MIRIAM MONFORT:

A NOVEL.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE."

"Fancy, with fact, is just one fact the more."

"Let this old woe step on the stage again,
Act itself o'er anew for men to judge;
Not by the very sense and sight indeed,
Which take at best imperfect cognizance.
Since, how heart moves brain, and how both move hand,
What mortal ever in entirety saw?
Yet helping us to all we seem to hear,
For, how else know we save by worth of word?"

BROWNING, "The Ring and the Book"

NEW YORK:

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

549 & 551 BROADWAY.

1873.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of one most dear, who saw it grow to completion with pleasure and approbation, during the last happy summer of a life since darkened by misfortune. Peace be his!

MONFORT HALL.

"Not one friend have we here, not one true heart;
We've nothing but ourselves."

"There's a dark spirit walking in our house,
And swiftly will the destiny close on us.
It drove me hither from my calm asylum;
It lures me forward—in a seraph's shape
I see it near, I see it nearer floating—
It draws, it pulls me with a godlike power,
And, lo, the abyss! and thither am I moving;
I have no power within me—but to move."

"He is the only one we have to fear, he and his father."

COLERIDGE'S Translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein"

MIRIAM MONFORT

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

PART I.

MONFORT HALL.

CHAPTER I.

My father, Reginald Monfort, was an English gentleman of good family, who, on his marriage with a Jewish lady of wealth and refinement, emigrated to America, rather than subject her and himself to the commentaries of his own fastidious relatives, and the incivilities of a clique to which by allegiance of birth and breeding he unfortunately belonged.

Her own family had not been less averse to this union than the aristocratic house of Monfort, and, had she not been the mistress of her own acts and fortune, would, no doubt, have absolutely prevented it. As it was, a wild wail went up from the synagogue at the loss of one of its brightest ornaments, and the name of "Miriam Harz" was consigned to silence forever.

Orphaned and independent, this obloquy and oblivion made little difference to its object, especially when the broad Atlantic was placed, as it soon was, between her and her people, and new ties and duties arose in a strange land to bind and interest her feelings.

During her six years of married life, I have every reason to believe that she was, as it is termed, "perfectly happy," although a mysterious disease of the nervous centres, that baffled medical skill either to cure or to name, early laid its grasp upon her, and brought her by slow degrees to the grave, when her only child had just completed her fifth year.

My father, the younger son of a nobleman who traced his lineage from Simon de Montfort, had been married in his own estate and among his peers before he met my mother. Poor himself (his commission in the army constituting his sole livelihood), he had espoused the young and beautiful widow of a brother officer, who, in dying, had committed his wife and her orphan child to his care and good offices, on a battle-field in Spain, and with her hand he had received but little of this world's lucre. The very pension, to which she would have been entitled living singly, was cut off by her second marriage, and with habits of luxury and indolence, such as too often appertain to the high-born, and cling fatally to the physically delicate, the burden of her expenses was more than her husband could well sustain.

Her parents and his own were dead, and there were no relatives on either side who could be called upon for aid, without a sacrifice of pride, which my father would have died rather than have made. He was nearly reduced to desperation by the circumstances of the case, when, fortunately perhaps for both, she suddenly sickened, drooped, and died, in his absence, during her brief sojourn at a watering-place, and all considerations were lost sight of at the time, in view of this unexpected and stunning blow—for Reginald Monfort was devoted, in his chivalric way, to his beautiful and fragile wife, as it was, indeed, his nature to be to every thing that was his own. Her very dependence had endeared her to him, nor had she known probably to what straits her exactions had driven him, nor what were his exigencies. Perhaps (let me strive to do her this justice, at least), had he been more open on these subjects, matters might have gone better. Yet he found consolation in the reflection that she had been happy in her ignorance of his affairs, and had experienced no strict privation during their short union, inevitably as this must later have been her portion, and certainly as, in her case, misery must have accompanied it.

Her child, in the absence of all near relatives, became his charge, and the little three-year-old girl, her mother's image, grew into his closest affections by reason of this likeness and her very helplessness. Two years after the death of his wife, he espoused my mother, a bright and beautiful woman of his own age, with whom he met casually at a banker's dinner in London, and who, fascinated by his Christian graces, reached her fair Judaic hand over all lines of Purim prejudice, and placed it confidingly in his own for life, thereby, as I have said, relinquishing home and kindred forever.

A hundred thousand pounds was a great fortune in those days and in our then modest republic, and this was the sum my parents brought with them from England—a heritage sufficiently large to have enriched a numerous family in America, but which was chiefly centred on one alone, as will be shown.

My father, a proud, shy, fastidious man, had always been galled by the consciousness of my mother's Israelitish descent, which she never attempted to conceal or deny, although, to please his sensitive requisitions, she dispensed with most of its open observances. That she clung to it with unfailing tenacity to the last I cannot doubt, however, from memorials written in her own hand—a very characteristic one—and from the testimony of Mrs. Austin, her faithful friend and attendant—the nurse, let me mention here, of my father's little step-daughter during her mother's lifetime, and her brief orphanage, as well as of his succeeding children.

Stanch in his love of church and country, we, his daughters, were all three christened, and "brought up," as it is termed, in the Episcopal Church, and early taught devotion to its rites and ceremonies. Yet, had we chosen for ourselves, perhaps our different temperaments might, even in this thing, have asserted themselves, and we might have embraced sects as diverse as our tastes were several. I shall come to this third sister presently, of whom I make but passing mention here. She was our flower, our pearl, our little ewe-lamb—the loveliest and the last—and I must not trust myself to linger with her memory now, or I shall lose the thread of my story, and tangle it with digression.

With my Oriental blood there came strange, passionate affection for all things sharing it, unknown to colder organizations—an affection in whose very vitality were the seeds of suffering, in whose very strength was weakness, perhaps in whose very enjoyment, sorrow. I have said my mother died of an insidious and inscrutable malady, which baffled friend and physician, when I was five years old. She had been so long ill, so often alienated from her household for days together, that her death was a less terrible evil, less suddenly so, at least, than if each morning had found her at her board, each evening at the family hearth, and every hour, as would have been the case in health, occupied with her children.

My father's grief was stern, quiet, solitary; ours, unreasonable and noisy, but soon over as to manifestation. Yet I must have suffered more than I knew of, I think, for then occurred the first of those strange lethargies or seizures that afterward returned at very unequal intervals during my childhood and early youth, and which roused my father's fears about my life and intellect itself, and gave me into the hands of a physician for many years thereof, vigorous, and healthy, and intelligent otherwise as I felt, and seemed, and was.

It was soon after the first settling down of tribulation in our household to that flat and almost unendurable calm or level that succeeds affliction, when a void is felt rather than expressed, and when all outward observances return to their olden habit, as a car backs slowly from a switch to its accustomed grooves, that a new face appeared among us, destined to influence, in no slight degree, the happiness of all who composed the family of Reginald Monfort.

It was summer. The house in which we lived was partly finished in the rear by wide and extensive galleries above and below, shaded by movable jalousies; and, on the upper one of these, that on which our apartments opened, my father had caused a hammock to be swung, for the comfort and pleasure of his children. With one foot listlessly dragging on the floor of the portico so as to propel the hammock, and lying partly on my face while I soothed my wide-eyed doll to sleep, I lay swaying in childish fashion when I heard Evelyn's soft step beside me, accompanied by another, firmer, slower, but as gentle if not as light. I looked up: a sweet face was bending over me, framed in a simple cottage bonnet of white straw, and braids of shining brown hair.

The eyes, large, lustrous, tender, of deepest blue, with their black dilated pupils, I shall never forget as they first met my own, nor the slow, sad smile that seemed to entreat my affectionate acquaintance. The effect was immediate and electric. I sat up in the hammock, I stretched out my hands to receive the proffered greeting, and then remained silently, child-fashion, surveying the new-comer.

"Kiss me," she said, "little Miriam. Have they not told you of me? I am Constance Glen—soon to be your teacher."

"Then I think I shall learn," I made grave reply, putting away the thick curls from my eyes and fixing them once more steadily on the face of the new-comer. "Yes, I will kiss you, for you look good and pretty. Did my mother send you here?"

"She is a strange child, Miss Glen," I heard Evelyn whisper. "Don't mind her—she often asks such questions."

"Very natural and affecting ones," Miss Glen observed, quietly, and the tears sprang to her violet eyes, at which I wondered. Yet, understanding not her words, I remembered them for later comprehension; a habit of childhood too little appreciated or considered, I think, by older people.

She had not replied to my question, so I repeated it eagerly. "Did my dear mother send you to me?" I said. "And where is she now?"

"No, tender child! I have not seen your mother. She is in heaven, I trust; where I hope we shall all be some day—with God. He sent me to you, probably—I fancy so, at least."

"Then God has got good again. He was very bad last week—very wicked; he killed our mother," whispering mysteriously.

"He is never bad, Miriam, never wicked; you must not say such things—no Christian would."

"But I am not a Christian, Mrs. Austin says; only a Jew. Did you ever hear of the Jews?"

Evelyn laughed, Mrs. Austin frowned, but Miss Glen was intensely grave, as she rejoined:

"A Jew may be very good and love God. That is all a little child can know of religion. Yet we must all believe God and His Son were one." The last words were murmured rather than spoken—almost self-directed.

"Is His Son a little boy, and will he be fond of my mother?" I asked. "Will she love him too? Oh, she loved me so much, so much!" and, in an agony of grief, I caught Miss Glen around the neck, and sobbed convulsively on her sympathetic breast. Again Evelyn smiled, I suppose, for I heard Miss Glen say, rebukingly:

"My dear Miss Erle, you must not make light of your little sister's sufferings. They are very severe, I doubt not, young as she is. All the more so that she does not know how to express them."

Revolving these words, I came later to know their import. They seemed unmeaning to me at the time, but the kind and deprecating tone of voice in which they were conveyed was unmistakable, and that sufficed to reassure me.

"And now, Miriam, let me go to my room and take off my bonnet and shawl, for I am going to stay with you. Perhaps you will show me the way yourself," she said, pausing. "Bring Dolly, too;" and we walked off hand-in-hand together to the large, commodious chamber Mrs. Austin pointed out as that prepared for our governess. I recognized my affinity from that hour.

There, sitting on her knee, with her gentle hand on my hair, and her sweet eyes fixed on mine, I learned at once to love Miss Glen, or "Constance," as she made us call her, because her surname seemed over-formal. She wished us to regard her as an elder sister, she said, rather than mere instructress, deeming rightly that the law of love would prove the stronger and better guidance in our case, and understanding well, and by some line magnetic sympathy as it appeared, my own peculiar nature, to which affection was a necessity.

Ours was a peaceful and happy childhood under her gentle and fostering rule; and, when it ceased, all the wires of life seemed jangled and discordant again.

She lived with us three years as friend and teacher. At the end of that time her vocation and sphere of action were enlarged, not changed, for she married my father, and thus our future welfare seemed secured.

Alas for human foresight! Alas for affection powerless to save! Alas for the vanity of mortal effort to contend with Fate!

Our home was in one of the chief Northern cities of that great republic which has for so many years commanded the admiration, respect, and wonder, of the whole world. The house we occupied was situated in the old and fashion-forsaken portion of the city. From its upper windows a view of the majestic Delaware and its opposite shores was afforded to the spectator; and the grounds surrounding the mansion were spacious for those of a city-house, and deeply shaded by elms that had been lofty trees in the time of General Washington.

Four squares farther on, the roar of commerce swelled and surged, in storehouse and counting-room, on mart and shipboard and quay; but here all was quiet, calm, secluded, as in the country, miles beyond.

Two houses besides our own shared the whole square between them, though ours, the central one, possessed the largest inclosure, and was the finest residence of the three, architecturally speaking; and the inmates of these dwellings, with very few exceptions, constituted for years our whole circle of friends and visitors.

So it will be seen how secluded was the life we led, how narrow the sphere we moved in, despite our acknowledged wealth, which, with some other attributes we possessed, had not failed, if desired, to confer on us both power and position in the society we shunned rather than shared.

To my father's nature, however, retirement was as essential as routine. He was one of those outwardly calm and inwardly excitable and nervous people we sometimes encounter without detecting the fire beneath the marble, the ever-burning lamp in the sarcophagus, unless we lift the lid of rock to find it—an effort scarcely worth the making in any case, for at best it lights only a tomb.

Extremely mild and self-contained in manner, and chary of opinion and expression, he was at the same time a man of strong and implacable prejudices and even bitter animosities when once engendered. I do not think his affections kept pace with these. He loved what belonged to him, it is true, in a quiet, consistent way, and his good breeding and practised equanimity were alone sufficient to secure the peace, and even happiness, of a household; but of much effort or self-sacrifice I judge him to have been incapable.

He was a handsome man in his stiff and military way—well made, tall, commanding in figure and in demeanor, stately in movement. His features were regular, his teeth and hair well preserved, especially the first, his hands and feet aristocratically small and shapely, his manner vaguely courteous. He was a shy rather than reserved person, for, when once the ice was broken, his nature bubbled over very boyishly at times, and his confidence, once bestowed, was irrevocable. Like most men of his temperament, he was keenly susceptible to deferential flattery, and impatient of the slightest infraction of his dignity, which he guarded punctiliously at all points. It was more this disposition always to wait for overtures from others, and to slightly repel their first manifestations, from his inveterate shyness, than any settled determination on his part, that made him such an alien from general association. Nervous, fastidious, exacting—what had he in common with the texture of the new society in which he found himself, and what right had he to fancy himself neglected where the "go-ahead" principle alone was recognized, and time was esteemed too precious to waste in ceremony?

Yet this injured feeling pursued him through life and made one of his peculiarities, so that he drew more and more closely, as years passed on, into his own shell, which may be said to have comprised his household, his comforts, his hobbies, and his narrow neighborhood, in which he was idolized, and the sympathy of which was very soothing to his fastidious pride.

Nothing so fosters haughtiness and egotism as a sphere like this, and it may be doubted whether the crowned heads of the world receive more adulation from their households than men so situated.

From the moment he set his foot on the threshold of his own house, nay, on the broad, quiet pavement of his own street, with its stately row of ancient Lombardy poplars on one side, and blank, high-walled lumber-yard on the other, he felt himself a sovereign—king of a principality! king of a neighborhood;—what great difference is there, after all?

It was only the hypochondriacal character of his mind that shielded him from that chief human absurdity, pomposity. He needed all the praise and consolation his friends could bestow simply to sustain him—no danger of inflation in his case! He was shut away from self-complacency (the only vice to which virtue is subjected) by the melancholy that permeated his being, and which was probably in his case an inheritance—constitutional, as it is said to be with things.

Perhaps it will be well to give, in this place, some more vivid idea of our home, which, after all, like the shell of the sea-fish, most frequently shapes itself to fit the necessities and habits of its occupants.

Our house had been built in early times, and was essentially old-fashioned, like the part of the city in which it was situated.. My father, soon after his arrival in America, had fancied and purchased this gloomy-looking gray stone edifice, with its massive granite steps (imported at great cost, before the beautiful white-marble quarries had been developed which abound in the vicinity of, and characterize the dwellings of, that rare and perfect city), and remodelled its interior, leaving the outside front of the building, with its screens of ancient ivy, untouched and venerable, and changing only the exterior aspect of the back of the mansion. Very striking was the contrast between the rear and front and exterior and interior of "Monfort Hall," as it was universally called.

The dark panel-work within had all been rent away, to give place to plaster glossy as marble, or fine French papers, gilded and painted, or fresco-paintings done with great cost and labor, and indifferent success. The lofty ceilings and massive walls formed outlines of strength and beauty to the large and well-ventilated apartments, which made it easy to render them almost palatial by the means of such accessories and appliances as wealth commands, and which were lavished in this instance.

The back of the house was, however, truly picturesque. Here a bay window was judiciously thrown out; there a portico appended or hanging balcony added to break the gray expanse of wall or sullen glare of windows; and a small gray tower or belfry, containing a clock that chimed the hours, and a fine telescope, rose from the octagon library which my father had built for his own peculiar sanctum after my mother's death, and which formed an ell to the building. The green, grassy, deeply-shadowed lawn lay behind the mansion, sloping down into a dark, deep dell, across which brawled a tiny brook long since absorbed by the thirsty earth thrown out from many foundations of stores and tenements and great warehouses hard by; a dell where once roses, lilacs, guelder-globes, and calacanthus-bushes, grew with a vigor that I have nowhere seen surpassed.

It was not much the fashion then to have rare garden-flowers. Our conservatory contained a fair array of these, but we had beds of tulips, hyacinths, and crocuses, basking in the sunshine, and violets and lilies lying in the shadow such as I see rarely now, and which cost us as little thought or trouble in their perennial permanence, whereas the conservatory was an endless grief and care, although superintended by a thoroughly-taught English gardener, and kept up at unlimited expense.

My sister—for so I was taught to call Evelyn Erle—revelled in this floral exclusiveness, but to me the dear old garden was far more delightful and life-giving. I loved our sweet home-flowers better than those foreign blossoms which lived in an artificial climate, and answered no thrilling voice of Nature, no internal impulse in their hot-house growth and development. What stirred me so deeply in April, stirred also the hyacinth-bulb and the lily of the valley deep in the earth—warmth, moisture, sunshine and shadow, and sweet spring rain—and the same fullness of life that throbbed in my veins in June called forth the rose. There was vivid sympathy here, and I gave my heart to the garden-flowers as I never could do to the frailer children of the hot-house, beautiful as they undeniably are.

"Miriam has really a vulgar taste for Nature, as Miss Glen calls it," Evelyn said one day, with a curl of her slight, exquisite lip as she shook away from her painted muslin robe, the butter-cups, heavy with moisture and radiant with sunshine, which I had laid upon her knee. "She ought to have been an Irish child and born, in a hovel, don't you think so, papa?" and she put me aside superciliously. Dirt and Nature were synonymous terms with her.

My father smiled and laid down his newspaper, then looked at me a little gravely as I stood downcast by Evelyn.

"You are getting very much sunburnt, Miriam, there is no doubt of that. A complexion like yours needs greater care for its preservation than if ten shades fairer. Little daughter, you must wear your bonnet, or give up running in the garden in the heat of the day."

"I try to impress this on Miriam all the time," said Mrs. Austin, coming as usual to aid in the assault, "but she is so hard-headed, it is next to impossible to make her mindful of what I tell her. Miss Glen is the only one that seems to have any influence over her nowadays." She said this with a slight, impatient toss of the head, as she paused in her progress through the room with a huge jar of currant-jelly, she had been sunning in the dining-room window, poised on the palm of either hand, jelly that looked like melted rubies, now to be consigned to the store-room.

"Well, well, we must have patience," was the rejoinder. "She is young—impulsive (I wish she were more like you, Evelyn, my dear!), her mother over again in temperament, without the saving clauses of beauty and refinement; these she will never attain, I fear, and with much of the characteristic persistence of that singular race, which in my wife, however, I never detected, though so much nearer the fountain-head!" This was said half in soliloquy, but Evelyn replied to it as if it had been addressed to her—replied, as she often did, by an interrogatory.

"What tribe did her mother belong to, papa?"

"The tribe of Judah, I believe, my love, was that her family traced their lineage from; but you question as if it were Pocahontas there was reference to instead of a high-bred Jewish lady!" speaking with asperity.

"I meant no offence, papa, I assure you," said Evelyn, quietly; "I only asked for information. Certainly there is something very grand in being related to King David."

"There is, indeed," said a gentle voice close at hand. Miss Glen had entered silently as they were speaking. "There was genius in that strain of blood, Evelyn, nay, more, divinity. Christ claimed such descent. Let us never forget that! He, the universal brother." She spoke with feeling and dignity, and led me away, lecturing me greatly as she did so for not obeying Mrs. Austin as to the sun-bonnet bondage, which she promised; to make as light as possible by purchasing for me a new French contrivance called a calêche, light and airy and sheltering all at once.

I was seven years old then, and the understanding was complete between us that endured to the end, but as yet there was no foreshadowing of her marriage with my father.

She had been engaged, when she came to us, to a gentleman, who must have perished at sea soon afterward—a young naval officer who had gone out on board of the United States sloop-of-war Hornet, the fate of which vessel is still wrapped in mystery, though that it foundered suddenly seemed then, as now, the universal opinion. Miss Glen some time before had made up her mind to this, and was stemming a tide of grief with great fortitude and resolution, while she was laying the foundations of character and education in her two very opposite pupils, both of whom she guided with equal ability.

My father was not unaware of her sufferings, I think, indeed, this community of sorrow first attracted him toward her, and later he was confirmed in his admiration of her womanly self-control and beauty of character, by the development he saw in his children, the work of her hand. That he was ever profoundly in love with her I do not believe, nor did she pretend to any passionate regard for him. Respect, friendship, confidence, mutual esteem, were the foundations of their union, which certainly promised enduring happiness to all concerned, and which was looked on with favor by the whole household, not excepting Mrs. Austin herself.

"If any successor of your dear mother must come, Evelyn," I heard her say one day to my sister, "we had better have her we know, to be sure, than a mere stranger, but I must say I can't see why your papa does not content himself as he is. I am sure he seems very happy in his library and his greenhouse, and driving out in his Tilbury, or with you two young ladies in the coach of afternoons, and chatting and smoking of evenings with Mr. Bainrothe or old Mr. Stanbury. I should think he might have had enough of marrying by this time, and funerals and all that. Your own precious mamma first, an earl's own daughter (Evelyn Erle, never forget that, if your father was a poor soldier! you have grand relations in England, child, if you are not as rich as some others I could name), and then your mother and Miriam's, Miss Harz that was, such an excellent woman for all her persuasion, to be sure; better than some Christians, I must say; and she just three years and a half laid in her grave!" A doleful sigh gave emphasis to this remark. "I was never more surprised, I must confess, than when he sent for me last night to tell me he was to marry Miss Glen next week! Who is she, I wonder, Evelyn; did you ever hear her speak of her kinfolks? Not a soul except two or three of her church-people has been near her since she has been here, and Franklin says she very seldom gets letters." A pinch of snuff emphasized this remark.

"I heard her say she had only one brother, Mrs. Austin, and that he was in some distant part of the world, in India, or New Orleans, or some such place, she does not know herself exactly where. He is a young lad, and she grieves about him; his picture is most beautiful, I think. He ran off and went to sea, and it almost killed her. That was some years ago, and since then she has been teaching in a great school until she came to us, and was never so peaceful before, she says, as she is now. I think she will make papa happy too, and keep him in his own family, since she has none of her own. I was so afraid it was Mrs. Stanbury at one time."

"I never thought of that," said Mrs. Austin, starting. "What put it into your head, Evelyn, and what made you so close-mouthed about it? Child, you have an old head on young shoulders—I always said so; as like your own precious mother as two peas. Yes, that would have been a nice connection truly! The two young Stanburys forsooth, to divide every thing with you and Miriam, and her rigid economy the rule in the house, and Norman riding over every one on a high horse, and that lame brat to be nursed and waited on! Any thing better than that, Evelyn. You are right, my dear." And she tapped her suggestive snuffbox.

My elder sister was about thirteen years old when she uttered those oracular sentences which elicited Mrs. Austin's commendations, and her own clear-sighted prévoyance; and I, at eight, whose mind was turned to any subject save that of marrying and giving in marriage, stood confounded by her superior wisdom and discretion. I gazed upon her open-mouthed and wide-eyed as she spoke, drinking in every word, yet very little enlightened, after all, by her remarks. She turned suddenly upon me, and tapped my cheek slightly with her fan. It was a way she had of manifesting contempt.

"Now run and tell Mrs. Stanbury every word I have spoken, just as soon as you can, Miriam, do you hear? Don't forget one syllable, that's a darling. Come, rehearse!"

"Won't it do after dinner, sister Evelyn?" I asked, gravely and literally. "I want to go and see about my mole, now—my poor mole that Hodges wounded with his spade this morning. It suffers so dreadfully!"—clasping my hands in a tragic manner, not unusual with me when excited.

"There! what did I tell you, Mrs. Austin? You will believe my report of Miriam another time—little blab! There is nothing safe where she is, and as to keeping a secret, she could not do it if her own life were at stake, I verily believe."

"I can keep a secret," I said, fiercely, "you know I can! You burnt my finger in the candle to make me tell you where the squirrel was, and I would not do it; Now, miss, remember that, and tell the truth next time!"

"What a little spit-fire," said Evelyn, derisively. "You see for yourself, Mrs. Austin."

"O Evelyn, Evelyn, did you, do that?" moaned the good woman. "Your little sister's hand! To burn it so cruelly, and in cold blood. I would not have believed it of you, my Evelyn—that was not like your mamma at all," and she shook her head dolefully. "Miriam is a brave child, after all." A wonderful admission for her to make.

"If you believe every thing that limb of the synagogue tells you, Mrs. Austin, you will have a great deal to swallow, that is all I shall say on the subject," and she turned away derisively.

"Do you mean to deny it, then, Evelyn Erle?" asked Mrs. Austin, earnestly, laying her hand on her arm, and shaking her slightly as she was about to leave the room. "Come back and answer me. I hope Miriam is only angry—I hope you did not do this thing."

"I will not be forcibly detained by any old woman in America," said Evelyn, struggling stoutly, "nor questioned either about a pack of fibs. Miriam knows better than to tell such stories—or ought to be taught better."

"It was no story," I said, solemnly. "It was true. You did burn my finger, and begged me not to tell Constance or papa afterward, and I never told them, because I never break my word if I can help it, and I wouldn't have told Mrs. Austin (but I didn't promise about her, you know), only you twitted me so meanly, and made me so mad—and it all came out. For I can keep a secret! I know where that squirrel is now, Evelyn Erle, but I will never tell any one—never—not even Constance Glen. I promised myself that, and crossed my heart about it when you tried to cut off its tail—its pretty, bushy tail that God gave it to keep the flies off with."

Mrs. Austin was shedding tears by this time; Evelyn's insolence and duplicity had stung her to the quick, and she saw, with real concern, that I had justice on my side. She had relinquished her hold on Evelyn, who stood now sullenly glaring at me, pale as a sheet, her eyes white with rage, looking like heated steel, her lips trembling with passion.

"You shall tell me where that squirrel is, or I will appeal to papa," she said, sharply. "It was mine. Norman Stanbury said so when he brought it here and gave it to me. You heard him, little cheat!"

"He told me to feed it, and take care of it, and not let it get hurt, if he did give it to you," I replied, doggedly, "and I did what he told me. You are a born tyrant, Evelyn. Constance told you so a month ago, when you twisted Laura Stanbury's arm for not teaching you that puzzle; and there is a wicked word I know that suits you to-day, only I am afraid to say it—Constance would be angry—but it begins with an L and ends with an R, and has only four letters in it. There, now!"

I well deserved the slap, no doubt, that rang down with such lightning speed and force on my cheek, and, fortunately, Mrs. Austin arrested my panther-like spring toward Evelyn, or the nails I held in rest might have brought blood from her waxen face, and marred its symmetry for a season. As it was, I screamed wildly, until Miss Glen came in, attracted by my cries, and, receiving no satisfactory explanation as to their cause, led me to her own apartment to compose, question, and rebuke me in that firm but gentle manner that ever calmed my spirit like oil poured upon troubled waters. The end of the matter was that, when I met Evelyn again, I went up to her in a spirit of conciliation, and mutely kissed her as a sign of peace and penitence.

It was a matter of indifference to me that this advance was carelessly received, since it satisfied my conscience and her who stirred its depths—nor did my cheek flush at the derisive taunt that followed me from the room after this obligation to self was discharged—"Now tattle again, little prophetess," for thus she often alluded to my Hebrew name and its signification, "and produce my squirrel, or look well to your wounded mole!"

This threat was not without its effect. In a deep, leafy covert I concealed my poor dying patient, "earthy, and of the earth"—literally, in every sense—but the squirrel still enjoyed its sequestered home on the topmost branch of an English walnut-tree, from which it cheerfully, but cautiously, descended at my call when I went out to carry it almonds or filberts from the dessert (invariably served with wine to my father, who, in observance of his English custom, sat alone some moments after the ladies of his household had withdrawn from table), nor did Evelyn have the despotic pleasure of abbreviating his right of tail.

CHAPTER II.

My father's marriage was solemnized very quietly in that old gray church with its fairy chime of bells, all alive on that occasion, which stood in the busy street not far from our quiet house. An aged and reverend bishop, who had administered the sacred communion to Washington and his wife when the city we dwelt in had been the temporary residence of that chief, performed the ceremony, which, with the exception of my father's immediate household and neighbors, none were invited to witness. When the solemn rite was ended, I made my way to Constance, so fair that day in her pearl-gray robes and simple white bonnet, and clasped her hand. She stooped down and kissed me many times, to conceal her tears, probably.

"Call me mamma now, dearest," she said, at last; "and let the name be as a new compact between us. Now let Evelyn come to me, my love, she, too, is my daughter; and go with Mrs. Austin."

I did as she directed, grasping Mrs. Austin's hand tightly as we walked home, and proceeding at so brisk a pace that she was often obliged to check me.

"Poor child, why should you rejoice so?" she said, mournfully. "Don't you know you have lost your father from this hour? Do you suppose he will ever love you as well again—you or Evelyn? Poor, ignorant, sacrificed babes in the woods!"

"I don't care," I said. "I have got my new mamma to love me, even if he does not. 'Mamma—mamma Constance!' how pretty that sounds. Oh, that is what I shall always call her from this time—'Constance,' as usual, you know, with 'mamma' before it." And I kept repeating "mamma Constance," childishly.

"Foolish thing," she rejoined. "I wish you had your sister Evelyn's consideration; but at any rate," she murmured, "the money will be all yours. He cannot alienate that; yours by marriage contract, not even to divide with Evelyn, and" (elevating her voice) "that you will surely do hereafter, will you not, Miriam?"

"I don't know," I replied; "not unless she is good to me and stops calling me 'little Jew,' and other mean, disagreeable names. But I always thought Evelyn was the rich one until now. She has so many fine clothes, and such great relations, you say, in England."

"True, true, gentle blood is a fine heritage; but your mother had great store of gold, and, when your papa dies, all this will belong to you (it is time you should know this, Miriam), and you will have us all to take care of and support; so you must be very good, indeed."

"I am so sorry," I said, with a deep sigh and a feeling that a heavy burden had been thrown suddenly on my shoulders; "but I tell you what I will do" (brightening up), "I will give it every bit to mamma, and she will support us all. She will live much longer than papa, because she is so much younger—twenty years, I believe. Isn't that a great difference?"

"Your father will outlive me, child, I trust, should such a state of things ever come to pass; but I am old, and shall not cumber the earth long," and a groan burst from her lips.

"How old are you, Mrs. Austin?" I asked, with a feeling of awe creeping over me, as though I had been talking to the widow of Methuselah, and I looked up into her face, pityingly.

"Fifty-five years old, child, come next Michaelmas, and a miserable sinner still, in the eyes of my Lord! I was a widow when I went to hire with Mrs. Erle, Evelyn's lady mother—that was soon after she married the captain, who had only his sword—and I have lived with her and hers ever since, and served them faithfully, I trust, and I hope I do not deserve to be cast on strangers and upstarts in my old age, even if one of them happens to marry your father. Constance Glen, forsooth!" and she drew up her stiff figure.

"To be wicked and old must be so dreadful," I said, thoughtfully shaking my head and casting my eyes to heaven.

"What are you thinking about, child?" she asked, jerking my hand sharply. "Who is it that you call such hard names—'wicked and old' forsooth? Answer me directly!"

"It was what you said a while ago about yourself I was thinking of, Mrs. Austin," I replied. "To be more than half a hundred years old! It is so many years to live; and then to be such a sinner, too—how hard it must be! I always thought you were very good before; and I am sure you are not gray and wrinkled and blear-eyed, like Granny Simpson!"

"Granny Simpson, indeed! You must be crazy, Miriam Monfort! Why, she is eighty if she is an hour, and hobbles on a cane! I flatter myself I am not infirm yet; and, if you call a well-preserved, middle-aged, English woman, like me, old, your brains must be addled. Look at my hair, my teeth, my complexion"—pausing suddenly before me and confronting me fiercely. "See my step, my figure, and have more sense, if you are a little foreign Jewish child. As to sinfulness, we are all sinful beings, more or less. To be wicked is a very different thing from sinful. I never told you I was wicked, child. What put that into your head?"

"Oh, I thought they were the same thing. Which is the worst, Mrs. Austin?" I asked, with unfeigned simplicity.

"There, Miriam, step on before! you walk too fast anyhow for me to-day. Besides, your tongue wags too limberly by half. You always did ask queer questions, and will to your dying day. No help for it, I suppose, but patience; but it is all of that Gipsy blood! Now, Evelyn's line of people was altogether different. She has what they used to call in England 'blue blood in her veins;' do you understand, Miriam? Blue blood! Catch her asking indiscreet questions! Take pattern by your elder sister, Miss Miriam Monfort, and you will do well."

Not knowing what evil I had done, or how I had offended, or how blood could be blue, yet sorry for having erred, I made my way as I was told to do, speedily and silently homeward, and was glad to find shelter from all misunderstanding and persecution in the arms and shadow of my "mamma Constance," as I called her from that hour.

But, to Evelyn she was "Mistress Monfort," from the time she espoused my father; and the coldness between them (they were never very congenial) was apparent from that time, in spite of every effort on the part of my sweet mamma to surmount and throw it aside.

It is time I should speak of those few neighbors who composed our society at this period, and to whom some allusion has already been made—the occupants of those two houses which, as I have said, divided with ours the square we lived in, with their grounds. These green-shaded yards were divided one from the other by slender iron railings, which formed a line of boundary, no more, and presented no obstacle to the exploring eye. Graceful gates of the same material opened from the pavement, common to all, and presented a symmetrical and uniform appearance to the passer-by. Stone lions guarded ours, but Etruscan vases crowned the portals of Mrs. Stanbury and Mr. Bainrothe, filled with blooming plants in the summer season, but bare and desolate and gray enough in winter.

Mrs. Stanbury, our right-hand neighbor (ay, in every way right-handed), was a widow lady of about thirty-five years of age. Her husband had been a sea-captain, and, being cut off suddenly, had, with the exception of the house she lived in, left her no estate. She owed her maintenance chiefly to the liberality of his uncle, a gruff old bachelor of sixty or more, who lived with and took care of her and her children in a way that was both kindly and disagreeable. He was a bald-headed man (who flourished a stout, gold-headed cane, I remember), with a florid, healthy, and honest face and burly figure, engaged in some lucrative city business, and entirely devoted to his nephew and niece, Mrs. Stanbury's only children, the one fifteen and the other about twelve years old at the time of my father's marriage.

Strangely enough, her own deepest interest, if not affection, seemed centred at this period in her little orphan ward and nephew, George Gaston, a child of nine years old, who had recently come into her hands; singularly gifted and beautiful, but lamed for life, it was feared, and a great sufferer physically from the effects of the fatal hip-disease that had destroyed the strength and usefulness of one limb, and impaired his constitution.

Mrs. Stanbury herself was a lady-like and pretty woman, fair and graceful, and her daughter Laura closely resembled her; both sweet specimens of unpretending womanhood; both devoted to the discharge of their simple duties and to one another; both entirely estimable.

Norman Stanbury was of a different type. He had probably inherited from his father his manly and robust person, his open, dauntless, dark, and handsome face, in which there was so much character that you hardly looked for intellect, or perhaps at a brief glance confounded one with the other. He was the avowed and devoted swain of my sister Evelyn, from the time when they first chased fireflies together, up to their dancing-school adolescence, and for me maintained a disinterested, brotherly regard that was never slow to manifest itself in any time of need, or even in the furtherance of my childish whims. Our relations with this family were most friendly and agreeable. There never was any undue familiarity; my father's reserve, and their own dignity, would of themselves have precluded that certain precursor to the decline of superficial friendship; but a consistent and somewhat ceremonious intercourse was preserved from first to last, that could scarcely be called intimacy.

Between George Gaston and myself alone existed that perfect freedom of speech and intuitive understanding that lie at the root of all true and deep affection. His delicacy of appearance, his stunted stature, his invalid requisitions, nay, his very deformity, for his twisted limb amounted to this, put aside all thought of infantile flirtation (for we know that, strange as it may seem, such a thing does exist) from the first hour of our acquaintance. He always seemed to me much younger than he was, or than I was—as boys, even under ordinary circumstances, are apt to appear to girls of their own age, from their slower development of mind and manner, if not of body.

But this lovely waxen boy, so frail and spiritual as to look almost angelic, and certainly very far my superior intellectually, seemed from his helplessness peculiarly infantile in comparison with my robust energy, and became consequently, in my eyes, an object of tenderest commiseration. From the first he clung to me with strange tenacity, for our tastes were congenial. He brought with him from his Southern home stores of books and shells and curious playthings and mechanical toys, such as I had never seen before, and to spread these out and explain them for my amusement was his chief delight.

My memory in turn was richly stored with poetry, some of it far above my own comprehension, but clinging irresistibly to my mind through the music of the metre. I had revelled in old ballads until I could recite nearly all of these precious relics of heroic times, or rather chant them forth monotonously enough in all probability, yet in a way that riveted his attention forcibly, and roused his high-strung poetic temperament to enthusiasm.

When ill or suffering, if asked what he needed for relief, he would say "Miriam," as naturally as a thirsty man would call for a glass of clear cold water. For his amusement I converted myself into a mime, a mountebank. When I went to the theatre, the performance must be repeated for his benefit, and many characters centred in one.

For him I danced the "Gavotte," the "shawl-dance," as taught to do by Monsieur Mallet, at the great dancing-school on Chestnut Street, or jumped Jim Crow to his infinite amusement and the unmitigated disgust of Evelyn, to whom his physical infirmity made him any thing but attractive. Such personal perfection as she possessed is, I am afraid, apt to make us cold-hearted and exacting as to externals in others. Evelyn could endure commonplace, but could not forgive a blemish. Once Norman Stanbury came very near, losing her favor for having a wart on his finger; another time, she banished him from her presence for weeks, for having stained his hands, beyond the power of soap-and-water or vinegar to efface, in gathering walnuts. Certainly no despot ever governed more entirely through the medium of fear than did she through the tyranny of a fastidious caprice united to a form and face of surpassing beauty and high-bred grace.

Even my father fell under this requisitive influence of hers. Propriety, the quality he worshipped, stood forth enshrined in her, and, from the lifting of her fan to the laying down of her knife and fork, all was faultless. The prestige, too, of birth, his special weakness, lingered about her, and elevated her to a pedestal above any other inmate of his household.

Her mother, who married him for convenience, and whose selfish requisitions had almost driven him mad, was the honorable Mrs. Erle, and an earl's daughter. He had loved my mother twice as well, found her ten times more attractive and interesting, devoted and congenial; admired her grace, recognized all her worth, not only in deed but in word, and with a fidelity of heart that never wavered even when he married again. Yet the prestige of descent was wanting in her and hers, or rather, such as it was, brought with it ignoble and repulsive associations only. He was not the man to reach a hand across Shylock and the old-clothes man, to grasp that of the poet-king of Israel; or Esther, the avenging queen of a downtrodden nation; or Joab, strong in valor and fidelity; or Deborah, inspired to rule a people from beneath the shelter of her palm-tree in the wilderness.

The grandeur of the past, in his estimation, was eclipsed by the ignominy of the present; but with me it was otherwise, and, as I grew old enough to recognize the peculiar traits of that ancient people from which I sprung, it pleased me to imagine that whatever there was about me of fiery persistency, of fearless faith, of unshrinking devotion, nay, of bitter remembrance of injuries, and power to avenge or forgive them, as the case might be, sprang from that remarkable race who called themselves at one time, with His permission, the chosen children of God.

I think these very characteristics of mine repelled my father and jarred on his nervous temperament, endangering that outward calm which it was his pride and care to preserve as necessary to high-bred demeanor, and thus intrenching on his ideas of personal dignity. Yet, with strange inconsistency, it was her very indulgence of these peculiarities that inclined him most strongly to Constance Glen, and finally, I am well convinced, determined him on making her his wife, as one well suited to secure the welfare of his turbulent and incomprehensible child, his "rebellious Miriam," as he sometimes called me when milder words availed not.

He had, as I have said, an "English" horror of scenes and excitement of any kind. He was conservative in every way. He believed in the British classics, and would not admit that any thing could ever equal, far less surpass them (dreary bores that many of them are to me!). Walter Scott's novels were the only ones of later days he ever allowed himself to read approvingly; for, once being beguiled, against his will almost, into sitting up late at night to finish a new work called "Pelham," he frowned down all allusion to the book or its author ever afterward, as derogatory to his dignity.

"Bulwer and Disraeli are literary coxcombs," he said, "who ought not to be encouraged, and who are trying to undermine wholesome English literature."

"O father," I ventured to observe on one occasion, "'Vivian Grey' is splendid. It is a delightful dream, more vivid than life itself; it is like drinking champagne, smelling tuberoses, inhaling laughing-gas, going to the opera, all at one time, and, if you once take it in your hand, nothing short of a stroke of lightning could rend it away, I am convinced. Do read it, sir, to please me, and retract your denunciation."

"Never," he said firmly, solemnly even, "and I counsel you, Miriam, in turn, to seek your draughts of soul from our pure 'wells of English undefiled,' rather than such high-flown fancies and maudlin streams as flow from the pen of this accomplished Hebrew. There is a little too much of the Jeremiah and Isaiah style about such extracts as I have seen, to suit my taste."

"The idea of a Jew writing novels!" said Evelyn, derisively as she sipped her wine.

"Or the grandest poem in the world!" added Mr. Bainrothe, who was dining with us that day, coming to the rescue quite magnanimously as it seemed, and for once receiving as his recompense a grateful look from the stray lamb of the tribe of Judah, reposing quietly in a Christian fold.

"What poem do you allude to?" said Evelyn, superciliously. "'Paradise Lost?'—Oh, I thought Milton was a Unitarian, not quite a Jew; almost as bad though!"

"No, the book of Job," replied Mr. Bainrothe. "It was that I alluded to."

"And the Psalms," I added, breathlessly.

"Dear me," said Evelyn, "what an array of learning we have all at once! Why, every Sunday-school child knows about the Psalms. David and Solomon did nothing else but sing and dance, I believe."

"Irreverent, very, Evelyn," said my father, looking at her a little severely, in spite of his own "Jeremiah" and "Isaiah" allusions. I had never heard him check her so openly before, and enjoyed it thoroughly. My smile of approbation provoked her, I suppose, for she pursued:

"I am so tired of having the Bible thrown at my head; you must excuse me, papa. For my part, I find the New Testament all-sufficient. I weary of the horrors of those Jews; worse than our Choctaw Indians, I verily believe."

"So they were, so they were, my dear," said my father, complacently, "but for some reasons we must always treat their memory with a certain respect. They were God's people, remember, in the absence of a better, and their history is written in this book, which we must all revere."

"A very great people, surely," said Mr. Bainrothe, "and destined to be so again. Don't you think so, Miriam?"

"I don't know," I said; "I have never thought of such a possibility before, I acknowledge, yet it is natural I should incline to my mother's people, and I can say heartily, I hope so, Mr. Bainrothe."

"Then you want to see the Christian religion trampled under foot," said Evelyn, spitefully, fixing her eyes on mine.

The blood rose hotly to my temples. "No, no, indeed! You know I do not, Evelyn, for it is mine; but Christ died for all, Jew as well as Gentile. Through him let us hope for change and mercy and peace on earth. When infinite harmony prevails, the Hebrew race will find its appointed place and level again, through one great principle."

"My idea is, that it has found its appointed place and level, and will abide there.—But to digress, when do you expect your son, Mr. Bainrothe?"

I have anticipated by many years in giving this snatch of conversation here. Let us go back to the time of my father's marriage, and to affairs as they stood then, for precious are the unities.

I need not drop Mr. Bainrothe, however, and it was of him, our left-hand neighbor, so intimately connected with our destiny, one and all, that I was about to speak when the digression occurred which led me from the high-road of my story.

Our "sinister neighbor," as my father laughingly called him sometimes with unconscious truth, in reference to his left-hand adjacency, was a handsome and gentlemanly-looking man of no very particular age, or rather in his appearance there was no criterion for decision on this subject. His form was as slender and elastic, his step as light, his teeth, hair, and complexion, as unexceptionable as though he had been twenty-five; nor were there any of those signs and symptoms about him by which the weather-wise usually measure experience and length of days.

If care had come nigh him at all, it had swept as lightly past him as time itself. His address was invariably urbane, self-possessed, well-bred; his voice was pleasant, his smile rather brilliant, though it never reached his eyes, except when he sneered, which was rarely and terribly.

They glittered then with a strange cold light, those variegated orbs, but their ordinary expression was earnest and investigatory. They were well-cut eyes, moreover, of a yellowish-brown color, and I used to remark as a little child—for children observe the minutiae of personal peculiarities much more closely than their elders—that the iris of both orbs was speckled with green and golden spots, which seemed to mix and dilate occasionally, and gave them a decidedly kaleidoscopic effect.

His skin was clear and even florid, and his lips had the peculiarity of turning suddenly white, or rather livid, without any evident cause. This my father thought betokened disease of the heart, but I learned later to know it was the only manifestation of suppressed feeling which the habit of his life could not overcome, and that proved him still mortal and fallible.

He had bought and moved into the house he occupied, in his single estate, with a few efficient servants, soon after my father had taken possession of his own larger mansion, and it was not long before the best understanding existed between these two. My father's hauteur was no safeguard against the steady and self-poised approaches—his shyness found relief in the calm self-reliance of his "left-hand" neighbor; and, as they were both lovers of books, rather than students thereof, a congeniality of tastes on literary subjects drew them together in those hours of leisure which Mr. Bainrothe usually passed in his own or my father's library, in the cultivation of the dolce far niente—I beg pardon—his mind.

What his occupation was, if indeed he had any worthy of a definite name, I never knew. That he was a kind of intermediate agent or broker I have since suspected. His leisure seemed infinite. He came and went to and from the business part of the city several times a day, and often in the elegant barouche he kept, with its span of highly-groomed horses and respectable-looking negro driver in simple livery—an old retainer of his house, as he informed my father, faithful still, though freed in the time of universal emancipation.

His association was undoubtedly, to some extent, with the best men of the town—bankers and merchants chiefly; and once, when my father had called in a considerable sum of money which he had loaned out at interest on good mortgages, for a term of years, he was so obliging as to interest the most notable bankers of the city in its safe and prompt reinvestment.

This gentleman dined with us on one occasion at this period, when his conference with my father intrenched on our late dinner-hour, and I shall never forget the singular beauty of his face and expression, nor the charm of his manner, as he sat at our board discoursing, with an abandon and witchery I have observed in no one else, on subjects of art and letters, on men and manners, of nations past and present, until hours fled like moments, and time seemed utterly forgotten in the presence of geniality and genius. Then, starting gayly and suddenly to his feet, he remembered an engagement, and sped away so abruptly that his visit seemed to me but a vision breaking in on the monotony of our lives, too bright to have been lasting.

Afterward, invitations came repeatedly to my father, for his grand dinners and levées, from this potentate, for he was a prince and a leader in those days of a society that, more than any other I have known, requires such leadership to make its conventionalities available; but these were not accepted, though appreciated and gratefully acknowledged. Nor could Mr. Bainrothe, with all his influence over him (that rare influence that a worldly and efficient man wields over a shy and retiring one unacquainted with the detail of affairs, and dependent upon active assistance in their management), prevail upon him to break through the monotonous routine of his life so far as to accept any one of them. His church, the theatre, when a British star appeared, his hearth and home—these were my father's hobbies and resources. Travel and society abroad he equally shrank from and abjured, or the presence of strange guests in his household circle.

"I will change all this, when I grow up, Mrs. Austin," I heard Evelyn say, one day. "We shall have parties and pleasures then, like other people, and, instead of masters and tedious old church humdrums, Mr. Lodore and the like, you shall see beaux and belles dashing up to this out-of-the-way place; and I will make papa build a ballroom, and we shall have a band and supper once a month. You know he can afford any thing he likes of that sort, and as for me—"

"Child, it will never be," she interrupted, shaking her head gravely. "Mr. and Mrs. Monfort" (my father was again married then) "are too much wedded to their own ways for that, and, besides, you and Miriam will not be ready to go out together, and the money is all hers—don't forget that, my dear Evelyn, and you must go back to England to your own, and I—"

"That I will never do," she in turn interrupted haughtily. "Play second fiddle, indeed, to mamma's grand relations, mean, and proud, and presumptuous, I dare say, and full of scorn for me (a poor army-captain's daughter), as they were for my father? No, I shall stay here and shine to the best of my ability. The money is all papa's while he lives, and he is still a young man, you know, and Miriam's turn will come when mine is over. One at a time, you see. Good gracious! it would seem like throwing away money, though, to dress up that little dingy thing in pearls and laces. Ten to one but what she will marry that lame imp next door as soon as she is grown, and endow him with the whole of it—that 'little devil on two sticks,' and I must have my run before then, of course." She laughed merrily at the conceit.

"I hear you, Evelyn Erie," I exclaimed tragically from the balcony on which I sat, engaged, on this occasion, in illuminating, with the most brilliant colors my paint-box afforded, a book of engravings for the especial benefit of George Gaston. It was his private opinion that Titian himself never painted with more skill, or gorgeous effect, than the youthful artist in his particular employ. "I hear you, miss, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk so behind his back, of a poor, afflicted boy like George, too good, a thousand times too good, to marry any one, even Cinderella herself. 'The devil on two sticks,' indeed!"

"Don't preach, I pray, Miriam. You have quite a dispensation in that way lately, I perceive. If you must eavesdrop, keep quiet about it now and hereafter, I beg."

"I was not eavesdropping," I screamed. "I have been painting out here all the afternoon, and Mrs. Austin knows it, and so might you. You are always accusing me of doing wrong and mean things that I would cut off my"—hesitating for a comparison—"my curls rather than do. Let me alone!"

"Your curls, indeed!" and she came out of the window and stood on the balcony beside me. "Do you call those tufts your curls?" taking one of them disdainfully with the tips of her dainty fingers, then pulling it sharply. "They make you look like a little water-dog, that's what they do, and I am going to cut them off at once.—Bring me the scissors, Mrs. Austin, and let me begin."

In the struggle that ensued my paints were upset, my pallet broken, and my book drenched with the water from the glass in which I dipped my brushes, but, as usual, Evelyn gained the victory which her superior strength insured from the beginning, and fled from my wrath, after holding my hands awhile, laughingly entreating mercy.

"I will kill her some day, Mrs. Austin, if she persecutes me so," I cried, as I lay sobbing on the bed after the conflict was over. "I am afraid of myself sometimes when she tantalizes me so dreadfully. I am glad you held me when I got hold of the scissors; I am glad she held me afterward. I might—I might"—I hesitated—"have stabbed her to the heart," was in my mind, but the tragic threat faltered upon my lips.

"Pray to God, Miriam Monfort, to subdue your temper," said the well-meaning but injudicious nurse, solemnly. "Your sister is old enough to make sport with you whenever she likes, without such returns."

"I wish mamma was at home," I said, still sobbing. "She would not allow me to be so treated; but it is always the way—as soon as she turns her back, Evelyn besets me, and you look on and encourage her."

"I do no such thing," said Mrs. Austin, sharply. "You have no business to take up cudgels for every outsider that your sister mentions, as you do. She is afraid to speak her mind before you, for fear of a fuss."

"I hate deceit," I said, wiping my eyes; "and deceitful people, too. I love my friends behind their backs the same as to their faces—just the same."

"What makes you mock Mr. Bainrothe then, and show how he minces at table, and uses his rattan?" she asked.

"Mr. Bainrothe is not my friend; besides, I said no harm of him. I don't love him, and never will, and he knows it."

"Were you rude enough to tell him so, Miriam?"

"No, but he understands very well. I never mimic any one I love."

"Yet you love that rough, old Mr. Gerald Stanbury, as cross as a cur. What taste!"

"Yes, from my heart I love him. He is good, he is true, he is noble; that is what he is. He has no specks in his eyes. He does not say, 'Just so,' whenever papa opens his lips."

"O Miriam! not to like him for that!"

"No; that is just why I don't like him. He has no mind of his own—or maybe he has two minds. Mamma thinks so, I know."

"She has told you so, I suppose?"

"If she had, I would not talk about it. No, she never told me so. I found it out myself. I know what she thinks, though, of every one, just by looking at her."

"Then what does she think of me?" asked Mrs. Austin, sharply.

"That you are a good, dear old nurse," I said, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, jumping up and throwing my arms about her; "only a little, very little, bit fonder of Evelyn than me. But that is natural. She is so much prettier and older than I am, and takes better care of her clothes. Besides, I am cross about dressing, I know I am; and afterward I am always so sorry."

"My Miriam always had a good heart," said Mrs. Austin, quite subdued, and returning my embraces. "And now let me call Charity to wash and comb and dress you before your mamma comes home. You know she always likes to see you looking nicely. But soon you must learn to do this for yourself; Charity will be wanted for other uses."

"I know, I know," I cried, jumping up and down; "Evelyn told me all about it yesterday," and the flush of joy mounted to my brow. "Won't we be too happy, Mrs. Austin, when our own dear little brother or sister comes?" And I clasped my hands across my bare neck, hugging myself in ecstasy.

"I don't know, child; there's no telling. What fingers" (holding them up wofully to the light); "every color of the rainbow! That green stain will be very hard to get out of your nails. How careless you are, Miriam! But, as I was saying, there's no telling what to expect from an unborn infant. It's wrong to speculate on such uncertainties; it's tempting Providence, Miriam. In the first place, it may be deformed, I shouldn't wonder—that lame boy about so much—short of one leg, at least."

"Deformed! O Mrs. Austin! how dreadful! I never thought of that." And I began to shiver before her mysterious suggestions.

"Or it may be a poor, senseless idiot like Johnny Gibson. He comes here for broken victuals constantly, you know, and your mamma sees him."

"Mrs. Austin, don't talk so, for pity's sake," catching at her gown wildly; "don't! you frighten me to death."

"Or it may be (stand still directly, Miriam, and let met get this paint off your ear)—or it may be, for aught we know or can help, born with a hard, proud, wicked heart, that may show itself in bad actions—cruelty, deceit, or even—" she hesitated, drearily.

"Mrs. Austin, sha'n't say such things about that poor, innocent little thing," I cried out, stamping my foot impatiently, "that isn't even born."

"Well, well; there's no use rejoicing too soon, that's all I mean to say. And why you should be glad, child, to have your own nose broken, is more than I can see," with a deep and awful groan.

"For pity's sake, stop! I am glad, I will be glad, there now! as glad as I please, just because I know mamma will be glad, and papa will be glad, and George Gaston will be glad, and because I do so adore babies, sin or no sin; I can't help what you think; I say it again, I do adore them. No, I ain't afraid of 'God's eternal anger' at all for saying so; not a bit afraid. What does He make them so sweet for if He does not expect us to love them dearly—His little angels on earth? Whenever a baby passes here with its nurse, I run after it and stop it and play with it as long as I can; and oh, I wish so often we had one of our own here at home!" embracing myself again with enthusiasm.

"Evelyn is right; you are a very absurd child, Miriam," she said, smiling, in spite of her efforts to keep grave; "very silly, even."

"And you are a very foolish, dear old nurse, and you will love our baby, too, won't you now?" clasping her also, zealously.

"Be still, child—here comes Charity. She will think you crazy to be rumpling my cap in that way, and talking about such matters. You are getting to be a perfect tomboy, Miriam! What would your papa say if he could see you now, so dirty and disorderly—your papa, as neat as a pink always?—Charity, what kept you so long to-day? Be quick and get Miss Miriam's new cambric dress, and her blue sash, and her new, long, gray kid gloves, and her leghorn hat, and white zephyr scarf. She is going to drive out presently with her mamma and papa, and must look decent for once in a while." After a pause she continued: "Miss Evelyn was dressed an hour ago, and is ready at the gate now, with her leghorn flat on and her parasol in her hand, I'll be bound," looking from the window. "There comes Norman Stanbury home from school. That's the idea, is it?" and the good nurse looked grave. "It will never do, it will never do in the world," she said, as she glanced at them, then turned away, shaking her head dolefully. "My child, my pretty piece of wax-work, must do better than that comes to. Her blood must never mix with such as runs in the veins of the Stanbury clan."

About a month later the feeble wail of my little sister greeted my ear as I entered my mamma's room one morning, in obedience to her summons, and my heart was filled with a rapture almost as great as hers who owned this priceless treasure.

Three weeks later, very suddenly and most unexpectedly, my dear mamma was stricken mortally as she sat, apparently quite convalescent, in her deep chair by the cradle, smiling at and caressing her infant. Mrs. Austin and I were alone in the room with her; papa and Evelyn had gone out for a walk. I had just been thinking how very pretty she looked that day in her white wrapper, with a pink ribbon at the throat, and her little, closely-fitting lace cap, through which her rich brown hair was distinctly visible. She had a fine oval face, clear, pallid skin, and regular though not perfect features, and never appeared so interesting or beautiful as now, in the joy and pride of her new maternity. Suddenly she grew strikingly pale, gasped, stretched out her hands, fixed her imploring eyes on me, and fell back, half fainting, in her chair.

By the time we had placed her on her bed she was insensible, breathing hard, though with a low fluttering pulse, that kept hope alive until the doctor came. The moment he beheld her he knew that all was over; remedies were tried in vain. She never spoke again, and, when my father returned an hour later, a senseless mass of snow replaced the young wife he had left, happy and hopeful.

I was spared the first manifestations of his agony, in which disappointment and the idea of being pursued by a relentless fate bore so great a part, by my own condition, which rendered me insensible for nearly thirty hours, to all that passed around me. It was afternoon when I awoke, as if from a deep sleep, to find myself alone with Mrs. Austin in my chamber.

Except from a sense of lassitude I experienced no unpleasant sensations, and I found myself marveling at the causes that could have consigned me in health to my bed and bed-gown, to my shadowed chamber and the supervision of my faithful nurse, when the sound of suppressed yet numerous footsteps in the hall below met my ear, and the consciousness that something unusual was going on took possession of and quickened my still lethargic faculties.

"What does all this mean, Mrs. Austin?" I asked at last, in a voice feeble as an infant's, "and what are those steps below? Why am I so weak, and what are you doing here? Answer me, I beseech you," and I clasped my hands piteously.

"Eat your panada, Miriam, and ask no questions," she said, lifting a bowl from above a spirit-lamp on the chimney-piece, and bearing it toward me. "Here it is, nice and hot. The doctor said you were to take it as soon as you awoke."

I received eagerly the nourishment of which I stood so greatly in need, spiced and seasoned as it was with nutmegs and Madeira wine, and, as I felt new strength return to me with the warmth that coursed through my veins, the memory of all that had passed surged rapidly back, as a suspended wave breaks on the strand, and with the shock I was restored to perfect consciousness.

"I know what it all means now," I cried. "Mamma! mamma! Let me go to my poor mamma!" and before she could arrest my steps I flew to the head of the stairway, dressed as I was in my white bed-gown, and was about to descend, when Dr. Pemberton stopped my progress.

"Go back, Miriam; I must see you a moment before you can go down-stairs," he said, calmly, and with authority in his voice. "Nay, believe me, I will not restrain you a moment longer than necessary, if you are obedient now."

"Do you promise this?" I cried, sobbing bitterly.

"I do," and he led me gently back to Mrs. Austin, then examined my pulse, my countenance carefully, inquired if I had taken nourishment, gave me a few drops from a vial he afterward left on the table for use, and, signifying his will to Mrs. Austin, went calmly but sorrowfully from the room.

My simple toilet was speedily made. My dress consisted of a white-cambric gown, I remember, over which Mrs. Austin bound, with some fantastic notion of impromptu mourning, a little scarf of black crepe, passing over one shoulder and below the other, like those worn by the pall-bearers; and, so attired, she took me by the hand and led me, dumb with amazement and grief, through the crowd that surged up the stairs and in the hall and parlors below, into the drawing-room, where, on its tressels, the velvet-covered coffin stood alone and still open, its occupant waiting in marble peace and dumb patience for the last rites of religion and affection to sanctify her repose, ere darkness and solitude should close around her forever.

The spell that had controlled me was rent away, when I saw that sweet and well-beloved aspect once again fixed in a stillness and composure that I knew must be eternal, the tender eyes sealed away from mine forever, the fine sensitive ear dull, expression obliterated! I flung myself in a passion of grief across the coffin. I kissed the waxen face and hands a thousand times and bathed them with scalding tears, then stooping down to the dulled ear I whispered:

"Mamma! mamma! hear me, if your soul is still in your breast, as I believe it is; I want to say something that will comfort you: I want to promise you to take care of your little baby all my days and hers, to divide all I have with her—to live for her, to die for her if such need comes—never to leave her if I can help it, or to let any one oppress her. Do you hear me, Mamma Constance?"

"What are you whispering about, Miriam?" said Mrs. Austin, drawing me away grimly.

"There, did you see her smile?" I asked, as in my childish imagination that sweet expression, that comes with the relaxation of the muscles to some dead faces toward the last of earth, seemed to transfigure hers as with an angel grace. "Her soul has not gone away yet," I murmured, "she heard me, she believed me," and I clasped my hands tightly and sank on my knees beside the coffin, devoutly thanking God for this great consolation.

"Child, child, you are mad," she said, drawing me suddenly to my feet. "Come away, Miriam, this is no place for you; I wonder at Dr. Pemberton! That coffin ought to be closed at once, for decay has set in; and there is no sense in supposing the spirit in the poor, crumbling body, when such signs as these exist," and she pointed to two blue spots on the throat and chin.

I did not understand her then—I thought they were bruises received in life—and wondered what she meant as well as I could conjecture at such a time of bewilderment; but still I resolutely refused to leave my dear one's side, sobbing passionately when Mr. Lodore came in to take me away at last, in obedience to Dr. Pemberton's orders.

"Come, Miriam, this will never do," he said. "Grief must have its way, but reason must be listened to as well. You have been ill yourself, and your friends are anxious about you; if your mamma could speak to you, she would ask you to go to your chamber and seek repose. Nay, more, she would tell you that, for all the thrones of the earth, she would not come back if she could, and forsake her angel estate."

"Not even to see her baby?" I asked, through my blinding tears. "O Mr. Lodore, you must be mistaken about that; you are wrong, if you are a preacher, for she told me lately she valued her life chiefly for its sake; and I heard her praying one night to be spared to raise it up to womanhood.—Mamma! mamma! you would come back to us I know, if God would let you, but you cannot, you cannot; He is so strong, so cruel! and He holds you fast." And I sobbed afresh, covering up my face.

"Miriam, what words are these?—Mr. Monfort, I am pleased that you have come. It is best for your little daughter to retire; she is greatly moved and excited;" and, yielding to my father's guidance and persuasion, I went passively from the presence of the dead, into which came, a moment later, the hushed crowd of her church-people and our few private friends, assembled to witness her obsequies.

Evelyn Erie accompanied my father to the grave as one of the chief mourners, and at my entreaty Mrs. Austin laid my little sister on the bed by my side, and I was soothed and strengthened by the sight of her baby loveliness as nothing else could have soothed and strengthened me.

Then, solemnly and in my own heart, I renewed the promise I had made the dead, and as far as in me lay have I kept it, Mabel, through thy life and mine!

I roused from an uneasy sleep an hour later, to find George Gaston at my side.

"I have brought you this, Miriam," he said, "because I thought it might help you to bear up. It is a little book my mother loved; perhaps you can read it and understand it when you are older even if you cannot now. See, there is a cross on the back, and such a pretty picture of Jesus in the front. It is for you to keep forever, Miriam. It is called Keble's 'Christian Year.'"

"Thank you, George," and I kissed him, murmuring, "But I do not think I shall ever read any more," tearfully.

He, too, begged to see the baby for all recompense—his darling as well as mine thenceforth; and I recall to this hour the lovely face of the boy, with all his clustering, nut-brown curls damp with the clammy perspiration incident to his debility, bending above the tiny infant as it lay in sweet repose, with words of pity and tenderness, and tearful, steadfast eyes that seemed filled with almost angelic solicitude and solemn blessing.

Two guardians of ten years old then clasped hands above its downy head, and in childish earnestness vowed to one another to protect, to cherish, to defend it as long as life was spared to either. Hannibal was not older than we were when he swore his famous oath at Carthage, kneeling at the feet of Hamilcar before the altar, to hate the Romans. How was our oath of love less solemn or impressive than his of hatred?—pledged as it was, too, in the presence of an angel too lately freed from earth's bondage not to hover still around her prison-house and above the sleeping cherub she left so lately!

Such resolutions, however carried out, react on the character that conceives them. I felt from that time strengthened, uplifted, calmed, as I had never felt before. I learned the precious secret of patience in watching over that baby head, and for its sake grew forbearing to all around; toward Evelyn, even, whose taunts were so hard to bear, so unendurable on occasions.

"There is a great change in Miriam," she said one day to Norman Stanbury. "I believe she is getting religion, or perhaps she and George Gaston are training themselves to go forth as married missionaries, after a while, to the heathen. They are studying parental responsibility already, one at the head and the other at the foot of the baby's cradle-carriage, but I am afraid it will be but a lame concern, after all."

We both heard this cruel speech and the laugh that succeeded it, in passing by, as it was intended we should do, probably—heard it in silence, and perhaps it may be said in dignity, not even a remark being interchanged between us concerning it; but I saw George Gaston flush to the roots of his hair.

A few minutes later we were ourselves laughing merrily over the baby's ineffectual efforts to catch a bunch of scarlet roses which George dangled above her head, and, altogether forgetful of Evelyn's sneer, bumped our heads together in trying to kiss her.

In truth, my superb sense of womanhood lifted me quite above all frivolous suggestions; thenceforth George seemed to me physically almost as much of a baby as Mabel, and was nearly as dependent on my aid. In his sudden fits of exhaustion and agony of such uncertain recurrence as to render it dangerous for him to venture forth alone, he always turned with confidence to my supporting and guiding hand.

I taught him his lessons in the intervals of my own studies, which he recited when he could to a private teacher, the same who gave me lessons.

Evelyn preferred a public school, and was sent, at her own request, to a fashionable establishment in the city attended by the élite alone, as the enormous prices charged for tuition indicated, as a day-boarder. There she became proficient in mere mechanical music—her ear being a poor one naturally—and learned to speak two languages, dance to perfection, and conduct herself like a high-bred woman of fashion on all occasions and in all emergencies—each and all necessities for a belle, which, it may be remembered, she had aspired to be, and announced her intention of becoming.

The fame of my father's wealth, her own beauty, tact, and grace, and elegant attire, rendered her conspicuous among her school-mates, and from among these she selected as friends such as appeared to her most desirable as bearing on her future plans of life. So that already Evelyn had made for herself a sphere outside and beyond any thing known in "Monfort Hall" or its vicinity.

My father, who, like all shy persons, admired cool self-possession and the leading hand in others, looked on with quiet approbation and some diversion at these proceedings. He gave her the use of his equipage, his house, his grounds, reserving to himself only intact the refuge of his library, from which ark of safety he surveyed at leisure, with quiet, curious, and amused scrutiny, the gay young forms that on holiday occasions glided through his garden and conservatory, and filled his drawing-room and halls with laughter and revelry.

On such occasions I was permitted, on certain conditions, to appear as a spectator. One of the most imperative of these was, that I was never to reveal to any one that Evelyn was not my own half-sister.

"You are not called upon to tell a story, Miriam, only to give them no satisfaction. You see they might as well think part of all this wealth, which came from your mother, is mine. It will in no way affect the reality—only their demeanor—for they every one worship money."

"I would not care for such girls, sister Evelyn, nor what they thought," I rejoined. "Besides, are you not an earl's granddaughter; why not boast of that instead, which would be the truth?"

"An earl's fiddlestick! What do you suppose American girls would care for that? Nor would they believe it, even, unless I had diamonds and coronet and every thing to match. Your mother had diamonds, I know, but mine had not. By-the-by, where are they, Miriam? I have never seen them."

"I do not know, Evelyn," I replied, gravely. "I have never thought about them until now, I am so sorry your heart is set upon such things. You know what Mamma Constance used to tell us."

"Oh, yes, I remember she croaked continually, as all delicate, doomed people do, I believe. It was well enough in her case, as she had to die; but, as for me—look at me, Miriam Monfort! Do I look like death? No; victory, rather!" and she straightened her elastic form exultingly. "And you, too, little one, are growing up strong and tall and better-looking than you used to be," she continued, patting my cheek carelessly. "The Jewish gaberdine is gradually dropping off; I mean the dinginess of your early complexion. By the time I have had my successful career, and am settled in life, yours will begin. Help me now, and I will help you then."

"You are only a school-girl," I said, sententiously. "You had better be thinking of your lessons, and let beaux and diamonds alone. I would be ashamed to keep a key to my exercises and sums, as you do. I would blush in the dark to do such a thing."

"I am not preparing myself for a governess, that I should make a point of honor of such things, little pragmatical prig that you are; nor are you, that I know of. You will always have plenty of money. 'Rich as a Jew' is a proverb, you know, all the world over."

The taunt had long since lost its sting; so I replied, meekly:

"We none of us know what may happen. I should like to be able to support myself and Mabel, if the worst came. Old Mr. Stanbury says all property is uncertain nowadays, especially in this country."

"Oh, don't repeat what that old croaking vulgarian and general leveller and democrat says, to me! A democrat is my aversion, anyhow. I wonder papa, can tolerate that coarse old Jackson man in his sight. 'Adams and the Federal cause forever,' say I; and all aristocratic people are on that side. I never enjoyed any thing so much as our illumination when Mr. Clay gave his casting vote, and carried Congress. The Stanbury house was as dark as a grave that night; but Norman was in our interest, and I made him halloo 'Hurrah for Adams!' That was a triumph, at all events. It nearly killed the old gentleman, though."

"If I were a man, I, too, would vote for General Jackson," I said defiantly. "He was such a brave soldier; he could defend our country if it was attacked again. Besides, I like his face better than old moon-faced Adams; and I despise Norman for his time-serving."

"Miriam, I shall tell papa if you utter such sentiments again; you know how devoted he is to the Federal party, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"That is just because Mr. Bainrothe over-persuaded him. He used to admire General Jackson. I heard him say once, myself, he would be the people's choice, next time."

"I thought you accused Mr. Bainrothe of toadying papa. Where, now, is your boasted consistency?"

"Evelyn, you know very well that is the way to rule and toady papa. Yield to him apparently, and he will let you lead him and have your own way pretty much. You have found that out long ago, Evelyn." And I looked at her sharply, I confess. She colored, but did not reply. "There is more," I said. "A girl who would be ashamed of her own mother, and afraid to acknowledge her poverty, would not scruple to do this. I believe you are almost as great a humbug at heart as Mr. Bainrothe himself," and I smiled scornfully. "That is what some people call him."

She turned on me with cold, white eyes and quivering lips; she shook me by the shoulder until my teeth chattered and my hair tossed up and down like a pony's mane blown by the winds, with her long, nervous fingers.

"Inform on me if you dare," she said, "or utter such an opinion to papa, and I will make you and your baby both suffer for it, and that lame hop-toad too, who follows you everywhere like your shadow! Moreover, if you do breathe a syllable of this slander, I shall tell Mr. Bainrothe your opinion of him, and make him your enemy. And mark me, Miriam Monfort, precious Hebrew imp that you are, you could not have a direr one, not even if you searched your old Jewish Bible through and through for a parallel, or called up Satan himself. I shall tell papa, too, that you are a story-teller, so that he will never again believe one word that you say, miss!"

"You could not convince him of that," I said, disengaging myself from her grasp, "if you were to try, for I have honest eyes in my head, not speckled like a toad's back, nor turning white with rage like a tree-frog laid on a window-sill; but, if you ever dare to lay your hand on me again, Evelyn Erle, I will tell papa every thing—there, now! This is the last time, remember."

"I did not hurt you, and you know it, Miriam; I only shook you to settle your brains," and she laughed a ghastly laugh, "and to make you a little bit afraid of me."

"I am not afraid of you," I said, "that is one comfort; and you can never make me so again; and I am not a mischief-maker, that is another; so rest in peace. Pass for my sister if you choose, and are proud of the title; I shall not say yes or no, but of this be certain, you are no sister of mine, though I call you such, either in heart or blood. I do not love you, Evelyn Erle; and, if I were not afraid of the anger of God and my own heart, I would let myself hate you, and strike you. But I always try and remember what mamma said, and what Mr. Lodore tells us every Sunday. Yet I find it hard."

"Little hypocrite! little Jew!" burst from her angry lips, and she left the room in a whirl of rage, not forgetting, however, to write me a very smooth note before she went to school next morning, which was, with her usual tact, slipped under my pillow before I awoke; and, after that, all was outward peace between us for a season.

Evelyn was about sixteen when this occurred, I nearly twelve. The next year she left school and made her début in society, and, through her machinations, no doubt, I was sent away to a distant boarding-school for two years, coming home only at holiday intervals thereafter to my dearest baby, my home, my parent, and narrow circle of friends, and finding Miss Erle more and more in possession of my father's confidence, even to the arrangement of his papers and participation in the knowledge of his business transactions, and entirely installed as the head of the house, which post she maintained ever afterward indomitably.

Singularly enough, however, Mr. Bainrothe seemed secretly to prefer me at this period, however much he openly inclined to her, and he lost no occasion of privately speaking to me in rapturous terms (such as I never heard him employ in the presence of Evelyn and my father) of his only son, then absent in Germany engaged in the prosecution of his studies, but to return home, he told me, to remain, as soon as he had completed his majority.

It was only through our knowledge of his son's age, and his admissions as to the time of his own early marriage, that we arrived at any estimate of Mr. Bainrothe's years; for, as I have said, Time, in his case, had omitted what he so rarely forgets to imprint—his sign manual on his exterior.

CHAPTER III.

The school to which I was sent was half a day's journey from the city of our residence, situated in a small but ancient town of Revolutionary notoriety. The river, very wide at that point, was shaded by willow-trees to some extent along its banks, immediately in front of the Academy of St. Mark's, and beyond it to a considerable distance on either hand. The town itself was an old-fashioned, primitive village rather than burgh, quaintly built, and little adorned by modern taste or improvement; but the air was fine and elastic, the water unexceptionable, and bathing and boating were among our privileged amusements. Among other less useful accomplishments, I there acquired that of swimming expertly; and, as a place of exile, this quaint town answered as well as any other for the intended purpose.

For, notwithstanding my father's assurances that Dr. Pemberton had recommended change of air—to some degree true, of course—and that he himself believed a public course of study would exhaust me less than my solitary lessons, to which I gave such undivided attention, and notwithstanding Evelyn's professions of regret at the necessity of parting with me, and Mrs. Austin's belief that the "baby was killing me by inches," since she took it into her head to sleep with no one else, and to play half the night, and to stay with me all day besides, I felt myself "ostracized."

The whole matter was so sudden that I scarcely knew what to make of it. Mr. Bainrothe alone let in a little light upon the subject by one remark, unintentionally, no doubt:

"The fact is, Miriam, you are getting too much wound up with that Stanbury family, and you would be perfectly entangled there in another year. The idea of putting the whole hardship of George Gaston's education on your shoulders was worthy of diplomatic brains, and something I should scarcely have suspected that calm, quiet little woman to have been capable of conceiving. There is an old, worn-out plantation in the Gaston family, that your money would set going again, no doubt, with accelerated velocity. Did you never suspect anything of that sort?" he asked, carelessly.

"Never; nor did I suppose any one else was stupid or wicked enough to entertain such an idea. I, being tolerably acute, knew better, fortunately."

"My dear little girl, you are entirely too chivalrous and confiding where your feelings are engaged. What if I were to assure that this plan had been agitated?"

"I should think you had been deceived, or that you were deceiving me, one or the other. I should not believe you, that would be all. You understand me now, Mr. Bainrothe; there are no purer people than the Stanburys—I wish every one was half as good and true."

"Old Gerald at the head of them, I suppose?" with a sneer and a kaleidoscopic glance.

"Mr. Gerald Stanbury at the head of them," I reiterated firmly, adding: "These are friends of mine, Mr. Bainrothe; it hurts and offends me to hear them lightly discussed. If I am sent away from home to break off my affection for them, the measure is a vain one, for I shall returned unchanged."

"Yes, but with enlarged views, I trust, Miriam," he rejoined, pertinaciously. "See how Evelyn was improved by her two years at school; besides, how would you ever increase your circle of acquaintances here, studying alone, or even with your shy disposition, at a day-school?"

"I am sent from home, then, to make acquaintances it seems, and to prepare for my début into society? Very well, I shall not forget that; but pray, what particular advantage in this respect does a country-school present?"

"Oh, the very first people send their daughters to St. Mark's. If I were training a wife for my son, I should educate her there. What higher eulogium could I bestow, or"—dropping his voice—"what higher compliment pay you, Miriam?"

"If he were a king's son, you could not speak more confidently," I rejoined, with inexcusable rudeness. "Remember, too, you are not training a wife for your prince in disguise." But I was annoyed and irritated by his patronizing manner, and the suspicion that took possession of me from that time, that he had aided Evelyn in this conspiracy against my peace for selfish views.

He laughed carelessly and turned away, but I saw triumph in his variegated eye; yet was I powerless to resent it.

"I am leaving my poor papa bound hand and foot," I thought, "in designing hands, but I cannot help it. He has chosen for himself, I will not entreat his affection, his confidence, misplaced as they surely are. I cannot do this if I would; something stronger than myself binds me to silence. But O papa, papa! if you only knew how I loved you, you would not suffer these strangers to take my place, or banish your poor Miriam so cruelly!"

"Don't let Mabel forget me," were the last words I spoke to Mrs. Austin, as with a bursting heart I turned from the lovely child I had made perhaps too much an idol; "and George, let her see George Gaston every day; it will be a comfort to both." So, choking, I went my way.

I bade Evelyn "good-by" gayly, Mr. Bainrothe superciliously, my father bitterly, for I felt his ingratitude to my heart's core; and, under dear old Mr. Stanbury's escort, went to the steamboat, there to find one of the lady principals of the academy ready to take charge of me on our brief voyage. It was not in my nature to cherish depression or to make complaints and sudden confidences, and we chatted very cheerfully all the way up the river on indifferent subjects chiefly; sharing fruit and flowers, and general observations and opinions, so that I felt quite inspirited on my arrival, and made, I have reason to believe, no unfavorable impression.

My school-girl experiences I shall not record here. They were pleasant and profitable on the whole, and I earned the esteem of my teachers, by my zeal and diligence in my studies, and made some few valued friends more or less permanent, but none so dear as those I left behind.

Laura Stanbury, quiet and uninteresting as she seemed to many, had a hold on my heart that no newer acquaintance could boast, and for dear George Gaston, where was there another like him? I have known no one so gifted, so spiritual, so simply affectionate, as this child of genius and physical misfortune, whose short but brilliant career is engraven on the annals of his country, I well believe, indelibly.

When I was fifteen years old, I was recalled suddenly and in the middle of a busy session to my home, by the severe and almost fatal illness of my father. He rallied, however, soon after my return, and I had the inexpressible satisfaction of hearing Dr. Pemberton, our good and skillful family physician, pronounce him out of danger a week later, but he would suffer me to go from him no more. The voice of Nature asserted her claim at last, and, feeling within himself that indescribable failure of vitality in which no one is ever deceived, and which can never be explained to or wholly understood by another, he desired me to remain with him through the remainder of a life which he foresaw would not be long.

It was in vain that Dr. Pemberton tried to rally him on the score of his old hypochondriacal tendencies, or that Evelyn quietly remarked: "I am sure, papa, I never saw you looking better! It is a pity to interrupt dear Miriam now in the full tide of her studies. I am sure that I am willing to devote every moment of my time to you if needful;" or that Mrs. Austin added: "Miriam is so well, and growing so fast, that I am afraid to see her take on care again, for fear of a check; and now that Mabel is partly weaned from her they are both happy to be separated;" or that Mr. Bainrothe carelessly interpolated: "Let the child go back, my dear Monfort, or you will spoil her again among you. She is developing splendidly at St. Mark's, and you have twenty good years before you yet, with your unbroken English constitution."

Not even the joy manifested by George Gaston and Mrs. and Miss Stanbury, or bluff old Mr. Gerald, at the good news of my return, could shake his resolution.

"Miriam shall leave me no more while life is mine," he said, "be it long or short. When she marries, I will surrender every thing I possess, save a stipend, into her hands, and Evelyn and Mabel and I to some extent will be her pensioners thereafter. Until that time, matters will stand as they do now."

"Folly, folly, Colonel Monfort! You talk like a dotard of eighty; you, a superb-looking man yet, younger than I am, no doubt; young enough to marry again, if the fancy took you, and head a second family."

"Why not say a third?" asked my father, sadly. "Don't you know, Bainrothe, I am a fatal upas-tree to the wives of my bosom? See how it has been already."

"Better luck next time. Now, there is the Widow Stanbury, willing and waiting, you know, and a dozen others."

I turned a flashing eye upon him that silenced him.

"You know better than that," I said, in suppressed tones, hoarse with anger. "Better let that subject rest hereafter, unless, indeed, your object is feud with me. You shall not slander my friends with impunity, nor must you come any longer between me and them and my father."

I spoke, for his ear alone, and waited for no reply. I understood his game by this time, as he did mine.

"His son, indeed!" I murmured, with a scornful lip, as I found myself alone. "I would cut off my right hand before I would give it to a Bainrothe," and I scoffed at him bitterly in the depths of my resentful Judaic heart.

About this time I passed through a painful trial. It was autumn, and early fires of wood had been kindled in the chambers; more, so far, for the sake of cheerfulness than warmth. Mabel was playing on the hearth of her nursery preparatory to going to bed, and I was in the adjoining room, my own chamber, making an evening toilet, for Evelyn expected a party of young visitors that night, and my presence had been requested.

Mrs. Austin, it seemed, had left the room for one moment, when a cry from Mabel brought me to her side. She had fanned the fire with her little cambric night-dress, and was already in a blaze. I caught Mrs. Austin's heavy shawl from the bed, and promptly extinguished the flames, but not without receiving serious injury myself. The child, with the exception of a slight but painful burn on her ankle, was unhurt, but my left arm and shoulder and bosom were fearfully burned, and for some days my life hung on a thread.

Months passed before I was able to leave my own chamber, and the blow to my health was so severe as to induce a return of those lethargic attacks from which I had been entirely free for the last two years. It is true they were brief in duration compared to those of old, but that they should exist at all was a cause of anxiety and disquietude both to my father and physician.

By the first of March, however, I was again in glowing health, and no trace remained, except those carefully-concealed scars on my shoulder, of my fearful injury.

Soon after this accident had occurred, two circumstances of interest had taken place in our household and vicinity. One of these was the return of Claude Bainrothe from abroad, and the other the rather mysterious visit of a gentleman, young and handsome, but poorly clad, who had inquired for my step-mother, Mrs. Constance Monfort, and on hearing, to his surprise and grief, apparently, that she was dead, had gone away again without requesting an interview with any other member of the family.

He had met Evelyn at the door just as she was about to step into the carriage, dressed for visiting, and had said to her, merely (as she asserted), as he turned away, evidently in sorrow:

"I am the brother of Mrs. Monfort, once Constance Glen—now, as you tell me, no more. What children did she leave?"

"One only—a daughter," was Evelyn's reply. "Not visible to-day, however, since she was severely burned a few days since, and is still confined to her bed; not dangerously ill, though."

"I passed on then, as quickly as I could," said Evelyn, "for I saw no end to questioning, and had an appointment to keep. I said, however, civilly, 'Suppose you call another time, when papa is disengaged. To-day he could not possibly receive you,' pausing on the steps for a reply. This was of course all that was required of me, but he merely lifted his hat with a cool 'Thank you, Miss Monfort,' and went his way silently. He evidently mistook me for you, Miriam, and I did not undeceive him. My greatest oversight was in forgetting to ask for his card; but his name was Glen, of course, as hers was, so it would have been a mere form."

"The whole transaction seems to have been inconsiderate on your part, Evelyn," I remarked, as mildly as I could. "Mamma's brother! Oh, what would I not have given to have seen him! Did he never return, and where is he now?"

"No, never that I know of, and he has disappeared. He walked by here a few days later, Franklin says, when he was standing at the door with papa's tilbury, still very poorly dressed, but neither stopped nor spoke. You could not have seen him in your condition, at any rate, Miriam, so you need not look so vexed; and I had no idea of having papa annoyed so soon after his severe attack. Besides, I want no such claims established over Mabel. She is ours, and need desire no other relations. The next thing would have been an application for money, or board and lodging, or some such thing, no doubt."

"How old did he seem to be, Evelyn?" I asked, conquering a qualm of feeling at these words, and inexpressibly interested in her relation.

"I'm sure I can't tell, Miriam; about twenty-five or six, I suppose; the usual age of all such bores. You know mamma was seven or eight and twenty when she died, and she said he was much younger than herself, you may remember."

"Oh, yes, I recollect perfectly. Did he resemble mamma, Evelyn? Was he tall or short, fair or dark? Had he her lovely eyes? Do tell me about him."

"None of these things. A sort of medium man; not at all like mamma, however, as far as I could see on such brief scrutiny, and as well as I remember; with fine eyes, however. Not as good-looking as Claude Bainrothe, by any means. Commonplace, very, with a seedy coat. By-the-way, Miriam, he will be back next week, I believe, and then you will see this phenomenon. You know Mr. Bainrothe and papa design you for one another."

"Papa, indeed! I suppose you mean Claude Bainrothe," and I laughed disdainfully, I fear. "Nay, it is you rather, Evelyn, who have captivated this piece of perfection, as far as I can learn. At least, this is the report that—" I hesitated—colored.

"Finish your sentence, Miriam. The report that your faithful spies, Laura Stanbury and George Gaston, have brought to you in your solitude. They are very observing, truly," she pursued. "Creatures that never penetrate beneath the surface, though. Self-deluders, I fancy, however, rather than story-tellers."

"Do you pretend to deny it, Evelyn? Now, look me in the eyes and say 'No' if you dare," and I grasped her slender wrists playfully. She opened her large, blue eyes and fixed them full on mine, responsively.

"No! Now you have the unmitigated truth. Ah, Miriam, I have no wish to interfere with you," and she leaned forward and kissed my cheek tenderly, disengaging her hands as she did so. Her manner had so changed to me of late that she was growing rapidly into my affections, and I returned her embrace cordially.

In the next moment we were laughing merrily together over the ridiculous schemes of the elder Bainrothe, so transparent that every one understood them perfectly, motive and all, and which my father winked at evidently, rather than favored or encouraged, as our charlatan thought he did—"Cagliostro," as we habitually called him.

"The fact is, prophetess, the person in question would not suit you at all, with your grand ways and notions and prospects. I have fathomed his depth pretty successfully, and I find him full of shoals and shallows. Pretty well for a flirtation, though, and to keep one's hand in, but unavailable any further."

"Having brought him to his knees, you are perfectly willing to pass him over to me as a bond-slave. Is that the idea, Evelyn?"

"Exactly, Miriam; you are always so penetrating! But don't tell, for the world. Old Bainrothe would never forgive me; and, as I once before told you in one of my savage moods, his enmity is dire—satanic!"

"I am not afraid of Cagliostro, or his animosity," I answered; "never was, Evelyn, as you know. The best way to disarm him is to confront him boldly. He is like a lion in that alone. I wish, though, he would give me a little of his elixir of life, for dear papa; he has never looked himself since that attack, though better, certainly,—oh, decidedly better, of course, than I dared to hope at one time ever to see him again. Yet I am very anxious."

"Papa is well enough, Miriam; you only imagine these things. At fifty, you know, most men begin to break a little; then they rally again and look almost as well as ever in a few years, up to sixty or seventy. Look at Mr. Lodore! He looked older when we first knew him than he does now; and so did Dr. Pemberton."

"That is because they have both filled out and grown more florid and healthy; but papa is withering away, Evelyn; shrinking day by day—his very step has changed recently. Oh, I hope, I hope I may be deceived!" And I covered my face with my hands, praying aloud, as I did sometimes irresistibly when greatly excited. "God grant, God grant us his precious life!" I murmured. "Spare him to his children!"

"Amen!" said Evelyn Erle, solemnly.

A few evenings after this conversation I went to see and hear the opera of "Masaniello," then all the rage, and at the zenith of its popularity, with Mrs. Stanbury, Laura, and George Gaston—Norman had been recently placed in the navy and he was absent now, and Mr. Gerald Stanbury obstinately refused to accompany us to that "monkey-and-parrot show," as he deliberately dubbed the Italian opera.

"When men and women who are in love or grief, or who are telling each other the news, or secrets, stop to set their words to music, and roar and howl in each other's ears, the world will be mad, and the opera natural," he said. "I will not lend my countenance before them to such a villainous travesty."

As "Masaniello" had nearly had its run, and Evelyn was disinclined to see it again, having attended during the winter about twenty representations of this great musical spectacle, I was fain to go with our neighbors and their very youthful escort, or forego my opera.

As we entered the crowded lobby, Laura and I walked together behind George Gaston and Mrs. Stanbury, dropping later into Indian file as the crowd increased, in which order I was the last. I wore a rich India shawl, that had been my mother's, caught by a cameo clasp across the bosom. Suddenly I felt the pin wrenched away and the shawl torn from my shoulders. In another moment there was a cry—a scuffle—a fall—and a prostrate form was borne away between two policemen, while a gentleman, with his cravat hanging loose and his hair in wild confusion, came toward me eagerly, extending the shawl and clasp.

"These are yours, I believe, young lady," he remarked, breathlessly, throwing the shawl about my shoulders as he spoke, and laying the broken clasp in my hand. "I am happy to restore them to you."

The whole transaction had been so sudden and so public, that there had been neither time nor room for trepidation on my part. My own party, pressing steadily on, had not yet missed me, so that, even in that moment of excitement, I surveyed my champion with an eye capable of future recognition.

"Thank you," I said. "I hope you are not hurt in my service?"

"No, no; not at all—that is, very slightly, indeed. Pass on, I will attend you safely to your seat," and, obeying the wave of his hand, I followed the direction of Mrs. Stanbury's white plume as observingly as did the followers of Henry of Navarre, without turning again until I reached the box she had entered. I was shocked then, as I bowed my thanks, at the ghastly whiteness and expression of my escort's face, but he vanished too quickly to permit of inquiry or remark at that season.

I had still time before the curtain rose to relate my adventure, which brought the blood hotly to George Gaston's brow as he listened to it.

"There it is!" he muttered. "It is all very well with me in peaceful times, but, when it comes to battle, a poor, lame wretch is of little account. I might as well be a woman;" and the tears flowed down his quivering cheeks. "It was shameful, disgraceful, that any other man should have defended you, Miriam," he added, in a broken voice, clinching his hands, "than I, your escort."

"You did not even see the affair, George," I remonstrated. "Had you been as strong as Samson, and I know you are just as brave, you could not have helped me, for there I was lagging away behind, through my own fault, and how could you, in front, between your aunt and Laura, possibly know what danger was in store for me? Now, I shall feel provoked if you show so much morbid feeling; besides, reflect, you are but a boy, dear. George. No youth of your age is ever very strong."

"A boy! and what are you, Miriam Monfort, that you taunt me with youth! a woman, I suppose—a heroine!" with bitter sarcasm in his voice and eye, for the first time in his life so directed to me. I gazed at him in mute surprise.

"My dear George, you are very unreasonable, indeed," said Mrs. Stanbury. "What has Miriam done to deserve such a taunt? I never knew you to behave in such an uncourteous way before."

"You must be crazy, George Gaston," added Laura Stanbury, sharply. "Don't you know you are attracting attention toward our box. Be still directly!"

"Oh no, it is only the magnificent Miss Monfort that every one is staring at," he sneered. "The grown-up lady, the heroine, the heiress, who lingers behind in the lobby, in order to get up little melodramas of her own at the opera where such things are admissible, at the expense of her lame escort!"

I turned to him calmly; I had not spoken before. "George," I said, "if you say another word I shall go home alone, or burst into tears on the spot, and disgrace myself and you, one or the other. I cannot bear another word like this. I warn you, George Gaston!"

"Dear Miriam, forgive me; I am a fool I know," he said, as soon as he could recover himself. "Lend me your handkerchief, Laura, mine has mysteriously disappeared. There—Richard's himself again! (Sorra to him!) He ought to have a bullet through his head for his pains" (sotto voce).

This stroke of bathos brought about good-humor again, and soon our whole attention was absorbed in that magical music which to this hour electrifies me more than that of any other opera excepting "Norma." "Bad taste this," connoisseurs will say; but the perfection of human enjoyment is to pursue one's own tastes independently of Mrs. Grundy, whether musical, or literary, or artistic, according to my mode of thinking. In all the pauses of the opera, however, I saw that handsome and agitated face, that had last caught my eye at the box-door, rise before me like a spell; and anxiety for the safety of my strange champion—some curiosity too, mingled therewith, I do not deny, to know his name and lineage—beset me during the whole of a sleepless night and the dreaming day that succeeded it.

We were sitting around a cheerful spring fire in the front parlor, our ordinary sitting-room, opening as this did into the dining-room beyond on one hand, and the wide intersecting hall of entrance on the other, on the opposite side of which lay the long, double-chimneyed drawing-room, less cheerful than our smaller assembly-room by half, and therefore less often used (there, you have our whole first-floor arrangement now, my reader, I believe, and I must begin over again, to catch the clew of my long sentence). We were sitting, then, around the cheerful fire in the parlor in question, when Morton, my father's "own man," announced "Mr. Bainrothe and son," and a moment afterward the two gentlemen so heralded entered the room together. With one you are already somewhat familiar, reader mine, as a gentlemanly, handsome man, with deliberate movements and confident address. You have seen such men in cities frequently; but the word distingué, so often too hastily bestowed, was the chief characteristic of the appearance of his younger companion.

Tall, slender, graceful, strong—for strength alone bestows such easy perfection of movement, such equipoise of step as belonged to him—with a fine, clear-cut face and well-shaped head, nobly placed on his straight, square shoulders—wide for a man so slight—dark eyed, dark haired, with a mouth somewhat concealed by a long silken mustache, then an unusual coxcombry in our republic, yet revealing in glimpses superb teeth and the curve of accurately-cut lips, Claude Bainrothe stood before me, a young Apollo.

"I have brought my son here to-night, expressly to introduce him to you, Miriam, of whom he has heard so much."

He bowed low and silently, then tossed his curled head suddenly back again.

"We have met before, I believe, Mr. Bainrothe," I observed, when his eye rose to meet mine. "You were good enough to restore me my shawl and clasp last night at the opera, if I am not strangely mistaken."

"Ah! were you that lady?" he asked, with a slight yet somewhat embarrassed laugh. "Forgive me, if in the confusion of the moment I failed to remark your appearance. I only knew an outrage had been committed, and naturally sought to repair it."

"Now, that was really romantic," said Evelyn, who had caught the idea. "Miriam related her adventure, but was sorely puzzled to know to whom she was indebted for such chivalrous aid."

"I am glad to have been of service to Miss Monfort," he rejoined, deferentially, "but I merely obeyed an impulse strong with me. I should have been wanting to myself to have done otherwise than defend a helpless woman."

"There could not have been a more favorable opening to your acquaintance, certainly," observed Evelyn significantly; then, turning away and crossing the apartment, she applied herself to the entertainment of the elder Mr. Bainrothe, "Mr. Basil," as we called him after his son came, by way of distinction between the two, since the word "old" seemed invidious in his case, and we characterized them as we would have done two brothers.

Indeed, in manner, in bearing, in something of quiet repose entirely wanting in the father, and which usually seems the accompaniment of age or experience, the son seemed the elder man of the two. I had yet to learn that there is an experience so perfect and subtle that it assumes the air of ignorance, and triumphs in its simplicity over inferior craft itself.

When the mind has worked out the problems of life to its own satisfaction, like the school-boy who has proved his sums, it wipes the slate clean again and sets down the bare result—the laborious process it effaces. All is simplified.

"I was fearful that you had been hurt last night, Mr. Bainrothe," I hazarded, "from the expression of your face as I caught it at the box-door. I am glad to see you well this evening."

"I was hurt," he said, "to be frank with you. The scoundrel gave me a severe blow on the chest, which brought a little blood to my lips, and for the time I suffered. Had it not been for the faintness under which I was laboring I could not have failed to identify you. But you are generous enough to forgive this oversight I am convinced."

"Oh, surely! it was most natural under the circumstances. I have a habit of fixing faces at a glance that is rather uncommon, I believe. I never forget any one I have seen even for a moment, or where I have seen them, or even a name I have heard."

"A royal gift truly, one of the secrets of popularity, I believe. It is not so with me usually, though when my eye once drinks in a face" (and he looked steadily at mine while he spoke those words slowly, as if wrapped in contemplation), "it never departs again. 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever,' you know, Miss Monfort." He sighed slightly.

"Yes, that line has passed into an axiom, the only sensible one, I believe, by-the-by, that Keats ever wrote," I laughed.

"Oh, you do Keats injustice. Have you studied him, Miss Monfort?"

"Studied poetry? What an idea! No, but I have tried to read him, and failed. I think he had a very crude, chaotic mind indeed; I like more clearness."

"Clearness and shallowness most often go together," he observed. "When you see the pebbles at the bottom of a stream, most likely its waters are not deep."

"Yet, you can stir up mud with a long pole in the pool more readily than in the river. Keats wanted a current, it seems to me, to give him vitality and carry off his own mental impurities. His was a stagnant being."

"What a queer comparison," and he shook his head laughingly, "ingenious, but at fault; you are begging the question now. Well, what do you say to Shelley?"

"I have nothing to say to him; he has every thing to say to me. He is my master."

"An eccentric taste for so young a girl; and Byron? and Moore? and Mrs. Hemans? and Leigh Hunt? and Barry Cornwall?"

"Oh, every one likes them, but one gets tired of hearing lions roar, and harps play, and angels sing; and then one goes to Shelley for refreshment. He is never monotonous; he was a perennial fountain, singing at its source, and nearly all was fragmentary that he wrote, of course, wanting an outlet. The mind finishes out so much for itself, and the thought comes to one always, that he was completed in heaven. No other verse stirs me like his. You know he wrote it because he had to write or die. He was a poet, or nothing."

"You ought to write criticisms for Blackwood, really, Miss Monfort, and give a woman's reason for every opinion," with ill-concealed derision.

"You are laughing at me now, of course, but I don't regard good-natured raillery. I am sure I should not enjoy poetry as I do were I a better critic. I love flowers far more than many who understand botany as a science, and pull them to pieces scientifically and analytically."

"And paintings; do you love them?"

"Oh, passionately!"

"I confess I am blase with art," he said, quietly; "I have seen so much of it, I like nature far better;" adding, after a pause, "now, that is your chief charm. Miss Monfort."

"What, being natural?"

"How well you divine my meaning!" with a little irony in the voice and eye. The tendency of his mind was evidently sarcastic.

"Ah! true. Papa thinks me too natural; he often checks my impulses. Your father, too, coincides with him, I believe, in this opinion; but don't talk about me. Tell me of your sojourn in Germany. How delightful it must have been to have lived in Heidelberg, and felt the very atmosphere you breathed filled with wisdom! Did you ever go to Frankfort? Did you see the statue of Goethe there? Can you read 'Faust' in the original? Oh, I should like to so much, but I know nothing of German. I never could learn the character, I am convinced. French and Italian only. There was such a beautiful picture of 'Margaret' in the Academy of Fine Arts last year, I wanted papa to purchase it, but Evelyn and he did not fancy it as much as I did. They prefer copies from the old masters. I don't care a cent for Magdalenes and Madonnas and little fat cherubs. I prefer illustrations of poetry or fiction; don't you, Mr. Bainrothe?"

"Very frankly, Miss Monfort, I don't care for pictures at all, unless for good landscapes. I am cloyed with them. And as to German books, I never want to see another. The old 'Deer-Stealer' was worth all they have ever written put together, in my opinion. I love the vernacular."

"Oh, of course, Shakespeare and the Bible; there is nothing like them for truth and power. But to leave poetry for its sister art, you must have enjoyed the music in Germany. Do you love music, Mr. Bainrothe?"

"Not very much, except in opera; then the scenery and lights and people are half the charm. I don't care for science. Such an adventure as I had last night," he murmured low, "was worth a dozen operas to me;" and again I met his admiring, steady gaze, almost embarrassing, fixed upon me.

"What are you two talking about?" asked Evelyn, coming suddenly behind us. "Papa and Mr. Bainrothe are carrying on a little quiet flirtation, as usual, and have quite turned their backs on me, so I came hither, asking charity. I declare, Miriam's face is scarlet! What mischief are you two hatching?"

"I have been running on at a most unconscionable rate," I replied, "covering up my ignorance with many questions that have bored, rather than proved, Mr. Bainrothe, I fear. Take up the dialogue, dear Evelyn, for a few moments, while I go to superintend that elderly flirtation you speak of, and keep papa in order," and I left them abruptly.

"It will all be paid in before then," I heard Mr. Bainrothe say, as I approached them, "and you could not have a safer investment. It is as sound as the Federal Government itself. Indestructible as the solar system."

"I will bring the papers," papa said, rising. "Excuse me for ten minutes," and I dropped into his empty seat by Mr. Bainrothe.

"I hope I shall not interrupt your business meditations while papa is gone," I observed, breaking the silence first.

"Business is my pastime, and no food for meditation, my dear girl; for, like the Pontic monarch of old days, 'I live on poisons, and they have no power, but are a kind of nutriment.' Now, talking to a pretty young girl is far harder and more unusual work to me than transacting mercantile or financial affairs."

"Then I will not oppress you with my society," I said, with a feint to rise.

"Sit still, Miriam, and don't be foolish. You know what I mean, very well. Now, how do you like my son?"

"Oh, very much indeed; he is a little satirical, though, now and then; intolerant of youthful greenness, I perceive, and enthusiasm."

"All affectation, I assure you. He is as verdant himself as the Emerald Isle. Just from college, and very young; what can he know of life? As to enthusiasm, he is full of it."

"True, what can he know of life," I mused, and I glanced at him, as I questioned, sitting in front of Evelyn in a sort of humble, devoted way, very different from his easy, knightly air with me. She wore a cold, imperious expression of face not unbecoming to her haughty style of beauty, and fanned herself gently as she listened carelessly to his evidently earnest words, bowing superciliously in answer from time to time.

"The desire of the moth for the star," burst from my lips involuntarily.

"Nothing of the kind," said Mr. Bainrothe, quietly. "If Evelyn Erie were the last of her sex, he never could fancy her. She is much too old for my son, much too artificial; and, beautiful as she is, she wants some nameless charm, without which no woman ever secures the abiding love of man;" adding, abruptly, after a little pause, "That charm is yours, Miriam."

"How strangely you talk, Mr. Bainrothe!" I replied, with evident embarrassment, which he pretended not to perceive.

"Had you remained one year longer at school, there would have been no grace, no perfection wanting. I am sorry to see you thrown so young, so unprotected, on the waves of society, as you must be soon."

"Oh, not necessarily. I rarely come into the parlor when Evelyn receives, rarely go to parties, and my studies are as dear to me as they ever were. Besides, Mabel absorbs much of my time, and I am quite infatuated with my new accomplishment."

"What is that, Miriam?"

"I am studying elocution, learning to read with Mr. Mortimer—you have heard of him—and he is pleased, so far, with my success. It is a very delightful resource."

"Yes, you have a good voice, an impassioned face and manner—all very suitable, no doubt; but what will it amount to, after all? You will never have to earn your bread in that way, and for a home circle you have always read well enough. It is time wasted, I imagine."

"But the reading is not all. I learn to know and comprehend so much that was sealed from me before; in this way, Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, all acquire new beauties. By-the-by, this is what your son meant by studying poetry, perhaps."

"The puppy! Has he been lecturing you, too? Really, there is no end to his presumption;" and he smiled, benignly, upon him.

"I must defend him from such a charge," I said, earnestly. "I find him very deferential—he has the courteous European manner, which, when high-bred, is so polite. Americans never learn to bow like foreign gentlemen. It is a great charm."

"Do you hear that, Claude? Miss Monfort approves of your bow. This is all I can extort from her; but she is very hard to please, very censorious by nature, so don't be entirely discouraged."

A bow of the approved sort, and wave of the hand across the room, in addition, were the only rejoinder elicited by this sally, and again the downcast head, the clasped hands, the low, entreating voice denoted the character of his conference with Evelyn. He was pleading a desperate cause, it seemed to me.

Mr. Bainrothe became unreasonably nervous, I thought. He fidgeted with his hat, and gloves, and cane, which he took from the table near him, dropping the last as he did so; he glanced impatiently at the door through which my father was to enter, and, when finally his friend came, after a brief conference in a corner with regard to the papers he had gone out to seek, probably, summoned his son abruptly and darted off in true Continental style, followed by his more stately junior.

"Mr. Bainrothe amuses me," observed Evelyn after we were alone again. "He is so transparent, dear old butterfly! He need not be alarmed! I have put a quietus on all presumptuous hopes in that quarter forever, and now, Miriam, I hand him over to you signed and sealed 'Claude Bainrothe rejected and emancipated by Evelyn Erie, and ready for fresh servitude—apprenticed, in short.'"

"Thank you," I rejoined, dryly, speaking with a tightness at my throat.

"He thinks you quite good-looking, Miriam, I assure you; he was agreeably disappointed, even after what he had heard of your appearance—from the Stanburys, I suppose—and observed that there were fine elements in your character, too, if properly shaped and combined—a great deal of 'come out.'"

"He is truly gracious and condescending," I replied, "I thank him humbly."

"It was very plain that you admired him, Miriam. Any one could see that. I noticed his internal amusement at your fluttered manner."

"Did he tell you what his thoughts were, Evelyn, or do you merely interpret them after your own fashion?" I asked, sternly.

"Oh, of course he said nothing of the kind; I would not have permitted it, had he wished to. Poor fellow! I hope you will be kinder to him than I have been," and she sighed heavily. "He is yours now to have and to hold, you know."

"You have not shown your usual good taste, Evelyn," I remarked, coolly, "in rejecting so handsome and fascinating a man, and making him over to another, unsolicited. Claude Bainrothe would suit you exactly, I think; and, as to money, he will have enough, no doubt, for both. If not"—I hesitated—colored—sighed.

"If not, what, Miriam?" she urged, stamping her little foot impatiently as my answer was delayed. "If not, what then, Miriam? Speak out!"

"If not, dear sister, I will try to make up the deficiency," I said, embracing her. "Now you understand my intentions."

I was learning to love my sister, and happy in the power to please her, unconscious that an invisible barrier was rising from that hour, never to be put aside.

CHAPTER IV.

For a discarded lover heartlessly played with, as she herself confessed he had been, Claude Bainrothe bore himself very proudly and calmly in Evelyn Erle's presence, I thought. At first, there was a shade of coolness, of pique even in my own manner toward him as the memory of Evelyn's insinuations rose between us; but after the lapse of a few weeks all thought of this kind was put away, and he was received with a pleasure as undisguised, as it was innocent and undesigning on my part.

The repugnant idea of succeeding to Evelyn in his affections had stifled the very germs of coquetry, and my manner to him was unmistakable; nor was it without evident dissatisfaction that Mr. Basil Bainrothe surveyed the ruin of his hopes.

A sudden and painful change took place about midsummer in Claude's manner toward me (with Evelyn it was uniform). He became cold, restrained, embarrassed in his intercourse with me, hitherto so frank and brotherly. He made his visits shorter and at last at greater intervals; yet I knew, through others, that he remained strictly at home, eschewing all places of amusement, all society—"all occupation even," as Mr. Basil Bainrothe himself complained.

"I can't think what has got into Claude lately," he said to my father one day at our dinner-table. "The boy mopes. He is in love, I believe, but with whom I can't conjecture," and he glanced askance at Evelyn and me.—"Can you assist me, ladies?"

"Not with me, I assure you," said Evelyn, proudly. "That measure has been trodden, and the dance is over."

"Nor with me," I faltered, for the careless words had struck to my heart. "That fancy dance has yet to be solicited. We both plead innocent, you see, Mr. Bainrothe," and I tried to laugh, but the glittering, kaleidoscopic eye was fixed upon me, and my face was crimson.

"Never blush, Miriam," whispered Evelyn, maliciously, "it makes you look the color of a new mahogany bedstead. You are best pale, child. Always remember that."

"It must be with Miss Stanbury, then," said Mr. Bainrothe, evasively. "She is a very pretty girl, and I don't wonder at Claude's infatuation. The old man is rich, too; it will answer very well, I think. What do you say, Mr. Monfort."

"Well, really, I think Claude could scarcely do better," rejoined my ever literal father. "She is an admirable young person, pious, and discreetly brought up—and—yes, quite pretty, certainly. Let us drink to his success in that quarter.—Ladies!—Mr. Bainrothe!—fill your glasses.—Franklin, the sherry.—Morton, the port. Which will you have, Bainrothe? or do you prefer Rhine wines?"

"A glass of Hockheimer, if you have it convenient, Franklin. Those heavy wines are too heating for our summers, I think, Mr. Monfort. You yourself would do well to follow my example."

"Thank you," said my father, loftily. "When you feed lions on pound-cake you may expect to see Englishmen drink German acidulations instead of the generous juice of the grape—fostered on southern soil, above volcanoes even—to which they have been used since the time of the last Henrys. Beer were a better alternative. Give me claret or madeira."

Mr. Bainrothe had his limits, and usually took care not to exceed them. My father's easy good-nature was converted into frozen hauteur at any open effort to transcend the boundaries of his independence. He gloried in "Magna Charta," and never knowingly sacrificed his baronial privileges, yet he was wax in the hands of a skillful wheedler, and his "adamantine will" was readily fused in the fires of flattery.

We drank the proposed toast, much to Mr. Bainrothe's discomfiture. He had made the remark as a skillful feeler, and was mortified at my father's ready acquiescence in his plans. Of course, Evelyn and I both saw through the unskillful ruse, and pledged him with hearty malice; but he had yet another shot in reserve, which told with fatal effect.

"Mr. Biddle has offered me a cashiership for Claude," he remarked, carelessly, "in a thriving town in Georgia, and I shall accept for him forthwith. Then, if Miss Stanbury chooses to accompany him into exile, it will be all for the best; but, were he about to remain here, I would not suffer him to think of matrimony for years to come. 'A young man married is a young man marred,' as Shakespeare says somewhere, I believe; and I agree with him. A youth of twenty-one ought to be free for a season until he can shape his life."

I felt myself tremble from head to foot. I had never contemplated the possibility of his absence, and the conviction of my deep interest in him flashed across me for the first time with lightning force and vividness. Evelyn did not reproach me for blushing this time; I was pale enough to satisfy even her spleen. Indeed, some better feeling than she had before manifested seemed to inspire her now, for she filled another glass of wine and motioned me to drink it. I had merely sipped from mine when papa proposed his toast, and Franklin had borne it away with the others in making ready for the dessert.

"Don't let that man read you," she said, in a low, eager voice, not lost on me. I drank the wine, and met his glance steadily this time, and gave him look for look. My secret had nerved me well.

That evening Claude Bainrothe came.

"When do you enter the sacred bands of matrimony with Miss Stanbury, Mr. Bainrothe?" asked Evelyn, in her usual, cool, provoking way, sipping a glass of iced lemonade as she spoke, which Claude had brought her from the refreshment-slab and humbly offered.

"And when do you assume your office in Georgia?" I asked in the next breath, encouraged by her example, and perhaps, alas! eager to know the truth, scarcely lifting my eyes to his as I spoke.

He glanced from one to the other with a bewildered air, quite foreign from his usual self-possession.

"I protest, ladies, I do not understand your allusions," he replied at last, with such an air of truth that, taking pity on him, we explained the matter laughingly.

"My poor father is falling into that sear and yellow leaf, his dotage," he said, "that is evident; what could possess him to maunder so? I really believe he is in love with Miss Stanbury himself, and is wire-working merely to gain my consent. As to going to Georgia, I would as soon bury myself up to my neck in the sea-sand and bear the vertical sun for twenty sequent noons, as to dream of such a step. The old gentleman is a lunatic, and should be cared for without delay. I will get Dr. Parrish to see after him to-morrow."

"But I did hear you say you were going to Copenhagen with our minister," said George Gaston, who had swung himself softly up to our party on his crutches, unobserved by any one, while Claude was speaking, and now stood glaring upon him.

"Ah, that is a different matter. I may go there, George. I am told it is a very gay court; besides, I am curious about Denmark, naturally. Every one is who loves Shakespeare and the 'royal Dane,' you know."

Again that fatal pallor of mine swept from my heart to brow, and this time the large, dark gray eye of the boy was fixed on me with agony unspeakable. He dropped it suddenly, wheeled on his supporting-sticks, and turned away, ghastly pale himself, to seek the shelter of the portico, where I joined him a few minutes later.

"Are you ill, George?" I asked. "I felt anxious about you when I saw you leave the parlor so suddenly. Have you had one of your spells?"

"A very severe spell, Miriam; but not of the usual kind." I understood him now. There was a dry anguish in the very tone of his voice that smote heavily on my ear, yet I felt impatient with him, provoked beyond endurance.

"George, you should be more of a man," I said, with asperity, "than to yield in this way to every impulse that besets you. Your whims are hard to bear with lately, and scarcely worth understanding, I am convinced."

"Would I were more or less of a man!" he answered, meekly. "I should suffer less, probably."

"Tell me what does ail you, George Gaston," I added, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, caused by his patient, deprecating manner. "You know you always have my warmest sympathy, and affection—sisterly interest."

"Ah, Miriam, it is that! You love that man; yes, you love him a thousand-fold more than you have ever loved me. I suspected it before—I know it now; and I would rather see you floating a corpse on the river, with your dead face turned up to heaven, than married to that man, I hate him so!"

The last words were ground between his set teeth, and he trembled with passion.

"George," I said, "you are still a child in years, in strength, in stature! I, but a few months older, am already a woman in age, experience, feeling, character. It is always thus with persons of our sexes who contract childish friendships—one outgrows the other. Then there are bitterness, reproach, suffering, resentment, on one part or the other. But is this just? Remember Byron and Miss Chaworth—how was it with them? He grasped too much, and lost every thing; he embittered his whole nature, his whole life, for the want of common-sense to guide him; but, with almost as much genius—more, in some things, than he possessed—you HAVE this governing principle. I know my dearest George will do me justice. I shall be an old, faded woman when you are of an age to marry—unlovely in your eyes, George,"—I hesitated. "I have always hoped you would be our Mabel's husband. You know you have promised me." I smiled tearfully this time.

He bounded off the bench, interrupting me with a low cry. "Do not mock me, Miriam Monfort," he exclaimed, "if you can do no better. My God! a baby of five years old suggested as a wife by you, my idol! Oh, yes, wildly-beloved Miriam, the noblest, truest, as I have ever thought you—the most beautiful, too, surely, of all God's created beings!" and he caught my hand wildly.

"George, you are dreaming," I said; "your vivid fancy misleads you utterly. I am not beautiful—you cannot think so; no one has ever thought me so; you must not say such an absurd thing of me. It only humiliates me. But I do believe I still deserve your esteem. Let us separate now, and to-morrow come to me in a better mood."

"If I must give you up," he murmured, in a low, grieved voice, "let it be to a husband who loves and appreciates you—is worthy of you. I cannot tell you all I know—have heard; but of this I am certain: Claude Bainrothe loves you not! It is Evelyn he worships, and you are blind not to see it; Evelyn who has goaded him almost to madness already for her own purposes. I heard—but no, I cannot tell you this; I ought not—honor forbids;" and he laid his hand on his boyish breast, in a tragic, lofty manner, all his own, that almost made me smile.

"I know, I know all this, dear George," I said. "Claude Bainrothe addressed Evelyn before he knew me, and she refused him. Nor have I craved the honor, this is all that can be said as yet, of being her successor." I faltered here. "Let this satisfy you for the present. He has not spoken to me."

"But you love him—love him, Miriam!" he groaned. "Oh, I saw it plainly to-night, and, what is far more terrible and hard to bear, he saw it too! He was watching you from the corner of his furtive, downcast eye when he was speaking of going to Copenhagen, and a smile trembled around his mouth when you turned so pale—white as a poplar-leaf, Miriam, when the wind blows it over! If I were a woman I would cut out my heart rather than open it thus to the gaze of any man, far less one like that, shallow, selfish, superficial. O Miriam! not worthy of you at all—not fit to tie your shoe-latchet!"

"George, you overrate me, you always did, and—and—you undervalue Mr. Bainrothe, believe me; nay, I am sure you do. Let us part now, George. My father is calling me, you hear. Go home, my own dear boy, and rest and pray. Oh, be convinced that I love you better than all the world, except those I ought to love more.—Yes, yes, papa! I am coming.—Good-night, dear George."

And I kissed his clammy brow, hastening in the next moment to my father's side, who, missing me, could not rest in this new phase of his until I was forthcoming. Certainly, whatever tenderness I had missed in former years was amply lavished on me now. Evelyn, Mabel—all former idols sank out of sight in my presence, and the very touch of my hand, the sound of my voice, seemed to inspire him with happiness and a new sense of security. Sometime I flattered myself that I had earned this affection, since it had not seemed my birthright, nor come to me earlier; but no, it was the grace of God, I must believe, touching his heart at last, as the rod of Moses brought forth waters from the rock. Yet the simile is at fault here: my father's heart was never a stone, but tender and true and constant ever, even if locked away.

It may seem strange, but from the very evidences of his carelessness, as they seemed to others, I gathered, after a time, the blissful conviction that Claude Bainrothe was not indifferent to me. His reserve, his moroseness almost, the despairing way in which he spoke sometimes of his future life, his want of purpose, of interest in what was passing around him, his entire self-possession with Evelyn, so different from his embarrassment with me; his manner of pursuing me with his eyes, and holding me fast, and the long sidelong glances he often dropped at my feet like offerings, as I detected his vigilance—all persuaded me that what I most wished to believe was true, and that I had awakened interest if not passion in his heart, for—at last, I loved him!

The time came when his own lips confirmed my suspicions, my hopes—when faintly, and in broken accents, he related to me the story of his love; mine, as he declared, since the evening of our first meeting; and asked my troth in turn. I was so inexperienced in matters of this sort, I scarcely knew how to behave, I suppose; besides, I never thought of giving any other reply than the one he craved, for I too had inclined to him from the first. I recognized this now, and did not deny it when he urged me for the truth, holding my hands in his, and looking into my eyes in a deep and tender and devoted way peculiar to himself, that thrilled to my very life—an adoring expression that I have seen in no other gaze than his own, and which cast a glamour about him, I well believe, irresistible wherever it was exercised.

It was in September that we became engaged, with the joyful coincidence of Mr. Bainrothe, the somewhat reluctant consent of my father, the half-derisive approbation of Evelyn, the entire disapproval, expressed in eloquent silence, of the whole Stanbury family. For a time, this grave coldness on their part alienated me greatly from them all, George Gaston especially; and had it not been for Mabel, and the bond she proved between us, we might have been divided for life thereafter.

My father's declining health alone threw a bleakness over that rosy time of joy, and held in check the exuberance of my happy spirit, brimming like sparkling wine above the vase that contained it. Sometimes, when I met Evelyn's cold and gloomy eye, I felt myself rebuked for the indulgence of my perfect happiness. "She knows that my father is more ill than he seems!" I would conjecture—"Dr. Pemberton has told her what he conceals from me. I am making festal garlands in readiness for my father's grave, perhaps." Then with tears and entreaties I would question her: "I cannot be mistaken," I would say; "something is wrong with you. Is it about my father? If not of him, what is it, Evelyn, that makes your face like a stone mask of late—once all life and joy?" "Miriam, I am not quite well," she would reply evasively, or say, "I am meditating a step that will cost me dear. My uncle, the Earl of Pomfret, the head of our house since my grandfather's death, you know, writes me to visit him. It is this fatal necessity—for such for some reasons I feel it—that oppresses me so heavily."

"Why a necessity, dear Evelyn, why go at all? You certainly can never feel to any relative as you do to my father and yours."

"Your father does not find me as important to his happiness as he once did, Miriam. You have absorbed his whole affection of late; even Mabel, once his darling and plaything, is put aside."

"He surrendered her to me again, Evelyn, when I returned; this is all, believe me. He loves, he esteems you as much as ever; he consults you in all his arrangements. He has made you the mistress of his house; your judgment, your advice, are paramount with, him as to all matters of outlay; and, Evelyn, suffer me to speak to you on one subject of great delicacy—sister! I must. Whenever you marry from this house, understand well that you shall not go empty-handed."

"Fortune is not his to bestow," she responded, "and large charities have absorbed, I know, much of his yearly income, princely as that is. Besides, he reinvests all that remains from that source for Mabel, as I know. I feel assured he will provide for me, but it must be in a very small way, and I must go to England and make my establishment there."

"Would you marry for money, Evelyn?" I asked gravely. "O sister, can you conceive of no higher happiness than this?"

"I can," she said with emotion, while her lips blanched to the hue of ashes. "I have dreamed such a dream in days past, but now the dark reality alone remains and sweeps all before it. I shall embrace my first eligible offer regardless of feeling, and I prefer to cast my destiny with my own people, however estranged they may be. Certainly, this letter is not very affectionate, nor even a courteous one from so near a relative," and she placed in my hand the cold and supercilious note of the Earl of Pomfret, containing a permission to visit his castle, rather than invitation.

"Yet you will go, Evelyn?"

"Miriam, I must go. I should go mad were I to stay here, or die in the struggle."

"Sister, what can this be? Evelyn, hear me: I swear to you, on the day of my majority, to endow you richly in your own right. It is independence you want—you shall have it. My father will consent to this I know, and consider it no more than your due."

"You are kind," she said; "generous, very. You are not like your mother's people in that respect, such as they are in these degenerate days, at least. She herself was unlike them, I have heard, for her hand was princely. But, Miriam, I could not receive such obligations from you—ought not. Besides—your husband!"

"Ah, Evelyn, there is nothing he would refuse me—nothing."

A gloomy mockery transfused itself into her eyes, her lips were fixed in a suppressed and sneering smile. Incredulity was written on her aspect. Her face at that moment was very repulsive to contemplate.

"You do not believe in men," I said, coldly. "I have always remarked it; yet there are some worthy of confidence, believe me."

"Very few, Miriam, and Claude Bainrothe is not unlike the majority of his fellows. Men count it no wrong to deceive women."

"O Evelyn, you are too severe, I think. Why seek to shake my confidence in the man I love? He did not happen to suit your fancy, and you rejected him. I took what you cast aside, humbly, thankfully, dear Evelyn. Why resent this, and scorn me for my humility? Let not your pride for me make you unjust toward him. You, of all women, can best afford to be generous to Claude Bainrothe."

But still the cold shadow veiled her face, and still she looked inauspiciously on our betrothal, which, owing to our youth, it was understood, should continue a year. In the interval I was to travel with my father to the different large cities of the Union which I had never seen, and abide awhile in Washington.

His health, Dr. Pemberton thought, required this change, but a darker one was in store for him.

On Christmas-day, of that year, he was smitten with paralysis, and his decline was sure and rapid from that hour. Let me pass over the agony of that period of six weeks, lengthened into years by the dread tension of anxiety, most relentless of the furies. But for the confidence I felt in Claude's affection, and the vista of hope it opened for me, I think I should have succumbed under the unequal struggle.

During this period, his attentions to me and to my helpless father were most kind and assiduous. Mr. Bainrothe and Evelyn, too, between whom some unexplained alienation had existed for some time, met in apparent harmony above his bed of death.

In addition to the services of our own dear and valued physician, we had others of eminence coming and going daily, with the knowledge in their own breasts that all was vain.

Still I never ceased entirely to hope until the very last. "He is not old, he is still vigorous," I would say to myself. "There may be—there must be—reaction. I have so often heard him boast of his English constitution, I cannot, oh, I cannot think that the end is yet!"

I wondered then at the inattention of the Stanburys, in whose disinterested friendship I had reposed so much confidence, even though a shadow of late had been thrown over our intercourse by my engagement with Claude Bainrothe, a shadow of which I thought I saw the substance in the bitter jealousy and rancorous, unreasonable love and hatred of the morbid George Gaston.

Later I found by the merest accident, through one note of his that had been left in a drawer of a desk long disused, that Mr. Gerald Stanbury and Evelyn had maintained a rather fierce correspondence on the subject of her refusal to accept his services at my father's pillow; founded, as she alleged, on the recent unexplained but deep-rooted aversion Mr. Monfort seemed to have imbibed for his neighbor and friend, and which his physicians said must be regarded.

Allusion was made, not unmixed with bitterness, in Mr. Stanbury's note, to this assertion of hers, which he pronounced, if true, to rest on the misrepresentations of villains who had interposed between the too confiding Mr. Monfort and himself for no good purpose. No names were given, but it was easy to see to whom his reference was made, and I had every reason to suppose that Evelyn had communicated these opinions to those most interested in knowing them long before this record accidentally fell into my hands.

On the day of the funeral, however, Mr. and Mrs. Stanbury were present, with Laura and George. All seemed deeply affected, and one by one came to me in my shadowed chamber with a few words of tender sympathy or kindly condolence, for I could not bear to go down into that crowded parlor and see him dead amid all that tide of life, who had so lately stood there powerful and beloved—Monfort the master!

It was a superb day, they told me, such as we often have at that season in our changeful clime, and the distant peal of military music, the chiming of bells, the firing of cannon, the roar of the awakened multitude, reached my ear even in that secluded street, that quiet room.

The people were celebrating an anniversary that in all times has brought joy and pride to millions of united hearts. It was the birthday of Washington.

Laura Stanbury remained with me while all the rest went to the stately funeral, Evelyn leading Mabel down-stairs, they told me, attired in her little black dress, in sad contrast with her ivory skin, her yellow hair, her childish years, and her unconsciousness of the grave loss she had sustained; Mrs. Austin following these, her darlings, to go with them in the principal mourning-coach, in which Mr. Bainrothe also found himself ensconced, by some diplomacy of his own, no doubt, all clad in sables, and with his polished aspect fixed in woe!

After the funeral, Dr. Pemberton came up for a few minutes to my chamber. He found me reasonably calm and composed, and expressed his gratification at my condition.

"Now, do be very careful of yourself, my dear Miriam, or you may have one of your sleepy attacks, and they are exhausting to Nature, trying to both body and soul. We must guard against any thing of this sort at this time. You know how apt they are to supervene on excitement of any kind with you." He said this in his own kind, encouraging manner.

"Then they are strictly nervous?" I inquired.

"I don't know; can't say, indeed.—Here, Mrs. Austin, give Miriam one of these powders," and he drew them from his pocket-book, "every six hours until I come again, and keep her as quiet as possible. Some light nourishment she must take, but let there be no preaching and praying about her this evening, and advise Mr. Bainrothe to go quietly home for the present. She must not be excited, only soothed. Let Mabel come, of course."

He came again on the next day and the next, and so on until he was satisfied that all was going on very well, he said, but he would not suffer my father's will to be opened for a week, knowing that my presence would be necessary at the reading, and he permitted no disturbance of any kind to approach me during that interval of probation.

"Do you think you could get through with a few business details to-morrow?" he asked me on the last day of his visit. "They all seem very impatient, though I cannot see why."

"I think so, Dr. Pemberton."

"Well, then, notify Mr. Bainrothe to make ready for you in the library at any hour you may fix upon. He was your father's attorney, it seems, and had the will in his keeping. Of course it will be a very simple matter to carry out its provisions, since all was fixed before, as every one knows, but there may be some little agitation. Now, don't give way, I charge you."

"How can I help it. Dr. Pemberton?"

"Oh, with a will like yours, one can do a great deal. I had an obstinate patient once determined not to die, and she did not die, though death was due. Resistance is natural to some temperaments. Yours is one of them. Fight off those attacks, Miriam, in future."

"I will try," I said, half amused at his suggestion, "but, if all physicians gave such prescriptions, medicine would be at a discount."

"Not at all. Medicine is a great aid in any case—I have never thought it more. A doctor is only a pilot; he steers a ship sometimes past dangerous places on which it would founder otherwise, but he never pretends, unless he is a charlatan, to upheave shoals and rocks, or to control tempests. He can only mind his rudder and shift his sails; the rest is with Providence. Now, suppose the captain of this ship is calm and firm, and coincides with the pilot's efforts, instead of counteracting and embarrassing them. Don't you see the advantage to the ship?"

"Oh, certainly, and I admire the ingenuity of your allegory. You must have been studying Bunyan, lately."

"No, Miriam, I have little time for books, save those necessary to my profession. I study a mightier volume daily than scholar ever wrote—the wondrous mind and body of man, the one illustrated by the other, and both so mutually dependent that short-sighted people have occasionally confounded them, yet distinct after all as God and the universe."

"I am glad to hear you say this; doctors are so often accused of being materialists."

"No men living have less excuse for being so. The phenomenon of death alone ought to set that matter at rest in any reasoning mind. The impalpable is gone, and the material perishes. It is so plain that he that runs might read, one would think. That sudden change from volition to inertia is, in itself, conviction to every right-seeing mind."

"Yet I wish we knew more," I mused, aloud. "We ought to know more, it seems to me. God has not told us half enough for our satisfaction. It is so cruel to leave us in the dark, lit only by partial flashes of lightning. If we were certain of the future, we could bear separation better from those we love. It would not seem so hopeless."

"If we were certain of the future, we would not bear it all," he remarked, "but grow impatient and exacting like children who rise in the night to examine the Christmas stocking, rather than wait until morning. Most often we should join those we loved rather than bide our time if we were certain. Moreover, what merit would there be in faith or fortitude? No, Miriam, it is best as it is, believe me. Every thing is for the best that God has done; we must not dare to question the ways any more than the will of the Eternal."

"You ought to have been a preacher, Dr. Pemberton," I said, smiling sadly, "instead of a physician."

"No, my dear little girl, I ought to have been just what I am, since it was God's will. And now be calm and self-sustaining until I come again, which will be before long, I think."

I tried as far as in me lay to regard the instructions of my kind friend and physician (and happy are those who unite both in one person), but, prepare as we may to receive the waves of the sea when we bathe in its margin, and skillful as we may believe ourselves in buffeting or avoiding them, there comes one now and then with a strength and suddenness that sweeps us from our feet, overthrows us, and lays us prostrate at the sandy bottom of the ocean, to emerge therefrom half stifled with the bitter brine.

Such experience was destined to be mine before many hours.

CHAPTER V.

Mr. Gerald Stanbury had been especially invited to attend the reading of my father's will, by a polite note from Mr. Bainrothe, in which the interest that both bore in this testament was plainly set forth. With the exception of our excellent old neighbor and the two Mr. Bainrothes, the circle assembled for the solemn occasion was composed entirely of Mr. Monfort's household and was truly a funereal one. I wore my deep-mourning dress for the first time that day, and Mabel, similarly attired, sat beside me. Claude Bainrothe was alone on a distant sofa.

Evelyn assumed my father's chair, and wore, with the weeds customary to widows, a demeanor of great dignity and reserve suitable to the head of the family. Mr. Gerald Stanbury had a seat near mine, on which he sat uneasily, and Mrs. Austin, Franklin, and Morton, were ranged together stiffly in chairs placed against the wall, likewise attired in deep mourning. Mr. Bainrothe was seated near the study-table, looking unusually pale and subdued, from one of the drawers of which he had drawn forth the will, unlocking and locking it again with a key suspended to his guard-chain.

"This key was placed in my hand," he said, "during my friend's last illness, and, although he could not speak to me at the time, his expressive eye indicated its importance and to what drawer it belonged. This was before he was removed from the study in which he was stricken, dear friends, as you may all remember, on Christmas-morning, and which he never again reentered. From that day to this the key which I wear has not left my charge, nor been placed in the lock to which it belongs, and to the guardianship of which this will, as soon as made and legally attested, was probably committed. We will now, with your permission, break the seal that I see has been placed upon this document since I beheld it, the contents of which are already familiar to me." He then opened and read in a clear, monotonous voice my father's will and its provisions.

The property, as I knew already, was all mine by marriage contract, except such sums as my father had accumulated and set aside from his yearly income for his own purposes. With these he richly endowed Evelyn Erle, and comfortably the three servants or attendants, as he preferred to call them, who had followed him from England, and by their lives of fidelity and duty shown themselves worthy of his regard. Half of my estate was already in stocks of the United States Bank, and half loaned at interest on sound mortgages. This last was to be called in as speedily as possible and invested also in stocks of the above-mentioned bank, in that peculiar institution known as the Pennsylvania Bank, and still supposed to be under Mr. Biddle's superintendence. This was done, the testator said, to simplify his daughter's property, and render it more manageable to her hand, should she by her own will remain single, or by that of Providence be widowed, and he hoped in any case she would suffer it to remain in this shape as long as Mr. Biddle or Mr. Bainrothe lived.

All this I heard with satisfaction and even indifference, but the part that stung me almost to exasperation was reserved for the last. Mr. Bainrothe and Mr. Stanbury were named as executors conjointly with Evelyn Erie, in the last mentioned of whom all power over my actions was to vest until I should be of age, and in whose hands, as guardian, Mabel and her property were exclusively intrusted until that time should arrive; after that period her sisters were to act jointly, unless my marriage were made without consent of Evelyn, in which case Mabel was to be her charge alone.

No security was to be required of either executor, but, across Mr. Gerald Stanbury's name two lines in ink had been drawn with a wavering hand, as if for erasure.

I heard this last clause of the will with a beating, bounding, indignant heart. Evelyn, who so hated Claude Bainrothe, had us both completely in her power for the present, and might defer our marriage for years if it so pleased her. And Mabel, toward whom she did not disguise her indifference, was to be hers on this ground perhaps forever! Slavery for four of the best years of my life was entailed on me, and bondage forever on her, perhaps—my idol—my darling—mine—all mine by every right of man or God!

The injustice was too palpable. It was almost incomprehensible to me how he had been wrought upon to do these things—he, "a just man made perfect." All this flashed stunningly across my brain. Suddenly I threw my hand wildly to my head—the whirl of waters was in my ears; yet I struggled against the surging tide, and Claude Bainrothe's grasp upon my hand strengthened and revived me. I was roused from my apathy by hearing Mr. Gerald Stanbury's loud, sonorous voice speaking out clearly: "I decline to serve, Mr. Bainrothe, after that erasure. You understand that, of course. It was a farce to send for me to-day, tinder these circumstances."

"How could I know, my dear sir, that this erasure had been made?" was the soft and specious rejoinder. "It must have been done in the last few months. This will was drawn up in August last. I was ignorant of the whole subsequent proceeding, and at that time Mr. Monfort laid peculiar stress on your coincidence as executor. Has any thing occurred since that time to mar your good understanding?"

"Nothing of any consequence," said Mr. Stanbury, coldly—"nothing bearing on the esteem of man for man. Nevertheless, Mr. Monfort, as we all know, was a man easy to offend and difficult to appease, and I suppose" (he swallowed hard as he spoke) "he weighed old friendship and some good offices as nothing against his wounded self-love, and against the flatterers who beset him with their snares."

"Sir, you intend to be insulting, no doubt," Mr. Bainrothe observed, with a semblance of calm dignity; "but it is not on such an occasion as this, and in the disinterested discharge of my duty, that I will suffer myself to be ruffled by the bitter injustice of an irritable and disappointed old man."

"Be guarded, Mr. Bainrothe," Mr. Stanbury rejoined, "in your expressions to me, or I will look into that illegal erasure and still stand to my oar in this golden galley of yours, in which you expect to float with the stream, and so soon to have every thing your own way. I like plain sailing, sir; am a plain, straightforward man myself, to whom truth is second nature; and, were it not for the violence it might do the feelings of the person chiefly concerned in this testament, so soon to be allied to you and yours, if I understand things properly and report speaks truly, I would defy you, Mr. Basil Bainrothe, in the public courts, and claim my executorship under the wing of the law."

Mr. Bainrothe had turned ashy pale during the deliverance of this fiery rebuke. But he controlled himself admirably, merely contenting himself with saying, in a low voice: "No threats, if you please, Mr. Stanbury; act out your intentions when and where you choose, but have consideration just now for the feelings of others." And he waved his hand, trembling with rage, toward me, including in his gesture Evelyn, who by this time was beside me with her salts, chafing my hands. "I am sure we are all willing to yield our executorships if Miriam desires it," she said. "I, for one, should be glad to lift such a yoke from my shoulders, unaccustomed to such a burden. Mr. Stanbury, desirable as you seem to think it, this post of mine is no sinecure. But spare Miriam this scene, I beg of you; she is much overcome—much exhausted; excitement in her case is very injurious, Dr. Pemberton says. Let me beg you, my dear sir, to retire. All shall be done properly and in order. Her interest is our chief concern, of course."

"Evelyn Erle, I have nothing to say to you," I heard Mr. Stanbury exclaim, in a loud, excited tone. "It is not with women I wish to wage war, and so understand me! But there is One above to whom you will have to account rigidly some day for your stewardship and guardianship of these friendless girls, and be prepared, I counsel you, with your accounts, to meet Him when the day of reckoning comes! And it may come sooner than you suspect. I, for one, shall keep an unslumbering eye upon you and your devices while I live, even though at a distance.—Miriam, I am always ready to assist you, my dear, in any way possible to me—call on me freely. Remember, I am your friend." He came to me, he took me to his breast, he kissed my brow, his tears were on my cheek. I cast my arms about his dear, old, noble neck; I leaned my quivering face against his bosom. "I always loved you," I said. "I am so sorry, so sorry, Mr. Stanbury!" I knew no more—the words forsook my lips. Again that wild whirl of waters surged upon my ears; I seemed to be falling, falling down a black, steep, bottomless shaft, beneath which the sea was roaring—falling head-foremost—hurled as if with a strong impulse down the abyss to certain destruction.

Then all was still. The jaws of my dark malady had opened to receive me.

I woke as from a long, deep, and unrefreshing slumber. I was lying in my bed, with the curtains, drawn closely around it—the heavy crimson curtains, with their white inside draperies and snowy tufted fringes. I had a vague consciousness that some hand had recently parted them, and the tassels on the valance were quivering still with the impulse they had thus received. Then I heard voices.

"How much longer will it endure, Evelyn?"

"Five or six hours, I suppose. What time is it now?" The clock in the hall struck ten before the question could be answered.

"Ten! It was about three when she was seized," rejoined the voice of Evelyn; "you can calculate for yourself—the turns are invariably twelve and twenty-four hours in duration; if one period is transcended the other is accomplished. Dr. Pemberton himself told me this."

"Might not the term in some way be shortened? I was very sure I heard her stirring just now, and my heart was in my mouth." After which a pause.

"I knew you were mistaken, but I examined to satisfy your mind. No, she still lies in a lethargy, and will lie in that comatose condition until after noon. Then Dr. Pemberton will be here, and she will revive."

"That seizure was very dreadful, but I saw no foam on her lips like most epileptics, and I watched narrowly."

"There are modifications of the disease, Claude; hers is of a passive kind, with very few or no convulsive struggles—more like syncope. Had you not better retire now?"

"Still, it is epilepsy? No, do not banish me yet."

"That is what the doctors call it, I believe, Claude. Dr. Pemberton is too guarded or politic, one or the other—all Quakers are, you know—to give it a name, however. Dr. Physick told papa what it was very plainly, years ago."

"Ah I he was good authority, certainly a great physician and a philosopher as well; but, Evelyn, it is very awful," with a groan, and perhaps a shudder. "Very hard to get over or to bear."

"Yes, and the worst of it is it will increase with age, and the end is so deplorable—idiocy or madness, you know, invariably. Early death is desirable for Miriam. Her best friends should not wish to see her life prolonged. It is an inheritance, probably. Her mother died of some inscrutable incurable disease, I suppose like this."

"O God! O God! it is almost more than I can stand."

I heard him pacing the room slowly up and down, and my impulse was to part the curtains, to call him to me and comfort him, but I could not; I was too weak even to speak as yet, and bound as with a spell, a nightmare.

A whirl of vivid joy passed through me like an electric flash, however, as I recognized in his disquietude the strength of his affection. Evelyn's malignant cruelty and falsehood were lost sight of in the bliss of this conviction; yet my triumph was but brief.

"Evelyn," he said, speaking low, and pausing in his slow, continued pace.—"Evelyn, just as she lies there sleeping, I would she could lie forever! Then happiness could dawn for us again."

"Never, Claude Bainrothe!"

"You are unforgiving, my Evelyn! you have no mercy on me nor my sufferings. You make no allowance for necessity, or the desperation of my condition. In debt myself, and so long a cause of expense and anxiety to my father, whose sacrifices for me have been manifold, and before whom ruin is grimly yawning even now, how could I act otherwise, consistently with the duty of a son? Nay, what manhood would there have been in consigning you to such a fate as awaited penniless wife of mine?

"I did not think of these things, did not know them even, when we first met, and when I told you of my sudden passion I was sincere, Evelyn, then, as I am now, for it is unchanged, and you know that it is so.

"When the dark necessity was laid bare to me, and I felt it my duty to cancel our engagement, you bore it bravely, you kept my counsel, you assisted me in my projects; you proved yourself all that was noble and magnanimous in woman. What marvel, then, that I more than ever loved you, and wished the obstacle removed that divides us, and yearn for my lost happiness now dearer to me than before, only to be renewed through you, Evelyn! that I still adore!—woman most beautiful, most beloved!"

"Claude, this is mockery; release my hand; arise, this position becomes you not, nor yet me. Go! I am lost to you forever! your own cowardice, your own weak worship of expediency, have been your real obstacles. For your sake I was willing to brave poverty, debt, expatriation. It was you who preferred the dross of gold, and the indulgence of your own luxury and that of the sybarite, your father, to the passionate affection I bore you. It is too late now for regret or recrimination. Go, I command you! accomplish your destiny; continue to beguile Miriam with the tale of your affection, and in return reap your harvest of deluded affection and golden store from her! and from me receive your guerdon of scorn. For I, Claude Bainrothe, know you as you are, and despise you utterly!" Her voice trembled with anger, I knew of old its violent ring of rage.

"No, Evelyn, you only know me as I seem"—he spoke mildly, humbly—"not as I am. I am not a very bad man, Evelyn, nor even a very weak one; in all respects, vile as I appear to you, only a very unhappy wretch, and as such entitled to your respectful compassion at least—all I dare ask for now. I will not receive your scorn as my fit guerdon. Is there no strength in overcoming inclination as I have done, in compelling words of affection to flow from loathing lips?—for those scars alone, Evelyn, in contrast to your speckless beauty, would of themselves be enough to shock a fastidious man like me, those hideous livid scars which I have yet to behold, and shudder over, marking one whole side as you assure me of neck, shoulder, and arm, things that in woman are of such inestimable value, of almost more importance than the divine face itself."

"Yes, but the other side is statuesque enough to satisfy the requisitions of a sensuous sculptor," she rejoined, coldly; "you are wrong, Claude, let us be just! Miriam is very well formed, to say no more, and her skin is like a magnolia-leaf, where sun and wind have not touched or tanned it; then those scars will turn white after a while like the rest, and perhaps scarcely be visible."

"O Heavens! hideous white seams!" he exclaimed, passionately. "I have seen such, like small-pox marks, only ten times more frightful and indelible." In his impotent weakness he moaned aloud.

"Worse and worse! I will tell you frankly, had I known of them, the engagement never would have been contracted—no, not though the inferno had opened beneath me as my only alternative—but honor binds me now."

"You are fastidious truly, and your sense of honor supreme," she sneered.

"Beauty there was not," he continued, without regarding her rejoinder, "in any remarkable degree. I could have borne its absence with common patience, but absolute disfigurement, deformity, such as you assure me those burns have left behind them, is too dreadful! Had not Dr. Pemberton bared her arm in bleeding, as he did, I should never have known of it at all probably until too late. That one mark was suggestive."

"You attach too much consequence to mere externals, Claude," said Evelyn, coldly. "I trust such fastidious notions may be laid at rest before your marriage, or poor Miriam, with her warm, affectionate, and unsuspicious nature will be the sufferer. I pity her fate, sincerely."

"No, Evelyn, you wrong me there; I respect and esteem her far too much ever to wound her feelings. Against this I shall carefully guard. My bargain would be broken, otherwise. It is a clear case of barter and sale, you see. One's honor is concerned in keeping such an obligation. I shall never be ungrateful."

"You have European ideas, you tell me," she said, bitterly; "is this one of them?"

"It is, and the least among them, perhaps; yet it is, nevertheless, hard to overcome positive repulsion."

There was a pause now, during which I could count every throb of my heart, and throat, and temples—my whole frame was transfigured into an anvil, on which a thousand tiny hammers seemed to ring. Yet I could not move, nor speak, nor weep—no wretchedness was ever more supreme than this cataleptic seizure. Evelyn was the first to break the transient silence.

"Your path is a plain one, Claude Bainrothe; fulfill your contract, sealed with gold, and bear patiently your selected lot."

"Evelyn, one word—let it be sincere: do you hate and scorn me? Answer me as you would speak to your own soul."

"No, Claude, no, yet the blow was hard to bear—struck, too, as you must reflect, so suddenly! Only the day before abandonment, remember, you had made protestations of such undying constancy. Your conduct was surely inconstant, at least."

"I make them still, those professions you scorn so deeply."

"Away, false man, lest the sleeper awaken!"

"You say there is no danger of that, and that in their coffins the dead are not more insensible."

"To see you kneeling at my feet might bring the dead even to life," she laughed, contemptuously. "I am sick of this drama; be natural for once. We can both afford to be so now."

"Do not spurn me, Evelyn! Never was my love for you so wild as now." I heard him kissing her hands passionately, and his voice, as he spoke these words, was choked with grief.

"O Claude, let my hand go; at least consider appearances. Mrs. Austin will be here in a moment now; what will she think of you? What am I to think of such caprice?"

"One word, then, Evelyn—tell me that you forgive me—on such conditions I will release your hands."

"When I forgive you, Claude, I shall be wholly indifferent to you," she said, gently. "Do you still claim forgiveness? I am not angry, though, take that assurance for all comfort. Then, if you will have it" (and I heard a kiss exchanged), "this confirmation."

"Then you are not wholly indifferent to me, Evelyn?" he said, in eager tones, "you care for me still—a little?"

"A very little, Claude"—hesitatingly.

"Say that you love me, Evelyn, just once more—I can then die happy."

"Claude Bainrothe, arise—unhand me—this is child's play—let me breathe freely again. Well do you know I love you. O God! why do you return to a theme so bitter and profitless to both? Come, let us look together on Miriam sleeping, and gather strength and courage from such contemplation. Come, my friend!"

The curtains were lifted—still I lay rigidly and with closed eyelids before them—not from any notion of my own, but from the helplessness of my agony and the condition into which I was fast drifting. Once or twice during the progress of this conversation I had tried to lift my voice, my hand—both were alike powerless. I lay bound, for a while, in a cataleptic reverie, and then I passed away once more into darkness and syncope.

It was evening when I revived—Dr. Pemberton was sitting beside me, holding my pulse—Mrs. Austin and Mabel were at the bedside. This was, at last, the end I craved; of all, I hoped.

"The wine, Mrs. Austin," the doctor said, in low accents.

"Quick! one spoonful instantly. You know how it was before—you were too slow; she fell back before she could swallow it.—Now another, Miriam. Say, are you better?"

Most anxiously as my eyes opened and were fixed upon his face, were these words spoken:

"No, dying, I believe—at least, I hope so!"

The shrieks of the child aroused me to a sense of what I owed myself and her. "You shall not die, sister Miriam," she cried. "Papa does not want you—I want you—I will not stay with Evelyn and Claude—I will go down in the ground too, if you die. My sister, you shall not go to God! I will hold you tight, if He comes for you. He shall not have my Miriam—nor His angels either."

Her cries did for me what medicine had failed to do. They tried in vain to silence her. My pulse returned under the stimulus of emotion. I put out my hand blindly to Mabel.

"Hush, darling," I said, "I will live for you if I can—ask Dr. Pemberton to save me."

"You are better, already, Miriam," he whispered. "Mrs. Austin, take Mabel away until she can be quiet and behave like a lady; her sister is getting well—tell her I say so. Call Miss Evelyn here, instantly."

"No, no!" with an impatient movement of the hand. "Not Evelyn;" again my arm fell nervelessly.

"Well, then, don't call her, of course. I will stay a while myself; we don't want anybody at all, Miriam and I, only each other. Go you and make that panada ready, and sent it when I ring. Let Charity bring it, she will do. Keep every one else away."

His word was law in our household in times of illness, and Mabel's cries were hushed at once by his assurances, and she was led passively away. She was capable of great self-control on emergencies, like her own dear sainted mamma, who always thought first what was best for others, and afterward for herself, if there was room at all for such latter consideration.

"You must have revived hours ago," said Dr. Pemberton, after I had rallied sufficiently to prove to him that my crisis was over, and the usual symptoms of returning convalescence had been manifested. "I have marked your seizures narrowly, the periods are perfect—have limited them to eighteen hours latterly—nay, sometimes to twelve; they used to be four-and-twenty. You were due back again in port, little craft, at nine or ten o'clock this morning."

"Back again from where, Dr. Pemberton?"

"How should I know, my dear? Some unknown shore—Hades, perhaps. Who knows what becomes of the soul when the body is wrapped in stupor or sleep, any more than when it is dead? You came partially to yourself at five this afternoon. I had just come in then, having been unavoidably detained. We administered, or tried to administer, wine—but too slowly; you fell back again into unconsciousness—drifted off to sea once more; but this last effort of Nature was successful. It is all very mysterious to me. Have you no memory of having revived before?"

"Yes, I was conscious for some time this morning—for nearly an hour, I think."

"At what hour? Who was with you?"

"At ten o'clock. I heard the hall clock strike that hour soon after I opened my eyes. I counted every stroke. There were persons in the room at the time, but no one knew of my recovery of consciousness. I lay as if spellbound. I heard conversation and understood it; I remember every word of it yet—I shall ever remember it. But, when they came to me, I was unable to speak or make a sign."

"Unable, or unwilling? I have said before, Miriam, the will has much to do with all this. It is a sort of magnetic seizure, I sometimes think."

"Both, perhaps, involuntary; but I certainly did not wish to grow unconscious again."

"Yet you wanted to die a while ago—child, child, there is something wrong here! What is it? Tell me frankly. I heard of the scene with Mr. Stanbury—the passionate old man was very unwise to excite you so; he meant well, though, no doubt—he always does. What more has occurred? Now, tell me candidly—much depends on the truth—has any one been unkind?"

"Whatever I say to you, Dr. Pemberton, must be under the pledge of confidence," I replied; "otherwise I shall keep my own counsel."

"Surely, Miriam."

"Well, then, I overheard some one saying, when I revived this morning, that I was epileptic, and it troubled me. Now, I call upon you solemnly to answer me truthfully on this point. Of what character is my disease?—speak earnestly."

"I do not know—not epilepsy, certainly; partially nervous, I think—one of Nature's strange safety-valves, I suppose."

"You would not deceive me?"

"Not under present circumstances, surely; not at any time after such an appeal as yours."

"Did Dr. Physick ever pronounce my disease epilepsy? You consulted together about it once, I believe. Do tell me the truth about this matter," laying my hand on his arm.

"Never, so help me God!" he said, earnestly.

"You have relieved me greatly," I said, pressing my lips on that dear and revered hand which had so often ministered to me and mine in sorest agony—a hand spotless as the heart within—yet, brown and withered as the leaves of autumn.

"Now you, in turn, must relieve me," he said, gravely. "Who was it that alleged these things? They were slanders, and deserve to be nailed to the wall, and shall be if power be mine to do so."

"I cannot tell you. Do not ask me. It was not asserted that you pronounced my disease epilepsy, but insinuated that you thought so. Dr. Physick's opinion was given to confirm this impression."

"Have you traitors in your own household, Miriam?" he asked, sternly.

I was silent—shedding quiet tears, however.

"I have thought so before," he said, low, between his set teeth. "But, thank God, you can put your foot on them all before very long!—This seems a nice young man you are going to marry, but I never liked his father. I say this frankly to you, child; but, in truth, I have had no sufficient reason for this distaste or prejudice—it is no more, I confess. You are very much in their hands for the present, I fear; but I hope they will do you justice."

"I shall not marry Claude Bainrothe," I rejoined at last, firmly. "Let this be perfectly understood between us two, Dr. Pemberton. That marriage will never take place!"

"Why, your own father told me you were engaged in October last!"

"I have changed my mind since then. Understand me, I admire Mr. Bainrothe for many qualities—I am attached to him even; and he is infinitely to be pitied for some reasons, certainly; but marry him I never will!"

"And this is your resolution?"

"It is. But, on second thoughts, I will ask you to keep your knowledge of it strictly to yourself. I cannot tell you my motives of action now, but they are good."

"Miriam, you must not ask me to be your confederate in any scheme of coquetry or caprice such as this concealment points to. You must deal with this young man openly—no double dealings, my child, or I shall come to the rescue."

"Have you ever known me to play fast and loose, Dr. Pemberton? Is that my characteristic? Ask Mr. Gerald Stanbury—ask all who know me—if I have ever been guilty of deceit, or time-serving, or caprice, or perfidy. No, Dr. Pemberton, it is on his own account solely that I wish to keep this matter quiet for the present. Should he wish to proclaim it, I surely shall not object. But I seek only to shield him from mortification, from reproach, in the line of conduct that I am adopting—best for both."

"And to give yourself margin for a change of mind again—little fox! Ah, Miriam, it is the old story—a lovers' quarrel! I understand it all perfectly now. Don't be too hard on the young fellow; he seemed very much in love. Relent in time; he will value your mercy more than your justice, perhaps."

"Have you ever seen us together, that you pronounce him very much in love?" I asked, in a hard, cold, subdued voice that startled my own ear, and made him serious at once.

"Never. But he wears the absent, dreamy air of a lover; even when alone it is noticeable, Miriam. I can always tell when a man is preoccupied in that way."

"If you could go a little further, and divine the object of such preoccupation, you would be better prepared to counsel me, dear friend. He is no lover of mine, I assure you!"

"Ah, the old story again, Miriam! Have patience, my dear child." And, strong in his belief that my change of resolution arose only from pique and jealousy, that would soon be over, the good doctor went his way, all the more ready to keep my secret for such conviction.

I passed a miserable night. The great bed seemed to inclose me like a sepulchre, which yet I was too feeble, too irresolute, to leave. The conversation I had heard seemed stereotyped on plates of brass, that rang like cymbals in my ears. Toward morning I slept. I dreamed that mamma came to me, and said, in tones so natural that they seemed to sound in my ears after I had awakened:

"Miriam, your mother and father have sent me to say to you that they are united and happy. I, too, have found my mate at last. It was for this I was called. The sea has given up its dead, and I am blessed. Now, dearest, Mabel is all yours;" and then she kissed me.

I woke with that kiss upon my cheek.

The brief and distinct vision made a deep impression on me. I awoke refreshed and strengthened, as from a magnetic slumber.

At first, a sense of joy alone possessed me, but soon the great bitter burden came rolling back upon my soul, like the stone of Sisyphus, which my sleeping soul had heaved away.

It is a beautiful law of our being, that we rarely dream of that which occupies and troubles us most in the daytime. Compensation is carried out in this way, as in many others, insensibly, and the balance of thought kept equal. I have heard persons complain frequently that they could not dream of their dead, with whom their waking thoughts were ever filled. But madness must have been the consequence, had there been no repose for the mind from one engrossing image.

Relaxation comes to us in dreams at times when the brain needs it most, and to lose the consciousness of a sorrow is to cast off its burden for a time, and gain new strength to bear it.

I thought, when I first arose from my bed, that I would write to Claude Bainrothe, and thus save myself the trial of an interview. But the necessity of secrecy, in the commencement at least of the rupture, on his own account, presented itself too forcibly to my mind to permit me such self-indulgence. I felt assured in the first bitterness of feeling, that he would lay my letters before Evelyn, from whom I especially wished, for household peace, to preserve the knowledge of what had passed in my chamber between herself and him.

I had no wish either to mortify or wound the man I had loved so tenderly, but from whom I felt now wholly severed, as though the shadow of a grave had intervened between us.

Never again, never, could he be more to me than a memory, a regret.

Glaring faults, impulsive offenses, crime even it may be, I could have forgiven, so long as his allegiance had been mine, and his affection proof against change, but coldness, perfidy, loathing, such as he had avowed, these could never be redeemed in any way, nor considered other than they were, insuperable objections to our honorable union.

My heart recoiled from him so utterly, that I could conceive of no fate more bitter than to be compelled again to receive his profession of affection, his lover-like caresses; yet, in recoiling, it had been bruised against its prison-bars, bruised and crushed like a bird that seeks refuge in the farthest limits of its cage from an approaching foe, and suffers almost as severely as if given to its fangs.

I determined, after mature consideration, to see him once again, privately, and beyond the range of all foreign observation and hearing. In order to do this, I might have to wait, and in the mean time how should I deport myself, how conceal my change of feeling from his observant eyes?

I was relieved by an unlooked-for contingency. Evelyn announced her intention of going, as soon as I should be able to spare her, with a party of young friends, to hear a celebrated singer perform in an oratorio in the cathedral of an adjacent city, her specialty being vocal music, and her mourning permitting only sacred concerts. Her own highly-cultivated voice, it is true, had ill repaid the care that had been lavished on it, sharp and thin as it was by nature. I urged her to set forth at once, declaring myself convalescent, but I did not leave my room, nor see Claude Bainrothe, save for five minutes in her presence, until after she had gone. Then I was at liberty to work my will.

I wrote on the very evening of her departure, requesting him to defer his accustomed visit, until the next morning, when I hoped to have an hour's private conversation with him in the library, a room most dear to me, once as the chosen haunt of my father, but shunned of late as vault-like and melancholy, now that his ever-welcome and dear presence was removed from it forever.

Punctual as the hand to the hour or the dial to the sun, Claude Bainrothe came at the time I had appointed, and I was there to meet him, nerved and calm as a spirit of the past, in that great quiet sarcophagus of books—at least, I so deceived myself to believe. I had made up my mind, during the time I had been sitting alone in that sombre room, as to what I would say to him, and how clearly and concisely I would array my wrongs in words, and pronounce his sentence. But, when he came, all this was forgotten. A tumult of wild feeling surged through my brain. My very tongue grew icy, and trembled in my mouth. My eyes were dimmed, and my forehead was cold and rigid. I was silent from emotion. I felt like a dying wretch.

"You are very pale, Miriam," he said, as he advanced to me with outstretched hands, and wearing that beaming, candid, devoted look he knew so well how to assume; "are you sure you are not going to be ill again, my love? You must be careful of yourself, my own darling; you must indeed, for my sake, if not your own."

I was strengthened now to speak, by the indignation that possessed me, at his perfidious words, his wholly artificial manner, which broke on me as suddenly and as glaringly on the eye as rouge will do on a woman's cheek in sunshine, which we have thought real bloom in shadow. I wondered then, how I ever could have been deceived. I wonder less now.

"Sit down, Mr. Bainrothe," I said, coldly, withdrawing my hands quietly from his grasp, and recovering with my composure my strength. "Do not concern yourself about my health, I beg. It is quite good just now, and will probably remain so for some time. My spells occur at distant intervals."

"I know how that is, or has been; but we must try to break them up altogether. We will go to Paris next year, and have the best advice; in the mean time Dr. Pemberton must try some new remedy for you, or call in counsel. On this point I am quite determined."

"I am satisfied that Dr. Pemberton, who understands my constitution thoroughly, is my best adviser. I shall decline all other medical aid," I replied. "Nature is on my side—I am young, vigorous, growing still, probably, in strength, and shall fling off my malady eventually, as a strong man casts a serpent from his thigh. I have little fear on that score. Nor do I think, with some others, that my disease is epilepsy; though, if it were, God knows I should have little need for shame."

"Miriam, what an idea! Epilepsy, indeed!" He was very nervous now, I saw. "Epilepsy, indeed!"—he faltered again.

"As to those scars, Claude," I said, fixing my eyes upon him, "they were honorably earned in my sister's service. Your father knows the details, which I spare your fastidious ear. I cannot wonder, however, that they shocked you, with your previous feelings to me. I do not like to look upon them myself, yet I have never felt them a humiliation until now." I knew that my forehead flushed hotly as I proceeded, and my lips trembled. The reaction was complete.

"Miriam, what does all this mean?" he asked, rising suddenly from his seat as pale as ashes, and clinging to the mantel-shelf for support as he did so.

"It means, Claude Bainrothe," I said, firmly, "it means simply this: that our engagement is at an end; that you are free from all claims of mine from this moment, and that henceforth we can only meet as friends or strangers—as the first, I trust!" I stretched forth my hand toward him kindly, irresistibly. He did not seem to notice it.

"Who has done this?" he asked, huskily. "Evelyn? This is her work, I feel; a piece of her bitter vengeance! Tell me the truth, Miriam—who has done this devil's mischief?"

He suffered greatly, I saw—was terribly excited.

"So far from your surmise being just, Claude, I enjoin upon you, as a man of honor, never to let her know the subject of this conference, in which she has had no voluntary part. Placed as I am by my father's will, which I never will gainsay, however bitter it may be to me; bound hand and foot; indeed, in her power by its decisions for a term of years, her knowledge of the fact that I had overheard her conversation with you in my chamber when I lay stricken, helpless, if not unconscious (an unwilling listener, I assure you, Claude, to every word you uttered), would be a cause of endless misery to me and her. No, Evelyn has told me nothing, believe me."

He staggered back from the mantel to his chair, sat down again helplessly, and covered his face with his hands. The blush of shame mounted above his fingers and crimsoned the very roots of his silken hair. He trembled visibly.

O God! how I pitied him then! Self sank out of sight at that moment, and I thought only of his confusion. Had I obeyed my impulse, I would have cast my arms about his neck as about a brother's, and whispered, to that stormy nature, "Peace, be still!" But I refrained from a manifestation that might have deceived him utterly as to its source. I only said:

"I am very sorry, Claude, for all this; but bear it like a man. Believe me, no one shall ever know the occasion of this rupture—the management of which I leave entirely in your hands. Of what I overheard I shall never speak, I promise you, even though sorely pressed for my reasons for our separation. My own pride would prevent such a revelation, you know, putting principle aside." And again I extended my hand to him frankly, with the words, "Let us be friends."

He had glanced up a moment while I was speaking, evidently relieved by my voluntary promise. He took my hand humbly now, and reverently kissed it, bowing his head above it long and mutely.

"My poor, outraged, offended, noble Miriam!" I heard him murmur at last. The words affected me.

"I am all these, Claude," I said, withdrawing my hand gently but firmly, "but none the less your friend, if you will have it so. And now let us think what will be best for you to do. I wish to spare your feelings as much as possible, and I will say all I can with truth to exonerate you in your father's eyes. Go to Copenhagen, as you proposed at one time to do, and leave the rest to me. That will be best, I think."

"To Copenhagen!" he exclaimed. "You issue thus coldly your edict of banishment! Are you implacable then, Miriam?" and the cold dew stood in beads on his now pallid brow as he rose before me. He had not fully realized his situation until now.

"'Implacable' is scarcely the word for this occasion, Claude. It implies anger or hatred, it seems to me. Now, I feel neither of these—only the truest sympathy."

"Your anger, your hatred, were far more welcome, Miriam—more natural under the circumstances. This cool philosophy in one so young is monstrous! Mock me no longer with your calm compassion—it maddens me—it sinks me below contempt!"

He spoke gloomily, angrily, pushing away the clustering hair from his brow in the way peculiar to him when excited, as he proceeded, stamping slightly with his foot on the marble hearthstone in his impotent way. I could but smile!

"I will not offend you further, Claude," I said, mildly. "Receive your ring;" and I gave him back the diamond cross on a black enamel ground set on its circle of gold that he had placed upon my finger as a pledge of our betrothal; an ominous one, surely—for another cross was now to be borne.

"Understand me distinctly, Claude, all is finally at an end between us from this forever more! And now, farewell!"

"Go, Miriam, go!" he murmured. "Leave me to my fate—I have deserved it all, and more. I have been weak and wicked—you shall not find me ungrateful. Go, queenly spirit! go, soul of tenderness, pity, and most unselfish faith, that ever folded its wings in human breast! go, and find a fitter mate! For me, the world is wide, I shall offend your gaze no more."

Without another word I left him. I could not trust myself to speak. Too much of the past returned to render any further intercourse between us wise, or other than torture at that season. Besides, my confidence in him was gone forever, and with it had vanished respect, esteem, affection!

CHAPTER VI.

"What is this Claude is talking of, Miriam?" asked Mr. Bainrothe a day or two after the interview I have described in my last pages. "Copenhagen again—and he seems quite dispirited. He says you have sent him into banishment for a year, Miriam—a long probation truly!"

"Our engagement was to have been for that length of time from the first," I said, evasively; "my father was not willing for me to marry before I had attained my seventeenth year, you remember, and it still wants some months of that period."

"Oh, yes! but all that is changed now by the force of circumstances. You are so well grown, so very womanly for your age, that I cannot see why it would not be just as well to shorten rather than lengthen the period of your engagement, especially as it seems Claude must go into exile until then, by some caprice of yours. You will be at the head of your own house too, after that ceremony takes place, which Claude is so impatient to have over. Evelyn would go to England for a time under such circumstances, for she will not oppose your views—your father's will was made before your betrothal to my son, or he would scarcely have made her your absolute guardian" (apologetically spoken). "For the matter of that," he pursued, "I cannot doubt that, were you settled in life, she would gladly transfer Mabel to your care. Indeed, I have heard her say as much."

"A great temptation, truly!" I said, grimly.

"Your manner is peculiar to-day, Miriam. I cannot understand it, I confess."

"For all explanation, Mr. Bainrothe, I refer you to your son. I prefer not to discuss the matter."

"Ah! it is just as I expected, from his behavior as well as your own. Some childish misunderstanding has taken place between you, which, he was loath to acknowledge or explain, but which in your womanly candor you will reveal at once, and tell me all about it. I am the very best mediator you ever saw on such occasions," with a bland and confident air, taking my hand, smiling.

"Mr. Bainrothe, your mediation could effect nothing between me and Claude; we understand one another perfectly, I assure you."

He was very much excited now, evidently; he relinquished my unwilling hand coldly—on which he had, doubtless, missed the conspicuous ring, significant of my engagement. His chameleon eyes seemed to emit sparks of phosphorescent fire, as if every one of the dull-yellow sparks therein had become suddenly ignited. I saw then, for the first time, what his ire could be, and what reason I had to dread it.

"Have I been deceived in believing that you were attached to my son, Miriam Monfort, and that you meant to keep faith with him?" he asked, stiffly.

"You have not been deceived, Mr. Bainrothe, nor is it my wish to deceive you now. Again I beg to refer you to him for all explanation; whatever he alleges will be highly satisfactory to me."

"I will bet my life," he said, passionately, "that Evelyn Erle is at the root of all this! That girl," he soliloquized, "who knew so well, from the first, what our intentions were; to throw herself at his head in the shameless way she did! A woman, without a woman's modesty."

"Beware, Mr. Bainrothe," I interrupted; "it is of my sister you speak. I will not hear her slandered. Certainly, if propriety ever assumed female form, it is in that of Evelyn Erie. This was my father's opinion—it is mine."

"Propriety! The pale ghost of it rather," he sneered; "I thought you hated hypocrisy; you do not love that woman—have little right to; yet you praise and defend her. How is this! Are you sincere in such a course? Ask your own heart."

"Mr. Bainrothe, let us not discuss Evelyn, I beg, either now or hereafter; for some reason she is very sacred to me. I cannot say one word more on the subject of your son than I have said, without his own consent. As to our marriage, let me tell you frankly—" I hesitated—the stricture of my throat, for a moment, interrupted me, and I was ashamed of my weakness.

"That it is indefinitely postponed, I suppose you would like to say, Miriam," he added, ironically. "Well, I honor your emotion; don't be ashamed of it. Claude is to blame, no doubt; but the poor fellow suffers enough already, without prolonged punishment. Suppose I send him up to you; he will fall at your feet."

I shook my head silently.

"Now, don't be hard-hearted; I have never seen any man more devoted than he is to you. A woman must forgive a few shortcomings, now and then, in one of our faulty sex. You lived so long with a man who was almost perfect, that you cannot make allowances for impulsive and indiscreet young manhood. What has poor Claude been guilty of?"

"I will tell you," I said, recovering myself by the time this speech was ended, by a mighty effort. "I will tell you: Guilty only of doing violence to his own inclinations, from a mistaken sense of duty to his father; that is all. I never felt more kindly—more affectionately to Claude Bainrothe than at this moment. If I can serve him in any way, but one, he may always command me. Let him go for the present to Copenhagen, I implore you; it will be best for him—for all of us. He will know his own mind better then, than he can now. When he returns, I would like to see him happy. I doubt if he will be so, if he remains here," I faltered; "I should dislike, very much, to see him make shipwreck of his happiness." I hesitated, choked again. "I acknowledge—"

"You have cut him off, Miriam, that is plain, for the present, at least," he interrupted. "Yet you speak in enigmas; but, if he be the man I think he is, he will make all clear to you at last, for I am sure he is incapable of any act radically wrong, and is the soul of chivalrous honor; always ready to repair a folly, and avoid it in future. The very best fellow living."

I had never seen Mr. Bainrothe so moved before as he now certainly was. The glitter of a tear was in his mottled eye, and it stirred me strangely. It was as if a snake should weep, and what in Nature could be more affecting than such a spectacle? Or, rather, what out of Nature?

There must have been, despite this tender showing, an outbreak of some sort between father and son from the time of this call and the next visit of Mr. Bainrothe, which occurred some days later.

The expression of concentrated rage on his face was unmistakable on this occasion. Its usually placid, polished expression was laid aside, for one of unqualified displeasure. He was pale as marble too, which was a sign of excitement with him, with his complexion, usually clear and florid.

"Again I come to you, Miriam," he said, "and this time with his permission to mediate between you and my unhappy son. Believe me, you attach too much consequence to hasty and half-comprehended expressions, uttered, as he avers, to appease the offended vanity of an angry and implacable—ay, and dangerous woman. There are few things a man will not say for such a purpose. He went too far in his anxiety to conciliate malice, and allay an evil temper. This is all that can be imputed to him. Be reasonable, my dear girl! you are alone in the world; we are your truest friends. It shall be our study—mine, as well as his—to guard your life from every care, every anxiety even—precaution so necessary in your case, and with your peculiar constitution. You love my son, or have loved him—in this I could not be mistaken—and his affection for you is sincere and unaffected, despite the concessions a designing woman, who conceives herself slighted, has wrung from his unwary lips, on purpose to mar his prospects, and blight your happiness, I well believe."

"No, no, there was no design of this kind on her part, of that I am sure. She could not—did not know that I overheard them. You must do her justice there—I trust she may never know it. Claude promised me—"

"I know, I know—it was with this understanding," he interrupted, "that he confided to me the extent of his indiscretion, for which I have rated him soundly, I assure you. Evelyn is not to know that you overheard them. This is the compact—a very sensible and politic one on your part, under the circumstances, for Evelyn, we all know, is, excuse me my dear, the devil, when fairly aroused. Now, as to this overhearing of yours—might not your mind, laboring under recent coma, and a sort of mental mirage as it were, have had a tendency to magnify and only partially comprehend the conversation thus suddenly forced upon your attention? For I understand you were unable to make yourself heard at all, or even to give signs of life when the curtains of your bed were lifted by the interlocutors."

"This last is true—but that I could not have been mistaken, Claude's own admissions confirm. He denied nothing that I suggested—much was left by me unquestioned."

"Yes," catching wildly at this straw, "he finds himself quite in the dark still, I perceive—as to the accusations brought against him; suppose you make your charges one by one, as it were in the shape of specifications?"

"There are no charges, no accusations brought—nothing of that sort," I said, proudly; "and I must entreat that from this hour, Mr. Bainrothe, this subject be dropped between us utterly. It is wholly unprofitable, believe me."

"You are a person of extraordinary obduracy," he said, "for one of your years. I should like to know how much the Stanbury influence has had to do with strengthening your unwise, unamiable, and stiff-necked resolution! If I were Claude Bainrothe, I should lay heavy damages against you in the courts of law, for your unjustifiable evasion of a formal contract—one your father sanctioned, one of which all your friends are and were cognizant and proud, and which has subjected him, in its rupture, to so much distress and mortification; nay, even as I can prove, pecuniary loss."

"If money can repay your son Claude, for any wrong I have done him, he is welcome to a portion of mine," I said, deeply disgusted, "without intervention of law—painful exposure of any kind. I cherish for him, however, even yet, too much regard and respect to believe him capable of such proceedings. The idea is worthy of the mind it springs from—worthy of the author of all this sorrow and confusion—worthy of Mr. Basil Bainrothe, the arch-conspirator himself."

He turned upon me with clinched hands and blazing eyes. "You shall answer for these words, girl! if not now, years hence," he said; "the seed of your insult has been thrown on fertile soil, I promise you!" and he laughed bitterly.

"I do not fear you," I replied; all disguise was thrown off—it was war to the knife between us now; "never have—never can, in spite of your unmanly threats. Evelyn must protect me henceforth from any further contact with you, however, until I am of age to take in hand my own affairs; Evelyn Erie, my guardian, and your fellow-executor, owes me this safeguard. I trust, Mr. Bainrothe, we shall meet no more."

I left the room—left him in possession of the library, in which he paced up and down for an hour or more, like a caged panther. There was a sealed note for me in his handwriting, under the massive paper-weight on the table, when I entered it again, which he had written and left there before his departure. It ran thus—for I read it derisively, and remember its contents still:

"We have both been wrong, dear Miriam. I, as the elder and more experienced offender—therefore, the more responsible one—claim it as my privilege to be the first to atone. I cannot think, from what I know of you, that you will be long in following my example. Let us forgive one another. Fate has thrown us together, and we must not afford a malicious world the spectacle of our inconsistency, or the satisfaction of seeing us quarrel, after so many years of harmony.

"As to Claude, you and he must settle your own matters. I wash my hands of the whole transaction from this hour, supposing that common-sense will triumph at last, and reconcile your differences.

"Yours as ever, truly and devotedly,

"BASIL BAINROTHE."

I did not answer this note—I could not discreetly, although I tried to do so several times. I could not conquer sufficiently my deep disgust of his insupportable behavior to respond kindly, at that time, to any overture of Mr. Bainrothe's, nor did I wish to write one rude word to him in connection with so delicate a subject as that of our late discussion.

He came no more until after Evelyn's return, and then only on necessary business; inquiring for her alone, and holding on such occasions secret conclaves with her invariably in the library. Whenever we met casually, however, whether in the street or my own house, he was polite and easy in his deportment, even gracious.

With Claude it was otherwise; he avoided me sedulously, and, although I have reason to think he met and joined Evelyn frequently, and even by appointment in her long walks, he never called to see her or paid her open attentions. Yet I found that he had followed my counsels.

A day or two before he sailed for Copenhagen to join the legation in Denmark, an exception to this rule of avoidance was made by both father and son, who came in as had been usual with them in other days, informally, in the evening.

This was Claude's farewell visit—a very unpleasant necessity evidently on his part. I was unconstrained in the cordiality with which I received both his father and himself—for it was heart-felt on this occasion. Old feelings came back to me so vividly that night, and my own dear father seemed so visibly recalled by the presence once more of our unbroken circle, that I lost sight, for a season, of my wrongs and sufferings in the memory of the past, and broke temporarily through the cloud that oppressed me and dimmed my existence.

I saw Mr. Bainrothe gazing at me several times, in the course of his visit, with an expression of interest and surprise.

He had expected very different manifestations, no doubt, and he told Evelyn afterward that "no woman of thirty could have carried off matters with a higher hand than did that chit of sixteen, Miriam Monfort."

"All that talk of yours, Miriam, about 'Hamlet,' 'Elsinore,' 'Wittenberg,' and the 'fiery Dane,' probably imposed on those two unsophisticated men; but I saw through the whole proceeding; you were afraid of yourself, my dear, that was evident, and ashamed, as you ought to have been, of your capricious conduct to poor Claude, who shows, however, as uncompromising a spirit as your own, I perceive. What was the matter, Miriam? I can get nothing out of him, and I have waited, until my patience is exhausted, for a voluntary communication from you."

"Why have you not asked me before, Evelyn?" I questioned, calmly, in reply. "You have shown more than your usual forbearance, on this occasion."

"My dear child, 'Least said is soonest mended,' is proverbial in quarrels of all kinds. I have no wish to pry or play mischief-maker, and, if Mr. Basil Bainrothe with his diplomatic talents could do nothing to mend the difficulty, I had no right to suppose that I could succeed better, with my very direct, straightforward disposition."

"You were right, Evelyn, certainly, in your conclusion, and, if you please, will never ask for any explanation of the breach between Claude and myself. It is irrevocable; but I am sorry to see him so resentful. He cannot conceal his displeasure against me, and yet I have never offended him willingly, I am sure."

"Caprice and coquetry are not so lightly estimated by every one, as you hold them, nor yet counted causes for gratitude by most men, let me assure you, Miriam."

"Who has accused me of these?" I questioned, with a flashing eye, a flushing cheek.

"Does your own heart acquit you?" she asked, evasively.

"It does," I answered, solemnly, "as does the God who reads all hearts, and to whom I am now alone answerable for any motives of mine."

"Since when have you grown so independent, Miriam?" she asked, ironically.

"Since the death of my father," I replied.

"Ah! you do not accredit delegated allegiance it seems," turning her face aside.

"Not as far as my own feelings and their sources are concerned. As to my acts, I hope never to commit one of which all just men might not approve."

"We shall see. However, a year more or less makes little difference. Claude Bainrothe, improved, will return within a year, probably, and all may still be well. Matters will then, I fancy, be in his own hands, pretty much.

"All is well, Evelyn, if you could only think so, and now, once for all, make up your mind, definitely, to let well alone, for I must not be approached again on this subject, I warn you!"

I spoke with a decision which, at times, had its effect even on the "indomitable Evelyn," as my father often had called her, playfully, and again the broken engagement was consigned to silence.

Yet on my mind, my feelings, the effect of this severe and sudden trial was far more bitter and profound than met the outward eye.

I had been sustained at first by a sense of pride, self-respect, and womanly indignation, that prevented me from feeling the whole extent of the wound I had received; but with reaction came that dull, dumb, aching of the heart, which all who have felt it may recognize as more wearing than keener pain, or more declared suffering.

I suppose the Spartan who felt the gnawing of the hidden fox was a mere type of this species of anguish, which reproduces itself wherever wounded pride underlies concealment, or wherever injustice and ingratitude render us uncomplaining through a sense of moral dignity.

The first six months succeeding my rupture with Claude Bainrothe went by like a leaden dream. My heart lay like a stone in my bosom, and the gloss had dropped from life, and the glory from the face of Nature for me, in that dreary interval, as though I had grown suddenly old.

In routine, in occupation alone, I found relief and companionship. I compelled myself to teach Mabel, and pursue my own studies, lest my mind should fall back on my body, and destroy both.

A nervous peculiarity manifested itself about this time, that was singularly distressing to me, and which I confided to no one, not even that excellent physician who kept a quiet and observant eye fixed upon me during all this period of my probation.

I became nervously but not mentally convinced of the want of substance in every thing around me, and have repeatedly risen and crossed the room, and touched an article on the opposite side, to compel my better judgment to the conviction that it was indeed tangible and substantial, and not the merest shadow of a shade.

I was sustained in my resolution to conquer this besetting weakness, from a vague horror and fear that, should I suffer it to gain further ascendency, I might fall back into habitual lethargies, and, remembering what Dr. Pemberton had said, I was determined, if possible, to throw off that incubus of my being, by the strength of my own will, aided by God's mercy.

There were no uttered prayers to this effect, that I remember, but an unceasing cry for strength, for light, went up from my heart, as continuously as the waters of a fountain, to the ear of my Creator. I have thought sometimes that, in this persistent wrestle of mind with matter, enduring so many weeks and months, so many weary, woful days and sleepless nights, the physical demon was exorcised at last, that had ruled my life so long, or was reduced to feeble efforts thereafter.

Once when Dr. Pemberton's attendance had been necessary to me, during a severe spell of pleurisy, he said when I was recovering: "There is some favorable change at work in your constitution, Miriam, it seems to me. We hear no more of the 'obliteration spells,'" for thus he called my seizures.

"Your drops have banished them, dear doctor, I suppose," I rejoined, with a faint smile.

"They may have aided to do so," he said, gravely, "but I think I have observed, Miriam, that you were doing good work lately for yourself. You have been struggling manfully, my little girl. Now, I am going for recreation to Magara, and the Northern cities, for a few weeks, next month, and I want you to go with me, in aid of this effort of yours. Quite alone, with Charity as sole attendant. My niece will be with me—a good, quiet girl, you know, some years older than yourself, and also in feeble health; and I will see that you are both well taken care of, medically at least, while you are absent. How would you like this, Miriam," patting my shoulder, "just for a change?"

"Oh, very much!" I said, eagerly. "Yes, I will go gladly, in this quiet way, for I do not wish to visit gay places, or to make strange acquaintance, under the circumstances. My deep mourning must be respected, you know, and—" I hesitated; looked in his kind, sympathizing face; then hid mine on his shoulder—weeping. The first tears of relief I had shed for months.

He did not check me, for he knew full well the value of this outlet of feeling, to one situated as I was, physically as well as mentally.

"I would offer to take Mabel," he added, after a time, "were I not solemnly convinced that it would be better for you both that she should stay here. Mrs. Austin seems necessary to her very existence; and that old woman is your vampire, I verily believe."

"No, no, she is very good, indeed. You are mistaken."

"No, I am not mistaken. There are persons who do sack away, unconsciously, the very life of others, from some peculiarity of organization in both. I have strong faith in this theory. I have been obliged sometimes to decree the separation of wife and husband for a time, to save the life of one or the other; of mother and child even. Every time you fall ill, I believe Mrs. Austin gains strength and energy at your expense. She absorbs your nervous fluid. It was from this conviction that I requested you two years ago to change your room, which, until then, she had shared on the pretence of your necessities, and to substitute a younger and less sponge-like attendant. You remember the stress I laid on this?"

"Yes, yes, one of your crotchets, dear doctor, nothing else. You are full of such vagaries—always were—but there is not another such dear old willful physician in Christendom for all that."

"Little flatterer! But here is a piece of cassava bread, I brought you, as you thought you would like to taste it. My old West Indian patient keeps me well supplied. I fancy to nibble it as I drive about in my cabriolet, or whatever they call this French affair of mine."

"For a wonder, you have the word right;" and I laughed in his honest face.

"I am going to France, next spring, when the Stanburys go over, just to see what strides medicine is making across the waters, and to rest myself a little, improve my Gallic pronunciation, and get the fashions, and I will take you as my interpreter, if you promise to be very good and obedient in the interval."

"Oh, thank you; I would like it of all things. But what takes the Stanburys abroad? I have heard nothing of this plan of theirs before."

"Pleasure and business combined, I believe. They will remain abroad some years, for the education of George Gaston. What an idol Mrs. Stanbury is making of that boy, to be sure, and Laura is just as foolish about him as her mother! By-the-by, she is to be married, they say, to that young Prussian nobleman, who was there so much last winter. I forget his unpronounceable name. They will reside in Berlin, I understand, should the marriage be 'unfait accompli,' as the French have it. Is not that right, Miriam?"

"Oh, admirably pronounced! You are becoming quite a Gaul in your old age."

"I hope I shall never become gall and wormwood, in any event, like some old folks. Now, is not that being literal, Miriam?"

"And witty, as well! You must have been associating with Dr. C——n, lately."

"So you can't give me credit for a little originality, because my facetious vein is new to you. Now, do your old friend justice, and believe even in his puns; if not pungent, he is self-sustaining and independent; but, remember, I count on you absolutely, next week. One trunk apiece and no bandboxes or baskets. A green-silk travelling-bonnet and pongee habit. This is my uniform, for my female guard. Carry Grey knows my whims, and will observe them. By-the-by, you will like my niece."

We made a delightful tour, which occupied the whole month of August, and I came back refreshed, soul and body; as for Carry Grey, she revived, like a plant that had been newly tended and watered after long neglect. For the poor girl had been making a slave of herself for two years in her widowed brother's household, consisting of many little children, and needed repose from her multifarious duties.

He was going to marry again soon, she told me, and then she hoped to feel at liberty to fulfill her own engagement of five years' standing. Carry Grey was quite this many years over twenty-one, and was going to emigrate with her husband to Missouri, and to settle in the thriving young town of St. Louis, fast growing up then into a city. He was to have a church there, and they might be so happy, she thought, if God only smiled upon them! But all depended upon that.

It was a wholesome lesson to my morbid discontent and pride to hear what trials she had surmounted already, and how many more she was ready to encounter.

She had once been engaged to a very brilliant young man, she told me, but he was dissipated and careless of her feelings, and she let him go; since that he had drifted fast to destruction, and sometimes she reproached herself for not having held to him through thick and thin. It was just possible she might have saved him, she thought, but her friends had persuaded her that he would only drag her down, and so she broke with him forever.

"Did he love you?" I asked, eagerly. "Were you sure that he was not perfidious?"

"Oh, I believe he was true to me—however false to himself."

"Then you were wrong," I said. "Wrong, believe me. Carry Grey! A woman should bear every thing but infidelity of heart for the man she loves—every thing!"

"I am sorry to hear you say so," she replied, somewhat coldly. "There is a great deal more than blind affection needful for a woman's happiness, Miss Monfort—so experience tells us. What I mean is, perhaps he might have reformed had I not broken with him; but it was the merest chance—one too feeble to depend on; and I did wisely to discard him, I am convinced."

"Forgive me! I did not mean to censure you," I said; "I was only speaking generally—too generally, perhaps, for individual courtesy. This is a theory of mine which as yet I have had no opportunity to put in practice, for I have never been attached to a dissipated man." I smiled. "I dare say I too should drop such a man like a pestilence."

"I hope so. But the best way is to avoid all intimacy with such men from the first. You are very young. Let me give you my advice on this subject before you form any attachment: keep your affections for a worthy object, if you keep them locked up forever. Better be alone than mismated."

"This is to shut the cage after the bird has flown," I thought, sadly; but I thanked her, and promised to profit by her good counsel.

We were fast friends ever after, and, when she went away to her distant Western home, Carry Ormsby bore some memorials of her summer friend away with her, in the shape of books, plate, and jewels, such as her simple means could have ill afforded. I felt that I could not have devised any means more sure to gratify her worthy uncle, to whom such gifts had been dross. He was a widower—the father of sons—indifferent to show, and, besides that, unwilling to incur obligations from any one, such as gifts entail on some minds.

There are persons made to give and others to receive, and neither can do the work of the other gracefully. He and I were both of the same order, so we accorded perfectly.

The autumn and winter passed very quietly. In Mrs. Stanbury and Laura I again found my chief consolation. George Gaston was in the South, for his health, on his own decayed plantation, with his uncle, who took charge of it. But, in the spring, as Dr. Pemberton had stated, they were all to go to Europe for some years. Laura would be married in Paris, if at all. Every thing depended on some investigations Mr. Gerald Stanbury was to make in person as to the character and position of her betrothed. "For a Prussian nobleman may be a Prussian boot-black for aught I know," he observed, "and without derogation to his dignity, no doubt, in that land of pipes and fiddlers. But an American sovereign requires something better than that when he gives away the hand of the princess, his relative, and endows her with a goodly dowry. Every man, we feel, is a king in America."

Our circle of society was much enlarged by Evelyn after our first year of mourning had expired. She insisted on taking me with her in turn to Washington, Boston, and Saratoga Springs, then at their acme of fashion. Mr. Bainrothe, who had by this time glided back into his old grooves of apparent sociability in our household, accompanied us, and did all in his power, it seemed, to promote our enjoyment and success.

Yet it was astonishing what an icy barrier still remained between us two, and how perfectly I managed, without a conscious effort, to set a limit to his approaches, even while treating him with apparent courtesy and confidence.

Something in his eye, his manner, had become extremely unpleasant to me since our social relations had been resumed. There was a controlled ardor in his expression of face and even in his demeanor that I could not reconcile with his position toward me nor understand, and yet which froze my blood in spite of my best endeavors to repel the thoughts suggested.

"I am very morbid and fanciful, certainly," I said to myself, "even to think such a thing possible. At his age, and knowing full well my opinion of him, my sentiments toward him—he surely would not dare—!" I could not even in my own heart finish out a conjecture that dyed my face and throat crimson, or mahogany-color, as Evelyn would have averred contemptuously could she have witnessed my solitary confusion.

"I have clung to him too much," I thought; "it is my own fault if he throws too much of the tone of tenderness in his manner, when, distasteful as he is to me, his arm, his protection, have seemed to me preferable to those of a stranger, and I have accepted them merely to avoid the advances of others.

"I am not in the mood to be sentimental, or susceptible either, after my bitter experience, and the idea he so carefully instills is ever present to me—strive as I will to repel it—the thought that I am sought alone for my fortune!

"Yet I am not wholly unattractive, probably, though less beautiful than Evelyn. But what, after all, is beauty? Plainer women than I are loved and sought in marriage, who possess no gift of fortune or accomplishment.

"Why should I suffer him to fill my mind with suspicions that embitter it against all approaches? Why should I seal my soul away in endless gloom, because one man, out of all Adam's race, was faithless and falsehearted?"

Thus reasoning, I gained strength and self-reliance to receive other attentions and mingle with the multitude. Nor should I have known to what extent Mr. Bainrothe had carried his injustice and perfidy toward me, but for the loquacity of Lieutenant Raymond, a young adorer of mine, who revealed to me, the very evening before I left Saratoga, along with his passion—a hopeless one of course, which, but for this connection, would not be noted here—the strategic course of my guardian.

"I ought to have been warned, by what I saw and heard, that my suit was a hopeless one," he said; "I had been told of your engagement, but could not believe it possible, although confirmed by Mr. Bainrothe's manner. A rival of his age and experience, possessed too of such physical attractions, and such charm of manner, seldom fails to carry the day over a raw, impulsive youth—who can only adore—bow down and worship his idol, and who possesses no arts of conquest."

"Pause there, Lieutenant Raymond; of what are you speaking?" I asked, coldly; "you have probably confounded matters, names, and—"

"No, no, it is all too evident now to admit of a doubt I You are affianced to Mr. Bainrothe—your own timid and dependent manner might have enlightened me long ago, as well as his devoted one—but a man in love is blinder than the blindest bat even! He is the maddest fool certainly! Forgive me for my presumption, and forget it if you can;" and he turned away, smiting his brow impatiently.

I laid my hand on his arm—I drew it down from his face again, which he turned upon me with an expression of surprise. I felt that I was pale with rage and scorn as he looked at me. He misunderstood my feelings evidently, for he said, earnestly: "I am sorry to have caused you so much pain, Miss Monfort! I was premature, I have been indiscreet in my remarks. Your engagement is surely no concern of mine. I should have confined myself to my own disappointment exclusively, and respected your reserve;" adding, "I beg that you will pardon and look less angrily upon me, in this our parting."

"I am not offended with you, Mr. Raymond." (His boyish passion had, indeed, swept over me as lightly as the wing of a butterfly across a rose. I felt that it amounted to nothing but pastime on either hand—a careless throw of the dice on his part, that might, or might not, have resulted to his advantage. He probably staked but little feeling in the enterprise—I certainly none at all.)—"I am not angry with you, Lieutenant Raymond, nay, grateful rather for your impulsive homage, which I regret not to be able to reward as you deserve; but this you must tell me, as a true, as an honorable man, if you care one iota for my regard, or the cause of truth and justice: what has that man been saying about me?" And I laid my hand upon his arm and shook it slightly.

"What man, Miss Monfort? I—I, scarcely understand you! You surely do not mean Mr. Bainrothe—your—"

"Guardian, nothing more, scarcely that," I interrupted, almost fiercely; thus finishing out his sentence as he probably might not have done. "Answer me truthfully, honorably, as you are a gentleman, has he propagated this vile slander, for as such I feel it, and as such shall resent it?"

"I do, do—not know positively—but I have reason to think that, either directly or indirectly, the rumor comes from him. You know some men have a way of insinuating things. I—I—cannot recall any thing positive or definite. I cannot, indeed. He never spoke to me on the subject at all. There was only an expression at times, as he bore you off, that seemed to tell me that all my efforts to win you were vain. I can't see why you lay such stress on the matter at all, Miss Monfort."

He had evidently the gentleman's true reluctance to make mischief.

"Lieutenant Raymond, I simply dislike to be placed in a false position, or grossly misinterpreted or misrepresented. Do you see that unfortunate person there?" I asked suddenly, "with his head drawn completely to one side, and his arms and legs swathed in flannel bandages, hobbling feebly along, followed by a youth (a relation, probably, bearing a camp-stool) and a dingy little terrier-dog, on his way to the pool of Bethesda?" As if he knew that he was the object of our attention, the man alluded to stopped, and turned just then a face grotesquely hideous in our direction, and, seeing me, smiled, and nodded feebly—disclosing, as he did so, long, fang-like teeth, yellow, as if cut from lemon-rind, and fantastically irregular.

"You have the oddest acquaintance, Miss Monfort, for a young lady of fashion, certainly! This old man keeps a little one-horse book-store somewhere, I am told, and makes it his constant theme of conversation."

"Yes, he has his hobby, like more distinguished men. I have known him from my childhood, however, and esteem him truly. He kept the choicest collection of children's books I ever saw in former days, and was a child at heart himself, and an especial crony of mine. But I have other reasons for asking you to remark him now. He is old, diseased, and poor; yet, just as good and honorable as he is, I would rather put my hand in his as betrothed or married a thousand-fold, than become the wife of Basil Bainrothe. Repeat this, if you please, whenever you hear this very unpleasant and absurd report and subject agitated. It will be a simple act of justice to me, and a tribute to truth, such as I am sure you will be pleased to render and illustrate."

"I will do so," he said, quietly; "but I confess, you surprise me. I have always refused to give credit to the matter myself, blinded, I was assured, by my own impetuosity, but I acknowledge this engagement is very generally canvassed and believed at Saratoga; nor has Miss Erie in any instance refuted the impression. Of this I am quite certain, and deem it my duty now to tell you so."

"Is it possible," I thought, "that this can be one of Evelyn's subtle schemes, reacting on Mr. Bainrothe? The father for me, the son for herself! My God! the grave would be preferable to me, to marriage with either one or the other, the loathed or the loathing! O papa, papa! why was I ever placed in hands like these? It must be so sweet, so delightful, to trust and love one's associates, whether natural or accidental! I feel as if Fate had raised up for me this band of mocking fiends, to guard me from my kind, and mar my happiness. Day by day I hate and distrust them more and more—nay, learn to tremble through them at myself."

"You are silent. Miss Monfort," he said; "will you not bid me a kind, a pardoning farewell?"

"Oh, surely, Mr. Raymond; and let me beg that, when you are near me, you will come freely to my house. I shall be most happy to entertain you." And I gave him my hand, frankly.

"One word more, Miss Monfort. Are you engaged to any other and more fortunate man than Mr. Bainrothe and myself? Is it for another's sake you have felt so very indignant? Forgive a sailor's frankness, and a sailor's interest, even if bestowed in vain. I fear you will add to these, a sailor's undue curiosity."

"No, Mr. Raymond, neither engaged nor likely to be. But hinge no hope on this declaration of mine. I am probably destined to walk through life alone, and, like many better women, to live for the good of others, in self-defense, if for good at all. I shall never marry, Lieutenant Raymond."

The hand that held mine, trembled slightly, relaxed, relinquished its eager hold, and fell listlessly to his side. He believed me, evidently, as I believed myself.

"I have loved you," he said, hoarsely, "far more than you will ever understand. Do not forget me!"

"That is scarcely probable," I murmured; "but we shall meet again," and I spoke cheerfully and aloud, "and under happier auspices, I trust. The world is fair before you, Mr. Raymond; this much let me counsel, and the counsel is drawn from experience: do not surrender your freedom too lightly—it is a precious gift to man or woman, and those who drag broken fetters wear woful hearts. Farewell!"

We left Saratoga on the following day. It was autumn when we reached our home again—sad and strange September—my birth-month, and the grave of many hopes. Mabel was well, and finely grown for a child of her years; and the joy of seeing her, and holding her to my heart again, made me oblivious of all else for a season. After our brief separation even, her loveliness struck me afresh. How beautiful she was! not with the white radiance of Evelyn, but lovely as a young May rose, blushing among its leaves and peerless in grace, sweetness, and expression. She had her sainted mother's great blue, soulful eyes, with finer features and more brilliant coloring, and her father's gleaming teeth and clustering hair, "brown in the shadow, gold in the sun," falling, like his, over a brow of sculptured ivory. I was not alone in my appreciation of her loveliness. It was a theme of universal remark. Even Mr. Bainrothe, who could never forgive my father for having married his children's governess, confessed that she had the "air noble," which he valued far above beauty. "And where she got it from, Miriam, is sufficiently plain," he said, one day, glancing at me with undisguised admiration as he spoke. "Her mother was simple and unpretending enough, Heaven above knows, but you Monforts, and you, especially, Miriam, are truly distingué, which is a word that cannot often be justly applied in any land to man or woman either."

"By-the-by, Miriam," he continued, "you are growing into a very beautiful woman, after a somewhat unpromising childhood. You surpass Evelyn as rubies do garnets, or diamonds aqua marine, or sapphires the opaque turquoise. You do, indeed, my dear," and he attempted to take my hand in the old fashion. I murmured something indicative of my disapprobation.

"It is an exquisite hand!" he remarked, as I coldly drew it away; "I have an artist's eye, and can admire beauty in the abstract, even though I am an old man, you know."

"Admire it also at a distance, I beg, hereafter," I said, bowing coldly, smiling very bitterly, I fear, with lips white with anger and disgust.

"Those scars, Miriam!" he went on, as if unobservant of my manner, yet with the old sarcastic gleam in his eyes, in the most audacious way, "have nearly disappeared, have they not? I think I understood so from Dr. Pemberton. Let me see that on your arm, my dear," and he extended his hand to grasp it.

"They are indelible, Mr. Bainrothe," I replied, folding my arms tightly above my heart, "as are some other impressions; never allude to them again, I request you. It offends me." And I left him, coldly and abruptly.

I give this little scene only as a specimen of his occasional behavior at this period, and of the humiliation to which his presence so often subjected me. But matters had not yet culminated.

CHAPTER VII.

Evelyn's fortune and Mabel's were, like much of my own, invested in the Bank of Pennsylvania, and deemed secure in that gigantic bubble. At twenty-three Evelyn, of course, consulted no one as to the disposition of her income, which she spent freely and magnificently on herself alone. Her jewels, silks, laces, were of the finest quality and fabric; she drove a peerless little equipage, had her own ponies and tiger and maid; travelled frequently, entertained splendidly, though this last, it must be confessed, was not at her expense, if redounding to her credit.

To her my father had decreed the first position in his household until my marriage (with her sanction) or majority should occur, and she kept it bravely. She possessed a leading spirit, and loved to rule whether by right or sufferance. Lovers she had in plenty; suitors, such as they were, manifold; yet she preferred so far her single estate to aught that could be or had been offered. I began to think that her constancy deserved to be rewarded, and to withdraw on such score the objection I had felt so strong in the outset against her union with Claude Bainrothe.

He had been already more than a year in Copenhagen when I discovered how it was between them, or rather thought I had done so, from seeing one night when she came into my room in her night-dress, which was accidentally parted at the bosom, the betrothal-ring, so peculiar as not readily to be mistaken, which Claude Bainrothe had once given to me, suspended from the button of her chemisette by a small gold chain, so as to lie constantly against her heart. How her pride had ever stooped to receive and wear the pledge originally given to another it was difficult for me to conceive, and little less bitter, I confess, at first to know. I thought all care was over as to Claude Bainrothe and his affairs, but a qualm of anguish surged through my whole being, the dying throe, I well believe, of trust and affection, when I beheld this carefully-guarded token.

As Evelyn raised her hand to fasten her night-robe, through the accidental opening of which I had caught sight of my repudiated treasure, I noticed on one of her slender fingers, from which all other incumbrances in the way of rings had been removed for the night, a circlet of plain gold such as is generally used for the symbol of the marriage-rite, an engagement-ring, I then supposed it.

"Let me see your wedding-ring, Evelyn," I said, laughingly, to conceal my embarrassment. She colored slightly.

"What, that little affair of a philopoena?" she rejoined. "Oh, I promised not to take it off until certain things were accomplished, nor to tell the name of the giver either, so don't question about it, 'an you love me, Hal!'"

"Was it sent from beyond the seas?" I questioned, seriously, "I shall ask nothing more."

"What an idea! No, on my honor, it was not. There! I will not tell you another word about it, so don't bore me, Miriam. I thought you, yourself, despised a catechist, and undue curiosity. What I came here, to-night, for, was not to be catechised, or 'put to the question,' but to ask a favor which you must grant, dear prophetess, whether you will or no. Now, don't refuse your Eva," and she kissed me affectionately; "I am going to give a grand fancy ball, or rather, we are, the same thing of course, and I want you to lay off your deep mourning for a time" (hers had been already entirely put aside), "and appear as night. You can still wear black, you know; I shall be Morning, and Mabel, Hesper. Now, won't it be a lovely idea? Hesper, you know, is both morning and evening star, and can hover between us, bearing a torch, and dressed à la Grecque. Is not that appropriate—our little link of sisterhood? It cannot fail to make an impression. I consider it, myself, a capital idea. You can wear your mother's diamonds at last, which Mr. Bainrothe means to hand over to you to-morrow as your birthday gift—not that, exactly, either," seeing my rising scorn, "but as a token of respect suitable for the occasion. He might hold on to them two years longer you know, legally," she added, carelessly.

"He is very magnanimous," I remarked, coldly; "I shall be glad to have my diamonds though, in my own possession, I acknowledge, but why does he make any parade about it at all? They are mine all the same, whether in his hands or my own. Every thing that man does seems theatrical and affected to me!"

"I thought you were beginning to incline very favorably to Cagliostro! I am sure this was the opinion of all who saw you together at Saratoga, and I believe, between ourselves, it is his own."

"Evelyn Erie, you know better than this! People, of themselves, would never have dreamed of such a thing, and he, too, knows my sentiments thoroughly. He only feigns ignorance."

"My dear, dear girl! worse things than this have been said frequently, and stranger ones have come to pass. Mr. Bainrothe is certainly a splendid financier, that was your own father's opinion. You will never marry any man who will take better care of your money, and that is a consideration with you, or ought to be, Miriam. Your estate is your chief distinction, child, if you only knew it; besides, with a knowledge of your constitutional malady, you should be very careful what hands you fall into. No woman that I know of demands such peculiar care and tenderness from a husband, nor such choice in her surroundings. After all, Mr. Bainrothe is still a very handsome man, and admirably well preserved if not exactly young; he does not look forty, he has not a gray hair, a false tooth, nor a wrinkle."

"Have you done, Evelyn Erie?" I asked, almost ferociously. "Have you completed your catalogue of insult? Then listen, in turn, to my counsel. Marry him yourself by all means; he would suit you, body and soul, far better than me. Indeed, I have never seen any one else who seemed so thoroughly your counterpart, match and mate, as Cagliostro!"

"Thank you," she said, furiously; "if I thought you were in earnest"—here she hesitated, clinching her hand, and biting her white lips.

"I am in earnest," I rejoined, quietly; "what then?" and I looked coldly, resolutely in her face.

"Why I would perhaps marry the son, just to correct your fallacious idea about the father, that is all! This course is shut out from you, however, entirely, by your own folly, so you must take what you can get now, for Claude Bainrothe, let me assure you, is lost to you forever." And she went out, smiling triumphantly.

I suspected from that hour what I knew later, and I had suffered the last pang to agonize my heart that my broken troth should ever cost me. The corpse of my dead love had bled at the touch of its murderer, in accordance with ancient superstition. Now, calm and quiet oblivion and the sepulchre should surround and enshroud it forever more.

I think I kept my determination bravely from that hour, but others must judge of this for me. We are not gods, to say to the tide of feeling, "Thus far, and no farther shalt thou come." We are only mortal Canutes at best, to lift back our chairs as the tide advances, and seat ourselves securely thereon beyond the surf. We all remember how it fared with the quaint old monarch and moralist when he tried the plan of the immortals, and commanded the sea to obey him—we perish if we arrogate too much when the surges sweep around us; but we can, we must avoid them if we hope to escape their force, and plant ourselves beyond them firmly on the shore.

Evelyn's fancy ball was a magnificent affair, and a complete success, as the word goes. She chose to call it my début party, but I never felt that it was so, or that I was more than any other guest. I would not have chosen a fancy dress for my first appearance, and she certainly was the queen of the occasion.

She was dressed as Aurora, in exquisite, fleecy gauze draperies of white, azure, and rose color, so artistically arranged as irresistibly to remind the observer of those delicate, transparent tints of morning that greet the rising sun. On her brow was a diadem of opals and diamonds arranged in a crescent form, from beneath which, her fleecy white veil flowed backward to the hem of her garments like a mist of the early day-spring; a rosy exhalation of the dawn enveloping but not obscuring the radiance of her raiment, over which dew-drops seemed to have been shed by the lavish hand of wakening Nature.

Her face, so fair as to gain from this marble-like radiance its chief characteristic, was delicately tinted to-night on either cheek so as to emulate the early blushes of Aurora. Her colorless hair, of a tint so neutral as to defy description, curling in light spiral ringlets so as to drop profusely on her bosom, had been richly powdered with gold-dust for this occasion, and glistened like the sunlight, or, to fall in my comparison, the tresses of Lucretia Borgia, as her historians portray them.

Nothing could be more refined, more refulgent, more ethereal, than her whole appearance, nor had I ever seen the light-blue eyes so clear and brilliant, the thin, writhing lips so scarlet and smiling, the pearly teeth so glistening by contrast with the first, as on this occasion.

Her arms and neck, which wanted contour, and yet were of snowy whiteness, were skillfully draped in her many-colored robe so as to cover all defects; and a chaplet of pearls, mingled with diamonds, concealed the slight prominence of the collar-bones, and descended low on the white and well-veiled bosom. Every eye was turned on her with admiration, and the low murmur that followed her through the halls she trod so proudly, proclaimed her triumph far more loudly than more open flattery could have done.

"You, too, look well to-night, in your black-velvet robe and diamonds, Miriam, better than I have ever seen you!" said a low voice in my ear, as I echoed the passing praises lavished on Evelyn's beauty by one of her admirers. "It is scarcely a fancy costume though, after all."

"Thank you, Mr. Bainrothe," I replied coldly. "For reasons of my own, I have preferred to make my costume as subdued as possible."

"By Jove! I wish our young exile could see you this evening," he went on, disregardful of my brief explanation. "He would strew his hair with ashes, and wear sackcloth in penance for the past, I doubt not; for I tell you frankly, Miriam, you have improved wonderfully of late, and you bear inspection far better than Evelyn with all her beauty; your figure is absolutely faultless; your face the most attractive woman ever wore, if not the most absolutely regular. I tell you simple truths. I am a disinterested critic, you see, and stand apart gazing upon women simply as specimens. Your hands and feet are models, your smile enchanting, your voice musical, your manner witchery itself, when you choose to let out your nature; what more could heart desire?" and he gazed steadily in my face, insolently I felt it!

I had been listening indignantly to this cool summary of my attractions, and the arrogant idea manifestly uppermost, that Sultan Claude Bainrothe had only to appear on the scene, and throw his handkerchief, for me to succumb, and I had been so confounded by this tirade of compliment and commonplace that I scarcely knew how to stay its tide without absolute rudeness, such as no lady should ever be guilty of—when he coolly continued his remarks as if wholly unobservant of my displeasure.

"Evelyn, with all her arts, is a little faded already; don't you see it, Miriam? There is no corrosive poison equal to envy, and that, by-the-by, is her specialty. She is bitterly envious by nature. Most of those thin-lipped, sharp-elbowed, sharp-nosed women are, if you observe. Faded at twenty-three! Sad, but true of half our American morning-glory beauties. For my part, I love the statuesque in women, the enduring! those exquisitely-moulded proportions on which the gaze reposes with such delight, and that set a man to dreaming, whether he will or not." And his eye dwelt on me from throat to waist in a manner that made my flesh crawl as if the worms that tortured Herod were passing over it. At this point I rebelled—I ground my teeth resolutely—my face flushed to the temples—I could willingly have stricken that audacious scrutinizer in the face with my clinched hand, and he knew it! How coarse coarseness makes us, even when most disinclined to it naturally! His sensuous brutality made me almost fiercely brutal in turn. As it was, I could only put him away with a gesture of contempt I sought not to command, and with which I swept past him into the thickest of the crowd, cursing at heart the bitter fate that had cast me bound and helpless, for a season, into such unscrupulous hands.

There was no one to turn to now. I knew Mr. Lodore thought Evelyn perfect, and me a sinner, because in the matter of church duties she was the more observant. Besides, my Jewish pedigree had always been a barrier between us. Dr. Pemberton, Mr. Stanbury, Laura, George Gaston, all that truly loved and believed in me, were gone for an indefinite time to Europe. I had not been suffered to accompany them, on many pleas and pretences, as I had wished to do, and this was the end of it all. Licentious persecution!

Evelyn, too! a blinded confederate in such schemes as should have nerved her woman's heart to indignation rather! Marry that man! I would have cut off my own right hand, or burnt it to a cinder like Scaevola; sooner gone out to service—played chambermaid on the boards, or the tragedy-queen of the commonest melodrama, far rather! It was all insult, injury, degradation, in whatever light I could view it, and every feeling in my nature was stung to exasperation.

It was well understood that I was an heiress, and I did not want for adulation. I was surrounded by fashion and beauty, and wreathed with approbation from the noblest and most exalted, on that night of festal splendor; and again that beautiful face that had cast its spell above me in my inexperienced childhood, and that age never seemed to change nor chill, bent above me with its gracious and genial sweetness, and the princely banker on this occasion condescended to manifest his kindly and approving interest in the daughter of his dead friend. At any other time, such tribute would have been most grateful and acceptable to me, for this man was almost my beau idéal at this period, but now the bitterness with which my heart was filled, permeated my whole being, and dashed every draught of enjoyment untasted from my lips.

Yet the memory of that time—that face—returned to me later with emotions irresistible, when the being who was then the idol of society, became its ostracized outcast, and, among all who bowed before him in his pride of place and power, were found, before two years had elapsed from this period,

"None so poor
To do him reverence."

Already is the injustice of that decision forced on the convictions of his fellow-men. Our scales are not wisely balanced in this world—we cannot weigh motives against acts, thought against deeds, with atom-like precision, nor measure the tempted with the temptation grain by grain, hair by hair. Ambition was the fault of the seraphim in the commencement—be well assured that some of the old angelic leaven lingers still about all of its votaries and victims.

Ay—victims!—for he who was said to have made so many, was himself the victim of the society that spoiled and flattered him, and fostered his foibles, in the beginning, with its false and fawning breath, and, later, blew on him a blast of ice from its remorseless, pestilent jaws, that froze him out of his humanity.

He could not live—moulded, as he was, of all sweet elements—apart from social influences, from the regard, the affection, the approbation of his kind—and he died of heart-starvation; fortunate, indeed, in that he was mercifully permitted so to die, rather than have lived, as less fervent natures might have done, in cold and cheerless apathy.

I do not defend his errors; I only seek to extenuate them. Pity and justice are not the same; but one may still so temper the other that Mercy, the appointed angel of this earth, may be the result.

Let us, who are mortal and fallible, be wary how we condemn one whose head was rendered giddy by his very pinnacle of power! Peace be his!

I have diverged so widely from my subject—a most bitter and revolting one to me, eventually—that I will not return to it just now; nor, indeed, do I even in thought revert to it with any thing like patience or pardon. There are some things, paradoxical as this may seem, we must forget, in order to forgive.

I am lingering too long on this period of my story, uneventful as it is just yet, and circumscribed as I am in space; but, as the boldest rider draws rein with a beating heart beside the dark abyss over which he must fling his horse, or perish, so I pause here, on the threshold of despair, and take breath for a flying leap—for I shall clear it, reader, believe me!

It will be remembered that, at my father's death, half of my means were invested in the stocks of the Bank of Pennsylvania; and that his directions were that, as the different loans he had made became due, they should, one after the other, be drawn in and invested in like manner by Mr. Bainrothe.

No details of my business had ever been discussed before me, nor had I any insight into the periods at which these loans were due, or how the money was cared for when paid in by my father's executors, of whom, to my regret, Mr. Gerald Stanbury had refused to be one.

One thing alone I had heard them say, and it was said, I doubt not, expressly for my hearing. All debts should be paid in gold, as, according to law, this was the only legal tender. Paper, however excellent, should never be received in discharge of any liability of my estate, since it might render the executors responsible to me, to depart a hair's-breadth from the very letter of the law, which enjoined specie payment.

"But why not receive bank stocks instead?" I had ventured to suggest, a little indignantly, "seeing all moneys are to be immediately reinvested in that form. Pennsylvania Bank stocks, I mean."

"You know nothing about the matter, Miriam," Evelyn had remarked, with some asperity. "Had your father deemed you capable of conducting your own affairs, he would not have appointed us to manage and direct them during your minority. No sinecure, I assure you!"

But Mr. Bainrothe had only laughed, and turned away tapping his boot with his rattan cane, amused, it appeared to me, by my sister's assumption of importance, and, probably, as well by her entire ignorance of his true motive in exacting gold, of which secret spring of action she, knowing nothing, still tried to make so profound a mystery.

Yet he flattered Evelyn very much, I saw, on her business qualifications, and her insight into financial matters, of which abilities, indeed, she was more proud than of her accomplishments, or even beauty.

The last she took as a matter of course; but it was something new and unexpected to her to be considered sagacious and strong-minded, and very gratifying to her arrogant and exacting spirit—ever alive to the delight of controlling the affairs of others, as well as her own—to have the reins of government given apparently into her hands.

My father had placed an iron chest in a secure niche in the dining-room, behind the great central mirror, made for the purpose of concealing it, and to which he alone had access. Here he had kept a store of plate, money, jewels, and papers, so as to defy all burglarious interference or foreign scrutiny, and, in dying, had bequeathed the secret of the patent lock to Mr. Bainrothe alone. Old Morton even was ignorant of the contrivance.

I knew of the niche and the iron chest by the merest accident, and had been requested, nay, commanded, by my father, not to speak of either; so, in silence the mystery had almost died out of my recollection, when it was rather singularly revived again in this wise:

During one of the hottest nights early in September, after our return from Saratoga, I descended, parched with thirst, to the dining-room, about four o'clock in the morning, to seek a glass of iced-water, always to be found there, I knew, by night or day, on the sideboard, in a small silver cistern.

The dawn was dimly breaking through the great window in the hall as I passed down the broad stairway, still in my night-dress and unslippered feet; but, on approaching the dining-room, I was surprised to see the gleam of a candle falling athwart the mirror, which had been swung from its place (as I had seen it once before swung by my father), so as to screen my advancing form from the person evidently at work behind it. The massive shutters of the room were closed and securely barred, as was the habit of the house, and the room was, consequently, still in darkness, or deep shadow.

As I stood half hidden now, by the arch of the hall, behind which I shrank instinctively, and uncertain how to proceed, I saw Mr. Bainrothe suddenly emerge from behind the mirror, and take from the table near it a canvas bag, small but evidently weighty, from the manner in which he carried it to its place of concealment.

Then I heard the slow, heavy fall of a shower of gold coins, dropping on others, the same sound that had greeted my ear on the day when I first detected this treasure-cave of my father, and as different from the sound of falling silver as is the gurgling of rich old wine from the dash of crystal water.

"The wretch is faithful to his trust, after all. So this is where he keeps my gold," I thought; "but how did he find ingress into our castle, supposed at least to be inaccessible by night? Has he a false key I wonder, and are we above-stairs, with unlocked doors, subject to his visitations, should it occur to him to make them?"

I shuddered at the suggestions of my own fancy. Women only, who have been similarly situated, can know how dark these may become, even in an innocent mind, from circumstances like those that surrounded me, and what a nameless horror there is about the insidious and licentious approaches of the man we would fain dash away from us, and trample under foot like a serpent, did we dare openly to do so.

Yet I lingered under the archway, determined to observe to the last Mr. Bainrothe's proceedings. When he had locked the chest and replaced the mirror, which swung out from its place, as I have said, like a door on invisible hinges and fastened with a spring, he passed hastily out of the dining-room into the pantry beyond, opening for convenience on a covered paved court, which divided the kitchen from the house and which led directly into the yard beyond. After that, all was silent.

Yet, the next day, Franklin assured me that he had carried the key of the pantry away with him, when he went home at night (he was a married man, and slept at his own house usually), and that he found it locked in the morning just as he had left it.

This was in answer to a question which I tried to make as careless as possible, with regard to some burglaries that had lately been committed in a neighboring street, adding, by way of caution: "Don't forget to lock us up carefully at night, Franklin; remember we are all women in the house, except Morton, and he is old and sleeps like a top, no doubt having a good conscience for his pillow."

"If you would have an inside bolt put upon the pantry-door, it would be best, Miss Miriam," he remarked; "that is, if your mind is really troubled about robbers. Then you could draw it yourself in my absence at night."

"And who would let you in, in the morning, Franklin, if I did this? Our household would sleep until noon, were it not for your early summons, I verily believe."

"I will throw a pebble at the cook's window, miss, if she is not on foot by that time. But she usually is; cooks has to stir earlier than the rest, you know, by reason of the light rolls and muffins."

"Oh, yes! true, I had forgotten this. Go at once, then, Franklin, for a smith, and let him put a massive bolt on the pantry-door, and I will be jailer of Monfort Hall in future, in your absence, for I am quite sure some one was trying that lock last night. I came to the dining-room for water just before daylight, and heard it distinctly."

"One of your lady-like notions," said Franklin, shaking his head, with an incredulous smile; "young ladies is always nervous like, and fearful about robbers, all but Miss Evelyn Erle—I never seen the like of her, for true grit! All was safe when I came, Miss Miriam, any way, and, if robbers had been about, it stands to reason the silver chest, setting out in the pantry, would have stood a poor chance."

Again he smiled provokingly. "There are all sorts of robbers in this world," I said, a little sternly; "some come for one purpose, some for another. Attend to the bolt, Franklin, at once; I am very sure of what I have said." And so the parley ended.

I am certain that Mr. Bainrothe came no more by night to his treasure-cave, but there was a mocking smile on his lip—when Evelyn told him, before me, some time later, that I had caused a bolt to be placed on the pantry-door, for fear of burglars—that was significant to my mind.

"What is the use of this mystery with me," I thought, "when I alone am concerned? Why not reveal to me at once the secret of the spring and the lock, as I only am to be the beneficiary of all this gold? The man's cunning is short-sighted. Suppose he were to die suddenly, how does he know that I would ever be the wiser or the better of these deposits? Years hence, when the house was crumbling to decay, some stranger might be enriched by this concealed gold, for aught he knows, which is legitimately mine. Evelyn, too, is in complete ignorance of this hidden chest, I am convinced, and, as far as I am concerned, will probably remain so. After all, does Bainrothe mistrust her honesty or mine? Good Heavens! what a mole the man is by nature, how darkly, deeply underhand, even in his responsibility! And there are two long years yet, nay more to wait, before I can openly defy him and put him away forever. Loathing him as I do, patience, patience! Rome was not built in a day. I shall still prevail."

Months after this occurrence, months that passed swiftly because monotonously to me, for by events alone we are told we measure time, I was roused one night from my early slumber by the sound of bitter weeping in Evelyn's chamber. I had left her engaged over accounts with Mr. Bainrothe, having withdrawn rather than spend a long, lonely evening in the parlor, somewhat indisposed as I felt.

I rose from my bed and went to her precipitately. I found her indulging in a passionate burst of grief, almost choking with sobs of hysterical indignation.

"All gone—all gone!" she exclaimed, wildly, as I entered the room. "Your estate—mine—Mabel's—all swept away with one fell swoop, Miriam! The Bank of Pennsylvania has failed; it is discovered that Mr. Biddle has proved defaulter, and we are ruined!"

"I will never believe it, Evelyn!" I exclaimed, vehemently, "until he tells me so with his own lips. This is one of Mr. Bainrothe's fictions; he is trying to wake us up a little, that is all. Mr. Biddle is the Bayard of bankers—'sans peur et sans reproche.' As to that bank, did not my father believe it to be as indestructible as the United States, the government itself? Nay, did not Bainrothe himself do all he could to convince him of it, and induce him to invest in its stocks? The wily fox had his motive, no doubt, but it surely could not have been our ruin! Our own fortunes are too intimately involved in his prosperity for this. Besides, why have not the newspapers told us of this?"

All this time Evelyn was sobbing convulsively, and what I have told continuously here was said by me in a far more fragmentary way between her bursts of grief. She ceased now, and looked up, with some effort at calmness.

"The newspapers have been discussing it for months past, all but Mr. Biddle's organ, and that alone was permitted to enter our doors. Mr. Bainrothe acknowledges this now. Have you not noticed the irregularity of our Washington papers?"

"No; I so rarely read them, you know."

"Mr. Bainrothe, with mistaken charity," she resumed, "I fear, sought to shield us as long as possible from the blow, which was inevitable sooner or later; or perhaps he hoped still for an adjustment of affairs, that might have left us a competence at least. But he was deceived, Miriam; we are worth nothing—a round naught—" and she suited the action to the word by the union of the tips of her thumb and finger—"is the figure whereby to describe our fortunes now; and the heiress and her once dependent friend and sister are alike—beggars! All brought to one level at last—there is comfort in that thought, at least! Ha! ha! ha!" and she laughed wildly, horribly. I never before heard such laughter.

"Beggary is a word I repudiate, Evelyn, in any case," I said, firmly; "and we, it seems, if this frightful thing be true, are not alone in ruin. Be calm, dear Evelyn! Learn to bear with dignity our fate. We must sustain each other now—be all in all to one another, as we have never been before. Thank God! let us both thank God, Evelyn, from our inmost hearts, that we still have this shelter—and—yes—I have reason to believe, much more."

And, kneeling beside her bed, I told her impulsively of our concealed treasure behind the mirror (though I had once determined never to reveal this to her or any one)—treasure guarded so long by me with bolt by night and vigilance by day!

Oh, fatal error, never to be repaired or sufficiently repented of! Oh, utter misplacement of confidence, not warranted, surely, by any thing that had gone before, and the results of which I had subsequently such bitter cause to deplore!

She listened to me with an interest and zeal that were unmistakable. She sat up in her bed, with her large, blue, distended eyes fixed on mine, turning paler and paler, brighter and brighter, as she gazed, until their lustre seemed opaline rather than spiritual, and with her slender white hands wreathed together like the interlacing marble snakes in the grasp of the Laocoon, so long, and lithe, and sinuous, seemed the polished, flexile fingers. Her lips were livid, but on her cheek burned two flame-like spots, indicative ever with her of intense excitement. Surely the god Mammon has rarely possessed so sincere a worshiper! Let us do her this justice, at least. So far she was consistent; so far she was devout!'

"You are sure of the truth of what you utter, Miriam?" she questioned, eagerly.

"Sure as that I live," I replied.

"It is wonderful! Why did he not mention this to me? I cannot conjecture his motive. But perhaps he has already removed and invested this gold, Miriam, of which you say there was such a quantity as to have represented a large portion of your landed estate, I think!"

"No, no; that is simply impossible. By night he has never done this, I know. By day he could not effect this unseen or unsuspected. That dining-room is so public, you know, that Morton sees every thing; besides, I gave him directions which he blindly obeyed, I am certain (you know his almost canine obedience to me, Evelyn), to remain, when engaged with the plate, in the adjoining pantry, with the door ajar between, and to be always on guard. Papa always allowed him the privilege of that room, and I love to continue it, you know, since we never use it except for meals. You remember I said this when you objected to his sitting there, Evelyn, and remarked that he might as well sit with the other servants, to whom he is so superior. But of late, I confess, I have had a motive, and Morton knew this"—I hesitated—"must have known it."

"Do you mean to say you confided the secret of the mirror to Morton, and kept it from me? Thank you, Miriam!" loftily. "I might have expected this, however."

"Not wholly this," I replied, with embarrassment, for I saw how the matter looked externally. "Morton simply knew that I wanted, for purposes of my own, to exclude every one except himself from solitary possession of the dining-room as much as possible, Mr. Bainrothe especially. Yes, I told him this, but I kept papa's secret. Believe me, Evelyn, I did this, and you know well enough what Morton's devotion is to me not to believe that he religiously fulfilled my request without asking for an explanation."

"Yes," she mused, "I saw him perched up there tonight, as usual, with his old English newspapers, and I have observed that he never leaves his post there, while Mr. Bainrothe remains. You could not have procured a better watchman, surely; but why have you watched at all?"

"Because," I said, "I felt sure that mystery lurked behind those nocturnal visits. You cannot doubt this yourself, Evelyn, and, with your opinion of Mr. Bainrothe, must see that I felt I had good reason for mistrust. I was determined to be present when that chest should next be opened by him."

A smile quivered across her face. "I had not suspected you of so much diplomacy," she observed, dryly; "but, after all, Miriam, how does this change the posture of affairs to me? I shall be all the same, poor and dependent."

"No, Evelyn, no indeed! I promise you faithfully.—But what is this?" I exclaimed, rising hastily from my knees, "I am faint—blind! Quick, the drops Dr. Pemberton left for me, Evelyn, or I am lost again."

I threw myself across the foot of her bed, sick and bewildered, yet feeling myself gradually—after a few moments of oppression—growing better, in spite of the dark effort of my evil genius to gain his fatal ascendency.

When she came with the drops, after some delay, I was, to her surprise, able to sit up and look around me. The spell was over.

"I believe I have troubled you uselessly," I said; "I will go to bed without medicine to-night, I think, and strive to be calm, as Dr. Pemberton enjoined me to do, and there was good sense in his advice, certainly. We have so much to do to-morrow, Evelyn—we two must remove these deposits ourselves. But not a word to Bainrothe!"

"Miriam," she said, eagerly, "can you doubt my discretion when you know, too, what your own promises have been now and long ago—to divide with me, ay, to the last cent, like a sister? Now, I insist on the drops! You are pale again, Miriam—collapsing visibly in my sight. Do take your remedy—so efficacious of late in warding off these distressing attacks. I have taken the trouble, too, to go after them. I was at some pains in hunting them up; they were not in the usual place. Come, now, as a punishment for your carelessness, I proclaim myself dictator, and command you to swallow them at once," and she poured the medicine into a spoon.

"No, Evelyn," I averred, putting the spoon aside, "I am better without the drops. I wish to see what my unaided will and constitution can do, this time."

"There is too much at stake to depend on these, Miriam. We must unearth this treasure-trove to-morrow at daylight, and defeat Bainrothe on his own grounds, or he may be beforehand with us. Take your drops, dear, and have a good night's rest, and be ready for the contest. There, now, that is a good sister," embracing me tenderly.

Persuasion and reason accomplished with me what commands could not have done. I took the drops, went quietly to bed, and was soon lost to a sense of misfortunes, hopes, and the world itself.

I slept profoundly and long. When I awoke, the slant rays of the evening sun were pouring through the blinds of my window, in lines of moted light. Mrs. Austin was sitting close to the sash, with her invariable knitting-work, her aquiline profile and frilled cap strongly relieved against the jalousied shutters.

On the mantel-piece were the inevitable spirit-lamp and bowl of panada, recognized at once as part and parcel of my malady. In the chamber the usual smell of ether, the remedy so often ineffectually administered during the period of my lethargic attacks.

I understood everything now—I had experienced another seizure, and I had lost a day.

Whether it was this conviction that cleared my brain at once of those mephitic fogs that usually clung around it after a spell of lethargy, long after my consciousness returned, I never knew, but certain it is, I sat up in my bed like one refreshed by sleep, instead of feeling exhausted, and, greatly to her surprise, accosted Mrs. Austin in clear, strong accents.

"How long have I slept? And where is Evelyn?" I asked.

"You have not opened your eyes to-day, dear child, until just this moment; and Miss Evelyn has not been able to sit up in her bed since she went to it last night, that shock yesterday overcame her so completely." By this time she was standing by my pillow, after laying aside her knitting, in a leisurely manner peculiar to her at all seasons. "But Mabel is in the next room; let me call her to you."

"Let her stay there," I interrupted, in a manner so unusual with me, whose first inquiry on reviving from illness had always been for Mabel, instead of Evelyn, that Mrs. Austin looked surprised and startled.

"What ails you, Miss Miriam? I thought Mabel was always your first thought; the little angel! She has been hanging over you tearfully all day; never going near Miss Evelyn at all. It is so strange she shows such partiality!"

Strange that one being on earth, and that one my sister, should love me better than Evelyn, in the eyes of her partial affection; and yet Evelyn treated her with positive disrespect every day of her life, as I never did; and often with severity as well. It was incomprehensible!

"Give me the panada," I said, grimly; "I am half starved, and must grow strong again to do my work. I am not nearly so weak as I usually am, though, after one of my seizures."

"You see you are outgrowing them, as Dr. Pemberton predicted you would. I declare, you are hungry, poor child; you have not left a drop—pint-bowl too—with a gill of wine in it. Not going to get up, Miss Miriam? Oh, no; you must not venture to do that yet."

And she tried gently to restrain me.

"Yes, I must get about again; I have much to do, and Evelyn must aid me, if able. Is she ill or only nervous?"

"Very ill, I think; she wrote a note to Dr. Craig and sent it last night, after you went to sleep; but he did not come."

"Quite naturally, since he had been absent some weeks. I could have told her," I said, sententiously; "indeed, I thought she knew it. Who carried her note?"

"Morton."

"Poor old man! The idea of sending him on such a wild-goose chase, after night. Papa would turn in his grave could he know he had been forced out in the rain at such an hour, for a woman's whim. I would have suffered tortures till morning first. Where was Franklin?"

"Franklin had gone home earlier than usual, and did not return to-day. He is sick with a chill, we hear, and his wife is again ill."

"Who did the marketing?"

"Morton."

"Morton again! Why, the old man seems to be becoming a factotum in his declining years—he whose duties have always been so few, so simple! I am provoked, for some reasons, that he should have been sent away to-day. Fortunately, I bolted the pantry-door myself, before I came to bed last night," I murmured, "and the front door is self-fastening. The house was well secured, at least, by night."

"How long did Morton remain absent?" I asked, recommencing my system of cross-questions, very abruptly.

"About an hour, I believe; but what makes you so particular, all at once, Miss Miriam?"

"Some day you shall know, perhaps. In the mean while tell me, has Mr. Bainrothe been here to-day?"

"He called about one o'clock, but, as all were poorly, went away again without entering the house at all. I saw him go down-street, after dinner, in his phaeton, with another gentleman, and have not heard wheels since."

"You are sure he was not here, this morning—while—while Morton was absent?"

"Quite sure; he breakfasted later than usual, I think, for I saw him throw open his side bedroom window at nine o'clock, and he was in his shirt-sleeves then. He sleeps in a large room in the ell, you know. I was standing at the pantry-door, and saw him distinctly, and he nodded to me, and called something, but I could not hear what it was at that distance."

"Where was Charity at that time, Mrs. Austin?"

"Cleaning the house, Miss Miriam—hard at work in the parlors, washing windows—this is her cleaning-day, you know."

"And cook, what was she about?"

"She got breakfast early, for us people, and went to mass, but was back by ten. Miss Evelyn had her breakfast after she returned, with Miss Mabel, and there was no one to eat dinner down-stairs so she thought—"

"Never mind what she thought," I interrupted, "or who went and came, so that all be well."

"You do ask such strange questions, this morning, Miss Miriam, and your eyes are so big! Do you feel light-headed at all after your turn—maybe you have fever?"

"Not at all—hard-headed, rather, Mrs. Austin—not even heavy-headed—though leaden-hearted enough, God knows! We are ruined, you know—or at least Evelyn tells me so. The rest I have still to learn—I must see Mr. Bainrothe this evening. There is a positive necessity for me to exert myself now, but first I have some examinations to make. Give me a shawl and wrapper, good nurse, and my slippers. Don't disturb Evelyn, or call Mabel till my return; and stay where you are until then, if you wish to serve me."

I sped rapidly down-stairs, and entered the dining-room so noiselessly that old Morton, who was a "little thick of hearing," did not hear my steps nor move from his position by the fire, where he sat apparently absorbed by his newspapers. "Morton," I said, and laid my quivering hand upon his arm, "the time has come to act. Come help me to secure my treasure." He rose silently to obey me.

I touched the spring of the mirror; it swung silently open, and revealed to the astonished old man a square niche built in the wall—unsuspected before by him—in which fitted an iron chest, the existence of which he had never dreamed of until now. But the contents were gone—gone since yesterday! The chest was empty, with its lid propped open. There was not even a paper within.

With a bitter groan I tottered back against the wall, while the cold dew stood on my brow, and my limbs trembled under me. This was indeed despair!

"What ails you, Miss Miriam?" he asked, with an expression of anguish upon his kind, old, quivering face. "Do you miss any thing—what have you lost, Miss Miriam?"

"You left your post, Morton," I said, at last, "and this is the consequence—I have lost every thing! Old man! old friend! did you think I charged you to watch every one who came, so earnestly, to stay here so constantly, without a good and sufficient reason? Some one has been here before us—my gold is gone! we are ruined, Morton!"

CHAPTER VIII.

Whatever my flash of conviction might have been, all suspicions against Evelyn must have been allayed by the manner in which she received the information of the loss of the deposits behind the mirror.

Her shrieks filled the house; another physician was hastily summoned in Dr. Craig's absence, who gave her disease or seizure a Latin name—wrote a Greek or Hebrew prescription—or something equally unintelligible, and vanished ghost-like, in the manner most approved of by modern practitioners.

There was no hard epithet that Evelyn did not apply to Mr. Basil Bainrothe during her hysterical mania, and before the doctor's arrival; but, on her recovery, she begged me to repeat nothing of the sort, if she had been indiscreet enough to let out her true opinion of him and his measures, in a moment of irrepressible emotion. "For," she pursued, "it is expedient for us to keep on terms with the man, at least for the present, and in no way harass or exasperate him—we are completely in his hands now, Miriam—we must watch our opportunity—"

"I do not see that," I interrupted; "less now than ever, it seems to me. What more can he do for or against us now? Our property is all gone—except this house, plate, and furniture, and my mother's diamonds—all of winch are tangible and visible, and in our own possession. We have no debts—you pay house-bills monthly, and I, fortunately, have just settled off every account I have in the world, and have five hundred Spanish dollars to start anew with—my savings during papa's lifetime. I hoarded it, fortunately, in this form for a missionary purpose you remember, Evelyn, but afterward changed my mind."

"Yes, I remember; merely because the person it was intended for prayed that the Jews might finally be exterminated."

"Was not that enough, Evelyn? The man who could utter such a prayer was no Christian, and unfit for religious teaching. Since then I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of undue and very impertinent meddling with the heathen; who are entitled to their own mode of worship as well as of government, and who I think are not yet ripe for Christianity."

"You have strange notions, Miriam; you talk like an old French philosopher."

"I never knew there was such a thing—a French sophist I am afraid you mean. No, I am not a sophist, Evelyn; any thing else than that! I wish sometimes I did not see so clearly. I love, I idolize the truth alone!"

She colored—sighed. God knows I was not thinking of her at that moment, or speaking with that reference, however I may have had reason to do so.

Is it not strange that our dreams often present to us, in our own despite, the vivid, photographic pictures struck by sleep from the dim, unconscious negative of our waking judgment, which we refuse to recognize as verities in the light of our open-eyed, daytime responsibility? I, who had declared myself no sophist, knew later that I had deceived my own heart, which spoke out so truthfully in dreams of sleep, and refused to be silenced in the dead hour of night, however I might stifle its suggestions by day.

In one of these suggestive, or rather reflected, visions, I saw Evelyn groping through darkness to the side-gate which gave into the grounds of Mr. Bainrothe from our own, made years before by my father's permission for the convenience of his friend; the night was a dark and stormy one, yet she went forth alone, or seemed to, in my vision, to seek a man she detested, and with him connive the destruction of the fortunes of the child of her benefactress, whose confidence she abused.

Then I saw them returning together, through that pantry-door which she had left unbolted, though locked when she went out by another egress, and which the man, who returned with her, readily unlocked with the duplicate key he carried, not by my father's permission. This last I knew.

Now the scene was changed to the dining-room. Again I saw the mirror swing back on its invisible and noiseless hinges, and now the glare of a shaded lamp fell in bands of light across its surface. But I was inside this time, by the glamour of my dream, and I saw them emptying the open chest painfully, laboriously, stealthily; stopping now and then to listen, to breathe, again working silently, industriously, at their vocation of theft and crime!

At last all seemed accomplished. A large, covered basket was partially loaded with the contents—heavy as lead—and, between them, they bore it out into the storm and darkness again, and I heard the sound of the spade and mattock at work on the graveled road.

Presently Evelyn came in again. Her air was wild and frightened; her trembling hands were stained with mud, seen by the light of the lantern she bore, and which she again hung in its accustomed place, stealing quietly away into the darkened hall, to grope her way up-stairs. All this while the farce of sending for Dr. Craig was being enacted, and Morton was out on his fruitless mission in the rain!

Again it was morning, and I saw them together in the library, while I still slept, consulting, planning, plotting, writing, erasing, whispering; soon to separate, however, this time. Their arrangements being completed without restraint, for again the old man was absent, doing the duties of another, who, knowing not the motive of such request or bribe, was content to work the will of a conspirator, and pass the day in idleness at home, for the sake of a purse of gold. Here ended my clairvoyance, if such it was.

All this may have been imaginary—part of it probably was—but the sense of the dream was no doubt what my untrammeled judgment would have suggested as truth, and what later—but let me not digress or anticipate here, in the thickest of my troubles, the jungle-pass of my story as it were, but strike on through a self-made path, it may be, to the light that shines beyond the forest, even if it lead into the desert!

Something in Evelyn's suggestion had struck me as the best to pursue under the circumstances, although at first I so boldly repudiated the idea of Mr. Bainrothe's power. Unless I could prove that he had removed the treasure for unworthy uses—why speak of it at all? I should only irritate and set him on his guard by such allusions; whereas, by a course of reticence, I still might learn, as she had suggested, the truth when he least suspected my purpose.

It would be so easy for him to deny all knowledge of the concealed chest—so easy to lay the robbery on Morton, even if the first were proved—or even on Evelyn!

I had sent impulsively for Mr. Bainrothe to come to me on the evening of my discovery, but his visit was delayed by a necessity that kept him from home all night, so that I had time to revolve and resolve on my course of action before I saw him, which was not until the following afternoon, and by this time my mind had undergone a change. He came, but not alone—his son accompanied him.

I have reason since then to think that Evelyn and Claude Bainrothe had met before their cold and measured interview in my presence. It was to me a painful and embarrassing one, and this time the graceful ease was all on the other side—I was preoccupied and agitated, Claude courteous and self-possessed, Evelyn lofty and confident, as though she had lived or trodden down her emotions, and, to my surprise, Mr. Basil Bainrothe wore his accustomed deliberate and self-poised demeanor, making no reference, not even by his expression of face or a glance of his kaleidoscopic eyes, to the sad catastrophe with which by this time I was but too well acquainted.

I had been reading newspapers eagerly all day, when he came, and, from a contradictory mass of evidence, had gleaned some grains of truth. One fact was beyond contradiction—a second Samson had drawn down the ruins of a temple, not on the heads of his foes alone, but his friends as well, blinded, as he of old, by the treachery of that basest of all Delilahs, a fawning public!

Yes, we were ruined; the only hope now was in the honesty of Mr. Basil Bainrothe. Should the gold I saw him hiding away not have been appropriated to the purchase of bank-stocks—should it have been saved for me—we might still rejoice in wealth beyond our deserts, and equal to our desires.

We still might keep the old, beloved roof above our heads, preserve one unbroken circle of family domestics—live without labor, or terror of the future. But would this be? I waited, as I still think I should have done, for Mr. Bainrothe to take the initiative in this proceeding.

Impatient and sick-hearted, I saw day after day glide past, without an effort on his part to explain or ameliorate my condition—one now of excessive and wearing anxiety.

At last he came. For the first time in his life when a matter of business was in question, he asked for me. I went to him alone at my own instance, and somewhat to Evelyn's chagrin, I thought.

I found him in the library, of late our sole receiving-room; the rest were closed and fireless. For, since the certainty of our misfortune, we had received no society, and would not long be obliged to decline it, Evelyn thought. Her opinion of the world little justified the pains she had taken to conciliate it.

I found Mr. Bainrothe buried in the deep reading-chair, always in his lifetime occupied by my father, his hand supporting his head, his hat and delicate ivory-headed cane thrown carelessly on the floor beside him—his whole attitude one of deep dejection.

He started a little when I addressed him by name, as if reviving from deep reverie—then arose and extended his hand to me, grasping mine firmly when I gave it to him, which I did unwillingly I confess.

"Miriam," he said, "this is all very dreadful!" subsiding into his seat again with a groan, and looking steadily and silently into the fire for some minutes afterward. "Very dreadful!" he repeated, shaking his head dismally; "wholly unforeseen!"

He glanced at me furtively once or twice to observe the effect of his words—his manner. Disappointed probably by my silence and coolness, he again affected to be absorbed in contemplation.

"Have we any thing left?" I asked quietly, at last—weary as I was of this histrionic performance of his, and anxious for the truth.

"Nothing," was the gloomy reply that fell on my ear—on my heart like molten lead; "nothing but what you know of. This house, this furniture, well preserved it is true, but old and out of style. Your carriage and horses—diamonds—in short, what you have in hand. That is all you have left of the great estate of your mother."

"It is enough to keep the wolf from the door, at all events," I remarked quietly, "and I am thankful for a bare competence; but why, under existing circumstances, were you in such haste to remove the contents of the iron chest behind the mirror, a portion of which you added to in September?"

He rose with dignity and advanced to the corner of the mantel-shelf, on which he leaned in a perfectly self-possessed position, one foot crossed lightly over the other, I remember, and one hand at his side—a favorite attitude of his. He interrupted my interrogatory with another, ever an effectual aid in browbeating.

"How did you become possessed of the knowledge that I kept gold there?" he asked, coolly; "I had meant to have preserved the secret of that spring until your majority, but you women penetrate every thing. No, my dear Miriam," he continued, without waiting for an answer, "unfortunately, the gold you refer to was exchanged for worthless bank-stocks in September last, according to the requisitions of your father's will; and, as that was the latest paid in of the loans he had made, and as all other means had been invested in like manner (and with a promptness characteristic of me, I believe I may say without vanity), as they fell into my hands. You will perceive, very clearly, that every thing, beyond the property I have here pointed out to you, is swept away."