingled with distrust.

Mabel had nothing more to say. The feelings with which she had commenced this conversation, were not in the slightest degree removed, and yet they seemed utterly without foundation. She waved her hand uneasily, murmuring, "you may go," and the governess went out softly as she had entered.

"Can I stay with you, mamma?" pleaded Lina, creeping timidly up to Mabel's chair.

"I am weary," answered Mrs. Harrington, closing her eyes, and turning aside her head. "Let me rest awhile!"

"But you will kiss me before I go?" said the gentle girl.

"Yes, child," and Mabel kissed that white forehead with her quivering lips.

"Is it with your whole heart, mamma?"

Mabel turned away her face, that Lina might not see how it was convulsed. So the young girl went out from the boudoir, grieved to the verge of tears.

After they were gone, Mabel grew strong again and began to pace to and fro in the boudoir, as if striving to outstrip the pain of thinking. The accident had left her nerves greatly shattered, and it was difficult to concentrate the high moral courage that formed the glory of her woman's nature. Thus she walked to and fro in a sort of vague, dreamy passion, her thoughts all in a tumult, her very soul up in arms against the new struggle forced upon her. Sometimes Mabel wrung her hand with a sudden gush of sorrow. Her eyes would fill and her lips quiver, and she looked around upon the sumptuous objects in her room, as if seeking out something among all the elegance that filled it, which might have power to comfort her.

There was no bitter or bad passion in the heart of Mabel Harrington. She had only laid down her burden for a moment, and finding its weight doubled, shrank from taking it up again. But she had a brave, strong heart, that after a little would leap forward, like a checked racehorse to its duty. This might not have been, had she always relied upon her own strength, which so far as human power can go, was to be confided in. But Mabel had a firmer and holier reliance, which was sure in the end to subdue all these storms of trouble, and prepare her for the battle which was to be fought over and over again before she found rest.

After a time, Mabel Harrington stole gently back to her easy-chair, and kneeling down, buried her face in the cushions. Fair-Star, which had been following her up and down, wondering at her distress, and looking in that agitated face with his intelligent eyes, came and lay softly down with his head resting on the folds of her shawl, where it swept over the floor. He knew with his gentle instinct, that she was quieter now, and with a contented whine lay down to guard her as she prayed.

While she was upon her knees, a rustling among the flowers in the balcony made Fair-Star rise suddenly to his fore feet, and cast a vigilant glance that way. He saw a hand cautiously outstretched, as if to put back the trails of a passion flower, and then a dark figure stole along behind the screen of blossoms, and crouching down, peered cautiously through the leaves into the room. Fair-Star dropped his head; he had recognized the intruder, and, not having any very definite ideas of etiquette, concluded that the governess had a right to crouch like a thief behind that screen of flowers, if her fancy led that way. For a little time her presence kept the pretty hound restless, but it was not long before Agnes had so draped the passion-flower that it entirely concealed her person, and then Fair-Star betook himself entirely to his mistress. A soul-struggle does not always break forth in words, or exhaust itself in cries. The heart has a still small voice, which God recognizes the more readily, because it is like his own.

Mabel came with no rush of stormy passion before the Lord. The very force of her anguish was laid aside as she bowed her proud head, and meekly besought strength to suffer and be still—to struggle for the right. Now and then her clasped hands were uplifted, once the spy on the balcony caught a glimpse of her face. It was luminous and lovely, spite of the anguish to be read there.

At last she arose, and seating herself, remained for some time in thoughtful silence, her arms folded on her bosom, her eyes full of troubled light, looking afar off, as if she were following with her eyes the angels that had been gathering over her as she knelt.

After awhile, Mabel arose, and walking across the room more composedly, unlocked a little escritoir of ebony, from which she drew forth a book bound in white vellum, and embossed with gold. Seating herself at the escritoir, she began to search among the trinkets attached to her chatelaine for a small key, which she inserted in a little heart beset with rubies, which locked the golden clasps of the book.

All this time Agnes Barker was watching each movement of her benefactress with the eyes of a serpent. She saw the tiny heart fly open, and the manuscript pages of the book exposed. She saw Mrs. Harrington turn these pages, now slowly, now hurriedly—reading a line here, a sentence there, and more than once two or three pages together. Sometimes her fine eyes were full of tears. Sometimes they were reverently uplifted to Heaven, as if seeking strength or comfort there; but more frequently she pursued those pages with a sad thoughtfulness, full of dignity.

After she had been reading, perhaps an hour, she dipped a pen into the standish on her escritoir, and began to write slowly, as if weighing every word as it dropped from her pen. Then she closed the book, locked it carefully, and securing it in the escritoir again, walked slowly toward her bed-chamber, which opened from the boudoir, evidently worn out and ready to drop down with exhaustion. A slight disturbance in the passion-vine betrayed that Agnes Barker had changed her position, and now commanded a view through the open door of Mabel's chamber. She saw the poor lady move wearily toward a bed, which stood like a snowdrift in the midst of the room, and pulling the cloud of white lace, which enveloped it aside, with her trembling hands, fell wearily down upon the pillows, and dropped away into tranquil slumber, like a child that had played itself to sleep in a daisy field.

Mabel had asked for strength, and God gave her its first tranquilizing element—rest.

Agnes stood motionless till the lace curtains above the sleeper closed again, leaving nothing visible upon the snowy white beneath but the calm, sleeping face of Mabel Harrington, gleaming as it were through a cloud, and the folds of her azure shawl, that lay around her like fragments of the blue sky. Mrs. Harrington had evidently sunk into a heavy slumber, but Agnes kept her concealment some time after this, for Fair-Star was still vigilant, and she shrunk from his glances as if they had been human.

But the dog crept into his mistress's chamber at last, and then Agnes Barker stole from her fragrant hiding-place, and entered the boudoir again.

The escritoir was closed, but Agnes saw with joy that the key still remained in its lock, and that Mrs. Harrington had left her watch upon a marble console close by. Stealing across the room, and holding her wicked breath, as if she felt that it would poison the air of that tranquil room, she crept to the escritoir, turned the key, and stealthily drawing forth the vellum book, dropped on one knee, while she reached forth her hand, drawing the watch softly to her lap.

There was a quiver in her hands as she unlocked that little golden heart, forcing it asunder with a jerk, for the dog came back just then, and stood regarding her with his clear, honest eyes. She strove to evade him, and gleams of angry shame stole across her cheeks as she laid down the watch, and stole, like the thief that she was, through the sash door, along the pretty labyrinth of flowers, and into another door that opened upon one end of the balcony.

And Mabel slept on, while this ruthless girl was tearing the secret from her life.

CHAPTER XIV.
RALPH'S LOVE DREAM.

It was an uncomfortable breakfast-table to which the Harringtons sat down that morning. The lady of the house and Lina, its morning-star, were both absent, and the servant, who stood at the coffee-urn ready to distribute its contents, was a most unsatisfactory substitute.

Their absence left a gloom on everything. The very morning seemed darkened by the want of their smiling faces and cheerful garments. A breakfast-table at which no lady presides, is always a desert—and so was this; spite of its glittering silver, its transparent china, and the warm October sunshine, which penetrated the broad eastern window with a thousand cheerful flashes, scarcely broken by the gorgeous tree boughs, or the climbing vines that waved and clustered around it.

Gen. Harrington was out of sorts, as your polished man of the world sometimes proves when his circle of admirers is a household one. The absence of his wife was an annoyance which, under the circumstances, he could not well resent, but that Lina should have been so indolent, or so forgetful, he considered a just cause of complaint. Thus in that smooth, ironical way, which usually expressed the General's anger, he began a series of complaints, that in another might have been considered grumbling, but in a man of Gen. Harrington's perfect breeding, could have been only an expression of elegant displeasure.

Ralph, radiant with his new-born happiness, and full of generous enthusiasm, strove to dissipate this gloom by extra cheerfulness; but this only irritated the grand old gentleman, who stirred the cream in his coffee, and buttered his delicate French rolls in dignified silence, into which his displeasure had at last subsided.

James Harrington, unlike his irritable father, or the bright animation of his brother, was so rapt in heavy thought, that he seemed unmindful of all that was going on. He had cast one quick, almost wild glance at the head of the table as he entered, and after that took his seat like one in a dream.

"Let me," said Ralph, taking the second cup from the servant, and carrying it to the General, "let me help you, father."

"My boy," said the General, "when will you learn to comprehend the refined taste which I fear you will never emulate? You ought to know, sir, that a breakfast without a lady is an unnatural thing in society, calculated to disturb the composure and injure the digestion of any gentleman. As Mrs. Harrington is not able to preside, will you have the goodness to inform Miss Lina that her seat is empty?"

"I—I don't know where Lina is, father. Indeed, I have been searching and searching for her all the morning," answered the youth with a vivid blush.

"Go knock at her door. She may be ill," answered the General, "and, in the meantime, inquire after Mrs. Harrington, with my compliments."

Ralph grew crimson to the temples. A hundred times before, he had summoned Lina from her slumbers, but now it seemed like presumption.

It was strange, but James Harrington had not inquired after either of the ladies; but he looked up with an eager flash of the eyes when the General gave his message; and, as Ralph hesitated, he said in a grave voice—

"What are you waiting for, Ralph? There is something strange in Lina's absence."

"Is there? Do you think so?" exclaimed the excitable boy, and the crimson came and went in flashes over his face. "Oh, brother James, do you think so?"

The General lowered his cup to the table, and began tinkling the spoon against its side, softly, but in a way which bespoke a world of impatience. Ralph understood the signal, and disappeared.

"Upon my word, I'd rather be shot," thought Ralph, pausing before the door he had knocked at heedlessly a thousand times during his boyish life; "I wonder what she'll think of it, so coarse and rude to present myself in this fashion after her first sweet sleep. Dear, dear Lina."

He reached forth his hand timidly, and with a pleasant tremble in all the nerves, drew it back, attempted again, and ended with one of the faintest possible taps against the black walnut panelling.

No answer came. The knock was repeated, louder and louder, still no answer. But at last the door was suddenly opened, and while Ralph stood in breathless expectation, he saw a mulatto chambermaid before him, beating a pillow with one hand, from which two or three feathers had broken loose, and stood quivering in her braided wool.

"Oh, it's you, is it, Master Ralph? Thought, mebbe, it was Miss Lina a-coming back agin. Everything sixes and sevens, I can tell you, since Miss Mabel took sick—now I tell you."

"Can you tell me where Miss Lina is?"

"Don't know nothin' 'bout her, no how—cum in here a little while ago, and didn't speak a word when I said 'Good mornin',' as pleasant as could be—but jist turned her head away and went off, as if I'd been the dirt under her feet."

With these words the exasperated damsel punched her right hand ferociously into the pillow, as if that had been in fault, and added half a dozen more feathers to those already encamped in her dingy tresses.

Ralph was troubled. What could this mean? Lina was never ill-tempered. Something must have grieved her.

"Tell me," he said, addressing the indignant girl, "was anything the matter? Did my—did Miss Lina look ill?"

"Just as blooming as a rose, de fust time I see her, and as white as this pillar when she went out, after I'd expressed myself regarding the ridickelousness of her stuck up ways."

"But where is she now?"

"Don't know. Shouldn't wonder if she's wid de madam—like as not."

Ralph went to his mother's boudoir, and after knocking in vain, softly opened the door. Fair-Star came towards him with his serious eyes and velvet tread, looking back toward the inner room, where Ralph saw his mother through the lace curtains, asleep and alone. He saw also the shrubs in motion at the window, and fancied that a rustling sound came from the balcony.

"Hist, Lina—sweet Lina, it is I!"

Before he reached the balcony, all was still there, but certainly the sound of a closing door had reached him, and the plants at one end of the balcony were vibrating yet.

"Ah, she is teasing me," thought the boy, and his heart rose with the playful thought. "We'll see if Lady Lina escapes in this way."

He opened a door leading from the balcony, and entered a room that had once been occupied by General Harrington's first wife. It was a small chamber, rich in old-fashioned decorations, and gloomy with disuse. The shutters were all closed, and curtains of heavy silk darkened the windows entirely. Still Ralph could see a high-post bedstead and the outlines of other objects equally ponderous. Beyond this, he saw a female figure, evidently attempting to hide itself behind the bed drapery.

Ralph sprang forward with his hands extended.

"Ah, ha, my lady-bird, with all this fluttering I have found you!"

There was a quick rush behind the drapery, which shook and swayed, till the dust fell from it in showers. Again Ralph laughed, "Ah, lapwing, struggle away, I have you safe."

He seized an armful of the damask drapery as he spoke, and felt a slight form struggling and trembling in his embrace. Instinctively his arms relaxed their hold, and with something akin to terror, he whispered:—

"Why, Lina, darling, what is this? I thought that we loved each other. You did not tremble so, when I held you in my arms yesterday!"

A smothered cry, as of acute pain, broke from beneath the drapery, and then, while Ralph stood lost in surprise, the curtains fell rustling together, and the faint sound of a door cautiously closed, admonished him that he was alone.

"Lina, dear Lina," he called, reluctant to believe that she had left him so abruptly.

There was no answer, not even a rustle of the damask.

He was alone. When satisfied of this, the young man found his way to the light again. But for the terror and evident recoil of the person who had evaded him, he would have considered the whole adventure a capital joke, in which he had been famously baffled; but there was something too earnest in that struggle and cry for trifling, and the remembrance left him with a heart-ache.

When Ralph came back to the breakfast-table, he found Lina seated in his mother's place. A faint color came into her cheek as she saw him, but otherwise she was calm and thoughtful. Nay, there was a shade of sorrow upon her countenance, but nothing of the flush and tumult that would naturally have followed the encounter from which she was so fresh.

Spite of himself, Ralph was shocked. The delicacy of a first passion had been a little outraged by the rude way in which he and Lina had just met, and struggled together, but her composure wounded him still more deeply. "So young, so innocent, and so deceptive," he thought, looking at her almost angrily, "I would not have believed it."

Lina was all unconscious. Full of her own sorrowful perplexities, she experienced none of the bashful tremors that had troubled her in anticipation. That interview in Mrs. Harrington's room had chilled all the joy of her young love. Thus she sat, pale and cold, under the reproachful glances of her lover.

And General Harrington was watching them with his keen, worldly glances. A smile crept over his lips as he read those young hearts, a smile of cool quiet craft, which no one remarked; but there was destiny in it.

Altogether the breakfast was a gloomy meal. There was discord in every heart, and a foreshadowing of trouble which no one dared to speak about. For some time after his father had left the table, Ralph sat moodily thinking of Lina's changed manner. A revulsion came over him as he thought of his singular encounter with her that morning, and with the quick anger of youth, he allowed her to rise from the table and leave the room without a smile or a word.

James saw nothing that was passing. Self-centred and thoughtful, he was scarcely conscious of their presence.

Lina sought Mrs. Harrington's chamber, but found it perfectly quiet, and the lady asleep. Then she took a straw hat from the hall, and flinging a mantilla about her, went out into the grounds, ready to weep anywhere, if she could but be alone.

CHAPTER XV.
THE STOLEN JOURNAL.

Ralph saw Lina pass, from the breakfast-room window, and his heart smote him. What had she done, poor, dear girl, to warrant his present feelings? What evil spirit possessed him to think ill of her, so pure, so truly good, as she was?

Ralph took his hat and followed Lina through the grounds, up to a hollow in the hills, where a great white pine tree sheltered a spring that sparkled out from its roots, like a gush of diamonds. It was a heavy day, not without flashes of sunshine, but sombre heaps of clouds drifted to and fro across the sky, and the wet earth was literally carpeted with leaves beaten from their branches by the storm. Amid all these dead leaves, and within the gloomy shadow of the pine, Lina sat alone weeping. She heard Ralph's tread upon the wet foliage, and arose as if to flee him, for with all her gentleness, Lina was proud, and his presence made her ashamed of the tears that her little hand had no power to dash entirely away.

"Lina," said Ralph, holding out his hand, rejoiced by her tears, for he longed to think that she was offended by his rudeness in the dusky room, "Lina, forgive me. I was a brute to wound you with my rough ways."

Lina turned away and sobbed. "It was not that, Ralph. You were only silent, not rude. But I have seen your mother this morning. Oh, Ralph, she will never consent to it—we must give each other up."

"What did she say? Tell me, Lina, tell me!" cried Ralph, full of emotion.

"She said nothing, Ralph, but her face—for a moment it was terrible. Then she fainted!"

"Fainted, Lina!—my mother?"

"I thought her dead, she looked so cold and white. Oh, Ralph, if my words had killed her, what would have become of us?"

"Lina, you astonish me. My mother is not a woman to faint from displeasure. It is the effect of her accident. You should not have spoken to her now!"

"I could not help it. Indeed, I was so happy, and it seemed right and natural to tell her first of all."

"But, what did you tell her, darling?"

Lina looked up, and regarded him gratefully through her tears.

"I don't know—something that displeased her—that almost killed her, I am afraid."

"Don't cry, don't, Lina—it will all come out right."

"No, no—I feel it—I know it—we must give each other up. The very first hint almost killed her, and no wonder. I did not think of it before—so much kindness made me forget. But what am I? Who am I, to dare equal myself with her son?"

"What are you, Lina!" said Ralph, and his fine face glowed with generous feelings. "What are you! An angel! the dearest, best!"

Lina could not help being pleased with this enthusiasm, but she cut it short, placing her hand upon his mouth.

"It is kind of you to say this, but the facts—oh! these facts—are stubborn things. What am I but a poor little girl, who wandered from, no one can say where, into your house, a miserable waif, drifted by chance upon the charity of your parents! I have no antecedents beyond their kindness—no name, save that which they gave me—no past, no future. Is it for me to receive affection from their son—to climb ambitiously to the topmost branches of the roof-tree that sheltered my happiness and my poverty?"

And this was the girl he had dared to think coarse and forward in not blushing at the liberties he had taken. This fair, noble girl, who, with all her delicacy, could utter such true, proud thoughts. For the moment, Ralph would have dropped on his knees, and asked her pardon in the dust. But, beware, young man—he that doubts a beloved object once, will doubt again. When you could, even in passing thought, judge that young creature wrongfully, it was a break in the chain of confidence that should bind true hearts together. Ralph! Ralph! a jewel is lost from the chain of your young life, and once rent asunder many a diamond bead will drop away from that torn link.

"Believe me," said the youth, burning with enthusiastic admiration of the young creature before him, "These proud words slander the noblest heart that ever beat in a woman's bosom. My mother loves you for yourself. All the better that God sent you to her unsought, as he does the wild flowers. Lina, the pride which reddens your cheek, would be abashed in her presence."

"It is not pride, Ralph, but shame that such thoughts should never have presented themselves before. I have dreamed all my life; up to this morning, I was a child. Now, a single hour has surrounded me with realities. The whole universe seems changed since yesterday."

Lina looked drearily around as she spoke. The hill-sides were indeed changed. The boughs, twelve hours before, so luxuriously gorgeous, were half denuded of their foliage. The over-ripe leaves were dropping everywhere through the damp atmosphere. A gush of wind shook them in heavy clouds to the earth. All the late wild flowers were beaten down and half-uprooted. Nature seemed merely a waste of luxurious beauty thrown into gloomy confusion, among which the high winds tore and rioted.

Lina was chilled by these winds, and drew her shawl closely, with a shivering consciousness of the change. The young man's ardent hope had no power to reassure her. The subtle intuition of her nature could not be reasoned with. Sad and disheartened, she followed Ralph slowly homeward.

A few hours after the scene we have described, the governess was half-way up the hill, on which the house of her nurse stood. She had walked all the way from General Harrington's dwelling, and her person bore marks of a rough passage across the hills. Her gaiter boots were saturated with wet, and soiled with reddish clay. Burdock burs and brambles clung to the skirt of her merino dress, which exhibited one or two serious rents. Her shawl had been torn off by a thicket of wild roses, and she carried it thrown across her arm, too much heated by walking to require it, though the day was cold.

On her way up the hill, she paused, and flinging her shawl on the ground, sat down. Opening the vellum-bound book, she read a few sentences in it, with a greedy desire to know the most important portion of its contents, before resigning it into hands that might hereafter deprive her of all knowledge regarding them. But the winds shook and rustled the pages about, till she was obliged to desist, and at last made her way up the hill in a flushed and excited state, leaving her shawl behind.

The moment she rose to a level with the house, the door opened, and the woman whom she claimed as a slave nurse, came forth, advancing towards Agnes with almost ferocious eagerness. She called out:

"Back again so soon! Then there is news."

"Look here," answered Agnes, holding up the volume, from which the jewelled heart still dangled, cleft in twain as it was. "In less than an hour after entering the house I had it safe. Isn't that quick work?"

"Give it to me—give it to me. You are a good girl, Agnes, a noble girl, worth a hundred of your lily-faced white folks. Give me the book, honey—do you hear?"

But Agnes, who had again opened the volume, held it back.

"Not yet, mammy—I have only read a little—don't be too eager—I have a right to know all that is in it!"

"Give me that book. Her secrets belong to me—only to me. Hand over the book, I say!"

"But I wish to read it, myself—who has a better right?"

The dark eyes of the slave flashed fire, and her hands quivered like the wings of a bird when its prey is in sight. She clutched fiercely at the book, hissing out her impatience like a serpent.

"Take it!" exclaimed Agnes fiercely, "but don't expect me to steal for you again."

"Hist!" answered the woman, crushing the book under her arm; "here comes one of the Harringtons on horseback. Clear that face and be ready to meet him, while I go in and hide Mabel Harrington's soul!"

CHAPTER XVI.
JAMES HARRINGTON'S RIDE.

James Harrington left the breakfast-table with a restless desire to be alone in the free air. He had not slept during the night, but spent the silent hours in thought, which filled both his heart and brain with excitement. The deep tenderness of his nature warred terribly against its strong moral force, but only as the quick tempests of summer hurled against a rock, beat down all the beautiful wild blossoms and moss upon its surface, but leave it immovable as ever.

As he went forth from his room, Ralph passed him, looking restless and anxious.

"Brother James! Brother James!" he said, "I wish to speak with you very much, but not now. I have no heart to say anything just yet!"

James smiled, very gravely, but with a look of gentle patience, that told how completely his strong passions were held in control. Few men in his excited state would have proved so thoughtful of others; for he had no idea that Ralph had any more important subject to consult him about, than some shooting excursion in the hills, or a horse-back ride with Lina.

"I am going out for an hour or two," he said; "I have been suffering with headache all night. The air seems close to me in-doors. After I come back, will that be time enough, Ralph?"

"I don't know. Yes, of course it will—there is no hurry," answered the impetuous boy, "only I'm so vexed and troubled just now."

"Well, come up to my room. It does not matter much if I go or not—this miserable headache will not probably be driven away."

"No, I can wait. You ought to ride out. How pale you are! Why, your face is quite changed! Indeed, brother James, I will not speak another word till you get back. I wonder what has come over us all this morning. Poor mother ill—the General out of sorts—you with a headache, and I, yes, I may as well own up—I have got something so near heart-sickness here, that—but never mind—I'll shake it off, or know the reason why. But one word, James, did you ever think my mother an illiberal woman?"

"Illiberal, Ralph? Your mother!"

"Well, I mean this. Is she a woman to reject beauty and worth, and everything estimable, because—" James Harrington cut the question short by laying a hand on his brother's shoulder somewhat heavily.

"Your mother, Ralph, is a woman so much above question in all her actions and motives, that even these half-doubts in her son are sacrilegious."

The color rushed up to Ralph's forehead. First he had lost confidence in Lina—now, in his mother.

"If you have a doubt of your mother, speak it to her," said James more gently, as he drew on his riding gloves. "After that, I will talk with you!"

"I wonder what has come over me—James is offended; I never saw him so grave before," muttered Ralph, as his brother moved down the hall.

"Everything goes wrong. Even Fair-Star started, as if she would spring at me, when I looked in to see if my mother was up. I will put an end to this!"

Thus half-passionately, half in thought, he went in search of Lina.

James Harrington mounted his horse and rode away. He wanted the clear air and freedom of expanse, motion, anything that would distract his thoughts, and bring back the self-control that had almost departed from him. He rode at random along the highway leading to the city, down cross roads and by the shore, sometimes at a sharp gallop, sometimes giving his well-trained horse the head, till both steed and rider flashed like an arrow between the stooping branches.

In this wild way he rode, unconscious of his course, and without any absolute object, save free air and that rapid motion which harmonizes so well with turbulent feelings. The horse took his own way up hill, along shore, up hill again, till all at once he came out on a green shelf in the hills, upon which a single dwelling stood.

He drew up his horse suddenly, for there a little way from the house and some distance before him, stood two women in eager conversation. One had her back toward him, but her left hand was in sight, and in it was an open book, with its leaves fluttering in the wind. The air and dress of this person reminded him so forcibly of Lina's governess, that he remained a moment looking earnestly that way; not that her presence on the hill would have been particularly remarkable, for on glancing around he recognized by its position, that her nurse's house must be in that neighborhood. But that very morning he had seen the governess passing toward Mrs. Harrington's room, and her appearance in both these places so nearly at the same time, aroused his curiosity, not to say suspicion.

The object that struck him most forcibly was the female with whom she seemed to be conversing. The stately person, the picturesque costume, composed entirely of rich warm colors, the eager expression of features that must once have been eminently handsome—above all, the air of almost ferocious authority, with which she was speaking, struck him as strangely out of place in that solitary spot. Beyond this, he felt a vague impression, impalpable and formless, of some connection between that woman and former events of his own life. It might have been her dress so foreign to the place, or her humble mode of life. The Madras kerchief, folded in a turban over the black hair falling down each side of her face in the heaviest waves of rippling jet, and the massive earrings that gleamed beneath, were in themselves calculated to awake remembrances of an early youth spent in the South, where this picturesque costume was common among the slaves; but the woman's face fascinated his gaze more than her general appearance. Some recollection too vague for embodiment, arose on his brain so powerfully, that he was unconscious of the time thus spent in gazing upon her.

At last the woman gave a quick glance toward him, and darting forward, snatched at the book in her companion's hand, talking rapidly.

There was some resistance—an attempt to ward her off—but the book was at last yielded to her impetuosity. He saw it, gathered up under the woman's arm, concealed by the folds of an orange-colored scarf, overrun with a pattern of many gorgeous colors, which she wore, and carried into the house.

Then the person whose back had been toward him, turned and looked that way. It was Agnes Barker. She saw him, evidently without much surprise, and turning, rather leisurely walked that way, as if it had been the most natural thing in the world to meet him there.

"Oh, Mr. Harrington," she said, coming close to his horse, picking the burs from her dress as she moved along, "can it be possible that you have only reached this point now? I left home half an hour after you rode away—on foot, too, and am here before you."

Harrington did not answer, except with a grave bow, but looked at her searchingly from head to foot.

"Yes," she continued, dragging her veil forward, "I found a rough walk after the storm, everything is so wet and gloomy. The only dry spot upon the shore was around the old cedar, where we had that rather interesting scene last night."

A quiet smile stole over Harrington's lip. "Indeed," he said, "I must have ridden at a snail's pace, to let you reach this spot before me—especially if the entire walk was beguiled by the book I just saw you surrender!"

A faint flush stole over Agnes Barker's forehead, and for an instant her eyes fell; then she looked up again with the pretty deprecating glance of one who had been caught in a meritorious act, which her modesty disclaimed.

"Oh, you must not think me quite insane, Mr. Harrington, if I did bring out my sketch-book, in hopes of stealing some of the beautiful autumn tints from these masses of foliage. My good nurse has just been scolding me for sitting on the damp ground, forgetting my shawl behind, and all that. As a punishment, she has carried off my poor book, and threatens to burn it. I have been very imprudent, and very indecorous, you will say," she added, glancing at her dress, with a faint laugh, "but, no doubt my caprice is sufficiently punished by this time; for, if that access of smoke means anything, my poor sketch-book is ashes now."

She spoke a little rapidly, as one does in a fever, but otherwise her manner was the perfection of modest innocence. Indeed, there was no appearance of confusion, which the derangement of her dress was not quite sufficient to account for.

"Well, you come in and rest a while?" she said at last, casting a soft glance upward from her dress. "My good mammy may not be prepared for such company, but she will make you welcome."

"Yes," said Harrington, struck by a sudden wish to see more of the woman who had interested him so much, "I will go in, thank you!"

She turned, as if to precede him, but throwing his bridle over a sapling, he walked rapidly forward, and overtook her just before she entered the house. The door was partly open. Agnes turned upon the threshold.

"I know that my poor book is burned, without asking," she said, in a voice much louder than usual. "You have no idea, Mr. Harrington, how careful nurse is of my health. Do not be surprised if she is very angry with me!"

"It is very difficult to surprise me with anything," said Harrington, drawing nearer to the door, through which he saw glimpses of orange-colored drapery disappearing into an inner room.

"You must not say that, for I had expected some surprise at the view from this particular point," she answered, evidently wishing to detain him on the door step.

"Yes, it is very fine; but you will find the wind rather keen. Allow me."

Harrington pushed the door wide open, and Agnes was obliged to pass into the apartment beyond. She seemed relieved to find it empty, and when her guest looked toward the opposite door, observed; "I am in disgrace, you see, mammy has shut herself up."

"And yet I have some desire to see her, if it were only to excuse the fright we gave her last night, by allowing you to enter without knocking."

"Oh, she did not mind it in the least. It was nothing, I assure you."

"Still I would like to speak with her."

Agnes grew pale about the lips, a sign of emotion that did not escape her guest; but it passed off in an instant, and she was slowly approaching the inner door, when it opened, and the object of their conversation presented herself.

CHAPTER XVII.
THAT WOMAN.

Harrington was, indeed, surprised when he saw this woman. She was evidently ten years older than she had appeared at a distance, and, though that seemed an impossibility, darker too. The Madras kerchief certainly had been refolded since her return to the house, for it came low upon the forehead, and the hair visible beneath it was thickly scattered with white. She stooped somewhat, and her gait was slow, almost shuffling. Not a vestige of the imperious air that had rendered her so picturesque a few minutes before, remained. She appeared before him simply as a common-place light mulatto of rather more than middle age, who might have been an upper house servant in her day, but nothing more. On closer inspection, even the orange-tinted shawl was soiled and held around her person in a slovenly manner, as rich cast-off garments usually are by the servants who inherit them.

At first, Harrington would not believe that this was the same woman whose appearance had made so deep an impression on him, for a heavy sort of sluggishness, both of thought and feeling, lay on her features, while those that had aroused his attention so keenly, were active and full of intelligence. The woman did not sit down, but stood by the open door, looking stupidly at Agnes Barker, as if waiting for some command.

"Well, Miss Agnes, I'se here, what does the master please to want?"

It was rather difficult for James Harrington, self-possessed as he was, to answer that question. The woman had taken him by surprise. Her appearance was so completely that of a common-place servant, that he was silenced by the very surprise she had given him. But for her dress, he would not have believed in her identity with the person he had seen in the open air, and that was worn with a slovenliness altogether unlike the ease remarkable in the person whom she represented, without conveying an impression of absolute identity.

Harrington had spent his early life in the South, and was at no loss to comprehend the peculiar class to which this woman belonged. He answered her quietly, but still with suspicion:

"Nothing, aunty, except that you will oblige me with a glass of water."

The woman shuffled across the room, and brought him some water, which she placed scrupulously on a plate, by way of waiter, before presenting it. Her air—the loose, indolent gait, like that of a leopard moving sleepily around its lair—convinced him that she had been nothing more than a common household slave, out of place in her cold, and almost poverty-stricken northern home. He drank the water she gave him, and handing back the glass, inquired if she did not feel lonely and chilled by the cold climate?

"I'se allus warm and comfortable where dat ere chile is," said the woman, looking at Agnes, "any place 'pears like home when she's by, and I 'xpect she feels like dat where old aunty is, if she is poor."

"She is happy in having one faithful friend," answered Harrington, more and more satisfied that the woman was simply what she seemed.

A strange smile quivered for a moment around Agnes Barker's lip, but as Harrington turned his glance that way, it subsided into a look of gentle humility.

"You will inform the ladies that I shall return to-night. It proved a chilly day for sketching, and finding myself nearer my own home than the mansion-house, I stole a few moments for poor, old, lonesome mammy here."

Harrington had arisen as she commenced speaking, and with a grave bend of the head, promised to convey her message.

The two women watched him as he crossed the rude garden, and mounted his horse; then drawing hurriedly back into the house, they closed the door.

"What could have brought him here? Did she send him?" inquired the slave-woman anxiously, and all at once assuming the haughty air natural to her, while a keen intelligence came to her features.

"No," answered Agnes, "she is ill in bed; I am sure she has not seen him this morning. It must have been accident that brought him in this direction."

The slave-woman looked searchingly in the girl's face.

"Did he know that you came this way?"

"That is impossible."

"It should not be impossible. You have been months in his house, Agnes—I did not expect so little progress."

Agnes was annoyed, and put aside the subject with an impatient gesture.

"What have you been doing, girl?" persisted the woman, "remember your own destiny is in this more than mine."

"But why select this man, so difficult of access, so unattainable?"

"Because he has wealth and power."

"There is some other reason, mammy. Let me know it!"

"Well, know it, then—I believe that woman loves him—I know that she loved him once."

"I know that she loves him yet," said Agnes, with a sinister smile. "For I witnessed a scene last night, when she came to after they had dragged her from the water, which settled that in my mind; but what do you care for that? How will it help us?"

"What do I care for that—I—I—what does the hungry man care for food, or the thirsty one for water? What do I care, child? Listen: I hate that woman—from my soul I hate her!"

"Then it was hatred of her, not love for me, that brought us here!"

"It was both, Agnes—do not doubt it. When I avenge the wrongs of my life on her, you must be a gainer."

"I do not understand you."

"It is not necessary; obey me, that is enough."

"But how has Mrs. Harrington wronged you?"

"How has she wronged me, Agnes! Be quiet, I am not to be questioned in this way."

"But, I am no longer a child to be used blindly. You have objects which I do not comprehend—motives which are so rigidly concealed that I, who am to help work them out, grope constantly in the dark. I am told to listen, watch, work, even steal, and am left ignorant of the end to be accomplished."

"Have I not told you that it is your marriage with Mr. James Harrington, the real owner of all the property which his father is supposed to possess? Am I not working to make you the richest lady of the North, the wife of a man whom all other men hold in reverence; and in this am I not securing the dearest and sweetest vengeance that mortal ever tasted?"

"But I do not think Mr. Harrington cares for me, or ever will."

"What have you been doing, then?" cried the woman fiercely. "You have beauty, or, if not that, something far more powerful—that subtle magnetism which all men feel a thousand times more forcibly, deep knowledge; for have I not taught you what human hearts are worth, and how to dissect them, leaf by leaf? You have coolness, self-control, and passion when it is wanted. Have I not trained you from the cradle for this one object, and dare you talk of its failure?"

"Mammy, let us understand each other. Cannot we accomplish the same thing, and both be gratified? I do not love Mr. James Harrington, but there is one of the name that I do love, heart and soul."

"And who is that?" demanded the woman sharply, and her black eyes caught fire from the anger within her.

"It is the other, Ralph Harrington."

How hard and defiant was the voice in which Agnes Barker said this—a young girl expressing her first love without a blush, and with that air of cold-blooded defiance. It was terrible!

"Ralph Harrington, he is her son, and a beggar!" cried the woman bitterly.

"I do not understand what force may lie in the first objection, and I do not believe in the second. Ralph cannot be a beggar, while his brother holds so much wealth; at any rate, I love him."

"Love, girl! What have you to do with this sweet poison? The thing Love is not your destiny."

"It is, though, and shall control it," replied Agnes, with the same half-insolent tone; for it seemed to be a relief for this young girl to act out spontaneously the evil of her nature, and she appeared to enjoy the kindling anger of her servant—if that slave woman was her servant—with vicious relish.

The woman walked close to the insolent girl, with her hand clenched, and her lips pressed firmly together.

"Agnes, Agnes—you cannot know how much rests on you—how great a revenge your obstinacy may baffle."

"I know that I love Ralph Harrington, and if it will comfort you to hear it, he does not love me," answered the girl with a burning glow in either cheek.

"Oh, you have come back again—it is his blood on fire in your cheeks. I have no fear of you, Agnes. That blood grows strong with age like old wine, and soon learns to give hatred for unanswered love. I can trust the blood."

"But he shall love me, or, at any rate, no one else shall have what he withholds from me."

"Be still, Agnes, do not make me angry again. You and I must work together. Tell me, did you succeed in quieting General Harrington's inquiries regarding the letters of recommendation?"

"Did I succeed?" answered Agnes, with a smile that crept over her young lips like a viper. "The old General is more pliable than the son. Oh, yes, when he began questioning me of the whereabouts of our kind friends who think so much of us, you know, I put forth all the accomplishments you have taught me, and wiled him from the subject in no time. You have just questioned my beauty, mammy. I doubt if he did then, for his eyes were not off my face a moment. What fine eyes the old gentleman has, though! I think it would be easier to obey you in that quarter than the other."

As she uttered the last words with a reckless lift of the head, the slave-woman made a spring at her, and grasping the scornfully uplifted shoulder, bent her face—which was that of a fiend—close to the young girl's ear: "Beware, girl, beware!" she whispered, "you are treading among adders."

"I think you are crazy," was the contemptuous reply, as Agnes released her shoulder from the gripe of that fierce hand. "My shoulder will be black and blue after this, and all for a joke about a conceited old gentleman whom we are both taking in. Did you not tell me to delude him off the subject if he mentioned those letters of recommendation again?"

The woman did not answer, but stood bending forward as if ashamed of her violence, but yet with a gleam of rage lingering in her black eyes.

"Have you done?" said Agnes, arranging her velvet sacque, which had been torn from its buttons in front, by the rude handling she had received.

"You must not speak in that way again," answered the old woman in a low voice, "I did not mean to hurt you, child, but General Harrington is not a man for girls like you to joke about."

"This is consistent, upon my word," answered the girl with a short scornful laugh. "You teach me to delude the old gentleman into a half-flirtation. He meets me in the grounds—begins to ask about the persons from whom we obtained those precious recommendations, and when I attempt to escape the subject, persists in walking by me till I led him a merry dance up the steepest hill that could be found, and left him there out of breath, and in the midst of a protestation that I was the loveliest person he had ever seen. Loveliest—no, that was not it—the most bewitching creature! these were the last words I remember, for that moment Benson's boat hove in sight, and there sat madam looking fairly at us. If they had been a moment later, I'm quite sure the old fellow would have been down upon his knees in the dead leaves."

The slave-woman listened to this flippant speech in cold silence. She was endowed with a powerful will, matched with pride that was almost satanic. She saw the malicious pleasure with which Agnes said all this, and would not gratify it by a single glance. With all her wicked craft, the young girl was no match for the woman.

"You have acted unwisely," she said with wonderful self-command; "never trifle with side issues when they can possibly interfere with the main object. I wished to evade General Harrington's close scrutiny into our antecedents; to soothe the lion, not goad him. Be careful of this a second time!"

How calmly she spoke! You would not have believed her the same woman who had sprung upon the girl so like a tiger only a few moments before. Even Agnes looked upon her with amazement.

"Woman," she said, "tell me what you are at—trust me, and I will help you heart and soul."

"What! even to the giving up of this new-born love?"

"Even to that, if I can be convinced of its necessity."

"I will trust you."

"Wholly—entirely?"

"Entirely!"

The girl threw her arms around that singular woman, their lips met, and the subtle force of one heart kindled and burned in the bosom of the other.

"Tell me everything, mamma!"

"I will. But first, let us read Mabel Harrington's journal, it will prepare you for the rest."

They opened the stolen book, and sat down together so close that their arms were interlaced, and their cheeks touched as they read.

It was a terrible picture, that meagre, dimly-lighted room, the tree-boughs waving against the window, their leaves vocal with the last sob of the storm, and those two women with their keen evil faces, their lips parted with eagerness, and their eyes gleaming darkly, as they drank up the secrets of poor Mabel Harrington's life.

CHAPTER XVIII.
OLD HEADS AND YOUNG HEARTS.

General Harrington spent the entire day at home. After the rather uncomfortable breakfast we have already described, he went to his library, discontented and moody. All day he was disposed to be restless and dissatisfied with his books, as he had been with the appointments of his morning meal. Indignant with his whole household, for not being on the alert to amuse him, he declined going down to dinner; but ordering some choicely cooked birds and a bottle of champagne in his own room, amused his rather fastidious appetite with these delicacies, while he luxuriated in his dressing-gown, and read snatches from a new book of poems that had interested him for the moment.

This rather pleasant occupation wiled away an hour, when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Lifting his eyes from the book, the General said, "Come in," rather hastily, for the knock had broken into one of the finest passages of the poem, and General Harrington detested interruptions of any kind, either in a mental or sensual enjoyment.

"Come in!"

The General was a good deal astonished when his son Ralph opened the door, and stood before him with an air of awkward constraint, that would certainly have secured him a reprimand had he not been the first to speak.

"Father!"

General Harrington gave an impatient wave of the hand.

"Young gentleman," he said, "how often am I to remind you that the use of the paternal title after childhood is offensive. Can't you call me General Harrington, sir, as other people do? A handsome young fellow six feet high should learn to forget the nursery. Sit down, sir, sit down and converse like a gentleman, if you have anything to say."

The blood rose warmly in Ralph's face, not that he was angry or surprised, but it seemed impossible to open his warm heart to the man before him.

"Well then, General," he said, with a troubled smile, "I—I've been getting into—into——"

"Not into debt, I trust," said the General, folding the skirts of the Turkish dressing-gown over his knees, and smoothing the silken fabric with his hand, but speaking with a degree of genuine bitterness, "because, if that's it, you had better go to James at once—he is the millionaire. I am not much better than his pensioner myself!"

"It is not that," answered Ralph, with an effort which sent the blood crimsoning to his temples, "though money may have something to do with it in time. The truth is, General, I have been in love with Lina all my life, and never found it out till yesterday."

General Harrington gave the youth a look from under his bent brows, that made the young man shrink back in his chair, but in a moment the unpleasant expression went off, and a quiet smile stole over the old man's lip.

"Oh, you will get over that, Ralph. It isn't worth being angry about. Of course, you will get over it. I think this is a first love, hey!"

"The first and last with me, fath—General."

"Yes, yes, of course—I think I remember feeling a little in the same way at your age. It won't be serious—these things never are!"

"But I am very serious. I have told her all about it. My honor is pledged."

The young man—who, by the way, really seemed a mere boy yet to his father—was going on with some vehemence, but he was coldly cut short by the General, who sat regarding his enthusiasm with a most provoking smile.

"Of course, I supposed so—eternal constancy and devotion on both sides! Very well, what can I do about it?"

"Oh, father, I beg your pardon—but you can do everything. Your free, hearty consent is all I ask—and if you would be so kind as to exert a little influence with mother."

"Then you have told this to her, before coming to me," said the General, and his brow darkened.

"No, sir, I have spoken to no one but Lina. It was my duty to come to you first, and I am here."

"That is better; but how do you know that Mrs. Harrington will disapprove of your caprice for her protégé, if no one has spoken to her on the subject?"

"I believe, sir, that Lina said something about it; but before she could be very definite, my mother fainted. This frightened my—I mean, it terrified poor Lina, and she had no courage to go on; so we were in hopes, sir, that you would be so good."

The General sat gazing upon the handsome face of his son, with the air of a person revolving some thought rapidly in his mind. At last, his cold eyes brightened, and a smile crept over his mouth.

"It was very right to come here first, Ralph, and remember your duty goes no farther. I will only consent to your marrying this girl at all, on condition that you, neither of you, ever speak on the subject to any one. You are both very young, and a year or two hence will be time enough for a decision; but I will have no gossip about the matter. Above all, my son James must be left entirely uncommitted. I only consent to let this fancy have a proper trial. If it proves serious, of course the whole family will be informed; but till then I must have your promise not to speak of it to any one not already informed."

The young man drew close to his father, and taking his hand, kissed it.

"I promise, father!"

The General was pleased with the homage and grace of this action, and rising placed a hand on Ralph's shoulder, more cordially than he had done for years.

"Are you sure she cares for you, Ralph? I have seen nothing to suggest the idea."

"I think, indeed I am quite certain that she does not like any one else near so much," answered the young man, reluctant to compromise Lina's delicacy by a broader confession.

"Young men are always confident," said the General with a bland smile. "I think that faith in woman was the first delusion that I gave up. Still it is pleasant while it lasts. Heaven forbid that I should brush the bloom from your grapes, my boy. So you really think that mamma's little protégé knows her own mind, and that my son knows his?"

A pang came to the ardent heart of the youth as he listened. Another golden thread snapped under the cold-blooded worldliness of that crafty old man.

General Harrington looked in his face, and analyzed the play of those handsome features, exactly as he had tasted the game-birds and champagne a half hour before. The same relish was in both enjoyments, only one was the epicureanism of a mind that found pleasure in dissecting a young heart, and the other, quite as important to him, was a delicious sensuality.

And Ralph stood under this scrutiny with a cloud on his fine brow and a faint quiver of the lip. It was agony to think of Lina without perfect confidence in her affection for himself. Yet he was so young, and his father had seen so much. If he found no evidence of Lina's attachment to himself, it might be that all was a delusion.

The old man read these thoughts, and took upon himself a gentle air of composure.

"These things often happen when young people are thrown together in the same house, Ralph. It is a pleasant dream. Both parties wake up, and there is no harm done. Don't take the thing to heart, it isn't worth while."

"Then you think, sir, she really does not care for me?"

With all his worldliness, the old man could hardly withstand the appeal of those magnificent eyes, for Ralph possessed the beautiful charm of deep feeling, without a particle of self-conceit. He began to wonder how Lina ever could have fancied him, and to grieve over the delusion.

"It is strange," said the General, as if musing with himself, "it is strange, but these very young creatures seldom do give their first preferences to persons of corresponding age. Girls love to look up to men with reverence. It is really wonderful."

The young man started, fire flashed into his eyes, and for an instant he was breathless.

"You—you cannot mean that, Lina—my Lina loves some one else!" he said, speaking rapidly—"Who has she known but me, and—and—?" He stopped short, looking wistfully at his father.

"You and my son James? No one, certainly, no one."

"Brother James! oh, father."

"But you are satisfied that she loves you, and that is enough," answered the General, waving his hand as if tired of the discussion. "It is decided that this whole subject rests between ourselves. Come to me a year, nay, six months from now, and if you desire it, then, I will not be hard with you."

The General seated himself as he spoke, and resumed his book with a gentle wave of the hand. Ralph bent his head partly in submission, partly to conceal the flush that suppressed tears left about his eyes and went out, leaving the first pure jewel of his heart in that old man's hands.

The twilight had crept on during this conversation. General Harrington rang the bell for a servant to remove the silver tray on which his dinner had been served, and consumed considerable time in directing how the lamp should be placed, in order to protect his eyes as he read. When once more alone, he cast a thought back to his son.

"It will do him good. I wonder now if I, General Harrington, ever was so confiding, so rash, so generous,—for the boy is generous. My son, on whom so much depends, married to that girl! I was almost tempted into a scene with the first mention of it."

With these thoughts floating through his brain, the General leaned back in his chair more discomposed than usual by his late interview, for though his reflections were all worldly and commonplace, they had a deeper and unexpressed importance hardly recognized by himself.

Again there was a low knock at the door, and again the General bade the intruder come in, rather hastily, for he was in no humor for company! "Miss Barker; Miss Agnes Barker," he said, as that girl presented herself and softly closed the door, "you are too kind—I only regret that this pleasant surprise detects me en déshabillé."

"General Harrington is always General Harrington in any dress—besides, I have a preference for this sort of orientalism."

"You are kind to forgive me, and kinder to allow me the happiness of your presence. Sit down!"

"No," answered the governess, with a look from her black almond-shaped eyes that brought a glow into the old man's cheek deeper than the wine had left. "I found the book open upon Mrs. Harrington's desk. She must have forgotten it there after her fainting fit this morning. I am sure she has no secrets from her husband, and so bring it to you, as it may excite her to be disturbed, and I have no key to her desk."

The General reached forth his hand, struck by the vellum binding and jewelled clasp, for he was a connoisseur in such matters, and the effect pleased him.

"What is it?" he said, opening the book and leaning towards the light, "some illuminated missal, I fancy, or rare manuscript. Oh—ha, my lady's journal—let us see."

He had opened the book at random, and with a gratified smile, but directly the expression of his face hardened, and his lips parted with surprise. He turned the open volume toward Agnes, who stood leaning upon the table opposite; placed his finger sternly upon a passage of the writing, and demanded whether she had read it.

"You insult me with the question," said the lady, drawing herself up, "I did not expect this," and before he could speak Agnes glided from the room.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE LOVER'S CONFESSION.

Ralph dared not confide in his brother James, as he had proposed to himself, and the elder Harrington was so occupied with his own conflicting thoughts that the momentary annoyance expressed by the youth had passed from his mind. He did not even remark that Ralph avoided any conversation with him, or that Lina was paler than usual, and from time to time looked anxiously in his face, as if to draw some reassurance from its expression that might bring her back into the bosom of the family from which she felt all at once inexplicably repulsed. The General was absent, or remained in his own room, sending down word that he was occupied, and that the business of the day must go on without him.

Mabel was not yet well enough to leave her own immediate apartments. Thus it happened that a silent and uncomfortable meal followed every reunion of the family for some days after the storm, which seemed still brooding blackly over the household. James Harrington went forth again and again from the breakfast room, without regarding the anxious looks of his brother, or the tearful eyes of poor Lina, and both these young persons held him in that awe which is always felt when reserve and secrets creep into bosoms warmed with kindred life.

Poor Lina. She felt, in that splendid mansion, like Eve wandering through the bowers of paradise after the sentence of banishment had been passed upon her. Lonely and sad of heart, she sat hour after hour in her solitary chamber waiting for some one to summon her, or ask a cause for the tears that came trembling with every thought to her heavy eyes. She avoided Ralph, for without his parents' consent, her own sensitive delicacy rendered the old intercourse impossible, and any other wounded her to the soul with its restraints. Thus it happened that pretty, pure-hearted Lina sat in her room and wept.

But Ralph was more impetuous. After exploring every part of the old mansion, dragging out guns, fishing tackle, and other provocatives of amusement, only to put them back again in disgust—after rowing furiously up and down the river, unconscious and uncaring what course he took, the youth grew impatient under his restraints, and promptly resolved to break through them at any rate, as far as Lina was concerned. She should creep away in gentle silence and spend her time in weeping no longer. He remembered that General Harrington had not forbidden them to meet as of old, and that his prohibition of speech could not extend to the mother, who had already been to some extent confided in. In short, Ralph was young, ardent, and restive of trouble, so, after a brief battle with himself, he resolved that the General had meant nothing by his prohibition, but to prevent premature gossip in the household.

When quite convinced of this, the youth cast all other thoughts aside, and sought out Lina in her solitude. She heard his footsteps with a leap of the heart, and a brightening of the eye which no sense of duty could check. How hopefully it sounded, how bold and firm it was. What had happened? Would he stop at her door?

Yes, yes, Lina! his heart bounds and throbs even more warmly than your own! His face is radiant with hope, which, without other source, springs out of his own buoyant nature. He has cast doubt behind him, and says, in answer to the arguments that struggle to get possession of his reason, "Let to-morrow take care of itself. I will see Lina to-day!"

He knocks at her door, and a smile that she cannot help, breaks through the trouble in Lina's eyes, as she arises with a thrill of mingled joy and dread, to let him in. She opens the door, and stands before him, blushing, and all in a tremor of delight, which will not be suppressed, but which her little heart says is very ungrateful and wicked, knowing, as she did, how wrong it was for her, a poor little outcast, to think of Ralph Harrington, when his mother is opposed to it utterly, and his father almost treats the whole subject with ridicule. Ralph has told her faithfully every word that passed between him and his father, and her delicate intuition detects the uncertainty and hollowness of it all. With these honorable feelings warring against the newly-awakened love in her heart, it is no wonder that gentle Lina trembled, and grew red and white again in the presence of her lover.

"Lina, dear, dear, Lina."

She reached out her hand. How could she resist beneath that bright, hopeful look? Her lips, that had begun to quiver, dimpled into a smile, as the soft fingers yielded themselves to his clasp. She attempted to reprove his coming, but that rebellious little mouth would only say "Ralph! oh, Ralph!" with a gush of tender joy in the words, which made the heart leap in his bosom, like a prisoned bird called suddenly by its mate.

"Lina, dear, dear, Lina! you look sad. Your poor eyes are heavy. You can bear this no longer. I am a man, and strong, but it almost kills me to be away from you. The General is away. I believe my mother is in her room. Come with me. Anything is better than seeing you suffer."

Lina drew back, and tried to wrest her hand from his grasp, but he only held it more firmly.

"No, no. I do not suffer any, hardly. Go away, Ralph, dear Ralph, go away, or it will kill me."

"I do not wish to see you unauthorized. Come to my mother, Lina!"

"No, no, I dare not. It kills me to remember that look."

"But I can endure these restraints no longer, Lina. My father, at least, does not withhold a conditional consent—surely our mother, the dearest and best woman that ever drew breath, will not be less generous. At any rate, we will know the worst. Come, Lina."

The young man, with his untamed will, drew the timid Lina firmly, but tenderly, from her vantage ground in the room, and hurried her away toward his mother's room.

Mabel was sitting up, calm and pale, like one who ceases to resist, though in the midst of a storm. She arose to receive her son with a gentle smile, and glanced kindly at Lina.

Ralph, full of impetuous warmth, threw his arm around the young girl, and brought her forward with gentle force.

"Mother, you have always loved her; now let it be more than ever, for my sake. She is all the world to me."

They were looking upward to Mabel's face—the one boldly and with honest confidence, the other shy and wistful—dreading the first glance, as if it had been a dagger. But an exclamation of astonishment broke from them both, at the sudden illumination of those eyes—at the smile that parted her lips, like sunshine forcing a red rose bud into sudden flower. Yes, the countenance of Mabel Harrington brightened into beauty then, and it was one which the heart leaped toward with gushes of tenderness.

The eyes of Ralph Harrington danced and sparkled in their joy, and Lina's brightened up, till the very tears shone like diamonds in them.

"Oh, mother, my blessed, blessed mother, how happy you have made us—how good you are!"

And yet she had not spoken a word. That eloquent face had done it all. She sunk slowly to her seat, sighing, but, oh! how pleasantly. Ralph seized her hand, which he covered with grateful kisses. Lina fell upon her knees, and burying her face in Mabel's lap, mingled soft murmurs with a world of broken sighs, as she had done many a time when a little petted child. Her gentle heart was brimful of thanksgiving, which she could utter in no other way.

"My children you have made me so happy!" exclaimed Mabel, folding them both in her arms. "I never expected to be happy again, and lo! God heaps all this blessedness at my feet."

"I thought you were offended with me," said Lina, lifting her bright face to meet the pleasant glance bent upon her.

"Offended, darling! I misunderstood you. Why, lady-bird, did you call my son Ralph, Mr. Harrington?"

Lina blushed scarlet, and Ralph laughed, little dreaming what cruel struggles had followed this trifling change of names. Indeed, Ralph was rather proud of the new dignity with which Lina's bashful love had invested him; and Lina was greatly puzzled to know what harm there was in calling so fine a young fellow Mr. Harrington, after all.

While they were hovering around Mabel's chair, overwhelming her with the abundance of their own happiness, there was a commotion among the passion-flowers at the window, and the vine was once so violently agitated, that some of its blossoms dropped away and fell through the sash-door; but no one of that happy trio heeded it, and Agnes Barker escaped once more from the balcony unseen.