Dawn of the Morning

Dawn
of the Morning

BY
GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL

AUTHOR OF
MARCIA SCHUYLER, PHOEBE DEANE, ETC.

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

COPYRIGHT, 1911
BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

Wings of the Morning

"The morning hangs its signal

Upon the mountain's crest,

While all the sleeping valleys

In silent darkness rest;

From peak to peak it flashes,

It laughs along the sky

That the crowning day is coming, by and by!

We can see the rose of morning,

A glory in the sky,

And that splendor on the hill-tops

O'er all the land shall lie.

Above the generations

The lonely prophets rise,—

The Truth flings dawn and day-star

Within their glowing eyes;

From heart to heart it brightens,

It draweth ever nigh,

Till it crowneth all men thinking, by and by!

The soul hath lifted moments

Above the drift of days,

When life's great meaning breaketh

In sunrise on our ways;

From hour to hour it haunts us,

The vision draweth nigh,

Till it crowneth living, dying, by and by!

And in the sunrise standing,

Our kindling hearts confess

That 'no good thing is failure.

No evil thing success!'

From age to age it groweth,

That radiant faith so high,

And its crowning day is coming by and by!"

WILLIAM C. GANNETT

Dawn of the Morning

CHAPTER I

In the year 1824, in a pleasant town located between Schenectady and Albany, stood the handsome colonial residence of Hamilton Van Rensselaer. Solemn hedges shut in the family pride and hid the family sorrow, and about the borders of its spacious gardens, where even the roses seemed subdued, there played a child. The stately house oppressed her, and she loved the sombre garden best.

Her only friend in the old house seemed a tall clock that stood on the stairs and told out the hours in the hopeless tone that was expected of a clock in such a house, though it often took time to wink pleasantly at the child as she passed by, and talk off a few seconds and minutes in a brighter tone.

But the great clock on the staircase ticked awesomely one morning as the little girl went slowly down to her father's study in response to his bidding.

She did not want to go. She delayed her steps as much as possible, and looked up at the kindly old clock for sympathy; but even the round-eyed sun and the friendly moon that went around on the clock face every day as regularly as the real sun and moon, and usually appeared to be bowing and smiling at her, wore solemn expressions, and seemed almost pale behind their highly painted countenances.

The little girl shuddered as she gave one last look over her shoulder at them and passed into the dim recesses of the back hall, where the light came only in weird, half-circular slants from the mullioned window over the front door. It was dreadful indeed when the jolly sun and moon looked grave.

She paused before the heavy door of the study and held her breath, dreading the ordeal that was to come. Then, gathering courage, she knocked timidly, and heard her father's instant, cold "Come."

With trembling fingers she turned the knob and went in.

There were heavy damask curtains at the windows, reaching to the floor, caught back with thick silk cords and tassels. They were a deep, sullen red, and filled the room with oppressive shadows in no wise relieved by the heavy mahogany furniture upholstered in the same red damask.

Her father sat by his ponderous desk, always littered with papers which she must not touch.

His sternly handsome face was forbidding. The very beauty of it was hateful to her. The look on it reminded her of that terrible day, now nearly three years ago, when he had returned from a journey of several months abroad in connection with some brilliant literary enterprise, and had swept her lovely mother out of his life and home, the innocent victim of long-entertained jealousy and most unfounded suspicion.

The little girl had been too young to understand what it was all about. When she cried for her she was forbidden even to think of her, and was told that her mother was unworthy of that name.

The child had declared with angry tears and stampings of her small foot, that it was not true, that her mother was good and dear and beautiful; but they had paid no heed to her. The father had sternly commanded silence and sent her away; and the mother had not returned.

So she had sobbed her heart out in the silence of her own room, where every object reminded her of the lost mother's touch and voice and presence, and had gone about the house in a sullen silence unnatural to childhood, thereby making herself more enemies than friends.

Of her father she was afraid. She shrank into terrified silence whenever he approached, scarcely answering his questions, and growing farther away from him every day, until he instinctively knew that she hated him for her mother's sake.

When a year had passed he procured a divorce without protest from the innocent but crushed wife, this by aid of a law that often places "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne." Not long after, he brought to his home as his wife a capable, arrogant, self-opinionated woman, who set herself to rule him and his household as it should be ruled.

The little girl was called to audience in the gloomy study where sat the new wife, her eyes filled with hostility toward the other woman's child, and was told that she must call the lady "Mother."

Then the black eyes that held in their dreamy depths some of the gunpowder flash of her father's steely ones took fire; the little face darkened with indignant fury; the small foot came down with fierce determination on the thick carpet, and the child declared:

"I will never call her mother! She is not my mother! She is a bad woman, and she has no right here. She cannot be your wife. It is wicked for a man to have two wives. I know, for I heard Mary Ann and Betsey say so this morning in the kitchen. My mother is alive yet. She is at Grandfather's. I heard Betsey say that too. You are a wicked, cruel man, and I hate you. I will not have you for a father any more. I will go away and stay with my mother. She is good. You are bad! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! And I hate her!"—pointing toward the new wife, who sat in horrified condemnation, with two fiery spots upon her outraged cheeks.

"Jemima!" thundered her father in his angriest tone.

But the little girl turned upon him furiously.

"My name is not Jemima!" she screamed. "I will not let you call me so. My name is Dawn. My mother called me Dawn. I will not answer when you call me Jemima."

"Jemima, you may go to your room!" commanded the father, standing up, white to the lips, to face a will no whit less adamant than his own.

"I will not go until you call me Dawn," she answered, her face turning white and stern, with sudden singular likeness to her father on its soft round outlines.

She stood her ground until carried struggling upstairs and locked into her own room.

Gradually she had cried her fury out, and succumbed to the inevitable, creeping back as seldom as possible into the life of the house, and spending the time with her own brooding thoughts and sad plays, far in the depths of the box-boarded garden, or shut into the quiet of her own room.

To the new mother she never spoke unless she had to, and never called her Mother, though there were many struggles to compel her to do so. She never came when they called her Jemima, nor obeyed a command prefaced by that name, though she endured in consequence many a whipping and many a day in bed, fed on bread and water.

"What is the meaning of this strange whim?" demanded the new wife, with set lips. Her position was none too easy, nor her disposition markedly that of a saint.

"A bit of her mother's sentimentality," explained the chagrined father. "She objected to calling the child for my grandmother, Jemima. She wanted it named for her own mother, and said Jemima was harsh and ugly, until one day her old minister, who was fully as sentimental as she, if he was an old man, told her that Jemima meant 'Dawn of the Morning.' After that she made no further protest. But I had no idea she had carried her foolishness to this extent, nor taught the child such notions about her honest and honorable name."

"It won't take long to get them out of her head," prophesied the new-comer, with the sparkle of combat in her eye. Yet it was now nearly three years since the little girl had seen or heard from her mother, and she still refused to answer to the name of Jemima. The step-mother had fallen into the habit of saying "you" when she wanted anything done.

Of the events which preceded her father's summons this morning, Dawn knew nothing.

Three days before he had received an urgent message from his former wife's father, stating that his daughter was dead, and demanding an immediate interview. It was couched in such language that, being the man he was, he could not refuse to comply.

He answered the summons immediately, going by horseback a hard six-hours ride that he might catch an earlier stage than he could otherwise have done. He was the kind of man that always did what he felt to be his duty, no matter how unpleasant it might be. It was the only thing that saved his severity from being a vice. His father-in-law had laid this journey upon him as a duty, and though he had no definite idea of the reason for this sudden demand, he went at once.

No one but his Maker can penetrate the soul of a man like Hamilton Van Rensselaer to know what were his thoughts as he walked up the rose-bordered path to the fine old brick house, which a few years before he had trod with his beautiful young bride leaning upon his arm.

With grave ceremony, the old servant opened the door into the stately front room where most of Van Rensselaer's courting had been done, and left him alone in the dim light that sifted through partly drawn shades.

He stood a moment within the shadowed room, a sense of the past sweeping over him with oppressive force, like a power that might not be resisted. Then as his eyes grew accustomed to the half-darkness, he started, for there before him was a coffin!

His father-in-law's message had not led him to expect to see his former wife. He had gathered from the letter that she might have been dead some weeks, and that the matter to be discussed was of business, though probably painfully connected with the one who was gone.

While the news of her death had given him a shock which he had not anticipated, he had yet had time in his long journey to grow accustomed to the thought of it. But he was in no wise prepared to meet the sight of her lying there in her last sleep, so still and white.

Strangely moved, he stepped nearer, not understanding why he felt thus toward one whom he firmly believed had made utter wreck of his life.

She lay in a simple white gown like the one she used to wear when he first knew her. In her hand was one white rose. It might have come from her wedding bouquet. The soft fragrance of it floated up and smote him with keen and unexpected pain. The rose had reached where a sword could not have penetrated.

Death had kindly erased the deep lines of suffering from Mary Montgomery's beautiful face, and told no tales of the broken heart; but to see what he had once loved, pure and lovely as it used to be, with no trace of the havoc he had wrought upon it, spoke louder to the conscience of the man than a sorrowful face could have done; for then he might have turned from her with a hardened heart, saying it was all her own fault and she had got only what she deserved. But to see her thus was as if God's finger had touched her and exonerated her from all blame. The sight shook the very foundations of his belief in her disgrace.

He was filled with conflicting emotions. He had not supposed that he could feel this way, for he had thought that his love for Mary was dead; yet it had raised its dishonored head and given him one piercing look, while it had seemed to say to his heart, "You are too late! You are too late!"

The sound of footsteps coming down the hall recalled him to himself. It came to him that this was what he had been brought here for, this dramatic effect of Mary's death, perhaps for revenge, perhaps to try to make him acknowledge that he had been in the wrong.

He stiffened visibly and turned toward the door. His heart, so accustomed to the hardening process, grew adamant again, and he was ready with a haughty word to greet the father, but the dignity of the white-haired man who entered the room held him in check.

Mr. Montgomery went over to the window, merely giving his visitor a grave bow in passing, and pushed up the heavy shades. The sunlight burst joyously in upon the solemnity of the room, unhindered by the sheer muslin curtains, and flung its golden glory about the sweet face in the coffin, making a halo of light above the soft, dark waves of hair.

The younger man's eyes were drawn irresistibly to look at her once more, and the sight startled him more than ever, for now she seemed like a crowned saint, whose irreproachable life was too sacred for him to come near.

The old man came over and stood in the pathway of light from the window, though not so as to hinder its falling on the dead face, and turned toward his former son-in-law.

Then and not till then did the visitor notice that the old man held in his arms a beautiful boy between two and three years old.

Proudly the grandfather stood with the chubby arm around his neck and the dimpled fingers patting his cheek. The sunlight fell in a broad illumination over the head and face of the child, kindling into flame the masses of tumbled curls which showed the same rich mahogany tint that had always made Hamilton Van Rensselaer's head a distinguished mark in any company. The baby's eyes were a wonderful gray, which even now held flashes of steel—albeit flashes of fun and not of passion. As the man looked, they mirrored back his own startlingly. In the round baby cheeks were two dimples strikingly placed, the counterpart of two that daring Nature had triflingly set in the otherwise stern countenance of the man. The likeness was marvellous.

In sheer astonishment the man gazed at the child, and then as he looked the baby frowned, and he saw his own face in miniature, identical even to the sternness which was the prevailing expression of his countenance.

Suddenly the man felt that he stood before God and was being judged and rebuked for his treatment of the dead. The awful remorse that stung his soul burst forth in a single sentence which was wrung from him by an unseen force:

"Why did you never tell me?"

He flashed the rebuke at the old man, but the dark eyes under the heavy white brows only looked at him the more steadily and did not flinch, as if they would tell him to look to himself for an answer to his question.

The steady gaze did its work. It was the Nemesis before which his pride and self-esteem fell. His glance went from the righteous face of the old man to the pure and beautiful eyes of the boy, now frowning with disapproval, and he dropped into a chair with a groan.

"I have been wrong!" he said, and bowed his head, the last atom of his pride rent away from him. There beside the dead, great scorching tears of bitterness found their way to his eyes, washing away the scales of blind conceit, and bringing clearer vision. Mary Montgomery was vindicated in the eyes of the man who had wronged her.

But the baby frowned and cried softly:

"Hush, bad man! You go away! You wake my pitty muvver! She's 's'eep!"

The strong man shrank from the child's words as from a blow, and looked up with almost a pleading on his usually cold face. But the old man watched him sternly.

"Yes, it is enough. You may go. There is nothing more to be said. Now you understand. This is why I sent for you. It was her right."

"But," said the stricken man, and looked toward the sleeping one in the coffin, "may I not wait until——"

"You have no right," the old man answered sternly, and the young man turned away with a strange wild feeling tearing his throat like a sob.

"No, I have no right."

Then with a sudden movement he turned toward the child as if he would claim something there, but the baby hid his face and clung to his grandfather's neck.

"I have no right," he said again. One last look he gave the sweet dead face, as though he would ask forgiveness, then turned and went unsteadily from the room.

The old father followed him silently, as though to complete some ceremony, and, closing the door softly behind him, spoke a few words of explanation, facts that had they been brought forth sooner might have made all things different. It was Mary's wish that no word should be spoken in her vindication while she lived. If her husband could not trust what she had told him when he first came home, it mattered not to her what he believed. The hope of her life was crushed. But now that she was beyond further pain, and for the boy's sake, her father had sent for him that he might know these things before the wife he had wronged was laid to rest.

Then Van Rensselaer felt himself dismissed, and with one last look at the huddled figure of his little son, who still kept his face hid, he went down the path again, his pride utterly crushed, his life a broken thing.

After him echoed the sound of a baby's voice, "Go away, bad man!" and then the great oak door closed quickly behind him for the last time.

He trod the streets of the village as in a nightmare, and knew not that there were those in his way who would have tarred and feathered him if it had not been for love of the honored dead and her family. Straight into the country he walked, to the next village, and knew not how far he had come. There he hired a horse and rode to the next stage route, and so, resting not even at night, he came to his home. But ever on the way he had been attended by a vision, on the left a sweet-faced figure in a coffin, with one white rose whose perfume stifled him, and on the right by a bright-haired boy with eyes that pierced his very soul. And whether on horseback or by stage, in the company of others or alone in a dreary woodland road, they were there on either hand, and he knew they would be so while life for him should last.

He reached home in the gray of a morning that was to become a gray day, and sent up word that his little daughter should come down to his study when her early tasks were finished.

He had not said a word to his wife as yet, though she had suspected where he was going when he told her that Mary Montgomery was dead. It lifted a great load from her shoulders to know that the other wife was no longer living. She had been going about these three days with almost a smile upon her hard countenance, and the little girl had had no easy time of it with her father away.

It was very still in the study after Dawn sat down in the straight-backed chair opposite her father. She could hear the old clock tick solemnly, slowly. It said, "Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child!" until the tears began to smart in her eyes.

Her father sat with his elbow on the desk, and his handsome head bowed upon his hand. He did not raise his head when she entered. She began to wonder if he was asleep, and her heart beat with awe and dread. Nothing good had ever come to her out of these interviews in the study. Perhaps he was going to send her away, too, as he had sent her mother. Her little face hardened. Well, she would be glad to go. What if he should send her to her mother! Oh, that would be joy!—but he never would.

She was a beautiful child as she sat there palpitating with fear and hope. Her face was like her mother's, fair, with wild-rose color, and eyes that were dark and dreamy, always looking out with longing and appeal. Her hair, like her father's only in its tendency to curl, was fine and dark, and fell about the little troubled face. It had been the cause of many a contention between her and her step-mother, who wished to plait it smoothly into braids, which she considered the only neat way for a child's hair to be arranged. Failing in that, she had tried to cut it off, but the child had defended her curls so fiercely that they had finally let her alone. It was wonderful what care the little girl took of them herself, for it was no small task to keep such a head of hair well brushed. But Dawn could remember how her mother loved her curls, and she clung to them. When she lifted the dark lashes there was a light in her eyes that made one think of the dawn of day. Such eyes had her mother.

At last Dawn looked up tremulously to her father, and he spoke. He did not look toward her, however, and his voice was cold and reserved.

"I have sent for you, my daughter—"

Dawn was glad he did not use the hateful name "Jemima."

"—to tell you that your mother was a good woman."

"Of course," said the child, with rising color. "I knew that all the time. Why did you ever say she wasn't?"

"There was a terrible mistake made." The father's voice was shaken. It gave Dawn a curious feeling.

"Who made the mistake?" she asked gravely.

The room was very still while this arrow found its way into the father's heart.

"I did." His voice sounded hoarse. The little girl felt almost sorry for him.

"Oh! Then you will bring her right back to us again and send this other woman away, won't you?"

"Child, your mother is dead!"

Dawn's face went as white as death, and she sprang to her feet, clasping her hands in horror.

"Then you have killed her!" she screamed. "You have killed her! My beautiful mother!" and with a wild cry she flung herself upon the floor and broke into a passion of tears.

The strong man writhed in anguish as his little child set the mark of Cain upon his forehead.

The outcry brought the step-mother, but neither noticed her as she entered and demanded the reason for this scene. She tried to pick the child up from the floor, but Dawn only beat her off with kicks and screams, and they finally went away and left her weeping there upon the floor. Her father took his hat and walked out into the woods. There he stayed for hours, while the wife went about with set lips and a glint in her eye that boded no good for the child.

Finally the sobs grew less and less frequent, and the old clock in the hall could again be heard in her ears, as she sobbed herself slowly to sleep: "Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child!"

It was after this that they sent her away to school.

CHAPTER II

Her father placed her on a Hudson River steamer in charge of the captain, whom he knew, and in company with two other little girls, who were returning to the school of Friend Isaac and Friend Ruth after a short vacation.

Dawn, attired in the grave Quaker garb of the school, leaned over the rail of the deck, inconsequently swinging by its ribbons her long gray pocket containing a hundred dollars wherewith to pay her entrance fee and provide necessities, and watched her unloved father walk away from the landing.

"Thee and thou and thy long pocket!" called out a saucy deck-hand to the three little girls, and Dawn turned with an angry flash in her eyes to take up the work of facing the world single-handed.

She did not drop the pocket into the water, nor fall overboard, but bore herself discreetly all through the journey, and made her entrance into the new life demurely, save for the independent stand she took upon her arrival:

"My name is Dawn Van Rensselaer, and my mother wishes me to wear my curls just as they are."

Her two fellow-travellers had given her cause to believe that there would be an immediate raid made upon her precious curls, and her determined spirit decided to make a stand at the start, and not to give in for anything. The quiet remark created almost a panic for a brief moment, coming thus unexpectedly into the decorous order of the place. Friend Ruth caught her breath, and two faint pink spots appeared in her smooth cheeks.

"Thee will wear thy hair smoothly plaited, child, as the others do, unless it be cut close," she said decidedly, laying her thin pink lips smoothly together over even teeth. "Thee will write to thy mother that it is our custom here to allow nothing frivolous or worldly in the dress of our pupils."

One glance at the cool gray eye of her oppressor decided Dawn to hide in her heart forever the fact that the mother whose wish she was flaunting was no more in this world, nor longer had the legal right to express her wishes concerning her child. With ready wits she argued the matter:

"But it isn't worldly. God made my curls, and it is just as bad to plait them up and take out the curl as it would be to go to work and curl them on an iron if they were straight. My curls are n't frivolous, and I take care of them myself. My mother loves them, and I must do as she says."

Friend Ruth looked at the determined little face set in its frame of dark curls, and hesitated. She was not used to logic from a child, yet there seemed to be reason in the words. Besides, Friend Ruth was a great advocate of honor to parents. It was a complicated question. She decided to temporize.

"I will speak to Friend Isaac about the matter, but thee will have to wear them in a net. It is untidy to have curls tumbling about thy face."

That was the end of the matter. Dawn wore her curls without further question, albeit in a plain, dark net. Though outwardly the little girl was docile, except upon occasion, Friend Ruth learned to avoid any crossing of swords with the young logician, for she nearly always got the worst of it.

Dawn took to learning as a bird to the air, having inherited her father's brilliant mind and taste for letters, combined with her mother's keen insight and wide perceptive faculties. Her lessons were always easily and perfectly learned, and she looked with contempt upon the plodders who could not get time from their tasks for the fun which she was always ready to lead.

The pranks she played were many. On one occasion she led an expedition of the entire school in a slide down a newly made straw-stack, thereby damaging its geometrical shape and necessitating several hours' work by the farmhands. As a punishment, she was remanded to the garden alone to write a composition on the beauties of Nature. It began:

A great green worm come cameing down the populo tree with great tribusence.

Friend Ruth read the finished composition with the dismay of a hen which has a duck on its hands, and handed it over to Friend Isaac.

"The child has an original mind, and is going to be a brilliant woman," he remarked gravely.

"Yes, Isaac, but thee will not tell her so," said Friend Ruth quickly.

Six years had passed since Dawn, a child of ten, had come to the school, and she had never gone home. It had been her own wish, and for once her father and stepmother were willing to accede to her. To both, the sight of her and the thought of her were painful. Her father had visited her every year and brought with him a full supply of the modest wardrobe that the school allowed, and Dawn had money to meet all her necessary expenses. She lived a sort of triple life—one in the world of her studies, in which she sometimes took deep delight, often going far ahead of her classes because she wanted to see what came next; one in the world of play, where she was leader in all sorts of mischief, getting the older ones into endless difficulties with the teachers, and protecting the little ones, even to her own detriment at times; the third life was lived alone in the fields or the woods, where she might sit quietly and look up into the blue sky, listening to the music of the winds and the birds or the sad chirp of a cricket, taking a little grasshopper into her confidence, talking to a friendly squirrel on the maple bough overhead—here was where she really lived. On the walls of her memory were hung strange, sad pictures of the past. Always on such occasions the mother all in white, with starry eyes, hovered over her, and seemed to listen to the wild longing that beat in her young heart, and to pour a benediction upon her.

She could not think of her father except sadly or bitterly, and so as much as possible she put him out of her thoughts. By degrees, as she came to see on his annual visits how old and careworn he was grown, how haunted and haggard were his eyes, she grew to pity him, but never to love, for her mother had been her idol, and he had killed her mother. That the girl could not forget, though as she grew older she felt with a kind of spiritual instinct that she must forgive. She felt it was his own blindness and stupidity that had done it, and that he was suffering some measure of punishment for his deed. She never actually put these thoughts before her in so many words. They were rather a sort of growing undertone of consciousness in her, as her mental and spiritual faculties developed.

In one year more she would be through with the school course. For some time she had been dreading the thought, and wondering what would come to her next? If she might go somewhere and "teach school,"—but she felt certain her father would never allow that. He was proud and held ideas about woman's sphere. Though she could scarcely be said to know him well, still she felt without asking that he would never consent. Sometimes she even entertained vague thoughts of running away when she should be through school, for the idea of dwelling under her father's roof again, under control of the woman who had usurped her mother's place, she could not abide.

It was therefore with trepidation that she received a message in the school-room one morning, bidding her come to the parlor to meet her father. The fair face flushed and the brow darkened with trouble. It was not the usual time for her father's annual visit. Did it mean that he was going to take her away from the school? Her young heart beat to the old tune of the friendly clock at home as she went to answer the summons: "Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child! Poor-child!"

But in the square, plain parlor, with its hair-cloth furniture, its gray paper window-shades, and its neutral-tinted ingrain carpet, there sat two men with Friend Ruth, instead of one.

Her father looked older than ever before. His hair was silvering about the edges, though he was still what would have been called a young man. The stranger was younger, yet with an old look about his eyes, as if they had been living longer than the rest of his face.

Dawn paused in the doorway and looked from one to the other. She had put up her hand as she reached the door, and drawn from her head the net which held her beautiful curls in leash. They fell about her lovely face in the fashion of the day. They were grown long and thick, but still kept their baby softness and fineness of texture. She made a charming picture standing thus with the door-latch in her hand, hesitating almost shyly, though she was not unduly shy. Even in her Quaker garb, with the sheer folds of the snowy kerchief about her neck, she looked an unusually beautiful girl. The young stranger saw and took notice as he rose to receive the impersonal introduction that her father gave.

The girl looked at them both gravely, with an alert watchfulness. Of the stare of open admiration with which the stranger regarded her, she seemed not even to be aware, though Friend Ruth noticed it with disapproval.

Dawn took the chair to which Friend Ruth motioned her, at some distance from the young man, and sat demurely waiting, her eyes wide with apprehension. Her father asked about her conduct and standing in the school, but no flush of embarrassment came to the face of the watching girl, though Friend Ruth gave unwonted praise of the past year's work. At another time it would have astonished and pleased her, but now she felt it was a mere preliminary to the real object of her father's visit.

As soon as there came a break in the conversation, the stranger took a part, admiring the location of the school, and saying he would be glad if he might look about the place, as he had a friend who wished to send his daughter away to school somewhere, and it would be a pleasure to be able to speak in detail of this delightful spot. Was there a view of the Hudson from this point? Indeed! Perhaps the young lady would be so kind as to show it to him?

Friend Ruth hesitated, but the father waved a command to his daughter. Frowning, she arose to obey. She felt the whole thing was a subterfuge to get her from the room while the real object of her father's unexpected visit was divulged.

She led the way through the wide hall, out to the pillared veranda, and down the sloping lawn to the bluff which overlooked the river, where plied a steamer on its silver course. Apathetically she pointed out the places of interest. She scarcely heard her companion's eager attempts at conversation. He noted the absent look in her dark eyes.

"You do not like it here?" he asked, letting his tone become gentle, in coaxing confidence.

"Oh, yes," she answered quickly, with a flit of trouble across her face. "At least, I think I do. I do not care to go away."

"Not to your beautiful home?" he asked insinuatingly. "And your mother?" he added, his eyes narrowing to observe her expression more closely.

"She is not my mother," answered the girl coldly, and became at once reserved, as if she were sorry for having spoken so plainly.

"Oh, I beg your pardon! I did not know," murmured the stranger, making mental note of her change of expression.

Suddenly her eyes flashed wide upon him, and she dashed a question out with a way that compelled an answer:

"Has my father come to take me home, do you know?"

"Oh, no, not at all," answered the young man suavely. He was delighted to have found this key to her thoughts. It led just where he desired. "We are merely taking a business trip together, and your father stopped off to see how things were going with you. I am sure I am delighted that he did, for it has given me great pleasure to meet you."

"Why?" asked the girl, lifting relieved eyes to his face in mild astonishment.

He gave a half-embarrassed laugh at this frank way of meeting him.

"Now, surely, you do not need to ask me that," he said, looking down at her meaningly, his eyes gazing into the innocent ones in open and intimate admiration. "You must know how beautiful you are!"

With a startled expression, she searched his face, and then, not finding it pleasant, turned away with a look resembling her father in its sternness.

"I don't think that is a nice way for a man to talk to a girl," she said in a displeased tone. "I am too big to be spoken to in that way. I am past sixteen, and shall be done school next year."

He dropped the offending manner at once, and begged her pardon, pleading that her father had talked of her as a child. He asked also that she would let him be her friend, for he felt that they would be congenial, and all the more that she was growing into womanhood.

Her gravity did not relax, however, and her eyes searched his face suspiciously.

"I think we would better go into the house," she said soberly. "Friend Ruth will not like my staying out so long, and I must see my father again."

"But will you be my friend?" he insisted, as they turned their steps toward the house.

"How could we be friends? You are not in the school, and I never go away. Besides, I don't see what would be the use."

"Don't you like me at all?" he asked, putting on the tone which had turned many a girl's head.

"Why, I don't know you even a little bit. How could I like you? Besides, why should I?" answered Dawn frankly.

"You are deliriously plain-spoken."

She caught her lip between her teeth in a vexed way. Why would he persist in talking to her as if she were a child?

"There, now I have vexed you again," he said, pretending to be much dismayed, "but indeed you misunderstand me. I do not look upon you as a child at all. Many a girl is married at your age, and you will soon be a lovely woman. I want you for my friend. Are you not willing?"

"I don't know," said the girl bluntly, looking troubled. "I should have to think about it, and I don't see why I should. I shall be here a whole year yet, and I shall never see you. I wish I could stay here always," she ended passionately. "I never want to go home."

"Perhaps you will not need to go there," he said insinuatingly, wondering how it was she was so different from other girls. She did not seem to understand coquetry. Her eyes met his now in mild question.

"You may marry and have a home of your own," he answered her unspoken question. A startled expression came into her eyes.

"Oh, no," she said quickly; "I don't think that will ever happen. I don't want that to happen;" and she drew away from him as if the thought frightened her. "Married people are not happy."

"Nonsense!" said the young man gayly. He had planted the seed in what looked like fallow ground, and perhaps one day it would blossom for him. "There are plenty of happy married people. I've a good old father and mother who just worship each other. They've been happy as clams all their lives, and I know a great many more.

"My father and mother were not happy," said Dawn gravely. "Friend Ruth and Friend Isaac do not seem to be very happy either, though of course this isn't a real home. But they are never cross," she added in conscientious explanation.

"If you were married, you could have a real home of your own, and have things just as you wanted them," the young man remarked cunningly.

"That would be nice," said the girl thoughtfully. "I should like that part, but I think I would like it better without being married. There are father and Friend Ruth looking for us. Let us hurry."

"But you have not told me whether you will let me be your friend," he said, detaining her under a great elm tree, and looking off toward the river, as if he were still watching the steamer. "If you will let me be your friend, I will get permission to come and see you now and then, and I will bring you a box of sweets. You will like that, won't you? All girls are fond of sweets."

"I don't know," answered Dawn slowly, looking at him with troubled eyes, and wondering why it was that his eyes reminded her of a fish.

"The other girls would like the sweets," he suggested.

"Could I give them away?" she asked with a flash of interest.

"You may do anything you like with them," he responded eagerly. "So it is all settled, then, and I may be your friend?"

"I don't know," said Dawn again. "I suppose it will have to be as father and Friend Ruth say."

"No need to consult them in the matter. Leave that to me. All I want is your consent. Remember I am going to visit you next month and bring you something nice."

But by this time the others had reached them.

"Charming view, Mr. Van Rensselaer. I had no idea you could see New York so plainly from this point," said the young man.

Dawn stepped over and stood beside Friend Ruth, looking thoughtfully down the river. She would like the box of confections well enough, for not many sweets were allowed at the school and they could have a treat down in the woods, beside the brook. But somehow she had a vague uneasiness about this friendship. She did not like the stranger's face.

Her father and the other man went away after the noonday meal. The stranger's name, she learned, was Harrington Winthrop, and that he was interested in a business enterprise with her father. The matter passed entirely from her mind, only, after that, when she sat alone to brood over her life, a new dream took the place of the old. Always there was a lovely home all her own, with comfortable chairs and plenty of books, and thin, sprigged china, such as had been her mother's. In this home she was sole mistress. Day by day she dreamed out the pretty rooms, and dwelt in them, and even occasionally let her imagination people them. The image of her beautiful mother hovered about that home and stayed, but there came into it no one to annoy or disturb.

When the two men settled themselves in the stage that night, the younger began to talk:

"Do you know you have a very beautiful daughter, Mr. Van Rensselaer?"

The father started from the reverie into which he had fallen. The look of the moonlight was reminding him of a night over sixteen years ago, when he and Mary had taken this same stage trip. Strange he could not get away from the thought of it. Ah, yes! it had been the look of his daughter that had brought back Mary's face, for the girl was grown to be the image of her mother, save for a certain sad flitting of severity. In the moonlight outside the coach he seemed to see again the sweet face in the coffin, and he compared it with the warm living face of the girl whom he had been to see that day. He knew that between his daughter and him was an impenetrable barrier that could never be removed, and the thought of it pierced his soul as it never had before. A great yearning and pity for his motherless, fatherless girl had come into his cold, empty heart as he had watched her move silently about. But ever present was the thought that he had no right—no right in her either, no matter how much he might try. No one would have suspected him of such feelings. He hid them deep under his grim and brilliant exterior, sternly self-contained in any situation. But now, in the half-darkness, a new thought came into his mind, and he started and gave his attention to the words of his companion.

"Is she your only child?"

The question made him start again. There was a long pause, so long that Harrington Winthrop thought he had not been heard; then a husky voice answered out of the shadows of the coach:

"No, there was another—a little boy. He died soon after his mother."

Outside in the moonlight, the vision of a ruddy-haired boy rode in a wreath of mist. The words were the man's acknowledgment to the two who ever attended him now through life. He did not wish to give his confidence to this business companion.

"Ah! Then this beautiful young woman will likely be sole heir to the Van Rensselaer estate," said the young man to himself, rejoicing inwardly at the ease with which he was obtaining information.

There was silence in the coach while Winthrop pondered the great discovery he had made, and how he should act upon it.

But the elder man was lost in gloomy thoughts. He had a vague feeling that Mary, out there in the moonlight with her bright-haired boy, would hold him to account for the little girl she had loved and lost in life. A sudden glimpse into the future had been given him, partly by the young man's words, partly by the beauty of Dawn herself. She was blossoming into womanhood, and with that change would come new perplexities. She could not stay always at the school. Where in the world was there a place for his child? More and more he saw that the woman whom in the fierceness of his wrath he had selected to take the place of mother to the girl was both unable and unwilling to do so. He shrank from the time when his daughter would have to come home. As he thought of it, it seemed an impossible situation to have her there; it would be almost like having Mary in the flesh to live with them, with reproachful eyes ever upon their smallest acts. At that moment it came to him that he was enduring the torments of a lost soul, his conscience having sat in judgment and condemned him.

The stage-coach rumbled on, stopping now and again through the night for a change of horses, and the two who sat within its gloomy depths said little to each other, yet slept not, for one was musing on the evil of the past and its results, while the other was plotting evil for the future.

CHAPTER III

Harrington Winthrop kept his promise about the sweets. Five times during the winter that followed his first visit with Mr. Van Rensselaer, he invented some excuse to visit Dawn.

The first time he came, he found her in the maple grove behind the pasture, with a group of other girls, all decked in autumn leaves and playing out some story that Dawn had read.

He persuaded her to walk a little way into the woods with him; and when he came to take his leave asked for a kiss, but Dawn sprang away from him in sudden panic:

"No," she said sharply; "I have never kissed anybody but my mother." Then, fearing she had been impolite in view of his gift, she added:

"We don't kiss people here at this school. It isn't the custom."

And she knew so little of the customs of the world that the incident passed without further apprehension on her part, or understanding of the young man's meaning.

"That's all right, my dear," he said pleasantly. "But don't forget about the house. I'm going to tell you all about it next time I come. You still want a home of your very own, don't you?"

"Why, of course," said Dawn; "but I can't see how you can know anything about it, or care. What have you to do with it?" And then with sudden alarm, "Has my father been talking to you about any such thing?"

"No, indeed! Your father does not even know I am interested in you. I care for my own sake. Didn't I tell you that I liked you the minute I saw you? And I'm just as interested in this future home of yours as you are."

"I'm sure I can't see why," said Dawn, perplexed, yet trying to be polite.

"Suppose you think about it hard, dear, and see if you can find out why I care. Just think it all over, everything I have said, and then if you are still in doubt go and look in the looking-glass and keep on thinking, and I'm sure you'll find out by the time I come back. I'm coming soon again, and I want you to be watching for me every day. I'll bring you something nice next time, besides another box of sweets."

Dawn tried to smile, but felt uncomfortable. She murmured her thanks again, and turned uneasily toward the woods and her companions, and he deemed it prudent to leave her without further ado.

Back in the woods, the girls were making merry with her confections, and had nothing but praise for the handsome stranger who had brought them; but all through the eager questions and merry jibes Dawn was silent and thoughtful.

"Where are your thoughts, Dawn?" said Desire Hathaway. "Has the stranger stolen them away to pay for his goodies?"

"She looks as if he had asked her to marry him, and she didn't know whether to say yes or to wait for somebody else," laughed Matilda Hale, a new-comer among them, and older than the rest.

"I guess he kissed her good-by," chimed in silly Polly Phelps, who aspired to be Matilda's shadow. "I peeked through the bushes and saw him bending over her."

Amid the thoughtless laugh that rose, Dawn stood defiant, the crimson leaping into her cheeks, the steel into her eyes. For an instant she looked as if she would turn upon the offending Matilda and tear her to pieces. Then a sudden revelation came to her: this, this was what the handsome stranger had meant!

Instantly the light of anger died out of her face, and a gentle dignity took its place. Her little clenched hands relaxed, the tenseness of the graceful body softened, and she turned toward the offender with a haughty condescension:

"Matilda, we don't talk in that way here," she said, and the laughter died out of the faces of her companions and left instead amazement and admiration. They had seen Dawn angry before, and had not expected the affair to end so amicably. They felt it showed a marvellous self-control, and left her mistress of the situation. Matilda bit her lip in a vexed way and tossed her head. She felt she had lost prestige by the little incident, and Dawn was still the recognized leader of the school. It was not a pleasant thought to the older girl.

Dawn turned and walked slowly away from them all, out of the woods, down through the meadow, where grazed her quiet friends, the sheep. She still carried her gentle dignity, and none of the girls spoke until she was out of sight behind the group of chestnuts at the corner of the meadow.

Then Desire Hathaway voiced the general feeling:

"Isn't she just like a queen?"

"Oh, if you want to look at it that way!" sneered Matilda, with another toss of her head. "There are a good many kinds of queens, you know. I must say, I thought she looked like a pretty wicked one for a minute or two. She would have enjoyed tearing my eyes out if she had dared."

"Dared!" cried Desire. "You don't know her. She will dare anything that she thinks is worth while. I thought it was just splendid, the way she controlled herself."

"Oh, well, just as you think, of course," shrugged Matilda. "Come on, Polly; let's go finish our sewing."

Dawn stumbled on blindly in the pasture, trying to take in the appalling thought that perhaps the young man wanted to marry her!

Tears of indignation welled into her eyes, but she brushed them angrily aside. Why was life so dreadful, she wondered. Why did men exist to break women's hearts?—for she never doubted that the married state was one of heart-break. Such had been the lesson burned deep into her soul by suffering. A home of her own had been a sweet thought, but the serpent had entered her Eden, and she cared no more to stay there.

The next time Winthrop came it was openly, with a message from her father. All through the interview, which lasted for an hour, and was prolonged over the noonday meal, Dawn sat stiffly on the other side of Friend Ruth, watching the fishy eyes of the stranger and listening to his fulsome flatteries of the place, her small hands folded decorously, but her young heart beating painfully under the sheer folds of the 'kerchief.

On his fourth visit he bore a private letter from her father to Friend Ruth, and wore an air of assurance which made the girl's heart sink with nameless foreboding. Not even the praises of the girls for her handsome lover, their open envy of her future lot, or their merry taunts, could rouse her from a gravity which had begun to settle upon her.

This time Friend Ruth seemed to look upon the visitor in a different light. Not only was Dawn allowed to talk with him alone, but she was sent out with him for a walk in the woods.

Reluctantly she obeyed, frightened, she knew not why.

Harrington Winthrop had a winning way with him, and he was determined to win this proud, beautiful girl. Also, he was wise in the ways of the world, he did not force any undue attention upon her, but confined his conversation to telling her about the beautiful home he had seen. Rightly guessing that there was still much of the child about her, he went on to picture the house in detail, not hesitating to embellish it at will where his memory failed.

There was a garden with a fountain, and there should be flowers, all in profusion. There were clipped hedges, gravel paths, an arbor in a shady place, where she might bring her book or sewing, and where the sunshine would peer through the branches just enough to scatter gold about the leafy way.

In spite of her prejudices, she was interested. She could not help it. The longing for a real home of her own was great.

Then came the most difficult part of his task, which was to reconcile her to himself.

Skilfully he led the conversation about till he himself was the subject—his life since he had become a man and gone out into the world. Pathetically he talked of his own loneliness, until he touched the maternal chord in her nature and made her feel sorry for him. He opened up for her gaze depths of sympathy, tenderness, and pathos, which were purely imaginary and wholly impossible to his own nature. He launched into details of his own feelings which were the inspiration of the moment, because he saw they touched her. He told her how he had often been lonely almost to desperation, and how he had many and many a time pictured a home of his own, with a lovely wife at its head. The girl winced at the name "wife," but he went steadily on trying to take the strangeness out of the word, trying to touch her heart and fire her tenderness; for he rightly read the possibilities of love in the beautiful face, and it put him on his mettle to make it bloom for him.

He succeeded so far as to make her conscience sharply reprove her for the dislike she had for him. Of course if he had been lonely, too, and had had a care for her loneliness, it was a different matter. Perhaps, after all, they had something in common, and he would not be such a dreadful addition to the home she had longed for. At least, she had no right to shut him out of a dream that he held in common with her, and she tried to put aside her own feelings and look at him fairly.

So they walked the deeper into the woods, and while she did not say much in reply to his eloquent words, she did not seem actively opposed. He let his voice grow more and more tender, though he did not trouble her with words of love. He let a care for her become apparent: as they walked over the rough growth in the woods, he held the branches aside for her, and helped her over a log, and once across the stones of a little brook, touching her hand and arm deferentially. It did not appeal to Dawn in the way he hoped that it would, nor awaken any tenderness for him, but she let him lead her along a path which, had she been alone, she would have cleared at a bound, and counted an easy thing.

When he parted from her that evening to take the night boat, he gave her shrinking fingers a slight pressure in token of the understanding between them, and Dawn understood it as the sealing of a kind of unspoken contract.

After that Dawn was not surprised to receive a letter from her father in which he spoke of the young man's desire to make her his wife, and formally gave his consent. It never seemed to occur to him that the girl might have any question about the matter. A dull kind of rebellion rose in her breast and smouldered there as she read her father's letter; yet she accepted his arrangements for her life, because it seemed the only way out from a home that could never be a happy one for her; and because it offered a spot that might be called her own, and a possible opportunity to live out some of her childish dreams.

When Harrington Winthrop came again, she no longer yielded to her inward shrinking from him, but took him as she took hard tasks that she did not like but that were inevitable; and he, finding her unresisting, was careful not to do anything to mar the pleasant understanding between them. Meantime, he congratulated himself constantly upon the ease with which he had possessed himself of a promised wife whose private fortune would be no small one.

CHAPTER IV

Dawn settled into a gravity that was premature. She counted every day of her precious school year, as if it had been a priceless treasure that was slipping from her.

There were times when she roused to her old self again, and plunged madly into fun, leading her companions into wild amusements that they would never have originated by themselves. Then again she would sober down, and they could get her to say very little. It began to be whispered about that she was to be married when she had finished school, and the girls all looked at her with a kind of envying awe.

Thus the winter passed and the spring came on, the spring that was to be her last at school. The first few days of warm weather she spent exploring old haunts, watching for the spring blossoms, and reverently touching the green moss, hunting anemones, hepaticas, and violets. Then, as if she could stand her own thoughts no longer, she suddenly proposed the acting of another play. It was the first since that time in the autumn when Harrington Winthrop broke in upon them, and they had never been able to induce her to finish it. Now she selected another one that seemed to her to have the very heart of spring and life bound up in it. She got it out of an old book which had been her mother's—"Tales of William Shakespeare," by name. It was not used as a text-book in the excellent school of Friend Ruth and Friend Isaac, and the child had always kept it safely hidden.

The play she had selected had many elves and sprites of the air in it. Dawn drilled her willing subjects, and rehearsed them, until at last she felt they were ready for the final presentation.

The scene of the play was to be on the sloping hillside just above the meadow, where the maples on the hill were flanked by a thicket of elderberry bushes that did double duty of background, and screen for the dressing-rooms.

The audience of girls was seated in breathless silence, augmented by a group of kindly cows and stupid sheep, who stood in patient rows and waited mildly for any tender bites or chance blossoms of cowslips the girls might put between the bars of the fence. Now and then, as the play went on, they lifted calm eyes of bewilderment over the turbulent scenes in the mimic play-house, or out of their placid world of monotonous duty, wondered whatever the children could be at now.

It chanced that day that Harrington Winthrop was passing, and, most unexpectedly, he had with him his younger brother, who was on his way back to Harvard College, after a brief visit home to see his mother, who had been ill.

Charles Winthrop had met his elder brother in the coach, and had boyishly insisted on accompanying him when he stopped on what he professed was a friendly errand at this school. Charles had long been separated from his brother, and wanted to talk over old days and ask many questions, for Harrington had been away from home most of the time for nearly ten years and had travelled in the West and the South a great deal, which seemed a charmed country to the younger man.

Now Harrington had not been anxious for company on this visit, but he could not well shake his brother off without arousing suspicions, therefore as they neared the school he told him that he was about to visit the girl whom he expected in a few months to make his wife.

Charles in his hearty boyish way congratulated him and expressed a desire to see the girl who was his brother's choice.

They were told at the house that Dawn was out with the other girls in the meadows, and so went in search of her. They arrived on the scene just as the closing act was about to begin.

The little company of players stood out bravely in costumes designed entirely by Dawn. The outfit of the school was far too sombre to play any part in the gaiety of the occasion. An occasional patchwork quilt had been pressed into service, and one or two gray or scarlet blankets, but most of the players were dressed in white literally covered with flowers or green leaves.

The two young men skirted the foot of the hill and came upon the scene just when Dawn, as queen of the air, attended by her sprites and nymphs, came into view with a gentle, gliding run learned surely from the birds, for nowhere else could such grace be found. She was clad in white drapery of homespun linen, one of her own mother's finest sheets. It was drawn about her slender form, over her shoulders, in a fashion all her own, though graceful as any Greek goddess. Her white throat and round white arms were bare, the long, dark curls had been set free, and about her brow was a wreath of exquisite crab-apple blossoms, whose delicate tinting matched the rose of her cheeks. About her throat, arms, wrists, and ankles—for her feet were bare—were close-fitting chains of the same blossoms. Here and there the white drapery of her garment, which fell half way from the knee to the ankle, was fastened with a spray of blossoms. It was a daring costume for a Quaker-reared maiden to don, and she knew it, but she expected no eyes to look upon her save her companions and the friendly cattle. She stood poised on the green slope, holding in her hands and high above her head a soft scarf of white—an old curtain which she had saved from the rag-bag and wet and stretched in the sun till it was soft and pliable. She had mended it, and fastened the darns with blossoms, and edged it also with blossoms plucked close from the stem and sewed down in a fine flat border.

Behind her came her maidens, their garments sewed over with maple leaves, tender and green and fluttering. They were crowned and wreathed also with maple leaves, and made a beautiful setting for Dawn's delicate beauty.

Then down the hillside they came, the maidens with festoons of leaves fastened together by their stems, which they held aloft as their leader held her scarf. They sang a strange, sweet song that had in it the wildness of the thrush's song, the sweetness of the robin's.

It was Dawn who had composed the melody, and taught it to them. She had learned it from the birds, and interpreted old Shakespeare's words. They sang it as the zephyrs sing.

The little audience sat with bated breath; the old cows chewed their cud thoughtfully, one with soft eyes heaved a long, clover-scented sigh, marvelling on the ways of the world. The two strangers stood entranced and astonished; but the heart of one of them thrilled with a strange new joy.

Charles Winthrop saw only the beautiful face of Dawn Van Rensselaer. All the rest were but a setting for her. He seemed to know instantly as he looked that there was no other girl in the world like this. He knew not who she might be, but he looked at her as if his spirit were calling to hers across the meadow-land that separated them. Then suddenly, half poised as she was, in the very midst of her song, Dawn became aware of his presence and stopped. She met his gaze, and, without her own volition, it seemed, her eyes were shining and smiling to meet his smile. It was just a fleeting instant that they gazed thus, and then the joy went out of the girl's face, and a frightened look took its place. She had seen the other man standing beside him, and he was frowning.

Harrington Winthrop had caught the look on his brother's face, and its answer in the face of the girl upon whom he had set his seal of possession, and an unreasoning anger had taken possession of him. This girl had looked at Charles as Harrington had never been able to make her look at him, not even since she had in a tacit way consented to marry him.

"This is foolish child's play!" he said in a vexed tone to his brother. "Let us go back to the house and wait until she has returned."

"Oh, no, let us stay!" said Charles. "This is beautiful! Exquisite! At least, if you must go, let me stay. I wish to see the finish."

"I wish you to go," said Harrington, and there was something in his brother's voice that reminded Charles of the days when he used to be ordered back from following on a fishing or swimming expedition. He looked at his brother's angry face, and then back to the beautiful girl on the hillside. But the light had gone out of her eyes. The song had died on her lips. There was no sparkling smile now. Instead, there was an angry, steel-like flash in the eyes. She held the fluttering scarf in front of her now, in long loose folds covering her feet and ankles, and as the two men turned and gazed at her her head went up proudly, even as the queen of the air might have raised her head. One hand went up in quick command, pointing straight at the two young men, and in quite the phrase of the play she had been acting she spoke:

"Hence, strange spirits!" she cried. "Hence! Begone! Ye have no right amongst us, being unbidden. 'Go, I tell ye! Go, or I, the queen of the air, will bring evil upon ye! Go, ye have angered me!"

Dawn had made Shakespeare so much her constant companion that the language came easily to her. She picked up phrases here and there and strung them together without hesitation. Her anger helped her on, and her splendid command of herself had a strange effect upon her audience.

The other girls listened in open-mouthed wonder that Dawn should dare to speak before these strangers and not be covered with confusion. Almost they thought it was part of the play. But the two to whom she spoke turned and obeyed her command, the one because he was angry and wished to get his brother away, the other because there had been a certain appeal in her lovely eyes which had reached his soul and made him bow in reverence to her command. Then all at once, as he turned away, he knew that she was the girl whom his brother intended to make his wife, and a great sadness and sense of a loss came over him.

There was mutiny in her eyes as Dawn came back to the house a little later, and greeted her lover with a haughty manner. He had managed it that Charles should sit alone in the gray parlor and wait while he met the girl out in the entrance to the orchard and walked away with her to a sheltered place overlooking the river. There was no hint of the queen of the air in her demure dress, the well-sheathed curls, the small prunella slippers that peered from under the deep hem of her gray gown, but her bearing was queenly as she waited for him to speak. He saw that he was treading on dangerous ground.

"Do you really like such childish play?" he asked a trifle contemptuously.

"You had no right to come there!" she flashed. "If you did not like it, you should have gone away."

He was disconcerted. He did not wish to anger her, for he had come for another purpose.

"Well, never mind. If you enjoyed yourself, I suppose it does not matter whether I liked it or not. Let us talk of something else. Your play-days are almost over. You will soon begin to live real life."

She looked at him and felt that she came near to hating him. A sudden, unspeakable terror seized her. She let him talk on about the house they were to have, and tried to remember that he was lonesome and wanted a home as badly as she did, but somehow she felt nothing but fear and dislike. So, though she walked by his side, she heard little of what he said, only saying when he asked if she wished this or that: "I suppose so. I suppose it will be as you like."

As they came back to the house again, she asked him suddenly:

"Who was the young man with you?"

The frown came into his face again.

"Why do you ask?" he asked sharply.

"He did not feel the way you did about us out there on the hill."

"How do you know?" He watched her keenly, but her face told him nothing.

"I saw it in his eyes," she said quietly, and without more words went into the house and up to her room.

Dawn stood at the little window of her room and watched the two men go down the path from the door. Through the small panes her eyes followed them until they were out of sight, and her heart swelled with thoughts strange and new and fearful. How could she go and live with this man who had frowned at her innocent happiness? Would he not be worse than the woman who had taken her dear mother's place? And how could he be so cruel as to look at her in that way? It was the look she remembered on her father's face the day he sent her mother away. It was the cruelty of men. Perhaps they could not help it. Perhaps God made them so. But that other one had been different. He had understood and smiled. Her heart leaped out toward him as she remembered his look.

Was it because he was young, she wondered, that he had understood? He had seemed far younger than his companion, yet there had been something fine and manly in his face, in the broadness of his shoulders, and the set of his head, as he walked down the path, away from the house. Perhaps when he was older he would grow that way to, and not understand any more.

She sighed and dropped her face against the glass, and, now that they were out of sight, the haughty look melted into tears.

CHAPTER V

The day that Dawn left school to go back to her home was one long agony to her.

All the other girls were happy in the thought of home-going, some of them looking forward to returning for another year, others to entering into a bright girlhood filled with gaieties. But to Dawn it meant going into the gray of a looming fate where never again would she be happy, never again free.

Ever since the day of the play when she had seen her future husband frown, she had looked forward to her marriage with terror.

He had not come after that, but instead wrote her long letters full of plans about the house, their house, that they were to occupy together. The letters impressed that thought most deeply and made the whole hateful to her. It grew to seem that it was his house, and she would be his prisoner in it. Yet somehow he had succeeded in impressing her with the feeling that she was pledged to him in sacred honor, and that it would be a dreadful thing to break a tie like that. This was made stronger by her father's letters, which now grew more frequent, as if he sought to atone to his motherless child for the wrong he had done her.

Just the day before her home-going there came one of these letters, in which he told her that everything had been prepared for her marriage to take place within a week after her arrival. He told her of the trousseau which his wife had prepared for her, which was as elaborate and complete as such an outfit could be for one of her station in life. He also spoke about the dignity of her origin, and with unwonted elaboration commended her judgment in selecting so old and so fine a family as that of the house of Winthrop with which to ally herself. He added that it would have pleased her mother's family, and that Mr. Winthrop was one of his oldest and most valued friends.

Somehow that letter seemed to Dawn to put the seal of finality upon her fate. There was no turning back now. Just as her father used to compel her to go upstairs alone when he discovered that she was afraid of the dark, so she felt that if he once discovered her dislike for her future husband he would but hasten the marriage, and be in league with her husband against her always.

When the time came to leave the school, she clung with such fervor about the neck of the impassive Friend Ruth that the astonished lady almost lost her breath, and a strange wild thrill went through her unmotherly bosom, as of something that might have been and was lost. She looked earnestly down into the beautiful face of the girl who had so often defied her rules, and saw an appeal in those lovely eyes to which she would most certainly have responded had she understood, for she was a good woman and always sought to do her best.

But the boat left at once, and clinging arms had perforce to be removed. Once on the deck with the others, Dawn looked back at Friend Ruth as impassively as always, though the usually calm face of the woman searched her out with troubled glance, still wondering what had come over her wild young pupil. Somehow, as she watched the steamer plough away until Dawn was a mere blur with the others, Friend Ruth could not help being glad that the beautiful dark curls had never been cut.

The day was perfect, and the scenery along the Palisades had never looked more beautiful, yet Dawn saw nothing of it. She sat by the rail looking gloomily down into the water, and a curious fancy seized her that she would like to float out there on the water forever and get away from life. Then she began to consider the possibility of running away.

It was not the first time this thought had entered her mind. The week before she left the school, she had thought of it seriously, and even planned the route, but always at night there had come that fearful dream of her future husband following her, and bringing her home to a life-long punishment.

She had almost got her courage up to the point of deciding to disappear in the crowd at Albany, and so elude the people with whom she was expected to journey to her home, when, to her dismay, she looked down at the landing-place where they were stopping, a few miles below Albany, and saw her father coming on board the boat. He had not expected to be able to meet her and had written that she was to come with acquaintances of his. Her heart stood still in panic, and for a moment she looked wildly at the rail of the steamer, as if she might climb over and escape. Then in a moment her father had seen her and stood beside her. He stooped and kissed her forehead coldly, almost shyly. This startled her, too, for he had not kissed her since the days before her mother was sent away, and a strange, sharp pain went through her heart, a pang of things that might have been. She looked up in wonder. She did not know how like her dead mother she had grown.

But the stern face was cold as ever, and his voice conveyed no smallest part of the emotion he felt at sight of her lovely face.

He talked to her gravely of her school life, and then he went on to speak of the Winthrop family, and to tell her in detail bits of its history calculated to make her understand its importance.

Dawn listened with growing alarm at the thought of all that would be expected of her. Yet not a breath of her trouble did she allow her father to see. It might have made a difference if she could have known how her father's heart was aching with the anguish of his great mistake, and perhaps if the father could have known the breaking of the young heart it might have melted the coldness of his reserve and brought some sympathy to the surface. But they could not see, and the agony went on.

Dawn walked sadly, reluctantly, into the unloved, unloving home. As the days dragged by, she grew to have a haunted look, and the rose flush on her sweet round cheek faded to a marble white, while under her eyes were dark circles.

Her father saw the look, but knew not what it meant. Yet it pierced his soul, for it was the same look that her mother had worn in her coffin, and he was the readier to have the marriage hastened, both for her sake and his own, for he realized she was not happy here in the home where there was so much to remind her of what had passed. He felt she never would forgive him, and that her only hope was to be happily married. Winthrop had so represented her feelings to him that he had taken it for granted she was only too eager to go to a home of her own.

The house had been bought—at least, the father supposed so—not knowing that but a small payment had been made, with a promise to pay the balance soon after the marriage. The young man had laid his plans nicely, and meant to profess that some investment of his had failed, making it impossible for him to make the final payments, and that he had disliked to postpone the marriage or to tell of his predicament, feeling sure that he would have the money by the time the payment was due. Naturally, his wife's fortune would suffice to pay for the house, which of course she would not let go then. If the house was not exactly what he had described to the little school-girl, certainly it was large enough and showy enough to make up for the lack of some of the things which had seemed important to her; and he had taken care that it should be so far from the home of her father that the latter could keep no eye on his son-in-law's business affairs. If all went well, he intended to have his wife's fortune in his own hands before their first year of married life should have passed. After that it would not matter to him whether the girl was pleased with her home or not. She could no longer help herself.

But of all this the father suspected nothing.

Dawn took no interest in her clothes. The step-mother was chagrined that after all her efforts Dawn was not pleased.

"I should think you might show a little gratitude, after all the trouble I've taken," Mrs. Van Rensselaer snapped angrily.

Dawn turned wide eyes of astonishment upon her.

"For what?" she asked. "I didn't want the things. I supposed you did it to please father."

"Didn't want them!" exclaimed her step-mother. "And how would you expect to get married without them?"

"I don't want to be married!" said Dawn desperately, and then closed her lips tightly, with a frightened look toward the door. She had not meant to let any one know that. The words had come of themselves out of her weary heart.

"Well, upon my word! You're the queerest girl! Any other girl in the world would be in high feather over your chances; but you always were the stubbornest, most contrary creature that ever drew breath. Whatever did you say you'd get married for if you didn't want to?"

"I don't think I ever did," said the girl sadly. "It just came in spite of me."

"That's all foolishness. Don't talk such things to me. No girl has to be married unless she chooses, and I'll warrant you had your hand in it from the start. Besides, it's too late to talk of such things now. It wouldn't be honorable to draw back now, after he's got the house bought and all."

"I know it," said Dawn miserably, and stood looking out the window blindly, swallowing hard to keep back the tears. She felt that she must have reached the limit of her endurance when she would let her step-mother see her state of mind.

Mrs. Van Rensselaer eyed her keenly, suspiciously. At last she ventured another question.

"Have you got any other beau in your head, Jemima?" she said. "Because if you have, you'd better put him out pretty suddenly. If your father should find it out, he would—I don't know what he would do. He would certainly punish you well, big girl as you are. Is that what's the matter? Answer me! Have you got another beau?"

Dawn looked up with great angry, flashing eyes, horror changing into contempt.

"I have never even thought of such a dreadful thing!" she said, with a withering look, and swept haughtily from the room. But on the way upstairs the color crept slowly into her cheeks, and her eyes drooped half-ashamed. Was there? Yes, there was some one else enshrined within her heart, some one whose face had smiled in sympathy just once, and toward whom she felt as she had never felt to any human being save her mother. Of course he was nothing to her but the vision of a moment, and never, never, could he be called by the hateful word her stepmother had used, that detestable word "beau." It seemed to the poor, tried child as if she could almost kill any one who used that word.