Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Papa’s Own Girl;
A Novel.

By MARIE HOWLAND.

——“Wisdom is humanity;

And they who want it, wise as they may seem,

And confident in their own sight and strength,

Reach not the scope they aim at.”

—W. S. Landor.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT,

No. 27 CLINTON PLACE.

BOSTON: LEE & SHEPARD.

1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by

MARIE HOWLAND,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

[All rights reserved.]

Electrotyped and printed by

The Excelsior Printing Company,

81, 83, & 85 Centre St., N. Y.

CONTENTS.

PAPA’S OWN GIRL.

CHAPTER I.
AN OLD LETTER.

* * * * I was seven years old when they came—those mysterious little red-faced sisters, which the day before were nowhere in the universe, and the next had sprung up before my bewildered young eyes, full dressed in long white gowns, and looking every way as exactly alike as did the objects I used to see double by “crossing my eyes” as we called it; a habit that brought me many a reprimand.

We lived then, as you know, in L——, Massachusetts, and I looked upon the advent of the little creatures on that fine September morning as the most wonderful stroke of fortune; but I remember that my mother, lying very pale and still among her pillows, watched my delight with sad eyes, and then turned her face wearily to the wall. Aunt Patty, the dear old Goody, long since sleeping in the village churchyard, entered kindly into my childish enthusiasm, turning up the skirts of the white dresses, and then unfolding a mass of soft flannel, finally exposed the velvety little feet, whose pink toes moved incessantly, as if enamored of the air. I very soon grew so boisterous in my delight that I had to be sent ignominiously from the room. I went immediately in search of my brother Dan, a handsome, rough fellow, whom I found in the kitchen busily employed with his fishing tackle; for the unusual excitement in the house afforded him an opportunity to sly off to the river, where mother had forbidden him to go on pain of severe penalties. I began eagerly imparting the news.

“O, pshaw! I know all about it,” interrupted Dan. The statement surprised me, but I accepted it as pure truth, as I generally did all that he said. He was some years older than I, and I considered him a superior being—at least everywhere except in school; there, even a partial sister’s eyes had to see that he was a dunce; though a good-natured one, and a great favorite. He was indefatigable in “coasting” the girls and the little boys in winter, and he had a rough humor that pleased them all. I remember that, at the beginning of one of our winter terms, the master had offered a prize to the one who should leave off at the head of the spelling class the greatest number of times. On the last day of school I received the prize, flushed with proud delight, standing at the head of the long line of pupils. Dan was at the very foot, as usual, and the teacher took occasion to reprove him for his bad lessons and his want of ambition in trying for the prize.

“Why, I almost got it,” said Dan.

“Almost!” echoed the teacher angrily; for we all knew that Dan had not left off at the head a single day.

“Yes, sir. I should have had it if you had only made this end the head.” A burst of laughter from the teacher and all the pupils followed this view of the case, and the echoes, more and more subdued, continued when we were dismissed to our seats, I hugging the precious prize, which was a red morocco bound copy of The Vicar of Wakefield, and Dan chuckling over the success of his humor. He had consoled and vindicated all the orthographical blockheads, and he was happy. But I am letting my pen run wild, as I like to do when answering your letters.

While I stood watching Dan’s manœuvres with his wiggling angle-worms and hooks and sinkers, I asked him if he did not think that the twins were perfectly lovely.

“No, I don’t,” he replied, impatiently. “I was going to have two months of fun before school commenced, and now I shan’t have any. I shall have to run everywhere for them nasty twins; and then the crackers I shall have to pound! Mother didn’t have half milk enough for Arthur, and it would take a whole cow for these. Girls, too, both of them!” he added, with great contempt. Here, in fact, was the sore point with Dan. While the baby Arthur lived, he was very fond of him, in his way, and would probably have been gracious over the advent of a new brother; possibly would have pardoned our mother in time for presenting us one baby of either sex; but two at a time, and both girls at that! This was too much for Dan’s patience, or for his confidence in the discretion of mothers. I was surprised at his cool prediction about the supply of milk, but I deferred to his superior experience and years. He gave me another piece of recondite information just as he started for the river, threatening to kill my pet kitten if I dared to even hint where he had gone. This information was that these particular babies would be “awful cross patches; girls always were.”

In time I myself grew to qualify my ecstasy over the double blessing; for they certainly proved “awful cross patches,” and the sacrifices I was obliged to make to them as a child, only a child I think could fully appreciate. * * * *

Do you remember the skeleton in the garret—the memento mori of our play-house banquets? * * * *

C. F.

“C. F.” is my old friend Clara Forest, and I am one of the characters, but it does not matter which one. I shall not appear again in the first person after I have described my first acquaintance with her. It is a long time since I determined to weave the events of her life into a story, and coming across this old letter the other day turned the balance of motives for and against the effort, and I set myself deliberately to work collecting and arranging materials; for this novel is by no means a structure evolved from the depths of my own consciousness. The groundwork is a simple narration of fact, and even the superstructure is real to a great extent.

In my early days, Clara was my heroine, my princess, but I worshipped her silently, and she never took any special notice of me until years after our first meeting.

I saw her first in a village graveyard one Sunday, between the morning and afternoon services. That was the cheerful spot where the congregations of the different churches walked during the noon recess, discussed funereal subjects, and ate “sweet cake,” to use the New England term of that time. Clara was accompanied by her Sunday-school teacher, named Buzzell—a grim and forbidding woman, I thought. Everybody called her “Miss Buzzell,” though she was a widow; but at that time, among the rural people of New England, it was very common to call married ladies Miss; unmarried ones received no title at all. Clara on this day wore a broad-brimmed white straw hat, with wide rose-colored streamers, a white dress and embroidered tunic of the same, and bronzed gaiters, or boots, as we now call them. She was a solid little girl, with a face round and very freckled, a broad, full brow, full pouting rosy lips, radiant blue-grey eyes, with thick, long lashes, and a nose that was pretty, though a little after the rétroussé order.

I shall never forget my first sensation. It was a feeling of regret that I had no freckles; for as soon as my eyes rested upon her, there came into my heart a deep desire to be just like her in every particular. Hundreds of times have I recalled her as she appeared to me that day; and I still believe that, upon some secret principle of æsthetics, notwithstanding the general prejudice against freckles, these added to the piquancy of her beauty. As she grew up few called her handsome, except those who could perceive the rich emotional nature that seemed to radiate through every gesture and movement of her supple form, and especially through her bright eyes, whose lids had sometimes a slight quiver or shake from any sudden excitation. This was something instantaneous as to time, and difficult to describe, but it added an extraordinary charm to her soulful beauty. There was always about her an atmosphere of fragrant health, which charmed you like the odors and zephyrs of spring-time. The freckles which, as a child, I had so envied her, disappeared entirely when she reached the nubile age.

On this Sunday in the graveyard I “tagged” after Clara everywhere she went, fascinated by her fresh, full life, and by her exquisite dress; but I could find no way to speak to her, because of her awe-inspiring companion, though I was often so near to her that her long hat ribbons swept my cheek. After a while my ignorance of churchyard etiquette came to my aid; for, finding the distance between me and this divine vision increasing, I made a short cut over some intervening graves. Miss Buzzell turned her awful eyes upon me. I simply noticed that there were many wrinkles converging about her mouth, and that her breath was redolent of cloves. In a deep, slow, admonitory voice, she said, “Child! you should never step on a grave!” It was like a cold leech dropped suddenly upon the warm, sensitive flesh. I could do nothing but hang my head in humiliation. Clara, childlike and human, sympathized with my distress, and told me sweetly that my pantalette was coming down. It was at the time when girls, in that part of the country at least, wore this nondescript article fastened on with the garter, falling down to the foot, and about three inches below the dress, where it ended with tucks and a wide hem. Some of us were so extravagant as to add an edging, which we used to knit of spool cotton. I stooped down to arrange the rebel pantalette, but when I had finished, Clara was some graves away from me, and the church bells were calling back the scattered congregations.

CHAPTER II.
THE SKELETON IN THE GARRET.

One beautiful May morning, not long after I first met Clara, I was sent to Dr. Forest’s with a basket of eggs. As I opened the little gate leading through the shrubbery and little lawn to the front door, I perceived Clara standing on the wide upper step, with a watering-pot in her hand. She was dressed in white, as usual, and was sprinkling some flowers that grew in a large vase that stood on a pedestal by the steps. She greeted me pleasantly, and led me into the kitchen, where Dinah, the fat black servant, relieved my basket of its contents. Mrs. Forest, a tall, sweet-looking, pale lady, in a white apron, was engaged in making a vast quantity of little cakes, which Clara told me were macaroons for her party—a great event which was to take place that afternoon. I had heard of it, but did not expect an invitation, because I lived quite out of the village, and knew Clara but very slightly. Seeing all these delightful preparations, caused me to break the tenth commandment in my heart, but I was glad that Clara was so happy; and I lingered in that pleasant kitchen as long as I could, consistently with any degree of propriety. The twins, now some five years old, were the most prominent object in the Forest household, if not in the whole village. At that moment Dinah was picking over raisins, and they kept near her, devouring all she would give them, and when their importunities failed they watched their chances, and every now and then succeeded in grabbing a handful, when they would disappear, and remain very quiet for a few minutes. Sometimes Dinah would be quick enough to seize the little depredatory hand and rob it of its booty. When she failed, she “clar’d to God” there wouldn’t be a raisin left for Miss Clara’s party cake.

The doctor’s family were from the South, where Dinah had formerly been a slave, though her condition was little better than slavery after the advent of those imps of twins. The good-natured old servant had loved the other children very sincerely, and she tried hard to take these also into her capacious heart, but she never fully succeeded. There was a feud between her and them, born of their persistent delight in tormenting her. “Hatching mischief,” she said, was their sole occupation during their waking hours, and their tricks were told by Dinah to other servants until the whole village laughed over them.

After amusing the twins awhile I rose to go, following Clara back through the dining-room to the front door. In the hall she showed me a long table filled with toy china sets for the amusement, she said, of the “little girls,” Dr. Buzby cards and other games for the older. I could not repress exclamations of delight at the prospect of so much bliss; but when I informed her that I had never been invited to a party in my life, I had not the remotest intention of “fishing” for an invitation to hers.

“You never have been at a party!” she exclaimed, quite amazed; and looking at me from head to foot, her heart seemed to be touched at the extent and depth of my deprivation. Just then Mrs. Forest came into the dining-room, and Clara said, “Mamma, I should like to invite one other girl to my party, if you are willing. I mean this one.” “Certainly, my dear, if you wish it,” was the pleasant reply, and thereupon, thanking Clara as well as I could, I left the house, filled with a greater happiness than I had ever known.

On reaching home I readily gained permission to attend Clara’s reception, but the question of dress was a serious one, for I well knew how finely her friends would be arrayed; still I managed as best I could, and three o’clock in the afternoon found me timidly pulling the door-bell at Dr. Forest’s. Some other girls arrived before Clara had disposed of my hat and little cape. We were first ushered into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Forest was sewing. She did not rise, but smiled upon us, and addressed to each a few pleasant words.

We soon grew impatient of sitting prim and “behaving” in the sitting-room, and were greatly relieved when we found ourselves playing games among the fragrant lilacs and syringas of the garden. Then followed a game with the innocuous Dr. Buzby cards then in vogue. Clara, more beautiful than ever, I thought, explained the principles of the game to me, in a charming, dogmatic manner. I was the only one ignorant on the subject, and this, with my very plain dress, caused one of the guests to eye me insolently and ask me if I lived in the woods. Clara instantly, and in no measured terms, rebuked her guest’s impoliteness, which had the effect to send her off pouting among the lilacs. I remember this because it shows the superior nature of Clara Forest in the most unquestionable way. Children may learn the form of politeness, but the spirit of it is almost invariably absent, and must be from the very nature of human development. Man is first the brute, then the civilizee, and lastly the philosopher; and the child, in its unfolding, exemplifies these phases just as society does. That Clara was exceptionally fine in her nature I knew well even then, but I was ignorant of the cause until long after.

We were much disturbed in our game of Dr. Buzby by Leila and Linnie, the ubiquitous twins, who vexed and annoyed us in the thousand ways that little ones have at their command. Finally, to escape from the twins, Clara led us upstairs, through the doctor’s study, into his bedroom, and closed the door. This was a plain little room, having a stand, with several books, at the head of the bed, and over it the doctor’s night-bell. Clara strictly enjoined us to not so much as touch a single article in her father’s rooms, on penalty of being instantly obliged, all of us, to quit our retreat. During our game of cards, Abbie Kendrick asked Clara why this room was called the doctor’s exclusively.

“Why, because he sleeps here, to be sure,” answered Clara, with a slight hauteur, as if unwilling to discuss family matters with her guests. She was a very dignified child, this idol of mine—“proud” was the term girls generally applied to her.

“But does not your mamma sleep here too?” asked Abbie, bold enough to pursue the subject.

“Certainly not,” replied Clara. “Papa and mamma do not think it proper to sleep together.”

This piece of information surprised us greatly, but we all accepted the fact as showing the immeasurable aristocratic superiority of the Dr. and Mrs. Forest over all the married people we knew. I remember we all approved the system, agreeing that it was quite proper for girls to sleep together, and for no others. How wise we were then! Some of us have slightly modified our views on the subject since we played that game of cards in the doctor’s room; but we had very fixed and positive opinions then—all except Clara, who listened silently. We decided that if we ever married, which, of course, we never would, we should have two bedrooms, and never, never allow our husbands to enter ours, unless he were a physician and we happened to be ill!

When the Dr. Buzby cards ceased to amuse us, Clara produced her piece de resistence, which was her play-house in the garret, somewhat neglected now, for she was approaching the outposts of young ladyhood. This garret was the one place where the sacrilegious twins had not penetrated. It was the sanctuary in which she had been in the habit of taking refuge when hard pressed by the merciless tyrants, to whom she had always been a patient nurse and victim, for her mother was in delicate health, and Dinah was almost exclusively occupied with the housekeeping. To this sanctuary Clara had removed her broken-nosed dolls, smeared and torn books, and the wrecks generally that she had snatched from time to time from the grip of the vandals.

We approached this large old garret, under the gable roof, by a rickety flight of stairs, and on reaching the landing a hideous spectacle curdled my young blood and riveted my scared, fascinated eyes. It was a grinning skeleton, suspended to the rafter by a cord and a ring attached to the top of the skull. The other girls being already initiated, laughed my terrors to scorn, while one bold miss of ten, Clara’s most intimate friend, Louise Kendrick, went straight up to the horror, made faces at it, and then deliberately set it spinning! I shall never forget the sinking, sickening sensation at my heart as the eyeless sockets and hideous teeth glared through the dim light at me with every revolution. Clara, seeing how frightened I was, hastened to reassure me by saying, as she placed her arm around me—

“It isn’t anything but the bones, you know. We all look like that under our flesh.” Comforting thought! It required a long time for me to control myself so that I could enter into the doll-dressing with spirit; and every now and then, as we cut, and planned, and sewed, especially as the light grew dimmer, I turned my head over my shoulder, gingerly, just enough to make sure that the “thing” was not striding toward me. Right glad was I when we were called down to our weak tea, and over the honey and hot biscuits I forgot for the time the agony of fear I had endured. That night, however, the skeleton was “after me” all the time; and my ineffectual struggles to get my long yellow hair out of its bony hands woke me many times with agonizing cries. And all this because my young imagination had been poisoned by ghost stories—the ghost always being represented by a skeleton partially covered with white drapery. I believe now in the “inquisition of science”;—that one of its most sacred functions is to seize and punish any person found guilty of entertaining the sensitive, unformed brain of the child with the horrors of the grave, of death, of hell, or any of the unverifiable hypotheses of theology and superstition, born of the general ignorance incident to the childhood of the human race.

CHAPTER III.
DR. FOREST AT HOME.

The doctor was about forty years old, but his hair was beginning to turn gray and his fine head was a little bald upon the top. He was about the medium height, muscular, with handsome broad shoulders, and very slightly inclined to stoutness. He had fine grey eyes, which he was in the habit of half closing when anything puzzled him. It was an exceedingly benevolent and expressive face, which won utter confidence at the first glance. He wore light, steel-bowed spectacles, which he never removed, apparently, from one year’s end to another. In repose, his mouth had an expression of severity; and when studying, he had a curious habit of protruding his under-lip; but the moment he spoke this mouth became handsome, expressing the large-heartedness and the ready humor that made him a favorite with all who knew him.

About the old house of the doctor, there was a quaint and dignified air, given by the books and numerous pictures, most of them quite old, and by the heavy antique furniture, relict of a former generation. It was not the air of wealth exactly, yet no one could suspect, from the general appearance of things, that there was a chronic scarcity of money in the family, and that the gentle Mrs. Forest had such sore difficulty in making ends meet. This, too, when the doctor was the best physician for miles around, and quantities of money were due him in all directions. The truth was, he could not collect what was due him. Unless absolutely driven to the wall, he could not ask any of his patients for money; and when they wished to return equivalents for his services, in the shape of corn, and apples, and potatoes, he said not a word until the cellar became so full that Dinah rebelled. In the spring, when seed potatoes gave out at planting time, every farmer knew where to make up his deficit; though in such cases he never thought of paying the good doctor money for them, but promised to return them at harvest time, not being particular at all to consider that a bushel now was worth five or ten in the autumn. Still, the doctor did not complain, being gentle to a fault, though he took note of all things. As to his children, he confessed frankly that he did not know how to bring them up, and when he was in doubt about any matter of discipline, he generally let them have their own way. An incident will illustrate his method: the large room where Mrs. Forest and the twins slept was directly beside the doctor’s, and as they did not like the darkness a lamp was always kept burning there. One night when the doctor, having been up all the previous night, had gone to bed early, he was prevented from sleeping by a tin-whistle in the mouth of Leila. He called out to her to stop, as he wished to go to sleep. Presently there came to the doctor’s ears a faint little “toot! toot!” from the whistle. Linnie tried hard to hush her sister, and reminded her of the voice from the next room. “Oh, its only papa!” said Leila impatiently; which, the doctor hearing, caused him to investigate the motive of the child’s remark, and philosophizing upon the subject, he went to sleep finally to the accompaniment of the “toot! toot! toot!” which Leila kept up until she was tired of it.

Mrs. Buzzell, Clara’s Sunday-school teacher, and an old friend of Mrs. Forest, had a very tender spot in her heart for the doctor, whom she regarded, and rightly too, as one of the best physicians in the world. No one understood her internal perturbations as he did, and she took all the medicines he prescribed with a faith that was somewhat remarkable, considering that she had been under his treatment for twelve years and more, and still required his services more than ever. Probably her sublime faith was based on the conviction of the awful things that would have happened but for his medicines. She lived a lonely life by herself, and was very fond of spending an afternoon at the doctor’s house, and having long conversations on nothing in particular with Mrs. Forest. Her visits were sometimes almost an infliction to Mrs. Forest, who had a strong housewifely pride in nice teas, which the chronic scarcity of money, before mentioned, rendered difficult to attain in many instances. To be sure there was always bacon and a barrel of fine hominy in the kitchen, which sufficed for Dinah’s southern tastes, and the family could always fall back upon these if necessary, and the latter at least was never absent from the family breakfast; but they could hardly serve a respectable tea-table where cake and creamy hot biscuits were a sine qua non according to all good housekeepers.

On one occasion, just before breakfast, Mrs. Buzzell sent a note to her friend expressing her intention to spend the afternoon with her, “if agreeable.” Now it just was not “agreeable,” for the commissariat was at a low ebb—lower, indeed, than it had ever been; but Mrs. Forest, of course, sent back a polite answer expressing delight at the prospect of the visit, not even dreaming, probably, of the conventional fib that her answer contained.

While she was writing the reply for the messenger to take back to Mrs. Buzzell, Dinah’s soul was being tried unusually in the kitchen by the conduct of the twins, which reached a climax when one of them actually threw a kitten into Aunt Dinah’s boiling hominy kettle. She was long-suffering, though her threats were severe and frequent; but this time her patience gave way entirely, and taking off a colossal carpet-slipper she spanked the offending twin right soundly. Mild Mrs. Forest hearing the uproar from the kitchen, sent Dan to bring the children to her room. Both were howling at the top of their voices, for one never cried without the other joining in on principle. Then she went down to the kitchen and reproved Dinah for taking the discipline of the children into her own hands. Dinah was too exasperated to be reasoned with. She burst out—

“I bars eberyting wid dem chil’en, missus; but I clar to God, I won’t hab dem kittens in de hominy pot!”

To the outside world, the Forest family was a model of domestic felicity, and not without cause as family life goes; but Mrs. Forest was very far from a happy woman. This was due partly to her delicate health, which gave her a disposition to “borrow trouble,” and to look too much beyond the grave for the happiness a stronger and more philosophical nature would have created out of her really fortunate environment. At times, she still suffered from the loss of the baby Arthur, though he had been dead some eight years. The doctor could hardly understand this as a normal expression, and she often accused him of a lack of sympathy. He himself submitted calmly always to the inevitable, learned the lesson that any misfortune afforded, applied it practically to his daily life, and in no other way remembered a suffering that was in the past. His wife, he said, had a passion for the “luxury of woe,” and this was a diseased condition. Dan gave her a world of trouble. She had made an idol of him from his birth, and it was indeed hard to feel that her deep love for him was not sufficient to cure him of a single one of his bad habits. Years of the most loving effort to make him take off his hat on entering the house, had been unavailing; and he still tramped through her tidy house with dirty shoes every day of his life, and though nearly fourteen years of age, it is questionable whether he had abandoned the charming habit of coming down stairs astride the baluster. He teased the twins, worried Clara whenever an opportunity offered, went and came without asking permission of his mother, and at table he was distressingly awkward. On this particular morning the doctor said to him, a little after sitting down to the breakfast-table and while he was serving the hominy—

“Now Dan, my boy, I’ve been cheated out of my morning sleep by the hubbub in the house, and my nerves are irritated; so you’ll save them a shock and much oblige me if you will give me warning when you are going to upset your glass, or wipe your knife off the table with your sleeve.”

Dan had more affection for his father than for any other being in the world. He hung his head, but answered good-naturedly, “I’m not going to do either this morning, sir.” During this reply he was vigorously mixing a piece of very hard butter in the hominy which his father had just put into his plate, and the result was the landing of his plate, bottom upwards, on the floor by the way of his legs. Mrs. Forest uttered an exclamation of despair; but Clara quietly rose, removed the debris, and brought Dan another plate. This time, Dan was really distressed, and his mortification was increased by the doctor’s laughing.

“Never mind, my son,” he said, putting his right hand kindly on Dan’s shoulder. “This time it was more my fault than yours. I made you nervous by my criticism.” The idea of Dan’s being nervous was an exquisite compliment from its perfect novelty. The doctor saw that the boy for once was greatly ashamed, and so he immediately changed the subject to Leila, who sat in her high chair on Dan’s right. “So Miss Mischief,” he said, “you set out to cook a kitten in the hominy this morning did you, eh? I’m very glad you failed, and I advise you to not try it again.”

“I sall took ee titten to-maw-yer, I sall.”

“You will cook the kitten to-morrow, will you?” he said, repressing a disposition to laugh. “Look here, Leila, if you try that again I hope you’ll get a much larger dose of Dinah’s slipper, and you shall not have a kiss from papa, nor come to the table with him for a whole week.”

“Poor kitty! her toes ache so,” said Linnie, who spoke quite plainly compared with her sister, and whose heart also was more tender. The doctor praised Linnie’s sympathy with the kitten, and while reading Leila a little lecture on cruelty, the bell rang, and he was called off to see a patient.

During the day Mrs. Forest consulted Clara on the subject of the afternoon tea, for she was sorely perplexed and mortified, as she said, because there was nothing in the house.

“Why, mamma, I don’t see why you should bother yourself. We have nice, fresh, Graham bread, some delicious cheese, any quantity of fruit, and Dinah can make some hominy. Mrs. Buzzell don’t ever taste hominy, and she’ll be delighted with it, I know. Papa would find such food excellent; and I am sure what is good enough for papa is good enough for anybody in this world.”

“Yes, my child, it is good enough, no doubt; but it is such an odd jumble. Who ever heard of such a tea? You know Mrs. Buzzell’s appetite is fastidious, and I like to have something savory for her. Of course the doctor’s credit is good at the grocer’s, and everywhere, for that matter, but I have never used it, and never intended to; but I think I shall have to make an exception to-day. We must have some butter and some sugar.”

“Now, mamma, you know Mrs. Buzzell is always complaining about her digestion. On principle, you should never give her anything but simple food—just like this tea we are going to have; and I wouldn’t put the cheese on the table either. It may destroy the effect of papa’s medicines,” added Clara, laughing.

Mrs. Forest descanted with much bitterness upon the laxity of the doctor in collecting the money due him. “Well, my child,” she said, after a pause, “I must trust to Providence.” This intention she always expressed after dwelling upon the doctor’s bad management and the exhausted state of the larder; but she evidently thought there was great virtue in such trust, as if Providence ought to be highly complimented by her confidence. This consultation took place in the kitchen pantry, and was finally ended by the entrance of Dinah with a slop-pail from the upper regions, at the same time that a country wagon drove around to the kitchen door.

CHAPTER IV.
ONE OF DR. FOREST’S PATIENTS.

The doctor used to say that “Trust in Providence and keep your powder dry” was a good injunction, but would be better reversed; and whatever he believed, Clara subscribed to as if by instinct. So when her mother, in the kitchen pantry, expressed her determination to trust to Providence, Clara received it with a little scowl of impatience.

Dinah came into the drawing-room a few minutes later, and Mrs. Forest and Clara followed her back to the kitchen. The wagon which had just driven away contained some grateful patient of the doctor. He had left with Dinah a half dozen nicely-dressed spring chickens, some golden balls of fragrant butter, and two boxes of fresh honey in the comb. Mrs. Forest looked silently at her daughter, every feature expressing, “You see I trusted in Providence.” Clara laughed pleasantly, repressing the temptation to remind her mother that the wagon must have been on its way with the welcome treasures long before that decision to trust in Providence was made; but she only said, “Now you can give Mrs. Buzzell a nice attack of indigestion. O mamma! your desire to give her something ‘savory,’ as you said, is only a deep-laid scheme to increase papa’s practice. I see it all now. Mrs. Buzzell is one of his few patients who pay promptly!”

“Why! what levity!” exclaimed Mrs. Forest, who, now that her anxiety about a respectable tea was removed, felt at peace with the world, and her sense of the fitness of things was answered.

Mrs. Buzzell came in good season. She was a prim lady of sixty or more, dressed in a neat black grenadine dress, open to a point from the throat. This open space was filled in with spotless illusion lace, fastened with a little jet brooch. Her white hair was beautifully rolled in three puffs on either side of her head, and surmounted by a white cap with a border or frill, and lavender-colored strings. She was a very active, industrious person, though a sufferer from her ailments. During the afternoon she spoke of her digestion several times. On these occasions Clara made a knowing, mischievous sign to her mother, who was dignifiedly oblivious, apparently, to what her saucy daughter was thinking.

Clara set the tea-table herself with her mother’s choice old china, which seemed to feel its rare importance only when arranged upon a snowy cloth. After all Mrs. Forest’s anxiety, the tea was as delightfully respectable as her heart could wish. The twins, however, set up in their high chairs, detracted a good deal from the solemnity of the occasion, for their behavior, always especially bad when “company” was present, was sufficient to make Mrs. Buzzell’s cap-border stand up in consternation. They kicked the under side of the table with the toes of their little shoes, setting the cups dancing in their saucers, whenever the supply of honey gave out and was not instantly renewed, or when reproved by their gentle mother for the quantity of cake they thought proper to discuss. Whenever their conduct became unbearable, a kind of semi-yell from Dan distracted their attention for a few moments, enabling the ladies to continue their mild comments upon the diseases incident to children, and the superior taste of the new milliner’s bonnets and caps.

Clara silently watched and anticipated the wants of the twins, wearing a weary, responsible look, for they weighed upon her young life like the world upon the shoulders of Atlas. Since they were babies, creeping about, putting everything animate or inanimate into their mouths, and calling every man papa who approached them, Clara had gradually assumed more and more the care of them, being stronger in mind and body than her mother. Her method of managing these irrepressibles, was very reprehensible in one respect, but she had been led into it by the necessity of some method, and the impossibility of moving the rebellious little tyrants by any reasonable means. She had taken advantage of their passion for doing anything they were forbidden to do, even though that in itself were disagreeable to them. For example, after tea the great desideratum was to get the twins upstairs to bed, for there was little possibility of quiet conversation where they were. The doctor had just come in, and was very contentedly sipping his rather insipid tea, and gathering up what remained of the eatables, to the accompaniment of a somewhat detailed account of Mrs. Buzzell’s “wretched digestion.”

“Now, Linnie,” said Clara, “you wish to stay down and play, don’t you? but Clara is going upstairs.” It was never necessary to address but one at a time, for whatever one decided to do was certain to be immediately repeated by the other. By the time she had reached the stairs, Linnie dropped her toys and started, Leila following closely, both determined to perish rather than stay down-stairs, as they supposed they were expected to do. Once arrived in the sleeping chamber, similar manœuvres inveigled the twins into bed, and when they were finally sleeping, Clara went down to the sitting-room. The doctor noticed her weary look, and said, “My child, you have too much responsibility. Papa must try to send you away to school. I have been thinking of your method in managing those children. Surely you do not think you are right in controlling them by such motives?”

“I suppose not, papa,” answered Clara, who had sat down on a stool at her father’s side, and was “resting,” as she used to call it, in the magnetic caresses of his hand upon her brown hair; “but it saves time.”

“Ah! my daughter. How many follies are committed under that plea! See what you do by this course. In the first place, you cultivate obstinacy in the little ones, which is bad enough, and then you dull the fine edge of your conscience by doing what your better sense condemns, I am sure.”

“She is not so much to be blamed,” said Mrs. Forest. “It is one of Dan’s tricks. She learned it from him.”

“What does papa’s girl think of that as an excuse?” he asked, studying her fine face.

“I don’t think it excuses me, papa. I know it does not.”

“You are right. Dan should learn of you, not you of him, in matters of conscience. I only wish he had your conscientiousness, and your love of books, too. I never see him reading. I wonder where the young rat is to-night.” Clara knew pretty well where Dan was, but for his sake she kept silent. She was always merciful to his delinquencies; probably from the fear that she did not love him as she believed a sister should love her brother. No two children could well be more unlike; and for years he had bullied her unmercifully, though he would not permit others to do so, and his tough little fist was ready to the head of any urchin in school or in the street, who dared to show the least disrespect for his sister. He monopolized that matter himself, and carried teazing to cruel extremes. She was easily irritated by him, especially in her earlier years, and whenever he saw her becoming angry, it was a constant practice of his to seize both her hands and hold them as in a vise, mocking her impotent rage until it grew to murder in her heart. This was a persecution so often repeated that it had completely destroyed all her natural tenderness for him, which the sensitive child reproached herself for, and sought to atone by treating him with great kindness.

Ah! what a nursery of crooked, abnormal motives the family often is! How many really deep wrongs are done to impressible children, to which the parents are utterly blind, because so ignorant of the laws of mental development. When Clara’s troubles with Dan were unendurable, she had sometimes gone to her mother. Once she did so, bursting out with, “I wish I could kill him.” The mother was horrified; but, alas! only at the language; not seeing beneath the surface what madness had been induced in the child’s heart, nor inferring a necessary and adequate cause. She only reproved Clara for such “dreadful words,” and sent for Dan. “My son, why do you teaze your sister so? Do you not know it is very wicked, and that if you are wicked you will never go to Heaven?” In truth, she was utterly incapable of comprehending the difficulty between the children, and as Dan was on his good behavior when his father was present, and as all the family tacitly agreed to never trouble the doctor unnecessarily, knowing that he ought to rest during the short time his practice left him free, he never knew of this peculiar trial of Clara’s until long after.

When Mrs. Forest would remind Dan of his danger of losing Heaven, she naturally thought that it should have great weight with him; though if she could have read his thoughts, she would have quickly seen her mistake. Heaven, to Dan, meant a country

“Where congregations ne’er break up,

And Sabbaths never end;”

and though he thought such a dull place might do for girls and for people like the widow Buzzell, he knew perfectly well that it was no place for a live boy, who liked fishing and setting snares in the woods much better than any congregation he could imagine.

But to go back to the family circle. When the doctor wondered where the “young rat” was, Clara kept silent. Mrs. Buzzell hazarded the suggestion that he might be off with those low Dykes—the Dykes being a family whom nobody visited, and who were generally set down as “no better than they should be.” This was precisely where Dan was at that moment, and the attraction was possibly Susie Dykes, though he took no particular notice of any one but Jim Dykes, who possessed a pair of old battered foils, and with them gave the delighted Dan several desultory lessons in the art of fencing. Jim being a great swaggerer, and a little older than Dan, was mighty in his eyes; especially when he discoursed on the “guards” and “passes,” his hat cocked over his left eye, his legs straddled, and an unmanageable end of tobacco in his mouth.

“It is strange,” said Mrs. Forest, “what Dan finds so agreeable in that family. I am sure I could not endure the house. Mrs. Dykes is a slattern, and her children have no sort of bringing up, as I am told.”

“Why,” said the doctor, “I don’t see but Susie is a very nice girl. She behaves very well indeed—totally unlike that uncouth brother of hers. I like the pretty way she does her hair.”

“For my part, I distrust girls or women who please only men,” said Mrs. Buzzell. “I’ve heard several men praise her looks.”

“I’m inclined to think that her charm is not so much in her looks as in her good nature. She always smiles as if she were happy. The signs of happiness rest one so;”—and the doctor sighed.

“Men,” said Mrs. Forest, who seldom generalized, “are unsatisfied unless women are always gay and smiling; but how can we be? Household cares so drag us down, and the care of children, especially two at a time, is too much for any one.”

“Yet children used to be considered a blessing,” remarked the doctor, and added humorously, “but I can see how any woman might be blest to death by a too frequent repetition of this doubling extravagance of your sex.”

Mrs. Forest was always annoyed at this suggestion, which the doctor often teazed his wife with, just to see the expression of impatient credulity on her face. She pretended not to notice it this time, but answered, a little spiritedly, “So they are a blessing, of course. I do not mean to deny that, but one may have many trials about them. I’m sure I have my share with Dan. He is almost sixteen, and yet I am quite sure he prefers to be ragged and dirty to looking like a gentleman’s son. It does annoy me so to think I have no influence over him in this matter.”

“I think, mamma,” said Clara, raising her head from her father’s knee, “that Susie Dykes will have more influence in that matter than you have. He made a famous toilet to-day before going out. You should see his room. It looks like an old cockatoo cage after the bird has been bathing—only cockatoos can’t leave their towels and stockings scattered over the floor.”

“Did he really change his stockings?” asked Mrs. Forest in amazement. “Then there’s something wrong. It must be the first time in his life he ever did such a thing of his own accord!”

When Mrs. Buzzell rose to go the doctor rose also, and, as usual, gallantly accompanied her. The conversation on the way was a little tiresome to the doctor, but his heart was far too kind to permit him to show it, for he knew that he was much esteemed by this patient, and he pitied her lonely life. In answer to her complaints about her digestion he said, “And you ate honey and hot bread to-night. You should have eaten only a crust of bread, and chewed it well.”

“Oh dear, no—that is, I am never troubled about what I eat at your house. I can digest anything perfectly well there; but everything disagrees with me at home. I have told you that often, doctor,” she added, as if pained that he should not remember.

“Pardon me, I did not forget; but I thought I must take that with a certain margin, as I am compelled to do much that my women patients tell me; but I see I must make you an exception, and the result is that my treatment can do you no good. You need more excitement—a larger life. While you live such a lonely way, medicines are of little use. You see the doctor is a humbug, more or less, and must be until he can prescribe changes in the social conditions as well as of diet and climate. Anyway considered, doctoring with drugs is more the business of the charlatan than of the true scientist. The longer I live the more I see the folly of patching up the stomach and the liver when the true disease is in the soul.”

“Soul! why, doctor, I was afraid you did not believe in the soul.”

“But I do, only you Christians and spiritualists, so called, have such a beastly material conception of soul that you can scarcely understand the scientific faith. Be sure that I believe in the immortality of soul, but I know that structure corresponds to function; that is the first law of nature. Now the soul, as you conceive it, is not a spiritual conception, but some kind of organization—a ghost, in short, having functions, but the Devil himself cannot define its structure.”

“Well, I am not a scientific person, doctor, so I will not pretend I know much; but I think I know that the only way to be happy is to keep as near to Christ as we can.” After quite a long pause, during which doctor and patient reached the little veranda porch of Mrs. Buzzell’s home, she added, “Shall I keep on taking that cardiac mixture, or would you recommend something else?”

“Nothing else,” he said, holding her hand a moment, “only a good-night kiss from your doctor.” This he added gravely, and then pressed his grizzly moustache lightly first upon one and then the other of his patient’s faded cheeks. The prescription was quite new, though the doctor had often kissed her forehead after sitting by her bed, talking to her while holding her hand.

“Is this a general treatment?” asked Mrs. Buzzell good-humoredly; “or am I an exception?”

“This is a special treatment, because specially indicated,” he said. “You are thoroughly womanly in your nature, and you really need the magnetism of affection. You suffer more from your secluded life than most people would. Good-night; I will call soon,” and with that he left her. To the ordinary observer Mrs. Buzzell passed as a formal prude, cold and unattractive, but in reality, there was in her heart, an under-current of refined sensibility. To be sure it would not have been safe or prudent, at least, for any other man to attempt to kiss her cheek as the doctor had done, but she knew there was no guile in his heart, and she justly held his kindness and his deep sympathy with her as a most precious treasure. Coarse men are wont to scoff at the attraction women find in ministers and physicians, especially women whose social conditions are unfortunate; but the solution is very simple: physicians, at least, generally know more of human nature than other men do. This is true, of course, only of those of the nobler moral type. No others win the confidence of refined women, though their vanity may blind them to the wide difference there is between ordinary and extraordinary confidence, for every physician, if not every priest, receives a certain amount of confidence from the nature of his office. The physician of the high type to which Dr. Forest belongs, knows to a certainty the amount of mutual sympathy existing between their women patients and their husbands, when, as is often the case, there is no verbal confession of grievances; and even when, if such grievances exist, there is special care taken to conceal them. The kind-hearted and high-minded physician, especially if he be a man of the world, as all great physicians have invariably been, is the priestly confessor among Protestants. He no more thinks of betraying the confidences of his patients than the Catholic priest does those of the confessional. He is not restrained from a feeling of honor—there is no restraint in the case, for there is not the slightest temptation to talk of such confidences. It is not in that way that the physician regards them. He has received them by the thousand, and they excite no wonder in his mind; besides, who could understand them as he does? He receives them seriously enough, for whatever the cause, suffering is positive and demands his sympathy, and the true physician accords it as by instinct. To the vulgar, causes seem often very amusing. To the physician, he who “dies of a rose in aromatic pain,” is none the less dead than if hit by a cannon-ball.

When you see two men walking in the street, and another in front of them trips and falls on the pavement, watch the effect of the accident on the two men. If one guffaws with amusement, and the other rushes to the victim, helps him up with grave ceremony and sympathetic words, you may draw this conclusion: the first is an ignoramus, and very likely an American; the other is a physician or a Frenchman; for as a rule the French are incapable of seeing anything comical in an incident fraught with danger to a fellow-mortal. Not that American men are less generous and kind-hearted than other people, but they are ashamed of the imputation of effeminacy, and consider it laudable to conceal the signs of delicate sensibility.

Mrs. Buzzell could not probably have explained exactly what it was in the character of Dr. Forest that made him seem so unlike all other men. She would have naturally called it religion, only the doctor was most unquestionably different, in his views of social morality and “saving grace,” from all the devout people she had ever known. She thought herself a very strict believer in orthodox dogmas, but in truth she would herself have rejected any “scheme of salvation” that was not some way capable of including him. Perhaps she could not see clearly how, so she prayed for him constantly, and believed that God would never suffer such purity of heart, and such devotion to everything good and true, to go unrewarded. It was clearly “unreasonable.” She could understand, she thought, how good works might not count much in themselves, but motives could never go for naught; and the doctor’s motives were so nobly superior that they must come by the grace of God. So on that rock she rested her fears for the doctor’s salvation.

CHAPTER V.
THE TATTOOING.

Two years are passed, and nothing that very specially affects the doctor’s family has happened. The twins go to school, quarrel with each other, as sisters generally do, but they give Aunt Dinah less trouble. They have grown far too considerate to attempt flavoring the hominy with live kitten, an event which, for a very long time, she constantly feared would be repeated. They are “as like as two peas,” according to most people outside of the family, though in fact, with the exception of their size and dress, they do not much resemble each other. Leila is a natural egotist, and has everything pretty much her own way, for Linnie has no rights which her more positive sister is inclined to respect. Linnie, who is much more generous and affectionate than Leila, protests loudly against the tyranny of her sister, “yells,” as Leila poetically calls weeping, but in the end invariably yields.

Dan is about seventeen, and with Clara attends the village high-school. His educational progress is of the same order as that which distinguished him in the old district-school spelling class, where the head was at the wrong end of the room! To his loving mother he is a vexation of spirit, though he is less awkward at table, and he has learned to take off his hat, and with great effort, and for a short time, to behave “like a gentleman’s son,” as she says. Still he finds Jim Dykes as irresistible as ever, for the two are now endeared by one or two desperate encounters, wherein the “science” acquired from his worthy teacher had enabled Dan to prove himself master. He was much prouder of this than he would have been of any honor at the disposal of the high-school, for the great bully, Jim Dykes, treated him with distinguished respect.

One evening, when Mrs. Forest was sitting up for him, as she always did, he came in very late. She reproved him for passing his time in low company, whereupon he stoutly defended the whole Dykes family on general principles. This he had never done before. She was seriously concerned, and when she spoke of Susie Dykes, he answered insolently and went upstairs in a huff. When the doctor entered, a little later, his wife appeared at the head of the stairs, and asked him to come up to Dan’s room, whither she had followed him, as she had often done, to offer silent prayers at his bedside, when distrusting all mortal power to guide him safely through the temptations of youth. He was sleeping, as she expected; but she had been diverted from her pious purpose by a sight that turned all her maternal solicitude into indignation and refined disgust. The doctor followed Mrs. Forest into the boy’s room, where he lay asleep, as stalwart and beautiful in form as any rustic Adonis could well be. He had thrown the covering partially off, for it was warm, and one of his incurable habits was to sleep entirely nude. This the doctor said he had inherited from his old Saxon ancestry, who always slept in that way.

The cause of his mother’s perturbation was soon perceived by the doctor. This was a fresh tattooing on his left arm, extending quite from the elbow to the wrist. It was abominably but clearly done, in blue and scarlet, the design being two hearts spitted with a dart, between the names Dan Forest and Susan Dykes.

“The young donkey!” said the doctor, laughing; and on the way down-stairs he added, “This young America is too fast for you, is he not, Fannie?”

“I must say you take it very coolly, doctor. Such a shocking thing! To think of his disfiguring himself for life in that way.” Mrs. Forest looked in despair.

“My dear, there’s nothing to be done. You must accept the inevitable. What astonishes me is the precocity of the rascal. See! nothing has ever given that boy any enthusiasm in life. In school he’s a perfect laggard, and though now past sixteen, cannot write a decent letter. He has idled away his time, with no real interest in anything. Now, here is born in him suddenly a new life, and it so charms him that he disfigures himself for life, as you say, in order to immortalize the sentiment, not questioning for a moment that Susan Dykes will remain so long as he lives the same divinity in his eyes that she now seems. If we could only utilize such forces when they appear! but under our present subversive social system, they are as unmanageable as the unloosed affrites of the Arabian Nights.”

Mrs. Forest looked bewildered. The doctor went on:

“Suppose this girl had been in Dan’s class and superior to him intellectually (as she is in fact), and he had to recite every day with her eyes upon him. Don’t you see what a spur it would be to his learning his lessons? The strongest motive would be to distinguish himself, and so win her admiration. Well, Dan is your idol, Fannie. I confess I know nothing about him, nor how to help him; but for Clara I am decided. She’s a child after my own heart, and, by Heaven! she shall have a chance. She shall not be sacrificed for want of anything in my power to do for her. She must go to school, Fannie. In a month the fall term commences at Stonybrook College. There are no decent schools for girls, but that I believe is about the best we have. Can you get her ready, do you think?”

Mrs. Forest was amazed at this sudden decision, and she answered despondently, “What am I to do without Clara? she is so much help to me.”

“I know; but we must not spoil the girl’s future. This is the beginning of the age of strong women, and Clara is a natural student; besides she has a noble head everyway. Time was when piano-playing, a little monochromatic daubing, and an infinitesimal amount of book lore, sufficed for a girl. That time is past. I want Clara to develop her forces all she possibly can under the present social conditions. She must be strong and self-supporting.”

“Why! don’t you expect her to marry?”

“No; that is, I don’t care. I’d as soon she would not. As things go, sensible, educated, and self-poised women are better single than married, even to the best class of men. About every man is conscious that he’s a tyrant; but slaves make tyrants. If there were no slaves there would be no tyrants, but a great republic of equals.”

“Why, doctor! Have I not always been a good wife to you?” and the tears came to her eyes.

This was so unexpected, that the doctor felt inclined to laugh. He had been looking into vacancy as he talked, not dreaming that he was uttering words that could by any possibility be turned into any personal application. He had forgotten for a moment the fact that Mrs. Forest was like many women, who never fail to see a personal reflection in any comment upon woman’s culture or condition, or upon anything unusual in household management. Sometimes, for example, the bread bought at the baker’s would prove unusually chippy and innutritious, but never could the doctor remark the fact without hurting his wife’s feelings, as if she had personally made the bread and staked her reputation upon its giving perfect satisfaction. The doctor knew well this weakness, but had forgotten it for a moment. Had he been looking at her while he talked, he would have tempered his voice or words probably.

“A good wife, dear! of course you have,” he said, caressing her, “though I have not quite forgiven you for doubling my responsibilities.”

This was the doctor’s one marital teaze, which was so comically effective that he could not resist repeating it, occasionally, to hear her defend herself with the ingenuous concern of one-half conscious of being in the wrong, yet not knowing how. When this subject was exhausted, and Mrs. Forest’s temporary grief also, the subject of sending Clara to school was resumed. Mrs. Forest asked how it could be accomplished. “It will cost so much,” she said.

“Why, I am as rich as a Jew, Fannie,” he replied. “Old Kendrick actually paid me to-day all his long standing bill. You know I’ve just got him through a horrid case of peritonitis,” he added, with an inward chuckle, seeing that he had spoken ambiguously, and knowing that certain people are always anxious to know the name of a disease, which generally satisfies their curiosity in proportion to the incomprehensibility of the term—“a serious case of peritonitis, and feeling very comfortable to-day, but that his life was still in my hands, he had an access of gratitude, and promised to pay me every cent as soon as he got out of the house. I joked him and declared that my only sure way to get my fees was to dispatch him speedily, which I seriously thought I would do on reflection, as the settlement would be certain then. That joke did the business; for he made me ring for the servant, whom he ordered to bring him his writing materials, and then and there he made out a cheque for the amount.”

“But, dear, you should first have a nice whole suit of clothes yourself,” said Mrs. Forest.

“Oh no; I’ll get on well enough. I should feel too much like a swell in a whole new suit.” In truth, the good doctor had not experienced that luxury for years, and his appearance was not a great many removes from the condition known as “seedy;” but thanks to Mrs. Buzzell’s devotion, he was always kept supplied with elegant linen and hand-knit stockings for summer and winter, which he always wore long and gartered above the knee. In gloves he was somewhat extravagant, for he held that a physician’s hands should be preserved sensitive and fine to the touch; especially when he filled the office of surgeon as well as physician, as most country doctors do.

Dr. Forest’s medicaments in all ordinary cases were of the most simple kind, and his rival, Dr. Delano, and even old Dr. Gallup, were in much better repute at the druggists than he was, for his heart was always with the poor, and to these he generally furnished most of the medicines himself. He understood well the weakness of uncultivated people, shown nowhere more signally than in their faith in the potency of mysterious drugs; and when he called for “two glasses, two-thirds filled with fresh water,” he did it with an assumption of certainty that convinced his patient that life or death might be in those words, “two-thirds;” and when he emptied a harmless powder, perhaps of magnesia or carbonate of soda, into one and stirred it carefully, and then some other equally innocuous substance into the other glass, stirring each alternately, it was with an air that said plainly, “Beware how you trifle with the time and the manner of taking these!”

Though it can by no means be proved that the popular and almost adored Dr. Forest gave bread pills and innocuous medicines generally, yet it is exceedingly probable that he did, and his marvelous success goes far by way of corroboration. Apparently, he knew just what to do in all cases. Water he insisted upon so mercilessly that his patients became regularly habituated to taking a warm bath while they waited for his visit. To the questions of the better educated of his patients he used to say, “Lord bless you, how do I know? Do you think medicine a science whose every problem can be worked out by a formula like those of algebra or geometry? We knew precious little of the absolute value of medicines when all that is incontrovertible is admitted and all the rest rejected. One thing is certain, there is nowhere on this two-cent planet at present the conditions for perfect health, because there are nowhere the conditions for perfect happiness. Bless your heart! instead of being decrepit and played out at seventy or eighty years, we ought to be teaching boys how to turn double-back somersaults, or making sonnets to fresh and beautiful women who are great-grandmothers. Life, as we know it now, is but a miserable travesty of the real destiny of our race when we become integrally developed, and have brought the planet thoroughly under our united control. If a physician is up with the science of his time and a true man, about all he can say honestly is: keep your lungs, skin, liver, and kidneys in working order, lead an active, temperate life, possess your soul in quiet, and send for the doctor when you know you haven’t done these and want to shove the responsibility off upon him.”

He was severe to many of his patients, but so popular that he had to manœuvre shrewdly to give the young Dr. Delano a chance to establish himself. Among the poor, the old, and especially the forlorn, like poor Mrs. Buzzell, he made his longest visits; and where he knew that love and sympathy were “indicated,” he gave them freely, as in the case of this lonely woman. He often caressed her thin hand after counting her pulse, held his cool, soft, magnetic hand long upon her forehead; sometimes closing her eyes thus while he talked gayly, told her comical anecdotes in his life, which made her laugh, and so stimulated some laggard function into working order.

CHAPTER VI.
CLARA AT STONYBROOK COLLEGE.

“Stonybrook College” would have been more appropriately, as well as more modestly, termed Stonybrook School at the time Clara entered it, for it was hardly more than a high-school for girls, though it stood well among institutions for the education of young ladies at a time when the equal education of the sexes was deemed an utopian idea among most people. It ranks much higher now that preparatory schools of a nobler order have furnished a more advanced class of students, and so more truly deserves the name, college. It stands upon the summit of a grand swell of land overlooking a large provincial city. The grounds are beautifully wooded, and laid out in handsome lawns, gardens, and groves. It boasts a really promising botanical garden, and the practical instruction of the young ladies in botany has always been well and systematically conducted. Clara, after a short time, took the first place in the botanical class, and in most of her studies.

There was one thing about this school which rendered it unpopular among the superficial of society, who desire only that their daughters shall secure the honor of graduating, quite independent of the fact of the amount of culture that such honor should presuppose. Very many students who entered Stonybrook College never graduated, and there was for a long time a severe struggle between the president and certain of the board of directors on the question of lowering the standard required for graduation. The latter argued that the first requisite was to make the school popular; while the former, a really learned and progressive spirit, maintained that popularity secured by lowering the grade of requirements would simply result in a primary school, by whatever high-sounding name it might be called, and that this was not the object of the founder, and moreover was the sure method to destroy the nobler popularity that should be aimed at. The president and his friends finally carried the day, and it was this fact that determined Dr. Forest to choose this institution for his favorite child. She had now been a student there two years.

It was June, and a Thursday afternoon holiday. Through the groves and lawns the young girls promenaded in twos and threes, conversing with that enthusiasm about nothing which none but girls are capable of. When deeply enough penetrating into the grove to be out of sight of any “stray teacher,” as they would somewhat disrespectfully say, they often familiarly twined their arms about each others’ slender waists, and so continued their walks, joining other groups from time to time. Their conversation was of that lofty and learned order which girls from twelve to seventeen, in female colleges, naturally assume. It may not be amiss to take up a little time with a sample:

Nettie.—“Still two whole months before vacation! I declare, I shall die before the time comes.”

Hattie.—“I don’t think it seems so long. I do wish, Nettie, you had taken geometry this term. You’ve no idea how nice it is.”

Nettie.—“Thank you. Algebra is quite enough to drive me distracted. You are one of the strong-minded, you know. You just cram a few of your sines and cosines into my head, along with the surds and reciprocals already there, if you want to see a raving, incomprehensible ‘idgeot,’ as you call it.”

Hattie.—“I never pronounced it so in my life. You are the one to mispronounce words, and to make mistakes too. Why, you’ve just been talking of sines and cosines of geometry. Those are terms of trigonometry. Don’t you know it?”

Nettie.—“No; and what is more, I don’t care. If I had my way, I’d just burn all the algebras in the college.”

Carrie.—“I’m glad you haven’t your way, then. I think algebra perfectly splendid.”

Hattie.—“I like algebra too, but geometry is more interesting. I think it perfectly lovely.”

Nettie.—“I don’t believe either of you. Mathematics are a horrid bore anyway.”

Hattie.—“Mathematics are! O shade of Goold Brown!”

Nettie.—“Well, that ought to be correct. You wouldn’t say the ‘scissors is,’ would you?”

Hattie.—“I would if I wanted to, carissima mia.”

Carrie.—“You never call me Carissima, Hattie.”

Hattie.—“You see, you are Carrie in the positive, not cara, so you can’t be carissima in the superlative. Why don’t you laugh at my pun, you owls?”

Nettie.—“You don’t give time enough. I was just bringing my powerful mind to a focus on the punning point when you interrupted.”

Carrie.—“I was thinking of the dear, kind, old Signore Pozzese.”

Hattie.—“Mercy! Spare the adjectives. I had no idea you were so in love with that precious Italian professor; but you need not set your cap for him. He has no eyes but for one, and that is Signorina Clara. Everybody can see he’s lost his heart to her.”

Carrie.—“I can’t endure that Clara Forest. She puts on such airs of dignity and general superiority. Why, here she comes! I hope she didn’t hear me.”

Clara approached, reading aloud, but in a low monotone, from a little book. She did not notice the trio until close upon them. They greeted her kindly; and Carrie, who a moment before could not “endure” her, was specially sweet in her manner. But we should not be too severe upon Carrie’s hypocrisy. Most of us have been guilty of the same inconsistency in one or another form. These were all nice girls, aye, and bright girls too, naturally, despite their opinions upon algebra and geometry. When we consider the paucity of conditions for high culture that young women may command, we should wonder, not that they are so frivolous, but that they so often rise above the petty ambitions of fashionable life.

Clara passed on, after a few pleasant words, and sat down in a quiet nook to finish her book. It was the Jaques of George Sand; and as she read on she was deeply moved by the masterly rendering of the hopeless passion of the hero, and especially by his heroic sacrifice to his wife. Being thoroughly absorbed by her reflections and emotions, she did not hear the light step of Miss Marston, her favorite teacher, who came and sat down beside her.

“My dear, what have you been reading?” she asked. Clara handed her the book frankly, knowing well it would not be approved, for George Sand was one of the tabooed authors in Stonybrook.

“I am grieved to find you reading such books, Miss Forest,” said the teacher, looking very gravely at the pupil. Miss Marston’s home was in a town near Oakdale, and she had known Dr. Forest by reputation quite well. She knew of his omnivorous literary tastes, and was wondering if his daughter had not possibly inherited them.

Clara answered, looking straight in Miss Marston’s clear brown eyes, “I am sorry you are grieved—very sorry; but I cannot see why such a book as this should be classed with those unfit to be read.” And she blushed deeply, as girls will from a thousand different emotions.

“See how you blush while you say it,” said Miss Marston, in a tone of real severity.

“I blush at everything,” replied Clara, angry at the weakness; “but I would not say what I do not think—most certainly I would not to you.”

“Where did you obtain this book?”

“One of the students lent it to me.”

“Which one?”

“I must not say, because she asked me to not tell, and I promised. I wish I had not, for I do not like to confess this promise to you.” Clara was sorely troubled. She knew this teacher had a real affection for her, as, indeed, all her teachers had, for she was frank and straightforward always, never shirked any task, and was the life of all recitations in which she took part. She asked questions and explanations innumerable, and would never quit studying any difficult point until she had thoroughly mastered it. Such pupils are ever the delight and the support of the faithful teacher; and no matter whether personally sympathetic, or charming in other ways, they are sure to be honored and treated with great consideration by any teacher worthy of the name. There is no surer test of a teacher’s utter incapacity than that his favorites are the pretty, wheedling shirks of the classroom.

Miss Marston was silent for a little time after Clara’s expression of regret, and then she said kindly, “That is well said, Clara. Of course, you must keep your promise; but do you not see that you were wrong to borrow a book which your fellow-student was ashamed to have known she possessed?”

“I cannot say she was ashamed of having this book. I feel certain that if she had read it as carefully as I have, she would not have made the request. I could never be ashamed to own such a book as this.”

“That is no argument. You are too young and inexperienced to judge of books, and when your teachers forbid the reading of certain kinds of literature, it is because they know that their influence is baneful. Remember the old adage, ‘Touch pitch and be defiled.’”

“But I am sure this is not pitch,” Clara answered, spiritedly; “and I do not think there is so much wisdom in that old saying—or at least it is often misapplied. My mother used to make a great effort to keep Dan and me from playing with certain children; but my father always declared that we ought to play with poor, neglected children, who sought our society; because, as he said, if our manners were more gentle than theirs, the result would be a culture to them which we had no right to withhold. When my mother quoted this adage, he used to say, ‘Pitch will not stick to ice,’ meaning that the badness of these children would not hurt us if we loved the good and the beautiful, and sought it everywhere, as he had taught us to do.”

“Then you wish me to understand, I presume, that you set your judgment against mine, and will read pernicious books if it pleases you to do so?”

Clara looked hurt by this, and her faith in Miss Marston received a shock. Why could not this good, wise teacher understand at once, without so many words? By yielding graciously, Clara was sure of caressing words and the old mutual trust. She was tempted to do so, because her love of approval by those she admired was a strong passion. While different motives struggled for control, she remembered certain words of Dr. Forest, in his last conversation with her, in his study, the evening before she left, when he had held her on his knees and talked to her very seriously upon many matters, some of which he had never broached before. “Be magnanimous always to those who fail,” he had said; but Clara had never dreamed that one of her teachers would be “weighed in the balance and found wanting.” She had at the time thought only of her class-mates, who might fail in many ways. So when she spoke, as she did after a little pause, she had determined to rise or fall in her teacher’s estimation, as she must, by the expression only of the best and most honest sentiments of her heart.

“You have been so good to me, Miss Marston,” she said, and her words came with some difficulty—“you must know I am anxious to keep your good opinion of me; but I must be true to myself, and I will. I cannot think nor feel that this book is not good and moral. It has wakened my best feelings. In the story the wife, Fernande, ceases to love her husband, and loves some one else. The reader must feel the deepest sympathy for poor Jaques, who dies that he may not stand in the way of his wife’s happiness. I constantly felt, as I read, that if I were Fernande, I would torture myself sooner than let myself grow cold to such a grand, noble creature as Jaques. I am perfectly sure, if I were ever in a like position, I should be much more careful to take the wisest course from having read this book.”

“You are very different from other girls, Clara. It will not make you vain to tell you that you are eminently superior to most of them; but I fear you lack respect for your elders. You are self-willed; but I know you wish to do right. We will say no more about it;” and she took the young girl’s hand in both hers and caressed it softly. Love always won Clara. She was a creature of tender emotions; to see Miss Marston yielding touched her profoundly, and she said quickly, her eyes full of tears, “I must do just right about this, or I shall be horridly unhappy. You have known papa many years, and he spoke of you in the highest praise; but I have found you nobler and better than even he could tell me. You know he is what they call a liberal—a ‘free-thinker,’ as some say—and he is so just and noble in all his words and acts that I believe he must be right in his principles, though mamma does not think so. I know that you too are a ‘liberal’”—Miss Marston started—“O, I know. I have often heard you talking to other teachers, and I notice you take the very views that my father does of many things. Now, I will tell you what I will do. Will you promise me one little thing without asking what it is?”

“That, I should say, is something for me to do instead of you.”

“Well, it is preliminary to what I am to do.”

“I never do that, Clara—well, yes, I promise you, provided always it is not something absolutely absurd. What do you wish?”

“You said you had not read Jaques. I want you to read it carefully, just as I have done, and then if, in your judgment, it is a bad book for me to have read, I promise while I remain here to read nothing without your permission.”

Miss Marston crammed the brochure into her dress pocket, saying, “I like your trust in me, but you will be disappointed. I shall be forced to condemn, I know; but I will be fair; and now please to be careful how you call me a liberal. It is a very equivocal compliment for a lady.”

“Are not angels liberals?” asked Clara, smiling, the little wrinkles gathering about her pretty eyes as she spoke.

“I am not acquainted with the private opinions of that fraternity,” said Miss Marston, wondering what next.

“Because if you are, I always call you a liberal.” Miss Marston smiled, kissed Clara’s cheek, and walked on. She was a good little woman, who had drank rather deeply at the bitter fountains of life. She was in a safe haven now, and being a studious and conscientious teacher, did her work nobly and well.

CHAPTER VII.
DAN’S BUSINESS OPERATIONS.

Oakdale some years ago was a very old-fashioned village, built around the traditional “common,” facing which were two taverns, one called the “Rising Sun,” several country stores, a printing-office, many residences, more or less elegant, and the Congregationalist church. The Methodist was on a side street, and the Universalist, which had once occupied a position on the common itself, had been moved off to satisfy the tastes, and possibly the prejudices, of the citizens; for the Universalist was not the popular church of Oakdale, though its preachers generally “drew” well, the doctor said, among the floating population, and those who stubbornly refused to identify themselves with any sect whatever. Dr. Forest went sometimes to this unpopular church, but Mrs. Forest was a staunch member of the Congregationalist—the only one having any pretence to respectability in her eyes. In time Oakdale changed wonderfully, and some two years after Clara’s entrance into Stonybrook College, it had become quite a manufacturing centre, for the railroad had brought new vitality into the old-fashioned town. It was now a city; boasted two rival newspapers, three paved thoroughfares, and several nice brick sidewalks. The doctor’s business shared the common prosperity. Mrs. Forest delighted her soul in the multiplying cares incident upon the gratification in some degree of her social ambition. The twins were quite large girls, attending school in the village. Leila, who boasted that she was the elder, as she was by an hour or so, led her sister by the nose, figuratively speaking, being pretty and selfish, and therefore a tyrant. These precious sisters quarreled from their cradle up; yet they were attached to each other by a bond, not so palpable but hardly less effective, than that uniting the famous Siamese brothers, for they pined if separated for a single day; though their reunion was often followed by a disagreement that ended in fiery recrimination, if not in uprooted curls. Oh, those twins! Nature had somehow so exhausted herself in producing their bodies that there was no force left for their souls, which Dinah “clar’d to God” were wholly wanting. This was not true of Linnie, at least, for she was generally sweet in her temper, as well as kind and obliging, when in her best moods.

The Dykes family had broken up—gone no one knew or cared whither, all except Susie, who was left to shift for herself in the old house that had been their home. Here the doctor found her one day, weeping for her good-for-nothing brother, who, if report said truly, had good reasons for not appearing in Oakdale. The doctor at once cheered her heart by bidding her stop crying, and trust him as her friend. His kindness drew from her the fact, that Mrs. Dykes was only her step-mother, and Jim no relation whatever. Her father, a wretched victim of intemperance, had been dead for years, and poor Susie’s condition was forlorn in the extreme; and yet, for some reason which she did not explain, she seemed exceedingly loth to quit the place and go with the doctor to his home. He finally prevailed, however, and Mrs. Forest, who was first shocked at the doctor’s step—he “would do such strange things”—soon found Susie very useful, and the temporary asylum, that the doctor had asked his wife to extend to the girl, grew finally permanent. To Susie it was a new and better world; and as she loved Dan with all her lonely little heart, she served his family with devotion. Everything belonging to him was sacred in her eyes.

Dan, meanwhile, had disappeared some weeks from the paternal roof, having given notice to his mother of his intention to leave a few days before that event. Still she did not believe he could do such a thing, and when it occurred, she was sorely troubled, though he was, as he said, old enough to take care of himself. She had long since been compelled to abandon her cherished hopes for her first-born. He could not apply himself in school, and always laid the blame of his low grade upon the teacher, or upon some circumstance for which he, Dan, was wholly irresponsible. In the art of excuses he was perfect, and had been from his earliest years. These he gave in a glib, ready manner, looking up with frank eyes that never failed to deceive a stranger. He had as many projects as there were days in the year. At one time he would be a jeweler, and the doctor secured him a position where he might learn the trade. This he gave up in a week, and so with many other schemes, until his father was utterly discouraged; but he never uttered a word of blame, knowing well that Dan could no more change his nature than could the leopard his spots. When he left home, therefore, the doctor comforted his wife, assuring her that it was a good thing for Dan to strike out for himself, and that he was sure to return some day when she least expected it; and so he did—horror of horrors! He turned up one day on a peddler’s cart, and entering the house in his usual unceremonious way, solicited patronage for his unconscionably varied wares. Mrs. Forest came near fainting, but Dan greatly enjoyed horrifying her. He was not so satisfied with the effect upon the doctor, who said kindly, “My son, I would rather see you an honest peddler than a dishonest statesman.” These words rang in Dan’s ears. It seemed, then, that he could satisfy his father’s hopes for him by peddling Yankee notions and tin kettles! Nothing that had ever happened to Dan had really touched his self-conceit like this. He made no answer but a low whistle.

It was a quaint picture, there in the large old sitting-room. The doctor sat by the grate smoking his little Gambier clay pipe, with a goose’s wing-bone for a stem. Dan, rosy with health and strength, and long riding in the open air, whip in hand, his pantaloons inside his bootlegs, and Mrs. Forest hanging upon his muscular arm, a little pained that her son seemed so indifferent to her tenderness—a tenderness so great that she had not even noticed yet the disposition of the legs of his trowsers! He got away from his mother’s caresses as soon as he could without positive rudeness, for well he knew that there was “metal more attractive” in the house somewhere; having kept up a correspondence with Susie as well as was practicable with his being constantly moving from town to town. His mother would have something brought in for him to eat;—no, he would go into the kitchen and have Dinah give him something. He would much prefer that. Mrs. Forest did not once think of Susie, or perhaps she would have followed him. Certainly she would, had she known that Dinah was making an elaborate search for eggs in the barn. So Dan found Susie alone, and the meeting was very demonstrative, on his side at least. He held her pressed like a vise in his strong arms, making her both happy and wretched at once—happy at the rude proofs of his affection, and wretched lest her love for him should be discovered. Hearing steps he released her, and said he had come for something to eat. Susie, too full of joy at meeting the one being in the world who loved her, to know what she was about, brought Dan a plate of soda-biscuits, and then stopped to look at him. He crunched two or three between his strong white teeth, interspersing the operation with more kisses, and then Dinah was observed approaching the house. Susie disappeared into the pantry, conscious of the tell-tale blushes flushing her whole face.

“Lor bress you honey, I’se glad to see ye. I knowed ye hadn’t runned away.”

“You knew I’d turn up like a bad penny, Dinah. So I have, but I’m off again directly. I say, Susie,” he called, “if I’ve to eat any more of these crackers, do bring me some coffee, or a ramrod, or something to help get them down.”

“Lor sakes! Massa Dan, who gived ye such trash?” and bustling about she made him sit down, while she placed before him every delicacy she could lay her hands on. Susie, meanwhile, went on with her work quite unconscious of his presence, Dinah thought; but Mrs. Forest, coming in soon after, did not fail to notice the flush on Susie’s face, and to attribute it to Dan’s presence; so when he would not bring his peddler’s cart around to the barn, out of sight of prying eyes, nor stay even an hour longer, she did not press him much. Clearly he was better away, now that Susie Dykes was a fixture in the family, but she insisted upon his giving her a private interview after the doctor had been called away to his patients. She talked to him of religion, of duty, urged him to give up this peddling as unworthy of his talents, and above all things to avoid low connections. Not one word did she utter directly of that which lay nearest her heart, though Dan knew well what she meant by low connections. In brief, he was bored by his mother’s “preaching,” though he listened passively enough, but felt infinitely relieved when he mounted his cart and drove off, covertly throwing a kiss to Susie, who was watching him by the curtain edge of an upper window.

In fact, Dan had never led so free and easy a life before, and his adventures furnished matter to delight Susie’s heart; for under an assumed name he wrote her very constantly for a long time. After a while he gave up peddling, and became a brakeman on a railroad. This for a time filled his ambition, like a goblet, to the brim. But his income was decidedly small, and would never permit him to put enough by to marry Susie and run away with her, a feat he had long desired to accomplish. Clearly New England was a slow place for making money, when a fellow had nothing to commence on. If he only had this something to start with, he would succeed in any kind of mercantile operation. He had a talent for business. He had proved it by a successful enterprise when he was ten years old. This enterprise was the buying of some young ducks with money that the doctor had given him. They grew and flourished on corn and other food that cost Dan nothing, and when they were ready for market, he sold them to his mother at a high price, and ate them himself! This operation had often been quoted by the doctor to dampen Dan’s ardor when he wanted money to commence business for himself. The doctor knew the volatile nature of his boy, and that he would not succeed unless conditions were about as favorable as in the duck enterprise. Still the good doctor had done much for Dan, being willing to buy him all the experience he could possibly afford, and he regretted that this was so little; but he must, as he told Dan, look out for his girls; boys could rough it, and learn prudence and forecast by experience. This was on the occasion of Dan’s next visit home, when he was wild with the desire to set up a livery stable, with the secret idea of finally doing a “big thing” in fast horses. This part, however, he concealed. The doctor having been able to put by a little sum for his “girls” during the past few years, was almost persuaded to yield and start Dan in his new business scheme; but this time Mrs. Forest’s entreaties and tears prevailed, at least for the time; not that she believed wholly that Dan would fail, but keeping a stable was such a disreputable thing in her eyes. It was so closely and inevitably connected with drinking and fast young men, both of which, to her horror, she had found that he had a taste for, though not as yet developed to any alarming extent.

When, therefore, the doctor got ready to give his final answer, Dan was disposed to be quite saucy. He told his father that “other fellows” were not expected to get a start in the world without help, and that if Clara had wanted such assistance it would be forthcoming.

“Well, Dan,” replied the doctor, rising and falling softly on his heels, as he stood with his back to the fire, in his little study, “I think you may be right. If Clara wanted to go into the horse business on graduating from Stonybrook, I think I should lay no straw in her way. By Jove! I think she’d succeed, though.”

“Succeed!” Dan echoed, in contempt. This irritated the doctor a little.

“Yes, sir, succeed. I think she would. She has ten times the brains of any young fellow I know. Women are going into business now-a-days, and considering their want of business experience, their success is marvelous. I can’t say I’d prefer the horse business for Clara, but I hope to Heaven she will take up with something beside matrimony. Girls have a poor show as things are, and a father feels bound to look out for them first.”

“I don’t see it”—answered Dan, somewhat irreverently—“I think girls have a much better show than we have;” and he sat down, with the back of a chair between his legs, and went on: “I don’t see anything much easier than to sit in the parlor, drumming on the piano until the richest fellow comes along, then nab him.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Dr. Forest. “You envy them that fate, do you? How would you like some rich woman to offer to give you her name, and to keep you during good behavior; that is, as long as you remained devoted to her, faithful, and the rest? What would you say to such an offer?”

Dan laughed aloud at the picture, but said, with some laudable confusion, “If you want my honest opinion, sir, I shouldn’t like to swear. I could stand the test.”

This answer took the doctor unawares, and he lost his gravity at once. Besides, being a true believer in the absolute equal rights of all human beings, the case had not seemed half so shocking as he would have it appear to Dan. His conscience accused him, and he said, smiling, “Well, my boy, I like your frankness. I heard a witty woman say once that if men, with their present moral standard, were suddenly to be transformed into women, they would all be on the town in a week. The fact is, neither sex should be kept by the other. Independence, honest self-support, by honest, productive industry, is the thing for women as well as men;” and as the doctor turned to empty his pipe into the grate, he asked Dan how much money he wanted to establish his livery business. Dan explained, with minute detail, just how matters stood, how fortunate the opening, how little the investment required, how certain the success. The doctor promised the funds, confessing at the same time that he had little faith, but that he could not endure that his son should think his father lacking in the desire to help him. “I much prefer you should think me a fool, my boy, than that you should believe me cold-blooded and calculating in my dealings with any one.”

Now the thing was done, the doctor had to meet his wife and try to convince her, what he did not believe himself, that he had acted wisely. He failed miserably, and she wore an injured, martyr air for days, not at all comforted by his justification, which was the old saw, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” Dan would not be persuaded to change his mind and enter some other business. He talked of horses till she was glad to drop the subject; and in three months had lost everything. The doctor paid his debts, but said not one word of reproach, and Dan went back to the railroad, fully persuaded that he would have made money enough could he only have had more to throw away.

CHAPTER VIII.
PHILOSOPHY VANQUISHED.

One night, some months before Clara’s final return from Stonybrook, the doctor returned home weary and “cross,” as he said. To the twins this used to mean that he was not in the humor to enjoy their clambering over him; but they felt themselves young ladies now, and “cross” meant that the doctor hoped they had done their piano practising during the day. Their torturing the piano was something endless and excruciating, but the doctor bore all domestic annoyances with the kind, long-suffering spirit that characterized the good family man—the great man, indeed—that he really was.

Women are beginning to see the folly of allowing their “lords” to write the biographies of great men, and are gradually taking the task upon themselves. When they do their full share of this work, there will be found in history many pigmies that would have swelled to colossi under the pens of their own sex; for their claims to the honor of greatness as moral forces will be judged by the way they treat women, specially and generally. A man may be great in a particular sense, if he is nothing but a military or political leader, or profound as a scientist; but he can never be great integrally as a man, if he lacks tenderness, justice, or faith in humanity. Men who are very tender as lovers, and deeply sensitive to the influence of women, usually have the reputation among brutal men of being “hen-pecked”—a word never found in the vocabulary of refined people.

On this occasion, as the doctor’s family sat down to tea, Mrs. Forest enquired after the health of Mrs. Buzzell, whom the doctor had been visiting regularly for many days. She was more comfortable, the doctor said.

“I don’t think,” remarked Mrs. Forest, “that her illness would endure so long if Dr. Delano attended her.”

“Oh, ho! A reflection upon my professional skill,” said the doctor, wiping the creamy tea from his grizzly moustache; but he added, laughing, “If there is anything Mrs. Buzzell enjoys, it is a good long serious illness.”

“That is because you pet her so. I think she is a ridiculous old thing.”

“That is not kind, Fannie. I don’t see how you can speak so of a good old friend like that. We ought never to forget that she is somewhat enfeebled by age, and really has no one to care for her.”

“I don’t see that that is any reason why you should make a martyr of yourself.”

“Oh, I do not. It is pleasant to me to see her faded eyes light up when I enter the room. I know I am the medium of a great consolation to her; and giving happiness should make us happy always.”

“Really! You are quite tender to your interesting patient.”

“Fannie, you disgust me,” he said, setting his cup down emphatically. “If this infernal world chooses to be cruel and mean, to laugh at those who are pining for sympathy and love—you ought to be capable of better sentiments.” The doctor added a more vehement word.

“What! profanity? You do pain me so by your violent way of speaking,” complained the doctor’s wife.

“There!” said Leila, “papa is really getting cross;” and lancing a confident saucy look at her father, whose crossness had no terrors for her, she seized her gentler-willed sister and waltzed her out of the room to the accompaniment of “Good riddance, you sauce-box,” from the doctor, and a stately rebuke from Mrs. Forest. When they were alone, Mrs. Forest repeated in other words her last remark to the doctor, who answered—

“Yes, I know I am always giving you pain when I remind you of your want of sympathy except for those who are a part of you. One’s children are not all the world, and to love only them is narrow and selfish. Suffering, wherever we find it, has claims upon us.”

“Charity begins at home,” said Mrs. Forest, sententiously.

“Yes; begins, but it should not end there. I have been wondering every day why you do not go and see Mrs. Buzzell, knowing how lonely she is, with no society but that of her old servant.” Now Mrs. Forest was indeed intending to go and sit awhile with her old friend, and carry her some dainties; but she did not feel in a gracious mood, and would not confess it. She said rather, “She has too much of your society to miss mine, I think.”

This was exasperating. The doctor rose, and Mrs. Forest touched the spring of the table-bell. “Somehow you will forever dance in a pint-pot; you cannot see anything in a broad light,” he said, “and Leila is going to be just like you. She requires nice dresses, a little music, a little flattery, a good deal of sentimental, unchristlike piety, and her cup runneth over. A grand life, a grand emotion, will never come to her. It would burst her like a soap-bubble, as it would you, to do anything not set down as proper by your set.”

“I should like to know some of your women who see things in a broad light. Who are they?”

“Well,” said the doctor, after a pause, “it is no use to cite examples. Most of them have someway outraged Mrs. Grundy, and you would not believe in them.”

“Yes; I suppose, in order to see things in a broad light,” said Mrs. Forest, contemptuously pronouncing the words, “one must become disreputable. Thank you; I prefer a good reputation, and what you are pleased to call a pint-pot dance.”

“By ——,” exclaimed the doctor, excitedly, “I do believe the first condition for the development of broad sympathies for humanity in a woman’s heart is the loss of respectability as defined by hypocrites and prudes.” Mrs. Forest looked horrified; but the entrance of Susie to remove the tea-things in answer to the bell, prevented her reply. As Susie went on with her work noiselessly, avoiding the slightest clatter of cups and spoons, the doctor continued, watching her movements as he spoke: “We should cultivate a feeling of unity with all nature, of which we are a part. That will force us out of our narrow lives, and make happiness possible to us only when all around us are happy. The inculcation of this sentiment of unity is so important, that we cannot overestimate it, for it will lead to grand association schemes for the amelioration of mankind. There are people in this town to-day, who labor hard from year to year, and yet want the conditions for a decent life; children who never have the chance of seeing a fine picture, or wearing a pretty suit of clothes.”

“I know that is very sad, but your free-thinkers do nothing for them. It is the ladies of our church who carry food and clothing to the children of the poor.” Mrs. Forest, as she said this, noticed something in her husband’s face which made her add, “You know, my dear, I always except you.”

“Why,” said the doctor, “here are the Unitarians, all free-thinkers, according to your creed, for they do not accept your orthodox scheme of salvation; but you can’t deny they do more for the poor than all the orthodox in the country. Take the firm of Ely & Gerrish, one a Unitarian and the other a Deist, as they call him; they have built a magnificent home for their workmen, whereby they are provided with many of the luxuries of wealth, and at about the cost of ordinary lodgings. How much nobler it is to help people to independence than to inculcate the spirit of begging, by your small charities!”

“We can’t all build workingmen’s homes, like Ely & Gerrish,” said Mrs. Forest, “but that should not hinder us from doing what we can.”

“I admit the worthiness of your motives, and the temporary good you do; but it is none the less true that it degrades the being to be the recipient of charity. No; charity don’t work, as a social system. The poor-house don’t work. The orphan asylum don’t work. Now, to one who has the scientific method in his examination of social problems, the moment a system don’t work, he knows it is wrong. Then the first duty is to discover why it don’t, and substitute a better.”

“All of which is very easy—in words,” said Mrs. Forest.

“In words!” echoed the doctor. “Why, we are doing it literally every day. Take the steam-engine and the telegraph. When the necessity arose for more rapid transportation, we tried awhile to breed faster and stronger horses, make better wagons and roads, but we found that did not work, and so we substituted the steam-car and the railroad; so with the postal system, the telegraph and the steam printing-press.”

Mrs. Forest saw that the doctor held a strong position logically, so she waived the question by giving some final orders to Susie about work for the next morning, and then dismissed her summarily. When she was gone the doctor said, “Do you think you are as kind to that poor child as you ought to be?”

“Dear me! what next?” answered Mrs. Forest, with a sigh. “Yes, I think I am. I give her time to sew for herself, and she has a good home. I must say she behaves remarkably well, considering her bringing up.”

“I am greatly interested in her,” the doctor said. “I wish Clara was here. That’s a girl after my own heart, you know. Clara has the true democratic—that is, the true human spirit. She would pity this lonely Susie, and help her to have some object in life.”

“Object in life! Why, what better object can she have than to behave herself, and be happy by doing her duty?” Mrs. Forest, with her “little hoard of maxims,” was armed at all points. It was as hard to grapple with her as with a porcupine. She was so utterly different from the doctor in her way of looking at things, that it is hard to do her justice. The doctor’s radical ideas had always alarmed her, and it had troubled her exceedingly to find that Clara delighted in just those radical notions that were her horror. It was clear, too, that Clara wrote her mother from duty—short, dutiful, correct, and very commonplace notes. To her father she scrawled long, rapid, charmingly frank and interesting letters, signing herself always “Papa’s Own Girl.” To her mother she invariably subscribed herself, “Your affectionate daughter,” which indeed Mrs. Forest considered in rather more ladylike taste, but she was a little jealous all the same.

When Mrs. Forest gave her opinion, in such a decided manner, about Susie’s duty, the doctor paused awhile and filled his pipe in an absent kind of way, holding his box of tobacco with some difficulty, so as to not disturb “Hommie,” the cat, who would jump upon his knee whenever he sat down. Mrs. Forest was never troubled with such familiarity on the part of Hommie, so named by the twins in honor of his perilous adventure in the hominy pot when a kitten. “Doing one’s duty,” the doctor said, “is not all there is of life. This Susie must feel the need of friends sadly. I wish you would take more interest in her, Fannie—talk to her and gain her sympathy.”

“I don’t care to talk to her much, and she don’t care to hear me.”

“That is because you talk to her about saving her soul—a subject about which she knows just as much as you do. Of course, it must bore her. Talk to her of herself; get her to read, and to take interest in some subject.”

“She’s not very intellectual,” replied Mrs. Forest, laconically.

“What!” said the doctor. “Why, she’s as bright as a dollar. See what a fine head she has!”

“Very likely. I don’t believe in heads, as you do. Some of the most stupid people I know are all head.”

“Ah! quality as well as quantity must be considered. In this case the quality is good.”

“I have not much hope for her. To be sure she goes to church, but I think it may be from the fear of displeasing me if she stays at home.”

“I am sorry she goes at all from that motive,” said the doctor.

“When Dan is here, she stays at home evenings, and I notice how she looks at him. When he is not here she often goes out in the evening. I’m sure I don’t know where she goes nor what she does.”

“Well, don’t be meanly suspicious. I know the girl’s heart is right. What can you expect? You treat her like a menial, and she feels it. She does your bidding because it means her daily bread, and because she has lost her heart to Dan. Poor little thing! That’s the saddest of all. She’s happy if she can only look at him; but otherwise finding no companions, no sympathy here, of course she seeks the few acquaintances she has outside, in the hope of answering this need—a need as imperative as that for food or air. You will some time find that it is a misfortune that you cannot take her into your heart and help her more. Let her think that Dan is the only creature that cares for her, and she will come to depend too much upon his regard, which I doubt not is already on the wane.”

“Yes; I think he would like to erase that abominable tattooing. Silly boy!”

“I’m not sure but that is the evidence of the best impulse that ever swayed him.”

“Mercy! doctor, how can you talk so? How would you like your only son to marry such a person?”

“He might do worse,” answered the doctor, decidedly.

This was too much for Mrs. Forest’s patience—too much for adequate expression in decorous words; so she folded her sewing, and left the doctor to the cat and his pipe.

CHAPTER IX.
THE LION’S DEN.

Susie Dykes was a little woman even among the rather diminutive. She had pretty soft grey eyes, a slender, well-shaped waist, and a wealth of light yellow hair. The pretty and simple way she arranged it the doctor had often noticed. She combed it straight back, twisted a part of it into a heavy coil, which she passed over the top of her round head, carrying the end back, and braiding it in with the rest to form a knot, fastened low with a comb. It was a very pretty, Quakerish coiffure, but very becoming. Considering the low family from which she came, the quiet and even distinguished air about her was marvelous. Mrs. Forest could not understand it, and so she refused to admit its existence. The doctor always spoke to Susie with great gentleness; but as the twins snubbed her, and his wife’s dignified coldness oppressed her heavily, he forbore to be as familiarly kind with her as he wished, lest the contrast should make her dislike his wife and daughters. But he went as far as he thought prudent. Once he told her that her ears were as pretty as Clara’s; a compliment that little Susie never ceased to be proud of. Lately, by the doctor’s influence, Mrs. Buzzell, now recovered from her illness, had become quite interested in Susie, and had helped her about her wardrobe, which showed want of means, though not of mending, for Susie was naturally neat about everything. Mrs. Forest gave her due credit for this, knowing that the instruction that she must have received from Mrs. Dykes was none of the best.

Poor Susie’s child-life had been a sad one, like the lives of the children of the poor generally; and she was happier now than she had ever been, despite the cold, unsympathetic relation she bore to Mrs. Forest, whom she longed to love like a daughter; for whatever belonged to Dan, was precious in her eyes. She was naturally very bright, as the doctor said, but what little education she had received in a neighboring district school had been painfully gained through the persecutions of more fortunate school-mates, who, with the savage cruelty of children, made sport of her poverty, not knowing what they did.

It is a folly, doubtless, to dress up little children like popinjays, that they may outshine their companions, and thus cultivate their own vanity at the expense of nobler feelings; but certainly it is a vital wrong to send a child among his fellows in a mean and untidy attire. For not having the philosophy of maturer years to support him against the ridicule he excites, he is either humiliated and degraded by it, or else moved to revenge or hate; and these feelings, if long entertained, crush out the finer possibilities of his nature, and so in both cases he is robbed and wronged. The ridicule and persecution that Susie had endured had the usual effect upon the sensitive of her sex. She was humiliated, and answered only with tears. She had never dreamed that she had elements of real loveliness in mind and person, and when Dan first began to notice her—he a proud, handsome fellow, belonging to the best of Oakdale’s choice society—she was transported with joyful gratitude, and would have laid down her life for him without counting it much of a sacrifice.

When Dan failed in his livery-stable enterprise, he went back to the railroad, and soon rose to the position of conductor, where he seemed really to have found his level. He liked the position, gave good satisfaction to the company, and received a very fair salary for his work. Susie, meanwhile, loved him more and more, and longed for, yet dreaded, his bearish caresses. The opportunity to see her alone did not occur often, for he was home only on Sundays, and then she went to church with Mrs. Forest. This annoyed Dan; and the obstacles in the way of passing an hour alone with Susie were many, and almost insurmountable. The twins, either one or both, had still the most remarkable talent for being just where they were not wanted. He used to send them away from the garden or orchard when he chanced to find Susie there; but they were apt to tell of this, which troubled Susie, and so he desisted. The last time he had tried to get rid of Leila, endeavoring to show her that she ought to go and practice her piano studies, he received the pert answer, “Thank you; I don’t play secular music on Sunday.” Dan answered with a long crescendo whistle, and abandoned tactics in Leila’s case. But fate sometimes gave him a few minutes with Susie. On one occasion she had gone at Dinah’s request to bring pears from the orchard—Dinah having very possibly an ulterior motive, for Dan had been very gracious to the old servant lately. He followed Susie after a few minutes—a very few—leisurely smoking a cigar.

As a specimen of a fine animal, Dan was certainly handsome; and this is hardly doing him justice, for it must be admitted that very good women—aye, and very superior women—have adored just such fine animals. There must be some justification, which severe moralists cannot comprehend, for action and reaction are equal. Dan was tall, his back finely curved, broad shoulders, and his head was right regally poised thereon. He had bright dark eyes, curly brown hair, a light, youthful moustache and slight side-whiskers, and what would be called a fine mouth, though not of the nobler type to which Clara’s belonged. Hers might be termed sensuous, his sensual; yet perhaps the term is too severe. It was pleasant to look at Dan’s mouth when he talked, and it must be confessed that his kisses were found distractingly sweet to some others beside little Susie.

On entering the part of the orchard where Susie was, he leaned against the trunk of an old fruit-tree and called her to him.

“I must not stay long,” she said, looking up lovingly into his face, as she stood before him. “Dinah will be waiting for these;” and she blushed and dropped her pretty eyes among the fruit.

“Let her wait,” he said. “You don’t mind keeping me waiting, I notice;” and throwing away his cigar, he drew her into his arms and kissed her rosy lips again and again, holding her like a vise. Susie wished to remain there forever, though she kept denying him her lips, and hiding her face on his breast. That was at least one feeling; another was a strong impulse to run away, but she dared not show this for fear of displeasing him. When, therefore, Leila came running down the path bareheaded, her hair streaming out on the wind, it was a relief to Susie, though an exasperation to Dan.

As time wore on from Sunday to Sunday—for Susie counted time only by the slow recurrence of these days—she began to be troubled a little about Dan’s regard for her. To be sure, he always told her he loved her dearly, and that she was “sweeter than a rose;” but he seemed to talk less of their future, and his new life out in the world had changed his manner to her, which was not so respectful as in the olden time. Ah! the olden time, when Susie had been so ashamed of Jim and his ways, so impatient of her rude surroundings, until Dan appeared and gladdened all her life as the sunshine gladdens the little wayside flower. She had never been troubled about his demonstrations then, and she passed in retrospection the old days when the boyish lover had scarcely dared to press her hand. She recalled continually one particular evening when he had found her alone—the first and last time they had ever been alone for a whole evening. That was the time when he gave her his first kiss—a quick little touch on the cheek, not like the burning kisses he insisted upon now. Where had he learned so much about love-making? He knew little enough about it then, when, blushing even like herself, he had made her promise to be his forever, and sealed the betrothal by that indelible record upon his arm. Clearly there was a change in Dan, but Susie’s heart refused to recognize it as a vital change. It was, indeed, the same old drama, played over and over again since the world began—the woman at home, dependent, busied with her little routine of duties, cherishing and nursing her one tender romance; the man mixing with the broader world, yielding to its varied attractions, taking and giving love, or the mockery of love, wherever he can find it, and so daily unfitting himself more and more for the rôle in which the home-keeping woman has cast him. Susie waited and trusted, but life during the week was very dull; the few acquaintances of her former life attracted her less and less, and she ceased altogether to visit them. This time happened to be a season of revivals, and Oakdale received a large influx of the “spirit.” The twins became “serious,” much to the joy of Mrs. Forest and—it must be confessed—the disgust of the doctor, who entertained very phrenological views upon the subject of sudden changes of nature. But under the influence of this seriousness, Leila, who had the most serious attack, became suddenly gracious to Susie, and would insist upon her being saved also; so she dragged her to prayer-meetings in season and out of season, the latter being on Sunday evenings, when Dan was at home. Dan could scarcely believe his senses when he found that there was in this world anything that could charm Susie away from him, even for an hour; so she had the satisfaction of witnessing another revival, that of Dan’s flickering affection for his first love. He did, indeed, seem to treat her with more softness, though he distrusted the value of her piety, since it caused her to hold more strict views on the propriety of vehement kisses. The twins, after a few months, lost their passion for prayer-meetings entirely, but Susie kept right on, with that sincerity and singleness of heart that characterized all that she did. She had found sympathy among certain people of the church, though of rather a stiff and at-arms-length kind; but in her own sincere devotion, and in the reading of religious books, she found much consolation. Not that she could understand them or criticise them; but when she came to anything that breathed the loving spirit of Christ, it sank into her lonely heart, and blessed her with something like peace.

One perfect moonlit evening, about a year after the events just narrated, and only a few months before Clara’s final return from Stonybrook College, Susie, returning home from some evening “meeting,” unexpectedly met Dan. He drew her hand caressingly over his arm, saying, as he turned to walk home with her, “Susie does not care for me any more.”

“O, Dan!” she exclaimed, in an imploring tone, for her little heart was full of its best emotions, and this want of faith in her love pained her.

“Fact. She has become a saint, and so cares nothing for my kisses.”

“O, you wrong Susie, Dan. She does love you dearly.”

“I know. She says she prays for me, and I don’t believe in prayers. Kisses are ‘indicated,’ as doctors say, in my case.”

“You do wrong to speak so, Dan. Surely it is good to pray when one is lonely and sad. I try to be good, but I am not, very. I fear I shall never go to Heaven.” Dan, for reply, gave his crescendo whistle, and then said, stopping short in the bright moonlight, and looking down into her face, “The idea of a good child like you troubling your little head about Heaven. The domestic economy of that institution must be very shiftlessly managed if such as you are not in great demand.”

“O, you must not talk so, Dan! I do so wish you could see religion as it really is.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Dan. “If I must be a spoon, I prefer to be made so by a live woman, not a morbid longing to twang a golden harp.”

“Your father does not talk like that,” replied Susie, who was always timid before Dan’s outbursts of humor, but the belief that she was in the right made her bold. “I know he will not go to church, but he is so good! and he never says anything against others going, if they find spiritual food in what he says are dry husks to him.”

“He’s a fine old chap, no mistake about that, and he forgets more every day than most people ever know; but he’s soft in spots. If I had only known him when he was a young man, I should have helped him to cut his eye-teeth.”

“Ah!” said Susie, “what you call his ‘soft spots’ are his noblest qualities. What can be more benevolent and sweet than his treatment of poor old Mrs. Buzzell?”

“Is that a conundrum?” Dan asked, in his rollicking way.

“He is so good!” said Susie, taking no notice of Dan’s levity; “and I often think if he would join the church it would influence you——”

“No, it wouldn’t,” interrupted Dan. “I’m only sensitive to your influence. You could do anything with me if you loved me as you once did.” They had just entered the gate and stopped a moment under the lilacs by the path. Susie looked up into Dan’s face and said, with a voice that trembled, “It is cruel for you to doubt me. I have not changed, unless”—“to love you more,” she would have said, but her words were checked by the depth of her emotion.

“You do not show it, then.”

“O Dan! I pray for you always. I think of you every moment. How can I prove it better?” she asked, with despairing tenderness.

“O, much better you can prove it, Susie;” and under the fragrant lilacs, under the dear, bright stars, a thought blacker than mortal night entered Dan’s heart.

“How do I know you pray for me?” he asked, caressing her hand very softly. “I do not hear you. Come to my room and pray for me there, and I shall believe you.”

“Do you really wish me to?” she asked, with a look that would have softened any heart but that of this sleek young tiger, whose white teeth glistened in the moonlight.

“I will,” she said simply, mentally reproaching herself for a momentary suspicion that had entered her mind.

When Susie entered Dan’s room on her pious mission, he at once closed the door and locked it. Susie protested earnestly, but the only reply it elicited was a long-continued fit of subdued laughter which Dan indulged himself in, tilting back his chair and holding his fingers interlaced at the back of his head. Then he insisted upon a kiss as a preliminary.

“No, no,” cried Susie. “Open the door and let me go. O Dan, you were not serious, after all. I wish I had not believed you;” and the poor girl covered her face and sobbed.

“Serious? Never was so serious in my life, as I can prove to you; but what is the use of praying for me if my heart is not in the right mood, and nothing can do that but a kiss, though a hundred would make it surer. How Susie must love me. She cries because I ask for one.” * * * *

Susie never prayed for Dan that night. Her prayers were all for herself. Alas! that they should have availed so little!

CHAPTER X.
CLARA’S RETURN—THE DRAMA IN THE DOCTOR’S STUDY.

The early days of September had come, and the day of Clara’s return. Dinah had scoured every pot and pan until they shone like mirrors, cooked the cakes and “lollypops” generally that Clara had liked so well as a child, for she was still a child in Dinah’s thought, which took no note of the changes that four years must bring to a young lady. She longed for Clara’s final homecoming, for between the twins and her there had always been a kind of feud, and they were, according to her, “no comfort to the house;” and though she liked Susie very much, there was nothing in the world so bright and lovely in her eyes as “Miss Clary.”

All was joy and bustle in the doctor’s house. The “fatted calf,” figuratively speaking, was ready, and the best chamber, newly fitted up for Clara, had received the addition of another bed, for Miss Marston was coming with her, at the cordial invitation of the doctor and Mrs. Forest. They wished to express their gratitude for her kindness to their child during her term at Stonybrook, and as Miss Marston had considerable curiosity to see the eccentric Dr. Forest, it was very pleasant to accept the invitation. The friendship between her and Clara had begun early after their meeting, and had soon ripened into a more tender regard and confidence than either women or men often inspire in each other. The result of Clara’s tactics regarding Jaques had even added to this mutual esteem, for Miss Marston frankly confessed that the motive of the book was noble, and though she thought it too emotional for young girls as a rule, admitted that it would do no harm to Clara, because she was disposed to be a “philosopher and an observer,” as she said. After this, Clara’s reading was never criticised. She was allowed full range in the college library, and certain of the alcoves, seldom visited except by one or two of the teachers, were familiar to her. She had graduated with the first honors, and there were not a few tears of real regret when she bade her school friends good-bye.

Clara had been home only once during her long absence, and the meeting with the dear ones at home was a great joy. Miss Marston was introduced, and then came the embraces: first the mother’s, then the twins, who were astonished into silence by the queenly carriage and address of Clara. Dr. Forest stood talking with Miss Marston, waiting his turn, and having no eyes but for his daughter. She came presently, and Miss Marston politely moved away. “The sweetest last!” whispered Clara, as her father pressed her to his heart, answering only, “Papa’s own girl.” Here fat old Dinah was descried in the dining-room, wiping her grinning face with her apron. At a gesture from Clara she came to the drawing-room door, and Clara submitted to be hugged, and kissed, and “bressed,” and cried over till she cried anew herself. Miss Marston looked a little surprised at this familiarity with a negro servant, until she recalled the fact that the doctor’s family had lived many years in the South, where, there being never a possible question of equality before the late civil war, the negro was often petted even like much-loved brutes.

That evening there was a grand reception in the doctor’s old-fashioned house, in honor of Clara’s return. Dan came in after all the friends had arrived, and for a time he saw no one but Clara, who advanced to meet him, offering him her hand affectionately, but instead of taking it, he grabbed the whole stately person of his sister and gave her a most bearish hugging and kissing, which embarrassed her somewhat, perhaps, because she knew Dr. Delano’s eyes were upon her. She had just left his side, and the few minutes conversation with him had given her a taste of feminine power. She had seen in every look, and word, and movement, that she impressed him deeply. After escaping from Dan’s grip, she glanced back to Dr. Delano. His eyes were averted. Was it from disgust at Dan’s rough way of meeting her, or from delicacy? At all events he seemed to have dropped her out of his thoughts, and was apparently greatly absorbed in conversation with Leila, and as he talked he occasionally twisted the long ends of a fine dark moustache. He was a rather distinguished looking man, perhaps a little too self-conscious, and old in Leila’s eyes, though in the prime of life, being not much over thirty.

Before Dan would let Clara go, he said, glancing at the piano, where a quiet, graceful lady was just sitting down to play, “That washed-out virgin is your divinity, Miss Marston, I presume.”

“Hush! brother. You will never speak so of her when she has once deigned to notice you. No one escapes the magic of her style, I assure you.”

“I wouldn’t give a sixpence for one woman’s judgment of another, sis; but I’ll try on the magic as soon as you like. See! there’s my bête noir making dead for me;” and leaving his sister to entertain Mrs. Buzzell, he just nodded to her and went to Susie, who was sitting quite alone in the corner of the room, pretending to be interested in an album of photographs. He greeted her with a pleasant word, and her sense of being neglected vanished instantly. Ah! is it counted a blessing to love like this poor child? Sentimental or emotional people never count themselves happy except when floundering in some sea of passionate madness. Do they not deceive themselves as to the nature of happiness? Is it well for any human soul to so depend upon another for every thrill of pleasure; aye, to have the very literal beating of the heart, in its normal way, dependent upon the smiles, the tender words, of any single creature among all the good and beautiful beings that the world contains? Be it wise or foolish, it is the fate of many people to love in just this mad way; though it excites the contempt of those who can regulate the play of their emotions as easily as we do the movement of a clock by raising or lowering the pendulum.

Susie kept on turning the leaves of Clara’s album, though listening intently to every syllable her lover uttered. Stopping longer over one, he noticed it. “Clara’s tenth wonder, eh?” he said. “How do you like it?”

“I think it very beautiful; don’t you?”

“Bosh! she has no color, no life,” he answered, glancing toward the original. “Why, you are a thousand times prettier, Susie.” This made the little heart very happy indeed; and she looked up into Dan’s face with a loving, trusting pride, that touched him for a moment; the next, he was forced to give his attention to Miss Marston, whose fine voice swelled through the room in the brindisi of La Traviata, the one bit of Italian music that Dan happened to know well, and as he listened, he was entranced. The voice seemed to upbear him as on wings. How passionately the pale little woman sung. Could such a voice belong to the commonplace lady he had thought Miss Marston to be? A few minutes later, when he was presented to her, and her little white hand lay in his for a moment, he longed to kiss it; and was consciously awkward as he spoke the words of greeting. Miss Marston knew how to put him at his ease at once, he never suspecting that she was exercising a common art among certain refined people of society. She made him thoroughly satisfied with the way he had deported himself, and he left her with a sense of delight, as if he had covered himself with glory. He returned to her as soon as he could, and scarcely noticed Susie for the rest of the evening. Susie waited until sure that Dan had no thought of returning to talk with her any more, and when she could no longer control her emotion from the company, she crept away to her room, and cried bitterly, while the sound of music and joyous laughter from below fell like mockery upon her lonely heart.

Dan’s infatuation for Miss Marston was sudden and irresistible, and soon became evident to everybody. To Clara it was an evidence of appreciation which she had thought him incapable of; and having no knowledge of his relation to Susie, she was delighted, though in her eyes Miss Marston was too good for Dan, and that he might win her seemed an absurdity. She thought, however, with the faith in love that all women cherish, that his admiration would have a softening and refining influence, which in this case was much needed. Miss Marston was very gracious. She sang for him whenever he asked her, and without the least effort charmed him in every way. When he made her a compliment, instead of saying that she hated flattery, as most country girls have the bad manners to do, she smiled and thanked him. In truth, her whole air and manner was a revelation of womanhood to Dan. He received her gracious politeness as a sign of preference, and before a week had passed, Susie was a millstone about his neck. She, meanwhile, half dazed with the knowledge of Dan’s disaffection, and the fate worse than death that hung over her, went about the house, pale, silent, brooding over the thought of death as the only possible escape for such as she. Mrs. Forest was quite touched by her sad face, treated her more kindly than usual, and even seemed disposed to talk to her. She asked her one day why she never went to see her friends, as she used to do.

“I have no friends,” Susie answered, with a stony expression that alarmed Mrs. Forest. What could she mean? “It must be,” she said to herself, “Dan’s attention to Miss Marston. Poor thing! I wonder if she really expected him to marry her?”

By-and-by the quick eye of Dr. Forest detected Susie’s condition, and his anger at his son was bitter and terrible; but he said nothing, waiting for the end of the week, when Dan would come home for the Sunday. Saturday evening the doctor came in rather late. He first went into the drawing-room and staid a few minutes. Dan was basking in the heaven of Miss Marston’s smiles. The parlor casement windows were open on the southern veranda, where they sat breathing the odor of the honeysuckles that climbed over the old wooden pillars. Clara was scarcely less happy than Dan, for Dr. Delano had been exceedingly agreeable that special evening, and she had just discovered that he had a certain, as yet ill-defined, but wholly delicious influence upon her. Mrs. Forest was delighted. Dr. Delano was a “party” after her own heart; so she kept discreetly at the further end of the room, and engaged the twins near her to the best of her ability, that they might not disturb either the flirtation at the piano or that on the veranda. As the doctor entered, Leila was teazing Clara about Dr. Delano, who had just left, and there was no little spite in this teazing, for Leila had fallen in the doctor’s eyes from what appeared to be a first class object to a third class one at best, since the advent of Clara.

“Don’t mind her, sister Clara,” said Linnie. “Her nose is out of joint, that is all.” Leila scowled without turning her head, and continued her bantering, while Clara kept on improvising pretty variations upon Weber’s Dernière Pensée. “Oh, are you not tired of that gloomy air?” exclaimed Leila. “You ought to play something more gay, I should say; perhaps, though, it is appropriate as a wail.”

“Your remarks are very silly, my child,” said Mrs. Forest mildly, “and quite out of taste.”

“Well, it’s so dull here. One is overpowered by a great event like the prospect of a marriage. I wouldn’t have Dr. Delano, though, if I was dying to get married.”

“And pray why not, Miss Wisdom?” asked the doctor.

“Well, he’s too old, in the first place,” replied Leila.

“Old!” repeated Clara, leaving the piano and approaching the back of her father’s chair. “He is not as old as papa, and I always wanted to marry papa,” she added, laughing and caressing his head with both her hands.

“Why, Clara!” exclaimed Mrs. Forest. “You make such unaccountably strange speeches.”

“My girl flatters her old papa, does she not, by comparing him to her younger slaves?” As he said this he drew one of her hands round to his lips and kissed it.

“Good-night!” said Linnie, going toward the door. “When Clara and papa commence making love, I always leave.”

Leila enjoyed this sally immensely, judging by the peal of laughter with which she greeted it. She kissed her mother, as did Linnie, and then the doctor, who took the opportunity to whisper to her, “Don’t undress till you hear me go up stairs. Then I wish you to come down and tell Dan to come to my study.”

A few minutes later Leila bounced on to the veranda, exclaiming, “Papa wants you, Dan, in his study. Quick!” and with this she disappeared as she came.

The summons was so sudden that Miss Marston started; but Dan, knowing the nature of Leila, did not apprehend that any one had fallen dead in a fit, as he might otherwise be justified in supposing. He assured Miss Marston that it was only Leila’s way, said he would be absent but a few minutes, and expressed a hope to find her on his return.

Dan passed into the parlor through the glass door, meeting Clara, who joined Miss Marston. He then remembered for the first time that Susie, despairing probably of seeing him alone, had given him a note when she had opened the front door for him that evening. He stopped by the parlor door, out of sight of Miss Marston, and ran over it hurriedly. What it contained was terrible enough; and the writing was blurred, evidently by tears, but the effort the poor girl had made to cheat her breaking heart into the belief that Dan still loved her, was lost on him. He was not fine enough to understand it.

As Dan crossed the threshold of his father’s study, the doctor wheeled round from his desk and rose, not offering Dan a seat. Dan saw with an inward misgiving that a storm was threatening. It burst upon him without the slightest preliminary.

“Young man,” the doctor said, with perfect command of his voice, “I suppose you are aware of the condition of Susie Dykes through your folly.”

Dan silently approached the mantle-piece, on which he leaned for support, for he was profoundly agitated. The doctor, who noticed everything, was moved at the signs of wretchedness his words had caused, and he continued, less severely, “I am sorry for you, my son; but my greater concern is about this poor girl. To a man it is nothing; to a woman it is worse than death.”

Dan thought of the gracious being on the veranda, brilliant, refined, unapproachable, but for whose favor he had dared to hope, and he thought the misfortune was worse than death for him also; and as he waited, chewing the end of his youthful moustache, his heart hardened toward the poor girl who had so tenderly loved, so foolishly trusted him. But his silence was exasperating the doctor, who, he well knew, would see but one way to pay for his “folly,” as he had termed it. He said, therefore, doggedly, without looking up, “What is done is done. I suppose you wish me to marry her.”

“I wish you to marry her, you young scoundrel!” replied the doctor, livid with indignation at the heartlessness of his son. “If you have lost all affection for her, does not your sense of honor prompt you to make the only reparation possible, when you have done a wrong like this to an innocent girl?”

“Innocent!” sneered Dan, “I’m not over sure about that, sir.”

Hearing loud words proceeding from the doctor’s study, and guessing what might be the cause, Susie, pale and trembling, crept down the stairs, which ended just at the doctor’s door. She heard distinctly these words from the lips that were so dear to her, and unable to move hand or foot, she sank down on the stairs. Poor girl! She had obeyed the instinct of her tender heart, meaning, if Dan was suffering under his father’s anger for her sake, to go and shield him, woman-like, and take all the blame on herself. Upon this noble impulse Dan’s words had fallen like cold steel upon her warm heart. Her wonder was overwhelming when she heard the doctor reply in a clear, distinct tone:

“Great God! that from a son of mine! Cowardly, ignobly, seeking to cover your baseness by degrading a weak young girl, whose only fault is loving you a thousand times more than you deserve. You have sought her and courted her favor ever since she was thirteen years old. Even as long ago as that, you promised her marriage, and tattooed yourself with her name as a seal of the promise. She never doubted your honesty for years, and when, through her devotion for you and the Devil knows not what arts exercised on your part, she sacrifices everything a woman can sacrifice, you would basely desert her. I tell you it is the most damnable act a man can perpetrate. Brute force and ignorance have oppressed woman in all history, making her a slave to petty cares, denying her the political and social equality that belongs by right to human beings, and making her dependent like a slave. Of course this has cramped woman’s free growth in every way, and the man who takes advantage of her weakness, as you have done with Susie Dykes, deserves the execration of all honorable men.”

“For God’s sake, father, don’t speak so loud!” cried Dan, who was in mortal terror lest Miss Marston should hear.

“I will neither control my voice nor my indignation at your meanness. The whole world deserves to know the base dog who would deceive and betray a woman through her folly in loving him too well.”

“Hold, sir! I have some feeling as well as you, and I won’t stand any more of this.”

The doctor moved toward the door, and Dan knew well it would not be easy to escape; nor did he feel much inclined to try it, for he felt the weakness of guilt. The doctor continued: “You will hear all I have got to say, and then I have done with you. There can be no question in my mind that this girl knows only you. Whom has she known, or sought, or cared for, except you? But this, in my opinion, is of little importance. The worst women are about good enough for the best of us. See how much more generous they are! They, in the freshness and cleanness of youth and health, take husbands who have consorted with the vilest, whose blood is vitiated with foul diseases, though every woman feels that a man’s standard of morality should be as high as hers. The sophisms that men take refuge in, in this connection, are beneath the contempt of common sense. Sir, you could in no way have made me despise your character as you have by that one insinuation. Do I not know you, sir? What are you that you should demand spotless innocence in a young woman? In this matter every honest man is bound to believe the woman whose repute is good. Does this girl confess to having been debauched by others?” demanded the doctor, whose rage knew no bounds.

“Of course not. According to her, she is most immaculate; but I know better.”

“Do you?” said the doctor, with fine contempt. “No man has a right to make that statement of any girl of good reputation; and let me tell you, for the benefit of your ignorance, that scientific men are not so confident in such cases. You have graduated in the Jim Dykes school, and all blackguards are wise on such subjects.”

Dan’s respect for his father was greatly tried. His way of showing resentment was of the Jim Dykes order; and during his father’s outburst he had been angry enough to have felled any other man to the earth. He felt dimly something of his father’s moral force and the secret of his power among men, as he had never done before. He felt abased before the sublime justice of the doctor; but still the doctor, who understood the heart so well, did not know of the new sentiment that Dan cherished for Miss Marston, as for a superior being. He wished he could tell his father. It would at least be a new complication that would interest him as a philosopher, and perhaps make him less hard upon him. This passed through Dan’s mind as the doctor continued, in a calmer tone: “But I have said enough; more, perhaps, than you will ever understand. The question now is, are you ready to make this girl the only reparation in your power?”

“I am no hero,” said Dan, bitterly. “A little while ago it would not have been so hard. You have wronged me in some things, though I know I have not done right. Yes, I am ready to marry Susie Dykes to-morrow, though I confess I would rather die.”

Here the door opened, and Susie, who had heard all, ashy pale and trembling in every limb, confronted her lover, more dead than alive, and scarcely able to articulate the words: “God forgive you, Dan, and make you happy. You will never marry Susie Dykes;” and sinking down exhausted from her emotion, the doctor caught her and kissed her forehead. “Brave girl!” he said. “Are you really in earnest? Would you really refuse, under such circumstances?” “I would die ten thousand deaths,” she cried, “rather than permit him to make a sacrifice in keeping his word to me,” and she motioned violently for Dan to leave her presence.

As he rushed from the room and from the house, covered with shame and self-contempt, Dan was as wretched as his most murderous enemy could have desired. When the door closed behind him, Susie sobbed bitterly, and the doctor lifted her bodily and laid her on the lounge.

“I did not think you had so much character,” he said, laying his hands on her temples. “You are a good girl, though you have thrown away your heart and gone the way of many. You shall never want a friend, my dear child. I shall stand by you. Now cheer up, and we will see what can be done by-and-by.” As he said this, he mixed her a powder, not too innocuous this time, and as he held it to her lips she moaned, “Oh, good, kind, noble one, you would be kinder to me if you would help me end my wretched life. Oh, do, doctor! Do give me something; I will never tell that it was you.”

“Very likely not. You couldn’t very well, if it was an effective dose,” said the doctor, trying to be gay for her sake.

“Oh! I mean when I am suffering—dying. Do you think I would tell? Oh, you do not know me!”

“Nonsense, little one. Now, shut your eyes and let me hold my hand over them. This powder will soon take effect. You are young, and the world has need of brave hearts and willing hands like yours. Don’t feel disgraced, and you will not be so in fact. Cultivate the thought that it is not you, but conventional society that makes it wrong to have a child by one you love, and right by one you loathe, if you happen to be married to him. Remember this: grief does not last forever; and if you are wise, this experience may prove a blessing to you—nothing like it to show a woman the gold from the dross.” As he said this, music rang out from happy voices in the parlor, for none but the actors themselves knew of the drama enacted in the doctor’s study. Susie thought Dan was there in the parlor, careless of her suffering, and she sobbed aloud in her agony: “What shall I do? what shall I do?”

“Put your whole trouble on me. Go straight to bed, now, and take this powder along, but don’t take it if you can get to sleep without it. I will go and talk with Mrs. Forest, and see if she will help us.”

“Us,” repeated Susie, covering the doctor’s hand with tears and kisses. “You are as good as Christ was, and if I live, I will show you how I thank you for your goodness—how I love you for being so good to me in this awful time.”

“Trust me, child. I shall be the same to you to-morrow and every day. Bear up bravely, and all will come out right.”

Susie tottered up stairs and sought her little room. She threw herself down by her bed, and wept and prayed, but no peace came to her troubled soul. She forgot the doctor’s powder, and when she woke, it was nearly daylight, and she was lying faint and ill on the floor beside her bed. She took the powder then, and with great effort got her clothes off and went to bed.

CHAPTER XI.
FAITH AND WORKS.

The next morning the doctor found Susie weak and feverish, and forbade her to leave her bed. He told her he had not been able to talk with Mrs. Forest, but should do so the coming evening, and meanwhile Dinah would be very kind to her and see that she did not want for anything. He was deeply touched by her condition, seeing her lie there alone, pale and suffering, with no woman’s sympathy to cheer her, though the house was full of women; and he dwelt with some bitterness upon the fact that he could not by a word bring his wife to his side in kindly, womanly faith that his impulses were generous and right. Clara he knew he could influence, but he wished her to act freely, and not through love for him; therefore he determined to have a talk with Mrs. Forest first, but meanwhile he had had a word with good old Dinah, and flattered her exceedingly by saying, “Now, you know all, Dinah, and I count on your help and discretion. You and I are the only ones in the house who know this. Help Susie all you can, for my sake, and mind that you say nothing. Are you sure you can keep the secret, Dinah?”

“Lor bress you, Massa! Massa knows Dinah can.”

“All right, Dinah. I trust you, and I go away feeling easier now;” and he pressed the old servant’s hand cordially.

This interview had taken place while Dinah was putting the dining-room in order; and while getting the hominy and coffee ready for breakfast, she found opportunity to prepare Susie some traditional medicament and carry it to her. Her heart was overflowing with real sympathy for Susie, and her pride that the wise and great Dr. Forest had chosen to take her alone into his confidence, made her feel exceedingly important in her own eyes.

“Lor bress you, chile!” she said, her shining black face beaming as she held the cup to Susie’s mouth, “Why didn’t ye tell old Dinah long fore dis time? Dinah could a helped ye, mebbe. Not now. Massa’d kill me, now you done gone told him; but cheer up, honey. Dem accidens will happen mos all de time!”

Susie, weak and suffering as she was, could not resist a smile, and as she drank the decoction Dinah had brought, she thanked her with tears. It was the first woman who had come to her in her sorrow, and she did not think of Dinah’s black skin, but silently thanked God for this blessing.

The breakfast in Dr. Forest’s family was the pleasantest meal of the day, for it was the only one when he was pretty certain to be present. On this morning, however, there was something like a cloud over the family circle, which seemed to oppress all except Leila, who chatted gayly to, or rather at, Miss Marston. The latter did not respond readily, and Leila turned her batteries upon Linnie, who was rather of a sentimental turn, and fancied that she was a victim of heart disease. Sentimental young ladies perfectly dote on heart disease. Linnie was disgusted with the incredulity of the family about the cause of her ailment. Even old Dinah had said, “Lor, Miss Linnie, you is growing like a potato-vine, and dese pains ain’t noffin but de growing pains!” After that Leila teazed her sister unmercifully about her “growing pains;” but that being frowned down by the family, it was held in reserve for private persecution. By-and-by Leila, finding the want of gayety at the breakfast table quite oppressive, drew a long sigh as she laid down her napkin.

“What is the matter, my child?” asked the doctor. Leila glanced at her sister mischievously, tilting her head low on the left side, and answered:

“Oh, I have got such a fearful pain in my diaphragm!” Miss Marston laughed, not fully comprehending the malice of the young minx, but the rest were very grave. Leila was impatient over mysteries, and clearly there was something in the air on this particular morning, so she soon began to probe the silence.

“I declare this breakfast is as solemn as a Quaker funeral,” she said; and as no one made any remark, she asked where Susie was.

“She is quite ill this morning, my dear,” answered the doctor; “quite ill. I hope you and Linnie will try to take her place until she is better.”

“I will, papa,” replied Linnie; “and I will help nurse her too, for I think Susie is really nice.” Then there was silence again until Leila exclaimed, “Dear me! They say everybody have their skeleton closet. I thought we were an exception, as we keep ours right out fairly in the light. Why, it’s an age since I saw him. I must go up in the garret and give the old darling a ‘gyrate,’ as we used to say. Do you remember, Clara?”

“I remember many things,” replied Clara, with a dignity that was perhaps a little sophomorical.

“O, do we? How antique we are getting.”

“Yes; I remember, for example, that there is a certain young lady who will probably go on repeating a certain grammatical solecism until she is gray,” answered Clara, alluding to Leila’s “everybody have.” Leila made an indiscriminate onslaught upon grammars generally, during which the doctor was called away to his patients, and the breakfast ended.

During the day Mrs. Forest, and subsequently Clara, visited Susie’s room; but in both cases Susie seemed disturbed, and disinclined to enter upon the details of her illness, and declared she wanted nothing. She thanked them for their kindness, and once, upon some gentle word from Mrs. Forest, she hid her eyes, which had filled with tears. Dinah was the only welcome presence to the poor girl during that long, sad day, and for obvious reasons.

Early in the evening Dr. Delano called, and made himself very agreeable to all the ladies, and especially so to Clara, a little later, when they had a long tête-a-tête on the old south-facing veranda. The sunset had been magnificent, and as Dr. Delano was quite seriously enamoured with Clara, he was gay, poetic, appreciative—everything that could charm her—but she could say little in reply to his fervid eloquence, for she had the disadvantage of being immeasurably in love, and consequently felt a certain awkwardness, a triumph to Dr. Delano, growing sweeter and sweeter every hour. It was her first romance. It was his—well, not his first, certainly. That was an early attachment to Ella Wills, his father’s ward, and this night he told Clara the story of that romance, showing her, of course, beyond a shadow of doubt, that that was a very insignificant passion—“as water unto wine,” was the way he characterized it—comparing it to his present deeper and dearer love. Do not lovers, not always, but very generally, tell this same old fib? The truth was, he had adored Ella with all a boy’s enthusiasm, and she had flirted with him persistently—“outrageously,” Miss Charlotte Delano, the doctor’s sister, declared—and had escaped heart-free herself. So when he came to tell her in words that his heart was under her feet, she affected the most innocent surprise, and hoped she had not led him to suppose, etc., etc. In the end she somehow won his respect, for he did not curse her, as rejected lovers do, at least in most novels. She wept very lavishly, for she meant to keep him in reserve, and marry him finally, if no more brilliant offer occurred, or if ever in danger of becoming an old maid—that terror of women who have no serious object in life. When Dr. Delano first began to mention Clara in his letters to his sister Charlotte, which he did once as “the noblest and sweetest of mortal women,” Ella felt personally affronted, and commenced at once to speculate on the chances of winning him back, not once asking herself if this “noblest and sweetest woman” had not already acquired rights over the heart once so lightly rejected. She had not seen him since his return from Europe, where he had spent three years in completing his medical education.

Ella always played the kitten, though she was no longer a child, and a very Methuselah, if age could be numbered by her conquests. She had no heart to speak of, and less conscience, but she impressed every male creature with a sense of childish, artless innocence. She was a brunette, petite, with dark short ringlets about her small head, a peach bloom on her cheeks, and a babyish, pouting mouth, whose sweetness Albert Delano had found difficult to forget, or even to recall without regret, until he had found in Clara something infinitely superior to the sweetness and prettiness that had so charmed him in earlier days. This something he hardly comprehended, though he owned its power to a certain extent. It was soul, for want of a better name—a moral sweetness, a divine, emotional sensitiveness, and a straightforward honesty of purpose, that made you conscious, last of all, that she was beautiful in person and exceedingly graceful in every movement.

This evening Clara remembered long after, as the happiest in her life. The bright moon shone through the climbing foliage on the veranda, carpeting the floor with soft mosaic patterns, through which the “mated footsteps” of the lovers passed and repassed, talking in low tones of the beauty of the scene, at intervals, when time could be spared from the dearer theme of their perfections in each other’s eyes, and the future that, before them,

——“like a fruitful land reposed.”

Of course, they took no note of time, and Miss Marston, after talking some time with Mrs. Forest, went quietly to her room. Leila fidgeted about for awhile, and then exclaimed, crossly:

“I don’t see why they wish to moon out there all night.”

“Why, Leila!” said Mrs. Forest, reproachfully. “I see nothing improper in their enjoying each other’s society, and you should not speak in that way.”

“She’s jealous,” remarked Linnie.

“You mean thing! I’m not,” Leila answered, in a high key, and then they went to bed to fight it out in the ordinary sisterly way; and I take it that sisters can be as caustic and insolently mean in their treatment of each other as any kindred under the sun. In this case, however, Linnie was really fond of her sister, and would have manifested it quite lavishly by way of petting, but for being discouraged and called “spooney” by Leila whenever she attempted any expression of sentiment.

Mrs. Forest waited awhile after the twins were gone, and then went to the veranda and gave the lovers some friendly caution about the night air. This duty discharged, and hearing her husband enter his sleeping-room, she joined him there. He was very glad to see her, for he wished to broach the subject of Susie’s condition, a task requiring considerable diplomacy, for he knew Mrs. Forest would naturally be merciless to one like Susie. But the doctor in his diplomacy, as Clara said, did very well until he came to the diplomatic part, and then he lost the first requisite, patience. He greeted Mrs. Forest very pleasantly, and told her she never looked lovelier in her life.

“Ah! dear,” she answered, “it is very sweet to hear you say so, but”—and she viewed herself composedly in the mirror of the doctor’s wardrobe—“this glass shows me my wrinkles and my gray hair.”

“Well, your hair is beautiful, and I like these little crows’-feet at the corners of your eyes; but this is not what makes your beauty in my eyes—” and he came beside her, and put his arm around her—“it is the softness and tenderness of expression in your face. You did not have this as a girl.” Here was possibly the approach to the needed diplomacy.

“Yet you used to rave about my beauty; and how indifferent I was to it.”

“To which?”

“To your raving, to be sure.”

“Ah! of course.”

“See how my color has gone. I think I never was vain, but who can look at such a reflection with any satisfaction? You are bronzed by exposure, but that rather improves you, and I’m sure, as we stand here, you look ten years younger than I do, instead of five older. That is because you have had no babies.”

“Ah! Indeed!” exclaimed the doctor, with Pantagruelistic gayety. “I thought they were all mine—all but that doubling feat. That was entirely your invention.”

“For shame! Have you not teazed me enough with that. I think you are so absurd. I wish you would never make such a remark again.”

“Well, then, I won’t; but the way you take it is so amusing. Are you going to stay?”

“Do you wish me to?”

“Ah! That is not to be considered,” said the doctor, with his usual gallantry, which was not gallantry at all in his case, but the simple expression of his interpretation of woman’s most primitive right. “The question is, do you wish to stay?”

“Yes, dear.”

“You don’t come too often these days,” he said, toying with her ear.

“That is because I know that you are tired, and would rather sleep when you have left your study.”

“Too tired, you think, to enjoy your presence?”

“Yes; you know I have not lost the girlish habit of liking to lie awake and talk. You go to sleep the moment you touch the pillow. Ah, me! how we change! I remember how you used to keep me awake with your ineffable words and caresses! and I was so indifferent then. You loved me more than I could possibly appreciate;” and she added, taking the hair-pins from her silvery hair, and with a little sigh, “Ah! if I were only young again!” For answer, the doctor sang the trivial words of Beranger:

“Combien je regrette

Mon bras si dodu,

Ma jambe bien faite

Et le temps perdu.”

“Translate your French. It is something shocking, no doubt.”

“No, indeed. But I could not do it justice. I promise to keep you awake to-night though, for I must consult you about a matter of importance.”

“What is it about?”

“It is about Susie Dykes.”

“She does look ill, I think, and she has been so silent and moody lately. You don’t think she has anything serious the matter with her, do you?”

“Yes, serious enough. It is strange you have not guessed.”

“What!” exclaimed Mrs. Forest, a sudden light breaking into her mind. “You don’t mean to say——”

“Yes, just that,” interrupted the doctor, “and the agony of the poor girl is dreadful. What is worse, Dan has put it out of his power to save her from disgrace.”

“Dan!” exclaimed Mrs. Forest, in great disgust. “I don’t believe he knows anything about it. The shameless thing! No doubt——”

“Now! now! Don’t go off at half-cock. He admits it all—did so in my study last night, where he said he would rather die than marry Susie.”

“Oh, Heaven! How dreadful for Dan!”

“And you think only of him.”

“Only of him! Is he not my child? Is it not natural that I should think only of him?”

“Many things are natural that are very selfish. Is Susie not somebody’s child too as well as Dan? And what is his suffering compared to hers? Will the world howl at him as a sinner, kick him down further into hell, and abandon him with virtuous scorn? No, no; there’s plenty of girls here in Oakdale, of good family too, who would marry him to-morrow for all his damnable treachery to this poor girl, while the hypocrites, drawing their immaculate skirts clear of his victim, wink at his act, and distinguish it ‘as sowing wild oats.’ And you, my wife—you among the number! You would send her out to die in the streets, would you?”

“I am sorry for her, of course. You know I am.”

Mrs. Forest was thinking of Clara’s prospects; of the aristocratic Delanos, who were soon coming to Oakdale, and the event was important. What would they say at Clara’s family supporting and harboring under their roof a girl so disgraced? Mrs. Forest added, “But we cannot be expected to be victimized because of her want of virtue. Of course she cannot stay here.”

“Virtue!” said the doctor, with contempt. “Virtue, in any decent code of morals, must include all the best qualities of the heart. You are one of the soulless Pharisees who would cover it with a fig-leaf. I thought I knew you better, Fannie. Some one says, if you would know a man, divide an inheritance with him; but, by ——, after you have slept in a woman’s arms twenty odd years, shared your fortune and all the joys and sorrows of life with her for that time, a simple case like this arises when you expect common human sympathy, and she fails you utterly.”

Mrs. Forest began to sob quietly, but finding to her astonishment that this redoubtable weapon had lost its power over the soft-hearted doctor, she was piqued, and hardened her heart like a flint. She began hastily replacing her hair-pins in her hair. This was to punish him by depriving him of her presence for the night, which she had so sweetly promised. The doctor noted this movement, the critical moment, probably, if only his diplomacy had been equal to the situation; but he was “a plain, blunt man,” as Mark Antony says of himself, and he had already played his last card. He knew it was hopeless. Mrs. Forest, gentle, mild, pious, as she undoubtedly was, could not understand the doctor’s broad love of humanity. She had no power of loving anything that was not distinctly her own; but she was sure of her own integrity, and when told by the doctor that there was no more virtue in her love than in that of a hen for her chickens when she gathers her own under her wings, but pecks away all others, even though motherless and dying for care, she was not in the least disturbed; she was sure of her own position, and as immovable as a rock. “Do as you like,” he said to her, giving up the case, but determined to speak his mind freely; “do as you like, you and the other godly who pretend to be followers of one who said, ‘Neither do I condemn thee.’ Your respect for Christ is a common farce. It is merely a thing of form and respectability. You don’t take the trouble to see what manner of man he really was, or you would see how impossible it is for you to have any sentiments in common with him. Was he not a radical, sitting down with publicans and sinners, shocking all the conventional morality of his time, befriending the needy, supporting the outcasts of society, and a thorough despiser of all cant and hypocrisy?”

“I dislike to hear any one quoting Christ who does not believe in him,” said Mrs. Forest very softly, but none the less angry for all that.

“Believe,” echoed the doctor. “You are the real infidel. Do you believe in the divine nature of Christ? Of course you do not; for if you did, you would have more respect for his morality and magnanimity of character. Do you believe in your heaven? You have no shadow of real faith in it, and you know it in your own heart, for it is a place where this same unhappy girl may be your equal or superior, according to your own scheme of salvation; and you know you would prefer annihilation to any such democratic mixing of saint and sinner. Do you think you can make me think you believe in hell, when you coolly run the risk of its terrors by turning against the suffering wretches whom Christ helped and befriended? Oh, Fannie! you have no religion in your heart, for you have no love for humanity; or, call it religion if you like, and say you have no honest human sympathy, and no faith that can triumph over the little expedients and conventional proprieties of the day.”

“I do not wish to manifest levity, but it does seem to me amusing to hear you talk of faith.”

At another time the doctor would have ceased in despair; but it is so hard to believe absolutely that those allied to us by many tender ties, can never respect our most sacred convictions; besides, the doctor’s sense of human justice was outraged, and he had not yet given full vent to his righteous indignation.

“I will not try to show you that I have a faith which you can never comprehend. It would be useless,” he said, “but I can tell you, though you could never persuade me to cant and howl among your pious herd, that I respect Christ and his example as I respect the dignity of all sympathy for human misery; and I shall prove it by standing by this unhappy girl. I am none the less ready to do so because her suffering is caused by a knave whom I had the misfortune to beget.”

“Why, I never heard any one utter such language!” exclaimed Mrs. Forest; “but it is useless to reason with you, when you are in a passion. For my part, I think ‘charity begins at home.’”

“Yes, I know you do; and according to your creed, it not only begins but ends there also.”

“Would you sacrifice the prospects of your children to protect a shameless girl?”

“I’d sacrifice anything and everything on earth to show my faith in the triumph of justice. Besides, this girl is not shameless. She has a noble nature. She told Dan to his face that he would never marry Susie Dykes—this when she found he would marry her, but only as a duty. Yes, madam, you can now measure my faith, which you despise, and see what it is worth beside yours. Let what will come, I shall stand by this girl. Life, with the consciousness that I have acted like a cur, is not worth having. Now you had better go and pray for grace to do unto others as you would have others do unto you;” and the doctor burst into a bitter laugh, as the door closed behind her who had come with wifely tenderness to sleep by his side.

CHAPTER XII.
CLARA DECIDES BETWEEN RELIGION AND PRINCIPLE.

Mrs. Forest had often had rather severe conflicts with her husband on questions of morality and justice, upon which, in her mind, he held very lax notions. This, however, was the first time they had been diametrically opposed in a matter of actual practice, and she was considerably disturbed, though she carried away the gratification of having preserved that serenity of soul that naturally belongs to those who are in the right; moreover she was somewhat piqued in her womanly vanity, because the doctor had not desired her to stay sufficiently to yield the point. But there was one deep satisfaction for her that atoned for everything: Dan was in no danger of being compelled to marry Susie Dykes. During all the first part of her conversation with the doctor, she had mortally feared that he would insist on bringing this about.

As she descended the stairs, she found Clara bolting the front door. She had just let Dr. Delano out, after bidding him good-night as many times as lovers usually do, and was in a blissful state of mind. Her beautiful, limpid eyes shone brilliantly through her long lashes, her lips were crimson and dewy, and her whole being expressed the happiness of the young, poetic enthusiast.

“Come and sleep with me, daughter. I wish to talk with you,” she said, embracing Clara with more effusion than was her wont, and Clara saw that some grief disturbed her mother. What could it be? Surely not disapproval of her attachment to Dr. Delano, for had not her mother smiled upon the happy lovers not an hour ago? This settled, in Clara’s thought, there could be nothing serious in what her mother had to say, and this special night she wished to be alone. There seemed lately no time to think, to enjoy the delicious creations of a vivid imagination, stimulated by a passion as real and sweet as it was dreamy and ideal. The longing to be alone with her thoughts made her say, “Come into the parlor, mamma dear, and tell me there.”

“No,” said Mrs. Forest, with the persistence of a child, “I want you with me,” and she added, reproachfully, “Is it a sacrifice?” thus forcing Clara to say what was not strictly true—“Certainly not, mamma dear. I will go with you.”

Long into the night Mrs. Forest talked earnestly to her daughter. Clara was shocked, as any romantic young girl would be, having the case presented in its worst light—disgusted, indeed—but she was much too severe upon Dan to please her mother. Clara was her father’s own girl, as Mrs. Forest knew, and her heart was naturally inclined to pity Susie, and she said to her mother in extenuation, “She is so young, you know, and without any education, or she would know she could never win a lover in that way.” This was a sign of wisdom that pleased Mrs. Forest.

“My daughter, I am sure,” she said, “would never be in danger of forwardness and immodesty with gentlemen; and I will say here, my dear, that much being alone with gentlemen before marriage, is very injudicious, for the most honorable of them will take advantage of such confidence.”

Clara was rather inclined to believe this, recalling certain passages on the veranda that evening, but she was very silent on that subject. Mrs. Forest returned to the subject of Susie, and labored to show the importance of having her out of the house as soon as possible. “Your father is so unreasonable. I really believe he thinks it our duty to have her here. Why, I should die of shame to have the Delanos know it. What would they think?”

“We must do right, mamma, whatever people think.”

“Yes, yes; but we can do right in a prudent way, and there is so much at stake. Dr. Delano asked your father’s permission to address you only to-day.” Clara knew this fact, but it was very agreeable to have a second account of it. “Your father is so unlike the rest of the world. I was shocked at his answer. Instead of thanking Dr. Delano for the honor, as would have been the proper way, he answered brusquely, ‘Bless my soul! Delano, it’s none of my business. I don’t see what the girl can want with your ridiculous addresses, but that is her affair. You know I advocate woman’s rights, and that includes her right to make a fool of herself;’ and he actually laughed.” Clara asked anxiously how Dr. Delano received it—that was the all-important part to her.

“Oh, he took it exceedingly well, I am glad to say. He held out his hand to your father, and thanked him in a very gentlemanly style.”

“Did papa say any more?”

“Such a lot of nonsense! He said he had brought you up to be independent. For my part, I think an independent girl dreadful. He said he had told you what rascally dogs men were, and if this was the result of his warning, why he must submit. You cannot imagine how mortified I was. Your father was called away then, and I apologized to Dr. Delano for his manner.”

“Why, mamma! the idea of apologizing for papa’s manner. I should not think of doing Dr. Delano the injustice of supposing he could not understand and appreciate my father. He speaks of him in a way that charms me.”

Mrs. Forest kept on talking, making a mountain of the importance of getting rid of Susie. She would, of course, be kind to her; all the ladies of the church would do something for her; but Dr. Delano’s august father and Miss Charlotte were coming, and they must never hear of this terrible disgrace.

Clara was bewildered. Her education at Stonybrook had inculcated the conventional respect for the proprieties; but now face to face with a practical trouble like this, she did not feel like trusting entirely her mother, who was the very soul of conventionality. She would see her father, and then judge for herself; and with this decision she dropped asleep.

In the morning Clara slept rather late, and when she went down-stairs her father was gone. During breakfast Mrs. Forest had hardly addressed a word to him. In her mind, there was a kind of lovers’ quarrel between her and the doctor. There had been many of these in her married life; but feeling conscious of her power when she chose to be gracious, it did not trouble her much. She felt he ought to be punished, and rather enjoyed his perturbation, not being sufficiently discriminating to perceive how deeply he was disappointed in her want of sympathy with his desire to help Susie in her strait. If Clara should fail him also, it would go hard with poor Susie. He determined, however, to say very little to Clara until he found how she would be disposed to act. This was a most interesting point to him. How would his Clara face a thing like this? Of course he might influence her through her love for him, but he scorned to do that—she must act freely. If he saw her, he would simply state the case and leave her to her own decision. The opportunity occurred unexpectedly, for in his drive across the common, in the middle of the forenoon, he overtook his daughter, who was out for a walk. He drew up beside her and talked a few minutes, being careful to avoid any expression as to how a woman ought to act to any sister woman in such a case. He expressed simply his own feeling for Susie, and his determination to stand by her. Clara listened silently, and walked home turning the matter over in her own mind. She found herself unconsciously calculating effects, after the manner of her mother, and was disgusted with this evidence of meanness. When she reached home, Miss Marston and her mother were in the drawing-room, where the latter had just informed her guest of the scandal, regretting that anything so unpleasant should occur during Miss Marston’s visit. Mrs. Forest was careful to avoid mentioning her son as in any way implicated, but she was pleased to have some one with whom she could talk of her troubles and cares—one, too, who had sound notions upon moral questions. Miss Marston indeed was a rigid moralist of the conventional school, not, indeed, from any narrowness of heart, but through logical conclusions from premises which, if not sound in principle, were at least well considered. Mrs. Forest knew that the influence of her guest was very great over Clara, because of her affection and admiration for Miss Marston, and so Mrs. Forest continued the conversation about Susie after Clara entered. One thing troubled her, however. Clara was ignorant of her mother’s intention to shield Dan from Miss Marston’s censure; and she might, by some ill-timed remark, let out the cat that her mother would so carefully tie up. Tact was necessary, and she soon found a pretext to send Clara to her room for something, and another pretext to follow her and implore her to not mention Dan. What was the use? It could do no good, and it was her duty to be kind to Dan as well as to Susie. Clara said nothing, but pondered deeply over her mother’s ways of securing her ends.

When the conversation was resumed, Mrs. Forest showed a remarkable clemency toward Susie, especially after discovering that Clara had been talking with her father during her walk. This was tact again. Clara had somehow inherited her father’s tendency to radicalism, and might be easily shocked into a heroic course toward her brother’s victim.

“I do not think,” said Mrs. Forest, “that we can do better than to get her a place where she can be quiet; and as she is so very deft with her needle, and can make herself useful in many ways, I do not think this will be difficult.”

“This will be to fail her in what she most needs—sympathy,” Clara remarked.

“My dear Clara,” said Miss Marston, “we cannot sympathize with folly unless we are foolish ourselves. You know the meaning of the word sympathy.”

There was a little too much of the dogmatism of the teacher in this to please Clara, but she showed no displeasure in her very calm reply: “But we can sympathize with suffering in all cases.”

“Yet even for her good,” replied Mrs. Forest, “we should show disapprobation of her conduct. By being too lenient, it would lead her to hold her act lightly, and open the way for its repetition.”

“Well, I think, mamma, with all proper deference, that your reasoning is exceedingly weak. Will not one terrible lesson like this be enough for any girl like Susie? Besides, you forget how many years it must be before she can outlive her love for——” Mrs. Forest trembled; but Clara saw the danger her mother dreaded, and continued, “for her betrayer, and by that time she will become staid and prudent.”

“I think myself,” said Miss Marston, “that there is little danger of her repeating her folly. She seems really a very modest young person. She has undoubtedly fallen through an ill-directed affection. What sort of a man is her lover, and where is he?”

Mrs. Forest did not dare meet Clara’s eyes during her quick answer, “Oh, it is a young man in town. He does not seem to care anything for her.”

“I consider him an unprincipled wretch,” replied Clara, indignantly. Her mother’s determination to screen Dan looked very ugly in her eyes. “Papa says he offered to marry her,” she continued, addressing Miss Marston, “but in a way that showed he considered it a great sacrifice; and she was proud enough and womanly enough to throw his insulting offer back in his teeth. I like her for that, and I think we ought to protect her right generously. I mean to help her, at all events.”

“My child!” cried Mrs. Forest, in alarm. “You are so impulsive, so imprudent. You will certainly be talked about.”

“I don’t think, mamma, that should make any difference when we know we are in the right. I believe the right way is to find out what our duty is, and then, to do it openly and fairly.”

“My dear,” said Miss Marston, “there are very Quixotic ways of doing our duty.” She said this in a cool, decided way, that chafed Clara’s growing heroic mood, and she replied, bitterly: “I could avoid these ways, I suppose, by making bibs and baby things in secret, and sending them to her anonymously, but I think that would be contemptible. I know if such an awful thing should happen to any one of my dear friends, my equals, or to my own sister, I should go to her and comfort her with my sympathy; and if there is any goodness or nobility in doing so for a dear friend, there must be still more virtue in such a course when the object is a poor, friendless girl, deprived of all advantages of education and social culture until she came here.”

“Very well reasoned,” said Miss Marston, ironically; “but I am sorry to see that you forget how this young person has profited by the advantages for social culture that she has already had in this family.”

Clara’s eyes fairly flashed, and Mrs. Forest saw that she was sorely tempted to show Miss Marston what social and moral influence Susie had been under through one member of the family at least; so she made haste to answer soothingly, almost before the words were out of Miss Marston’s mouth, “You are so young, my daughter, that it hardly becomes you to seem to know so much more than your elders about what is right and proper. I know your motives are generous, but you must not trust yourself wholly in such a case as this. You are wrong in supposing that showing open sympathy with a girl who has fallen from virtue, can do her any good; and it certainly may injure you irreparably.”

“Your whole tone, mamma, is cold and calculating. This poor girl is alone, and in an agony of grief such as we have never dreamed of. If helping her bear up under her burden, must injure me, even irreparably, as you say, let it do so. I do not want the favor nor the admiration of the Levites and Pharisees who pass by on the other side. Besides, I do not act alone. I have had the counsel of the clearest head I know, and as noble a heart as ever beat.” Here Clara paused and sighed heavily, almost overcome with a feeling of disappointment that Miss Marston should manifest so little generosity, and one of sorrow also that she had been compelled to express sentiments that must wound her much-loved teacher and friend. As she expected, Miss Marston took refuge in dignified silence, understanding herself, of course, as included among the Pharisees and Levites. Mrs. Forest remarked that all experience showed the feelings to be dangerous guides; as also were what were loosely called principles; that the only thing that upheld pure morals was religion, and therefore it was the only sure guide.

Clara had often seen this making religious duty an excuse for selfishness, and she had a contempt for it as natural as was her repulsion to everything dark and ugly. She replied boldly, “I hear much about principles and religion, and I am compelled to judge them by their fruits. My father, you say, has no religion. Surely principles are better than religion, if one leads to helpful sympathy with all misfortune, and the other to cold calculation of the effect of evil tongues. I have thought over all the possible results, mamma, and I have decided. I know one who will help Susie openly, and without either calculation or shame; and I shall certainly follow his example, for I will trust my father’s sense of right against the world!” and with this, delivered very dramatically and rapidly, Clara left the room.

CHAPTER XIII.
PAPA’S OWN GIRL.

Not long after Clara left her mother and Miss Marston, she rapped very softly on Susie’s door, not wishing to wake her if sleeping, and thus oblivious for the time, to her misery. Thinking it was Dinah, Susie bade the knocker come in. She was trying to dress herself, and sat by her glass brushing her long light hair. Perceiving the happy sister of Dan, resplendent in her youth and beauty, Susie buried her face with her pretty round arms, and wept softly. Clara approached her, and patted her white shoulder, saying, “Poor Susie! I have come to comfort you in your trouble. I know all about it, and I am so sorry, but I blame my brother far more than I do you;” at the mention of Dan, Susie sobbed aloud. “He is so cruel to you after all your loving him.”

“Don’t blame him too much,” sobbed Susie. “He could not help it. If I were handsome and educated like Miss Marston, he would love me always; but it is so hard. I wonder why I cannot die. Every hour is harder and harder to bear.”

Clara’s tender heart was profoundly touched. This was the first time she had ever been brought face to face with real anguish, and she found it more terrible than any romance had ever pictured it. She reproached herself for ever thinking even for one moment of consequences, in view of so plain a question of duty as trying to comfort this poor girl in every possible way. Yet she hardly knew what to say or do in the presence of such agony. She felt the necessity, however, of saying something, and inspiration and hope came as soon as she saw her words had any effect. “Don’t give way so, dear child, I beg you. Remember what papa says, ‘Grief cannot last forever.’ Time will soften it all away, and if you live a noble life after this, as I am confident you will, you will have good and true friends. See how papa is going to stand by you; and I am also, if you will let me.”

“If I will let you!” repeated Susie, raising her head. “What a good angel you are! I am not good enough to deserve so much kindness.”

“Why, do you know, I think you are. I don’t think any of the family but papa appreciate your sweetness and goodness. Now I want to tell you that Miss Marston will never marry Dan. She would never dream of such a thing. There is an idol in her heart enshrined, which no common man could displace; but that is a little secret, and I only tell it to reassure you. You are not going to sink down under this misfortune like a common-spirited girl. Do you know I admire you so much for refusing to be saved by Dan as a charity on his part? I’ve been thinking of it all day. You can win him back if you will; I’m sure of it, and the way to do it is to show him that he is not important enough for a woman to die for—not important enough to destroy your happiness for all time either. I tell you there is nothing so sure to win the love of men as to force them to admire our strength and independence. The clinging vines become very disagreeable and burdensome to the oaks after a time.” Clara said all this smiling cheerfully, and not in a patronizing “I am holier than thou” way at all. This won Susie’s heart, and gave her a first impulse of hope.

“Oh, how good you are, Miss Forest. You come like warm sunlight into a cold dungeon, and I bless you with all my soul. And how selfish I am to let you stand all this time.” And Susie rose and begged Clara to be seated, and excuse her while she finished dressing. Clara was struck with the delicacy of feeling in this poor girl, and especially by her good manners; and every minute in her presence increased her faith in her natural worth. “If I had only been here,” she said to herself, “I would have helped her to study and be interested in something in the universe besides Dan, and this would never have happened.” Then a new thought struck her suddenly, and she said, “What you want now is distraction from the one subject that worries you. What do you say to commencing to study seriously, and making me your teacher?”

“Oh, I will do anything in the world, and you shall never regret—” she said, but broke down before she could finish, after a moment adding, “never regret helping poor Susie. No one ever cared for me but Dan, and it was natural that I should love him too well——”

“Don’t think of him just now any more,” said Clara. “Of course it was natural. It is too bad that you have had so little chance for education, but we will make up for lost time.” Clara remembered the delight she had often experienced when, finding a pot-flower drooping, she had given it water, and waited to see it slowly lift up its limp foliage, as if in gratitude to the beneficent hand that came to its relief. How much grander the pleasure in raising up a sorrow-burdened human soul, she thought; and life seemed to have more scope and meaning to her from that hour. She entered enthusiastically into her plan of teaching Susie, and was delighted at the quick response it met.

“I have so longed to learn. I have tried to study grammar alone, but it is very difficult to get on. I fear you will find me so ignorant that you will give up in despair. I know so little of books; but I can read, and write too, but I am a dreadful poor speller though. Dan used to laugh at me so.”

“Did he? Why he was a perfect blockhead himself in school, and forever at the foot of the spelling class.”

“Why, Miss Forest! I thought he was a beautiful writer and speller,” said Susie, wondering if this could be so.

“Have you any of his letters?” asked Clara, laughing and thinking it would be a good stroke of policy to show Susie that her tyrant was not quite omnipotent in wisdom.

Susie produced from the bottom of a well-worn paper box, whose corners, both of box and cover, had been carefully sewed together, a package of letters, and handed it confidently to Clara, who took out one at random, which was written while Dan was in the peddling business. It ran thus:

“My Darling Susie: I have gone all over this one horse town of Boilston to-day, and have sold a peice of red coton velvit for a safer covering and some pins and matches and that is all. To-morrow I shall be in Marlboro and expect to do a big business. I have not written to the governer yet because I want to show him I can live and succede to, away from home, so dont tell whear I am til I come back whitch will be next weak. Thear is a pretty little house here for sail and I mean to buy it as soon as I get money enough. How would you like it as a present? Only I shall expect you to take me as a purmanent border and I may be a very dyspeptic one and hard to pleas.”

There was much more about the cottage, and many expressions of tenderness and anxiety because he thought Susie did not fully return his love. Clara sighed as she refolded the letter, to think that one of her sex should be so deficient in culture as to take this effusion as a masterpiece of composition; but it revealed the fact that Dan had loved Susie sincerely in his way, and made her look very leniently upon Susie’s inordinate faith in him.

“Are there any mistakes in that?” asked Susie, seeing that Clara was silent.

“Yes, dear; plenty of them,” she answered, regretting her determination to destroy any of the poor child’s illusions; but she had committed herself to it, and so she pointed out the errors consecutively, beginning with “peice” in the first line, and then she said, “You see, if he had any serious education himself, he would not laugh at your mistakes in spelling. Only ignoramuses are vain about small accomplishments. I do not doubt in the least that your own letters were superior to this.”

“Oh, I think not; but you can see for yourself. He gave them to me to keep, because he is always going about. He always keeps my last till I write again, and then returns it for me to keep—I mean he always did do so—but he will never write me again,” she said, struggling with her emotion, as she gave Clara one of her letters to Dan. Clara read with quiet interest, forgetting all thought of the orthography in the simple eloquence expressed in every sentence. Tears came into her eyes as she read the closing paragraphs, “but I must not sit up later though I could never wish to stop. It is so sweet to know where you are and to send you words of love and then so much more sweet to know that you care for them. I must be up early to help your mother who is so kind to me. I keep thinking all the day that sometime she may come to like me and be willing that I should be your wife though I know I am not worthy of so high an honor. Your family would be ashamed of mine, Dan. This is a hard thought, but it is not my fault, and I mean to be good and true always. I read all the time I can get, and try to improve all I can. Do not laugh at my spelling, dearest. Remember I never went to school steadily but two months in my life. When we are together you will teach me, and I shall show you how seriously I can study. Good-night, dearest one. I kiss you in my thoughts and all my love and all my life are yours forever.”

“Oh, how blind your love has made you, Susie. Why, this letter is eloquent. If my brother had been capable of understanding your generous sensibility, he would rather have sought to learn of you, than to have presumed to be your teacher. There are errors in orthography, but not half so many as there are in his; besides the sentiment of yours is noble, and that of his is not. You spell beautiful with two ll’s, and there are one or two other errors; but I believe they are all from studying Dan’s ridiculous style. You write a pretty hand, and your head, as papa says, is an excellent one. There is nothing to hinder your getting a fair education. I will teach you the Latin and Greek words from which ours are made up, also rhetoric, and history, and geography, and we will study botany together. You will be charmed with botany. I have all the text-books, and I want you to commence even to-morrow, so that you can have no time to brood over your miseries. I know you won’t do as silly girls do who, when persecuted for falling one step, think they may as well go quite down to perdition. Remember, you are not really degraded in my eyes, and I want you to take me into your heart as a true friend.”

Susie at this knelt down beside Clara, and burying her head in her lap sobbed anew, but quickly raised her head, saying, “I am only crying now for joy, because God is so good in sending you to me. Never in this world shall I forget the blessed help and comfort you bring to me. You will go to a home of your own some day, and if you will have me, I will come and take all your cares. I will keep your house. I will learn to do everything; and oh! I shall love you to my dying day.”

“Dear, dear Susie!” said Clara, her own eyes full of tears as she bent down and kissed Susie tenderly. “You would pay me too generously for what gives me so much pleasure. I ask only that you will be happy and make the best of everything. Do not kneel before me.”

“Oh, let me, do! It is natural for me, when I see anything so good and beautiful as you are; but have you thought that others will not think of me as you do? I am afraid you will pay dearly for your goodness to poor Susie.”

“Have no fear. I despise cold, shallow-hearted people, and shall lose the love of none but them. Papa will love me better, and that is compensation enough for that which merits no compensation at all. His approbation is worth more than that of all the world without it.” Clara found Susie quite capable of appreciating the character of Dr. Forest, and that raised her at once higher in her estimation. She talked with her some time longer, and then rose to go; but just then she saw Susie’s face blanch and her limbs shake. She had forgotten how great a strain this long interview must have been to Susie in her weak condition, and quickly atoned for her oversight, first by bringing her a cordial, and then helping her to undress and put her to bed like a child. Susie submitted like a tired baby. Her eyes were greatly swollen with weeping, and for these Clara brought hot water, and laid a compress upon them, saying, “Hot water, you know, is better for inflammation. That’s what the new school says, and we belong to the new school. Papa is a radical, they say; so are we. We believe in love, not in hate; in happiness, not in misery;” and Clara kissed Susie and bade her good-bye, saying, “Now go to sleep, if you can. Rest perfectly quiet. Trust to me and papa, and all will be well. No, don’t say a word. I won’t be thanked and called an angel, for I am only a girl like you, and in your place you would be just as kind to me.”

Clara left Susie’s chamber in a most enviable frame of mind. She had experienced a new pleasure from her course toward Susie, and in her heart she wondered why all the world was not loving and kind, when to be so created such deep satisfaction. “I think I did right too,” she said to herself, “in instilling a little healthy poison into Susie’s mind about Dan. If she can see a few of his meannesses, perhaps she will suffer less from the ‘pangs of despised love.’” Still Clara was not quite sure that she was right in lowering Dan in Susie’s estimation. On general principles, she would have naturally opposed anything of the kind; but Susie’s restoration to peace of mind and usefulness was the one object to be gained. To this end her self-respect must be roused, which could hardly be effected while she considered herself Dan’s inferior intellectually. Clara determined to prove to Susie her own innate strength, and humble Dan by showing him what a pearl he had thrown away. This was a labor worthy of Clara, and she left Susie’s room feeling that she loved all the world better for the course she had taken, and her heart was so full of human sweetness that she poured it out on everybody; on Dinah, whom she helped for an hour or two in her household work; on her twin sisters, who were not inclined much, especially Leila, to sentiment. Clara helped them both with their piano practice, petted them, called them her darlings, and encouraged them in every way. Linnie was touched by Clara’s kindness, and when she left said to Leila:

“How sweet Clara is, isn’t she?”

“As honey and nectar,” replied Leila; “all of a sudden, too. I guess she’s experienced religion,” she added, with her clear, metallic laugh. Leila was like Dan in many ways. The spirit of devotion was apparently wholly wanting in her nature. She was one of those whose doubting was an offence to freedom of thought, and whom you would rather see canting bigots than supporters of any principle dear to you. The doctor came in some time before tea, and went directly to Susie’s room, where he remained a full half hour. The change that he perceived in Susie was a revelation to him of his daughter’s character that brought an infinite relief, and more than justified all his hopes of her. As he went down the family were going into the dining-room. Clara stood at the foot of the stairs, waiting for him. He drew her head down on his breast and caressed it fondly; then held it away with both hands, and looked searchingly into her splendid eyes. This scrutiny evidently revealed what he sought, for he said softly and slowly, dwelling fondly on each word, “Papa’s own girl;” and then they joined the family in the dining-room.

CHAPTER XIV.
DAN’S MONEY RETURNED—THE DOCTOR CONQUERED.

The twins, who were now about thirteen years of age, had great difficulty in fathoming the secret regarding Susie, for, being the youngest of the children, they were still babies in the eyes of the family. They were not long in “nosing out,” as Leila called it, the real difficulty, and they discussed the subject together in a naive way that would have been amusing but for the heartlessness they displayed; still it was the heartlessness of the kitten over the agonies of a captive mouse, and perhaps implied no real cruelty of purpose beyond a certain spitefulness that they were not considered of sufficient importance to be taken into anybody’s confidence. Even Dinah snubbed them in a supercilious way when they attempted to obtain information from her, and they revenged themselves in a thousand nameless ways. Susie meanwhile had recovered from her illness occasioned by the shock she had received, and made superhuman efforts to win some little show of sympathy from Mrs. Forest. Clara had talked Miss Marston over to her side in a measure, so that she manifested a good deal of kindness to poor Susie, whose position was very difficult to endure. The twins, taking their cue from their mother, ignored Susie’s existence completely, more especially Leila, who, though in the habit of shirking every duty upon the willing hands of Susie, informed “Miss Dykes,” as she called her one day for the first time, that she need not come into her room any more to do the chamber-work. Susie looked at her with mild, sorrowful eyes, set down the water she had brought, and left the room without a word. Linnie, being softer in her feelings, said, “I think you are too bad, Leila. Did you see how she looked at you?”

“No, nor I don’t care. She’s a nasty thing.”

“I don’t see much difference between her now and a week ago, when you used to kiss her when you wanted her to do anything for you.” Leila flared up, and a very sisterly fight ensued. Linnie was no match for the hardheaded Leila in a contest of words, but in revenge, later in the day, she told Clara how Susie had been treated. This happened to be a good policy, though not intended as such. Clara drew her arm about Linnie, saying, “I am glad, sister dear, that you show some feeling. I knew you would, and I have wanted to take you into my confidence, for you are more mature for your age than Leila is; but mamma thought it not best. I think she is wrong, and I am going to tell you the truth. You have guessed it already. Susie, you know, has loved Dan since she was your age, and she has been foolish of course; but I want you to remember that she was a poor, ignorant, neglected child, and Dan was engaged to marry her. I blame him infinitely more than I do her. He was very selfish and unprincipled.”

“So I think, sissy. I thought it must be Dan—the mean thing. I’m real sorry for Susie; but what a goose she must be to care so for him.” And so another friend was won over to Susie. Linnie grew immensely important in her own eyes after this confidence of Clara, who told her, among other pretty compliments, that she was “right womanly” in her sentiments.

On one of those weary days, when Susie felt like destroying her life despite the kindness and sympathy of Clara and her father, she received a note from Dan. It was written in a cold, heartless style that she could scarcely believe him capable of after all she knew of him, and ended: “I don’t want you to be disgraced through me, and I am willing to marry you. Name the time and place, and I will be on hand. It is no use to palaver and swear I shall be supremely happy, and all that; but you are ‘ruined,’ of course, if I don’t, and I’m willing to do it, and ought to for the prospective brat’s sake, at least.” The letter enclosed a cheque for fifty dollars. Susie regarded the money greedily. She had never had half as much in her whole life, and this would buy so many things she needed, and then she read Dan’s heartless letter again, crying bitterly. Not one word of tenderness; nothing of the old love was left, only pity and an offer to sacrifice himself to save her. Disgust with her weakness, self-reproach, indignation, possessed her by turns, and the result was sending back the letter and the cheque, with only these words: “I can beg in the streets for myself or for your child much easier than I can accept charity from you. O my God! that I should come to this—to have money thrown at me like a bone to a dog, from one, too, whom I have so loved and trusted. Believe me, the only favor I ask, is that you may forget that I ever cared for you, for—

‘I am shamed through all my being

To have loved so weak a thing.’”

When Dan received this, he was surprised, to say the least, and chewed his moustache viciously. Beyond all his pique at the way his offer was received, there was a dawning respect for the girl he had ruined, as he thought; but Susie was not quite ruined yet, thanks to the generous sympathy of Dr. Forest and his daughter; and losing her respect for Dan, through finding out how soulless and unworthy he was, her heart-aches on account of his faithlessness gradually began to subside. Pretty soon another letter came, containing one hundred dollars in greenbacks. This time he confessed admiration for her “pluck,” as he called it, but swore that if she sent back this money he would burn it, leaving enough of the notes to show her he had kept his word. This was why he had sent greenbacks, which, if destroyed, could not be made good like a bank cheque.

Susie resolved to show this letter to Clara, and ask her advice, apologizing for not doing so with the first one. In fact Susie had enjoyed, in a bitter way, her answer, knowing it would wound Dan’s vanity, and she had feared that Clara’s advice would interfere with this satisfaction. The letter was written in a moment of exaltation, and was the wisest thing Susie could have done; but yet after it was in the post-office and beyond recall, the poor girl suffered new tortures lest her words should alienate him still further from her; for she had to own that, after all, she had not utterly given up the hope that he was only temporarily under some new influence, that made him act so dishonorably toward her. Love is not only blind, but absolutely idiotic, in its faith. When once we are even partially free from his gilded toils, how wide our eyes are opened! How microscopic their power to detect and measure infinitesimal quantities of meanness in the lover.

Clara was away when the second letter came, and Mrs. Forest and her visitor were out riding. Just as she had folded and put away Dan’s second letter, the doctor came in. He greeted her pleasantly, and threw himself wearily on the lounge in the dining-room. Upon his inquiring for Clara, Susie told him she was out. “But cannot I take her place, just for once?” she asked. “You want your bath, I know, for you always say that nothing rests you so much;” and not waiting for any verbal assent, Susie ran and pumped the water from the rain-cistern into the bath-tub, and added a pail of hot water from Dinah’s range. The bath refreshed him, as it always did, and when he came back Susie had his pipe filled for him, and a cup of fresh coffee beside it.

“What a grand sachem I am, to be so coddled by nice women. Now come and talk to me, Susie,” he said, stretching himself on the lounge. Susie sat down beside him on a low stool, and showed him Dan’s first letter and a copy of her answer.

“Good for your answer, Susie. I rather like it, though it is a little romantic. Yes, I like it; but your sending back the money—ah! that was too romantic by far. He’s a spendthrift, and the best possible use he can make of his money is to give it to you. Don’t you do it again—hear?—if he sends you any more.”

Susie listened to the doctor, but could not tell him just then that Dan had sent more, having stubbornly determined to refuse it, as she had the first; but she would consult Clara first. Seeing her silent, the doctor said:

“‘Is there confusion in the little isle?

Let what is broken so remain.’

“See! I am romantic, too. I also quote Tennyson. You’ve borne up bravely, Susie, these last days, and by and by all will be right. I am going to find you a place with some patient of mine, as near here as possible.” Susie’s face beamed at this. She felt that she could not possibly stay much longer in the doctor’s house, for she knew how Mrs. Forest felt toward her. He left her no time to thank him before he added, “I trust you are cultivating a healthy contempt for your rascally lover?”

“Do you think he will never, never care for Susie any more?” she asked. “See! he commences even this letter ‘Dear Susie,’” and she looked up inquiringly to the doctor, who answered, after a long pause:

“What dry husks a hungry heart will feed upon! Pitiful, pitiful!” and the doctor uttered a heavy sigh. “Why, no; he cares nothing for you beyond a feeling of pity, which no one could possibly withhold who had any natural feeling. I say this because the sooner you give up all hope that his disaffection is an accident, the better it will be for you.”

“Yet only so little while ago he told me I was all the world to him.”

“And he wrote you often, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Sometimes twice a day,” said Susie, smiling through her tears.

“Well, when he did that he was in love. There is no sign of that delectable state, so constant. You may lay it down as a law, if a man loves he writes, and simply because he cannot avoid doing so. He must be governed by the strongest impulse. When he is writing he does not know when to stop, for being away from an object that strongly attracts him, writing is the most effective solace. In fact, the amount a lover writes is a very good barometer of the pressure he is under from his passion.”

“But might he not be so busy he could not write?”

“He would take the hours for sleeping, because writing would be far pleasanter than sleeping. Of course there are accidents, serious illness, and so forth. I speak of natural, happy, passional attraction.”

“Why, I have not written myself sometimes because, indeed, I loved him so much,” said Susie.

“Ah! I was calculating the motives of my own sex. I doubt if the Devil himself could fathom all a woman’s motives.”

“I am sorry you think so, sir,” said the serious little Susie. “I mean I could not write because I wanted so to keep his love, and feared to reproach him, feared to be too loving, feared and distrusted my power every way; and so I often tore up letter after letter—often brought them back from the post-office door, and did not write perhaps for days; and yet I loved him so, all the time, that I could not sleep.”

“Poor child!” said the doctor, taking her hand. “Don’t you see you were but proving my rule, for in the first place you did write continually, according to your own confession; and then you remember I said happy passional attraction.”

“Oh, yes. I see you are right. You are always right; but do you not think love may sometimes return when once it goes out of the heart?”

“That’s a deep question, little woman—the rehabilitation of love. In romances, it happens often enough; but I am an old fellow, and I never knew a case in actual life. It is like small-pox, I suspect, and never breaks out the second time.

“But people do love deeply the second time.”

“Yes. I see my comparison is not well chosen; well, like the water of a river which never passes over its bed but once.”

While the doctor was conversing with Susie, Mrs. Forest was also engaged in her service, though with motives wholly different from those actuating the doctor, who talked to her to give her strength and self-confidence. He had never taken the trouble to have her sit by him, before the discovery of her sad condition, and seeing how deeply she appreciated his attention to her, made the giving of it very pleasant to him. Mrs. Forest, during her ride, called on old Mrs. Buzzell, who lived a very solitary life with her one old servant, to see if she would not receive Susie in her disgrace. Mrs. Forest was careful to mention all Susie’s good qualities, and Mrs. Buzzell at first felt inclined to assent because she was lonely, and had observed Susie with much interest whenever she had visited at the doctor’s house, and felt quite attracted to her; but some way she sniffed in the air that Mrs. Forest’s society notions were at the bottom of this move of hers, and so her reply was rather galling to one of Mrs. Forest’s refinement.

“Well, I will try to help her, and, as you say, no doubt the other ladies of our church will do the same; but if your house is too highly respectable to shelter her, of course mine is, and so there’s an end of that.”

This was Mrs. Forest’s last call upon Mrs. Buzzell. Their friendship, such as it was, had lasted twenty years, and thus it was brought to a sudden end, by wounding each other’s vanity. While they confined their mutual interests to gossip, and to superficial considerations of things generally, they met as on a bridge; but when deeper questions arose the bridge fell through, and they found themselves separated as by an impassable torrent. When Mrs. Forest had gone, Mrs. Buzzell questioned whether she herself had acted in a Christian spirit, and she was forced to confess that she had not. She thought, indeed, that she was very sorry, and anxious to apologize; but in fact her regret amounted to very little, for she would have been drawn and quartered in her present mood before she would have taken Susie in, after Mrs. Forest’s presumption.

This same day, in the early evening, after Clara was dressed for receiving Dr. Delano, she sat awhile with Susie in the room of the latter, and helped her in her first lesson; but they continually wandered from the subject of nouns and articles to those lying nearer the hearts of both. Still Susie’s recitation was very successful. She concealed from her friend the painful effort it had cost to concentrate her attention upon study, even for one minute, and hours had been consumed in preparing herself so that she might not disappoint Clara.

“Now you are going to do splendidly,” said Clara, assigning her a certain portion of history for the next day, to be read over and recited in Susie’s own language, and a very short task in a text-book of etymology. Clara had the true instinct of the teacher, and knew better than to give long tasks to a beginner, lest they should discourage. After this, Susie showed her Dan’s first letter and its answer, and before there was any time for Clara to reprove her for returning the money, she gave her Dan’s second letter, telling her at the same time that she was resolved to refuse the money. Clara held the money very closely, and said, “I shall not let you send this back. He is just pig-headed enough to burn it as he threatens. I will write him that I have seized it to prevent your returning it, and that I shall use it as I think best.” This she did, and Susie was forced to yield, not being sorry to have the responsibility thus completely removed from her own shoulders. She then consulted Clara about going away, and this Clara confessed was to be considered. “I do not wonder that you cannot endure mamma’s coldness,” she said, “but do not think of it to-night. Dr. Delano is anxious for our marriage to take place immediately, and entre nous—that is, between ourselves—I am myself going to manifest what mamma calls ‘indecent haste’ to get married, so that I may have a home for you;” and Clara laughed gayly, to prevent Susie’s taking it seriously, though in reality it was not wholly a pleasantry on her part. The ring of the door-bell interrupted Clara’s speech, and she bade Susie good-night tenderly, urging her to con over her lessons, and then go to bed and sleep. Susie clung to her friend a moment, crying silently; indeed, she cried so often that Clara found the best way was to not notice it too much; but she said, “Would you like me to come back after my friend has gone?” “Oh, do!” replied Susie. “Come and hear my lessons. I must have something to do, or I shall go crazy. If I can only get away from here——” “Yes, yes, I know just how you feel,” said Clara; “but it will not be long. I am going to talk with papa, if I am up when he comes home, and then I’ll come and tell you about it.” Susie begged Clara to understand how deeply she regretted leaving her and the doctor, but he would call on her, she knew. “And so shall I, every day of my life. Why, of course I shall, to hear your lessons. But I must go now;” and with another hasty kiss, after the manner of girls, Clara ran down-stairs.

Clara had thought to give Susie her sympathy and moral support in her trouble, but she had not dreamed of ever really loving her as a friend. And yet a week had not passed before she discovered qualities and sensibilities in Susie that not only surprised her, but made her compare most favorably with all the young friends Clara had known. The doctor was delighted with the growing regard of his daughter for Susie, in whom he had full faith. “Depend upon it, Clara,” he said, “Susie is a real gem, and under your polishing, you will see how she will shine out by-and-by. I think she will prove your best friend among women.”

The next morning the doctor had a long talk with his wife, who had “pouted” him, as the French say, ever since their last stormy interview; but he found it useless to try to move her. She was still as firm as a rock, though manifesting it in a way that seemed very gentle; and by appealing to his affection for her, by recalling the tenderness on his part that had endured all through their married life, the happiness that reigned in their home until he became “estranged” from her, as she said, and especially by her tears, which he called cowardly weapons, because she knew beforehand that he could not resist them—by all this she succeeded in making the good doctor feel that he was a brute, though he knew perfectly well that he had acted only justly and honorably in protecting a good girl in a disgrace caused by his own son. In the end he petted and caressed her, and turned her tears into smiles that were a triumph, but he saw in them only delight at his caresses.

That night Mrs. Forest appeared in the doctor’s room in a ravishing night toilet that had been packed away in lavender since the days of their honeymoon.

Is it possible that even virtuous married men are sometimes the victims of artful women?

CHAPTER XV.
THE DOCTOR’S LETTER—DAN REJECTED.

As Mrs. Buzzell was watering her house plants, a few days after the visit of the doctor’s wife, a letter arrived for her, and her eyes brightened, seeing the doctor’s handwriting in the superscription. She was very familiar with this handwriting, not from letters, indeed—nothing so romantic, but from his manifold medical prescriptions for her dyspepsia. There was no person in the world she esteemed so highly as she did Dr. Forest, and receiving a letter from him was a rare delight; yet she did not open it at once, but kept on tending her plants, which occupied a large table before the south window of her sitting-room. She did not open it hastily, probably for the same reason that has led many of us on receiving several letters, to leave the specially coveted one until the last, or perhaps until we were quite at ease and alone. At all events, Mrs. Buzzell waited until the flowers were all watered, and the stray drops of water fallen on the square of oiled cloth beneath the table carefully wiped up. Then she sat down, put on her gold-bowed spectacles, opened her letter, and read:

“My dear Mrs. Buzzell: I have wormed out of my wife this evening the object and the result of her late visit to you. I can quite understand, as I told her, why you should have refused her request.

“Now, you two women have danced in pint-pots all your lives, but with this difference: you, because the tether of your education and surroundings never permitted you to examine principles and motives of action outside of a given circumference; she, because the pint-pot fits her like a glove, and she measures the harmony of the spheres by this beautiful fit. She has never tried to breathe the broader, freer atmosphere outside, because her theory is, the pint-pot first and the universe afterward.

“By the pint-pot you know I mean society. Mrs. Forest sees plainly that no devotee of conventional morality can stand by a girl, especially one who is poor and humble in social position, and give her moral support through disgrace, without being ‘talked about’—that bugbear of little souls. Fools will say it is countenancing vice. I appeal to you because, from many sentiments I have heard you utter, I believe you capable of defying shallow criticism when you know you are right. I know you have broad and generous impulses, and you are young enough in soul and in body [this was a Bismarckian stroke of diplomacy, but the honest doctor never knew it] to obey them. You are the mother of no human child, but childless women should be the mothers of the world—sad for all its sorrows, glad for all its joys.

“Susie Dykes has more heart and brain than nine-tenths of the women I know, and if we treat her right fraternally—as I intend to do even if every one else abandons her—she will come out all right. She has not fallen yet; for she respects herself, despite this misfortune. I can say truly that I take pleasure in keeping this victim’s head above the muddy swash of conventional virtue that would wash her under.

“Will you be my real friend, and stand by me in this work? There is nothing like a good woman’s heart where such help is needed.”

The letter was well calculated to effect its purpose. There is nothing like faith in the justice and generosity of human nature, to call these qualities into action, even in the narrowest hearts. The doctor’s faith in Mrs. Buzzell made her feel equal to facing martyrdom; and then she was very proud of his appealing to her to stand by him when his own wife failed him; so without delay she put on her old gloves and her antique bonnet, shut her cat out of the house lest he should worry her canaries, and marched straight over to Dr. Forest’s, and called for Susie Dykes, without the slightest mention of the mistress of the family. Susie came down to meet her with wondering eyes. What could it mean that the staid and dignified Mrs. Buzzell should so honor her? She soon learned the object of Mrs. Buzzell’s call, and that very night, having packed all her worldly goods in two paper boxes and a bundle, she slept under the roof of her new friend.

The fact of Susie’s condition soon leaked out, and the “muddy swash,” as the doctor termed it, began to rise threateningly. Clara nobly sustained her, went every day and heard her lessons, as she had resolved to do, for having once decided upon the right course, she was indeed her father’s own girl, and there was no thought of turning back. Susie’s prompt response to Clara’s kindness, touched her heart, and gradually the friendship for her protégée grew into a deep and sincere affection, nourished by the best feelings of both.

In the plants of Mrs. Buzzell’s sitting-room, in her garden, and in the woods behind her house, there was ample means for botanizing, though at first it was a hard task for Susie to study. The mental effort required to distinguish the monocotyledonous and the dicotyledonous in the specimens she and Clara gathered, seemed a mockery to her over-burdened soul; but the struggle paid well. In a few weeks she became deeply interested in all her studies, and her rapid progress astonished her little circle of friends. Meanwhile, she carefully tended Mrs. Buzzell’s plants, which after a time began to respond to the knowledge she had acquired of their nature and different wants, and day by day she took some new responsibility of household cares from Mrs. Buzzell, who, after a month, could not have been induced to part with Susie. She took the whole charge of the wardrobe of the coming waif, and the hard lines about her mouth softened with the new, strange pleasure in the work that awakened memories of nearly forty years before, when, as a young wife, she had once, with loving care, prepared numerous tiny articles for a baby that never wore them. They had lain ever since, packed away in camphor, and no one had ever known the secret but her husband, now dead many years. Many times she had been tempted to give them to this or that friend, but her generosity could not quite overcome a sense of shame that women always experience over a useless work of this kind; yet she dreaded to have them found after her death, and there was a soft spot somewhere in her old heart, that would not let her destroy them. One day, therefore, with many misgivings, she unpacked with Susie the antique, camphor-scented trunk, and told the little history of her early married years, delighted only that Susie did not laugh at her. The idea of the serious little Susie laughing at any human disappointment, was simply absurd. She only said:

“It was too bad, when you were married to one you loved, and the baby would have been so welcome.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Buzzell, kindly, “we’ll make this baby welcome in spite of everything. We can’t understand all God’s ways; and who knows but this may be a trial that will lead you nearer to Him who judges hearts not as men judge, but as one who made them, and knows all their secret springs?”

This little experience, which to Mrs. Buzzell seemed a most important confidence, tended to develop all the dormant softness and tenderness of her nature; and one day the little, old baby-wardrobe was brought down, and her own wrinkled hands washed out the odor of camphor and the yellow of forty years.

As Susie’s fate had been so well provided for, and especially as Miss Marston’s visit was drawing to its close, Dan again appeared on the scene. In fact he could no longer keep away from this woman who had captured him, body and soul. He thought of her all the time, and the fear that she might not return his love, made his days and nights wretched. It was a new experience for Dan. Grief did not sit gracefully upon him at all. It was an enemy whose blows his “science” could not parry, and it made him furious, without leading him to reflect that he had caused a thousand-fold keener heart-aches to poor Susie (even apart from the special wrong he had done her by deserting her at a time when no man of sensibility ever shows that his heart is growing cold), for we can never suffer from failing to win love, as from the loss of it when it has become necessary, not only to our happiness, but even to the rendering of life tolerable. In his selfishness, Dan thought no suffering could equal his, and he determined to know his fate before Miss Marston left Oakdale.

One evening, therefore, he dressed himself with extraordinary care, and sallied forth in the direction of his father’s house. As he drew near, he heard Miss Marston’s adorable voice in the parlor, and instead of ringing at the front door, he went around to the veranda, and waited until the song ceased. Even then he had not the courage to approach her—she might come out, he thought, and be pleased by finding him there. Meanwhile he drank in greedily the sweet half-melodies, half-harmonies, evoked by her beautiful fingers, as they strayed over the key-board of the piano without any special aim, for she was evidently alone and “fancy free.” Pretty soon he recognized a kind of phantasy upon an old Scotch ballad, and then her voice swelled out in the first two lines of “Comin’ thro’ the Rye,” and then stopped. Again she commenced:

“Amang the train there is a swain,

I dearly love mysel’;

But what’s his name and where’s his hame,

I dinna choose to tell.”

This verse she sang entire. “Why this special verse?” asked Dan’s heart, for it was in the state when clinging to straws is perfectly natural. At this juncture he made bold to enter by the French window, which was open, and stood beside her. She attempted to rise, but he prevented it, begging her to keep on playing—he had something to say to her, which could be fittest said to music.

“So it is coming,” thought Miss Marston. “How shall I stave it off?”

If Dan had only read her thoughts as easily as she read his, he would not have made the headlong plunge into a declaration of love, as he did, without a moment’s pause. Miss Marston quickly interrupted him.

“You do me honor, Mr. Forest,” she said, rising and looking him calmly in the face; “but——”

Dan was half mad. He thought he detected contempt in the way she pronounced the word “honor.” He thought some one had been “poisoning her mind” against him—by the truth in his case—and scarcely knowing what he was saying, he blurted out this fear—thus, by a stroke of poetic justice, revealing what the prudent Mrs. Forest had taken such infinite pains to conceal.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Miss Marston, coldly. “I never dreamed that, young as you are, you could be so old in iniquity. I should much like to be able to respect you for the sake of your estimable family; but if this is so, and I see the truth of it in your face, let me give you a word of advice: I am some years older than you are, and I think I know human nature well enough to assure you that you will never win the love of any true woman while basely deserting another, whose happiness”—and she added in a low, withering tone, as she turned to leave the room—“and whose honor you have placed in your hands.” The door closed behind her, and Dan, in speaking of his sensations years after, remarked that you could have “knocked him down with a feather.”

CHAPTER XVI.
THE VISIT OF THE DELANOS.

Dr. Delano winced a little at the scandals circulating in the village, for he heard the name of his betrothed constantly coupled with that of the “fallen” Susie Dykes. Once he expressed a kind of gentle remonstrance that she should visit Susie so often, but she replied with such frank confidence, as if he could not possibly look at the matter except as one of the very highest and best of earth’s creatures, that he felt little in his own eyes, and dropped the subject. Still, he was a good deal disturbed when his father and the stately Miss Charlotte Delano appeared on the scene, coming from the centre of the élite of Beacon Hill, in Boston. While in Oakdale they were the guests of the Kendricks, old friends of the Delanos, and the richest people in the county. He knew that the Kendrick girls had cut Clara’s acquaintance from the beginning of these scandals. One of these, Louise Kendrick, had been Clara’s most intimate friend since their girlhood, when they used to play with the skeleton in the doctor’s garret. Clara herself was really distressed over her friend’s disaffection, and Mrs. Forest regarded it almost as a calamity, and tortured Clara about it in season and out of season. “I’m sure you might have expected it,” she would say, in an injured tone. “Girls, who have a proper regard for their reputation, shrink instinctively from those who have not.” These speeches roused Clara one day, and she flashed defiance in a very shocking way. “I begin to hate the very word reputation,” she said. “I wouldn’t have it at the cost of being mean and heartless, like Louise Kendrick.” Mrs. Forest was amazed, and asked her daughter what Dr. Delano would say if he could hear her utter such sentiments. The answer was very unexpected, and silenced Mrs. Forest effectually. It came like thunder from a clear sky:

“I don’t know what he would say. I only know it wouldn’t require any extraordinary amount of temptation to make him fall, reputation or not.”

This speech sounded very ugly to Clara when once it was uttered, but she was very angry, and it could not be recalled, though her heart, if not her head, accused her of a certain injustice.

The Delanos were not over-pleased that the male representative of the family name and wealth, should marry out of their “set;” but they were too well bred to not do honor, at least outwardly, to any wife he saw fit to choose, provided she was of irreproachable character. They had a natural contempt for country village scandals, and they saw there was nothing really improper in Miss Forest’s befriending the “unfortunate young woman.” It only showed an ill-directed enthusiasm, excusable in a young lady educated quite irregularly, as they understood she had been. Mrs. Forest, however, trembled for fear that what Mr. Delano and his daughter would hear at the Kendricks about Clara’s late course, would make them think unfavorably of the marriage; but her soul was at rest when the grave old gentleman, with his daughter, called formally, and thus recognized Clara as the son’s choice. After this formal call they graciously accepted an invitation to spend the evening at the doctor’s, one inducement being that he was absent in the first instance, and they had not seen him. Mrs. Forest was in her element receiving these elegant people. She had made the evening reception the study of days. On the occasion she looked very handsome in a pearl-gray silk with white lace, and her gray hair, in three rolls on each side of her face, surmounted by a pretty cap. Clara wore a pretty evening dress of white, with sleeves of illusion, puffed with narrow green velvet. As a finishing touch, Mrs. Forest fastened a string of pearls around her daughter’s neck, saying, “These, you know, are to be your wedding present from me. You look exceedingly well, my daughter, and I want you to talk very little this evening, and especially to avoid any of your father’s radical expressions. I don’t want them to think you are——”

“Strong-minded,” said Clara, finishing the sentence. “I know you were not going to say that, but you meant it. O dear! How different you are from papa. I wonder how you two ever came to marry. Now he would say to me, ‘Be yourself.’ You never said such a thing to me in your life. I am not namby-pamby, and I cannot speak with the affected voice of Louise Kendrick, who is your ideal; and I must say I am glad of it. However, mamma dear, I will try to please you, and if papa don’t inspire me, I shall be inane enough to gratify your taste.”

Dr. Delano came early, and had a tête-à-tête with Clara before his people arrived. He had never seen her neck and arms before, and his expressions of admiration at their exquisite moulding were perhaps intemperate, after the manner of lovers, but altogether delightful to Clara’s ear. He was proud of her, he said, and wanted his father and sister to see her looking as she did then; and certainly they must have been lacking in appreciation, if they could fail to admire a girl so beautiful as Clara was made by her charming toilet, the grace that was incarnate in every movement, and by every feature of her face, enhanced and glorified by the power of Love’s spell.

The evening passed very pleasantly until the subject of the late civil war was mentioned, and then Mrs. Forest fidgeted, expecting every moment some horrid radicalism from the doctor, who would not think like other people! Clara, too, she feared would “talk,” and, according to her creed, not only children, but young ladies, should be seen, not heard.

“Under all possible aspects,” the doctor said, on this occasion, in reply to some opinion of Mr. Delano, “under all possible aspects, war is a stupendous imbecility.”

“Then, sir,” replied Mr. Delano, “you would not justify defensive war.”

Mr. Delano was a retired cotton speculator. He was rather slight in build, with small, keen eyes, set deep and near together; a high, thin, Roman nose, thin lips, teeth of the very best manufacture, his face clean-shaven, and his dress faultless in its elegance.

“No, sir, I should not,” the doctor answered.

“Yet it seems to me that the principle of giving your cloak also, to the rascal who takes your coat, works very ill in practice, at least in these degenerate days.”

“Ah! that may be. I certainly never attempted to carry it into practice. If we have a barbarian people for a neighbor, and they organize an army to destroy us, we must, of course, defend ourselves. We should have the esprit de corps which would rouse men, women, and children even, to help crush the invaders in a single day; but this would not be organized war, as generally understood. Moreover, if we had barbarian enemies, it would be the wiser policy to conquer them by making them our friends; and that is by no means an impractical policy, as has been proved by history. Between civilized nations, this method of settling difficulties, is an insult to the dignity of civilization. In the first place, it never settles anything, any more than the duel does.”

No one seemed ready to defend dueling; and seeing a pause, Clara said, “I think the history of horrid wars might end with this generation, if only women could be inspired with a normal disgust for all kinds of murdering.”

Mrs. Forest thought that was not so bad, if only Clara would say nothing more radical. She herself believed that women would be the most effective instruments, under divine will, of ending human butchery.

Miss Delano regarded Clara as if astonished at opinions in a young lady. The old gentleman was evidently struck, for he deigned to reply to her directly.

“Yet the fair hands of your sex, Miss Forest, even to-day, are engaged buckling on the armor of their male friends.”

“I am sorry, sir, that this is true.”

“Your daughter seems to have opinions”—said Miss Delano to Mrs. Forest, with whom she had been keeping up a separate conversation—“not common to young ladies of her age.” This was really intended as a compliment, but was not taken as such at the time.

“I hope I am not unpatriotic,” said Clara, looking straight at Miss Delano with a frank, sweet expression. “I love my country; but I love other countries also, and I have been taught to look upon the human race as one, and not simply to confine my sympathies to the place where I happened to be born. It seems to me clearly a duty to cultivate this feeling of unity.”

“These sentiments do you honor,” replied Mr. Delano, anxious to draw out this girl, who was not like any he had ever met; “but it seems to me singular that you should have arrived at such conclusions at your time of life.”

“It ought not to be singular, I think. I have heard the doctrines of peace and the brotherhood of man presented by my father ever since I can remember. It is perfectly impossible for me to see anything in military glory worthy of admiration. To me, any honest laboring man is more noble than the military hero, and I consider the sword a badge of disgrace. If I were a man, I should be so ashamed to be seen with such a thing at my side! Think what it suggests!” said Clara, with disgust in every feature of her beautiful face.

“It is true, father,” said the son, “that this spirit in women would soon put an end to war. We should hardly fight, if we thereby made ourselves despicable in the eyes of those we love.”

“But this spirit among women, my son, would make cowards of us all.”

“That, I think, is a great mistake,” said Dr. Forest. “It might in time make us forget how to use the sword and the bayonet dexterously—a ‘consummation devoutly to be wished,’ in my opinion; but, good Heaven! sir, is the courage and manliness of men to be measured by their skill in killing each other, as the valor of the savage by the number of scalps he can show? He can brave death, if that be the test, in nobler ways than at the hands of some mad, misguided brother.”

“Yet, in all examination of such questions, we must not forget that human passions remain the same. In all ages mankind has shown a decided tendency towards conquest.”

“Certainly,” replied the doctor, “human passions remain the same: that is, no new faculties are created, and none destroyed; but their relative activity differs with degrees and stages of development. You and I have the same faculties that in the Apache express themselves in pow-wow-ing and scalping, yet we neither pow-wow nor scalp: we have outgrown that kind of gratification for the passion, but we still express it in fighting. The time will come when we shall have outgrown that kind of expression as well. The desire to triumph over obstacles, to succeed, as well as the passion for organizing great enterprises, will always find ample avenues of expression and gratification.” The doctor paused, fearing to monopolize the conversation.

“I should much like to hear your views as to the way those passions can be gratified,” said Mr. Delano.

“In many ways,” replied the doctor. “Suppose, instead of going into the South to subdue and kill our fellow-men, we had organized our vast army for the purpose of draining and reclaiming the Dismal Swamp. That would have been a noble work. Where now that miserable tract is exhaling poisonous vapors, it might be to-day yielding fruits and grains to feed the children starving in our cities.”

“Why, this is constructive radicalism!” said Mr. Delano. “But while our army were reclaiming the Dismal Swamp, the Southern army would have been marching into our Northern towns and laying them waste!”

“No; I think,” said Miss Delano, “they would have been astounded into very good humor, and would have at once set about adjusting our quarrel amicably.”

“It is difficult to say,” said the doctor, “how our Southern citizens would have taken the invasion of a nonfighting army. The slavery system is a fearful drag upon the growth of the higher faculties. If we had gone down there to build them railroads and school-houses, they might have considered it very patronizing on our part. Slavery made white men despise labor; so they would not have felt like joining in, perhaps, like good fellows, though they were ‘spoiling’ for action, and their chivalry, as they called it, dreamed only of military glory, as the sole gentlemanly expression of their bottled-up forces. If they had respected labor, they would have met us right fraternally; but then, if they had understood the dignity of labor, slavery would have never been, and consequently our civil war would have been avoided; so our speculation is useless.”

“It is very interesting, at all events,” said Dr. Delano. “I confess that the idea of a grand army to drain the Dismal Swamp inspires me. I would join such an expedition with enthusiasm.”

Miss Delano suggested that such an army need not become demoralized for the want of woman’s influence, because they could take women along with them; and Clara drew a glowing picture of camp-life under such conditions, with music and fancy-dress balls to inspire the workers after the day’s labor, which, with an army of fifty thousand or more perfectly organized, need not become drudgery, for each division could be constantly relieved after three or four hours, which would constitute a day’s work. “And then when all was over,” Clara continued, “when all the glory was gained, you would have, in place of murders on your conscience, the satisfaction of having created only pleasure, and benefited all coming generations.”

“It would be a very economical campaign,” said Mr. Delano. “Your war debt would be reduced to zero; for as the work would require several years, you could carry on at the same time all the agricultural and manufacturing operations necessary to support your army.”

“But the greatest economy,” said Dr. Delano, “would be the economy of men. Citizens being the most valuable part of the body politic.”

“That is the best part of it,” said Clara. “You would have no bones bleaching on some terrible field of glory; no mothers and wives and orphans mourning for their dead. I think that ‘glory’ is a gilded snare that catches only fools. There can be no true glory in a work that shames humanity.”

“For my part, I should like to see war ended forever,” said Miss Charlotte; “but I think preaching a crusade against glory will not do any good.”

“If preached by women, it certainly will,” said the doctor. “As soon as the rank and file, without which there could be no army, and consequently no war, come to realize the contemptible position they occupy as puppets in the hands of an ambitious glory-seeking few, they will say No; and when, by general culture, they come to respect labor and human rights, they will say, ‘We will do no murder; we believe in labor—in building up, not in tearing down.’ Depend upon it, the solution is simpler than politicians and demagogues have ever dreamed, and nearer, too, for the growing moral sense of the age points directly to a time when international disputes will all be settled by arbitration; and when, if two nations are about to grip each other’s throats, all the other nations, as by instinct, will unite and separate them.”

“How could they do that without fighting also?” asked Mr. Delano.

“Why, by mere remonstrance. Is there any person insensible to public opinion? A nation is only a body of individuals. It could not stand against the moral convictions of the majority of nations. It would be simply impossible. If one man is foolish enough to fight a wind-mill, like Don Quixote, you cannot suppose any nation of men would be.”

“I admit that,” replied Mr. Delano; “yet I am not convinced that we shall ever arrive at that reign of reason; and your constructive army does not seem to me to meet all the wants supplied by the destructive one. There must be far more excitement in the latter.”

“But we must not forget that, as man reaches a higher state of culture, he shuns violent excitement of all kinds—it has no charm for him. Natural attractions constantly demand better and finer food for their gratifications. To deny this, is like saying that because man loves conviviality and exhilaration, he must always continue to gratify them by the rum-shop and a free-fight.”

At this point in the conversation Miss Marston, who had been out of town on a visit, came in, and entertained the company by her exquisite singing, and soon after Dinah brought in a tray of dainties, and a decanter of California wine. While the company were sipping the wine, she reappeared with fruit. Her black face always beamed with delight on “massa’s company.” The doctor made some kindly remark to her, as he always did, and poured her out a glass of wine. Mrs. Forest was unspeakably shocked. On this special occasion why could he not behave himself properly? Dinah took the glass with thanks, and said, raising it to her sable lips, “I hopes massa’l lib forebber.” This was her toast; and grinning upon the amused guests, she courtesied to them and left. The doctor thoroughly enjoyed this shock to conventional propriety. Clara was not disturbed in the least, for whatever her father did was right in her eyes. Mrs. Forest made some excuse to Miss Delano for what she called the doctor’s “eccentricity.”

“Your family is Southern, I believe,” said Mr. Delano.

“I am,” said Mrs. Forest, a little proudly, “but my husband is not.”

“No,” said the doctor, “I am of the good old New England, witch-burning stock; though I lived South many years.” Mr. Delano asked him if he did not find his sympathies in this war rather on the side of the South. “No more than with the North,” he answered. “I deplore it for the injury it must do to the whole country and to the world at large. The moral sense of the civilized world has a natural right to forbid anything so imbecile as an appeal to arms.”

“Do you suppose, sir,” asked Miss Delano, “if you had taken the vote of all the people of this country on the question of war or secession, the majority would have decided for secession?”

“Most certainly I do, if you mean the people, madame, and not simply the fighting portion. Men would not vote for war if it involved the destruction of their mothers and sisters, daughters, wives, and sweethearts, and women are said to be more tender towards those they love, than men are.”

“I must say,” said Mrs. Forest, “I do not think any nation has a right to declare war without consulting women—those who must be the greatest sufferers in the end.” This was very bold for Mrs. Forest, who seldom expressed opinions on such questions. This was just after the emancipation proclamation, and the doctor remarked that the abolition of slavery was a grand result, but even that was purchased too dearly.

“I never identified myself with the abolition movement,” said Mr. Delano, not mentioning the fact that, as a cotton-broker, his policy did not lie in that direction; “but slavery is a relic of barbarism, and therefore out of place in the nineteenth century. Still you are right, perhaps, that war does really never settle vexed questions. I foresee confusion worse confounded in our future political relations with the South.”

Mr. Delano and his daughter stayed quite late, and evidently enjoyed their visit, and were more pleased with the family of Albert’s future wife than they had expected. When they were gone, Mrs. Forest inwardly thanked God that the conversation had been providentially prevented from drifting into religion or woman’s rights, and went to bed in a very serene state of mind.

CHAPTER XVII.
COSTLY GRAPES.

When Dan left his father’s house after his rejection by Miss Marston, he was really wretched for the first time in his life; yet the experience did not soften him as fine natures are softened by unhappy love. Between his set teeth he called her hard names, and cursed himself for giving her the opportunity to reject his offer. He passed Susie during this walk, who, being surprised, looked up into his face with the old light in her eyes. He met her eyes as we meet a stranger’s, without a sign of recognition; whereat the poor girl’s limbs trembled, and putting down her veil after passing him, she walked on blinded by her tears.

In his frame of mind, Dan looked upon all women as his enemies, and especially Susie, but for whom he might have won the queenly Miss Marston. But for the recentness of his rebuff, he would have spoken kindly enough to Susie, for he was capable of pity, and he had considerable affection in his nature, though it was of the bearish kind, wholly divested of that sensitive, tender element which, when a woman has once known it, makes valueless all other love of men. It is not found in common men, however, who are mostly capable of violent demonstration, without any of that high sentiment which seeks only to learn the real desire of the loved one, and then studies to gratify it, finding keen delight in that, and that alone. It is true, also, that few women are capable of inspiring such a sentiment, and so the world knows little of the highest phase of the passion of love. Susie had never known any love but Dan’s, and though it had occurred to her that there might be kisses, for example, not so much like the pounce of a hawk upon a pigeon, as his were, still she had loved him with all her heart, and it was terrible, even when she knew he had ceased to love her, to think that he could pass her in the street without a sign of recognition. But Susie had outlived that experience, and with the certainty that he was lost to her forever, and with time and the accession of new thoughts and cares, and especially with the interest Clara had succeeded in awakening in regular daily study, her grief lessened. There were, first hours, and then whole days, when there were no heart-aches on his account. Over the thought of this she would invariably rejoice, as over a great triumph, until some treacherous retrospection of happier days quickened the old tenderness into life—renewed agonies that she thought were quieted forever, and revealed her situation as dreadful beyond mortal endurance.

After Miss Marston left Oakdale, Dan went home once or twice, but it was like a strange place to him. His father, to be sure, treated him much the same, and never alluded to Susie by any accident. Mrs. Forest pitied him more than ever, and Clara was at least polite to him on all occasions. He could see and feel, however, that his conduct was detestable in her eyes, and as for Leila and Linnie, he considered them of slight importance. One day he discovered that Clara knew of his offering himself to Miss Marston, and of the galling manner with which he had been refused, and this made him furious. Miss Marston, then, had despised him too much to keep his humiliation a secret, as any honorable woman would do under ordinary circumstances.

Miss Marston would indeed have been the last person to reveal such a thing, but the day before her departure, in a long talk with Clara, she expressed the desire that Clara would make it certain to Susie that Dan was nothing to her. “You know,” she said, “how a person in her abandoned condition would naturally feel toward one she supposed the cause of her being abandoned. Do convince her that there has never been the slightest encouragement on my part—no intimacy whatever between me and your brother, no thought of correspondence, or anything of the kind;” and then she told Clara of the last meeting with Dan, and expressed unqualified disapproval of him altogether; at the same time sending kind messages to Susie, and a present of a microscope for her botanical studies.

“There is one thing I have wished to ask you, Miss Marston,” said Clara, “but I have never dared to. Will you tell me just your true impressions of Albert?” Miss Marston did not reply satisfactorily, and Clara, putting her arm around her rather timidly, for the teacher that expressed itself in every word and manner, still continued to awe Clara, as it had done in Stonybrook, urged a reply. She had often noticed Miss Marston studying Albert. The two were very polite to each other, but it was easy to see that there was little true sympathy between them. Thus urged, Miss Marston answered: “I have studied him carefully, because he has your happiness in his hands. I confess I fear greatly that you are not just the kind of wife he should select.” Clara was grieved, not understanding Miss Marston, and she said quickly, “I have often wondered that he should think so highly of me.”

“No, no. It is not a question of your worthiness. You are worthy, I think, of any one—certainly of Dr. Delano; but there is a self-sufficiency, well concealed by his culture, that will some time be very apt to run counter to your ideas of justice and devotion. I only say I fear, understand. I may be wrong; but I would urge you to avoid the first misunderstanding. It would be hard, I think, for him to examine himself with merciless justice. You have that power, which I see you inherit from your father, who is a wonderfully superior man.”

“Liberally translated,” said Clara, smiling, “you think Albert a tyrant. You do not understand him fully, I think, but I am glad of your frank opinion. I shall be careful to be good and just to him, and I think I shall never have cause to admire him less than I do now;” and Clara went on revealing, little by little, to Miss Marston a sentiment so near adoration that it almost appalled her, and convinced her still further that such an exalted passion could never find full response, nor be even comprehended by Albert Delano; but she said no more. The next day she left Oakdale. Her trunk had been sent to the station, which was but a short distance, and she and Clara were to walk. They passed Mrs. Buzzell’s cottage, and Miss Marston gratified Clara greatly by calling on Susie, and being really kind and friendly to her, a proceeding that quite astonished Mrs. Forest when she heard of it.

As the weeks passed Mrs. Buzzell bravely stemmed the current of popular disapprobation at her act of “countenancing vice;” for the consciousness of doing right was enhanced by the good qualities she was constantly discovering in Susie. Mrs. Buzzell’s temper, never very sweet, had not improved by years of loneliness, and when criticised by her female friends, she gave them back “as good as they sent,” to use her own words; and so it came to pass that the piously-disposed ladies of the congregation to which Mrs. Buzzell belonged, and which had barely escaped receiving Susie as a member, had not the opportunity to patronize Susie, and to extend charity to her in that condescending way too well known to many an unfortunate. The continuance of such patronage depends upon the utter humility of the recipient. She must confess herself a vile sinner, be willing to take thankfully the position of the lowest scrub, and express in every act that her patronizers are above her as the stars above the earth. Let the victim dare to show any ambition to regain her self-respect, any dissatisfaction because the daughters of her patronizers treat her with contempt, while they smile graciously upon the author of her degradation, and the patronage ceases at once.

“This is the way society protects itself,” said Mrs. Buzzell to Mrs. Kendrick, the banker’s wife, one of the would-be patronizers; “but is there not something wrong in the system that blasts and destroys the woman, while it winks at the sin of the man? I have come to see that in most cases, as in this, for example, her fault is much less than his. Man is taught self-dependence from the cradle; woman to depend upon man; and when she does so to the utmost limit, trusting every hope of happiness in his honor, this is a common result. We have called the doctor a radical, and graciously excused his eccentricities because he is so good a physician and so kind a man; but face to face with such facts, I see he is nearer right than we are.”

“Your judgment is misled by your sympathies, Mrs. Buzzell,” said the banker’s lady. “Do you not see that if unmarried mothers and their children are to be respected, there is no safety for legal wives and legitimate children? If society comes to recognize the position of mistress as respectable, to be a wife will be a very questionable honor.”

“Well, I sometimes think it is,” said Mrs. Buzzell, turning over in her mind this new and practical view of the case, and forgetting, in a kind of dreamy retrospection, that a moment before she had intended to smite Mrs. Kendrick “hip and thigh.”

“They think we lose our youth when we begin to fade a little,” said Mrs. Kendrick, “when in fact we are then more sensitive than ever to the better part of love; and having a baby makes a very baby of a woman in this respect. Do what we will, though, we cannot keep the very element in a man’s love without which we don’t care for his love at all; and children hardly prove the consolation we expect, except, indeed, when they are babies. When they grow older they go from us, they wound us, and seem to spend half their lives fighting against our desires. After all, it is better to keep our thoughts beyond this world. I find, myself, very little pleasure in it.”

It was very seldom that Mrs. Kendrick gave any expression to the dark under-current of her life. She passed for a very happy woman, and Mrs. Forest considered her position every way enviable. Her husband was rich, as all husbands should be in her opinion, as a duty they owe to society, and he was never known to be eccentric in anything. Mrs. Forest would have found him perfect. As a young man he had been enthusiastic, loved art and poetry, and talked of high purposes in life. He had even written very fair verses himself, and his wife, before marriage and some time after, had adored him; but he had in time so changed the diet of his soul, that whereas it once seemed wholly to feed upon grand aspirations, and upon the beautiful in all things, it now gorged itself upon bonds and stocks, and assimilated vast quantities of the nutriment. His romantic wife became practical too, but she was bitter over the loss of her illusions, and turned the whole current of her life into social ambition. She had the finest establishment in the county, and she seemed to study day and night to show her husband how dependent she was upon society—how little upon him—for her sum of happiness. For years they had ceased to wound each other’s vanity, as married people do after the romance is outlived and the conjugal yoke begins to gall them. It was not worth the trouble. Society held them up as shining examples of conjugal felicity. They always spoke of each other before the world in a tone of reserve, as if the nature of their mutual relations was too sacred to be questioned or discussed. And yet, with all this outside homage and interior luxury, with all her fine carriages and horses, elegant toilettes, splendid gardens and green-houses, Mrs. Kendrick really found life a burden, as thousands of women do in her position, not knowing that their trouble is the want of a wider sphere of action.

Mr. Kendrick must have been enormously rich. It was the wonder of all the country round that so much money could be squandered without the least effect upon the supply. Wise heads declared that Kendrick’s farms and grounds were badly managed, and it was well known that, notwithstanding the extent and cost of keeping his gardens and green-houses, flowers had to be ordered from professional florists on every occasion of a grand reception. Kendrick himself tried to take interest in his winter-gardens. In one there was a large black Hamburg grape-vine, bearing one magnificent bunch of fruit. He had watched this from day to day, but he knew nothing of the art of cultivation under glass, and was made to feel himself a very second-rate object when in the presence of the head-gardener, who was a pompous and important functionary. During the last winter Mr. Kendrick, in paying the coal bill, took the trouble to glance over it. The winter was not yet ended, and there were seventy-five tons of coal consumed for the hot-houses! On this occasion Mr. Kendrick ventured to go to the head-gardener and suggest mildly his astonishment at the consumption of coal. The functionary pointed reproachfully to that bunch of black Hamburgs, and Mr. Kendrick was silent.

On the occasion of Mrs. Kendrick’s call, she asked Mrs. Buzzell, as she rose to go, if she could do anything to help her in the responsibility she had assumed. “I want your sympathy of course,” replied Mrs. Buzzell. “It is not pleasant to feel that you are condemned for doing what you know to be your duty.”

“I certainly do not condemn you,” said Mrs. Kendrick; “but I could never do myself what you are doing; and I think you would see your duty in a different light if you were the mother of a marriageable daughter.”

“What then are we to do, as Christians, in cases like this?”

“Oh, I suppose there ought to be a respectable institution for them, where they could find protection and work to do, and some provision made for the education of their children. I would give something towards the establishment of such an institution; but I could not afford to defend openly a girl like this, as you are doing.”

“But don’t you see, that the religion of Christ plainly teaches us to forgive the erring, and so help them to a higher life.”

“My dear Mrs. Buzzell, the Christian religion, as interpreted to-day, adapts itself to the exigencies of society. That religion, as taught by Christ and his apostles, would be as much out of place in our present social system as a monk would be in a modern ball-room.”

When Dr. Forest called, a day or two after, Mrs. Buzzell told him of Mrs. Kendrick’s speech. “She is more of a philosopher than I thought,” he said.

“But don’t you think that a very shocking way to look at religion, doctor?”

“Ah! my dear friend; it should never shock us to hear a truth. The only real Christians, according to the original type, to be found to-day, are among certain orders of the Catholic church, who literally ‘take no heed of the morrow,’ never have ‘scrip in their purse,’ or a second suit of clothes. They literally crucify the flesh, and study to be just like Christ. Mrs. Kendrick is perfectly right. You see, in helping and befriending one like Susie, whom modern society despises and neglects, you are a very old-fashioned kind of Christian, though not necessarily of the primitive type.”

“Well, if I can only be a Christian in the true sense, whatever that may be, it is all I ask for myself,” said Mrs. Buzzell, earnestly.

“And by that you mean pure in all your thoughts, and upright in all your dealings, and nothing else.”

“Certainly I do.”

“Well, that is what I call true morality. You call it by a different name. We don’t differ so much. For bigot and infidel, we stand very comfortably near together, I should say,” said the doctor, smiling. Mrs. Buzzell saw she had admitted too much by that “nothing else,” but she did not feel like arguing, and so turned the subject.

CHAPTER XVIII.
HOW DAN GOT MARRIED.

With October, came busy days for Clara. Her mother was in a fever from the fear that the wedding trousseau would not be ready by the middle of November, when the wedding was to take place. The twins sewed very cleverly when the fit was on; but the fits were very uncertain, and Dr. Delano very imprudently, as Mrs. Forest thought, would call every evening of his life; but then, men were always so very inconsiderate, she said. Little bundles of linen exquisitely made up, kept constantly coming home from some mysterious laboratory. Mrs. Forest was silent, though she recognized at a glance the deft fingers of Susie; but Clara said they were made by her good fairy. One day, to facilitate the sewing operations, Mrs. Forest offered the twins money if they would do certain work. It had not the least effect. Leila explained shrewdly:

“You know, mamma, you will tell us just how to spend the money—so it would be just like having you buy things for us.”

“It would be nice,” said Linnie, “to have just a little money to squander.”

“And what do you do, pray, with all the immense sums you have wheedled out of your father?” asked the doctor, laughing.

“I hope you are not so spooney, papa”—(spooney was a pet word of Leila’s)—“as to think we squander it. Why, mamma always directs just what we shall do with our money. She admits it is our money, and we can do as we like with it; but you see, papa,” continued Leila, with a sly little wink at her mother’s expense, “we don’t ever like, you know!”

The doctor laughed, and said: “Now, then, we’ll change the venue. How much will you sew for by the yard—measuring every inch fairly with your tape measure—provided you can do just what you like with your money?”

“Will five cents be too much, mamma?” asked both the girls in a breath.

“Not if you pay your board out of it, I think,” said Mrs. Forest, smiling sweetly.

“No, no,” said the doctor, “we owe you board, and comfortable clothing and education, from the fact that you were not consulted in the unimportant matter of being born or not born. I assure you, it is folly to squander money; but that is one of the things you must learn by experience. I make you both this offer: five cents for every yard well done and measured by your mother; and no one shall question what you do with your earnings; five cents for every yard well done, and for every dollar earned I will add fifty cents, because this is not shop-work, but what would come under the head of ‘fine sewing,’ I believe.”

The effect was astounding. Mrs. Forest, before a week ended, had positively to scold both girls for their assiduity, and Clara’s sewing went on like magic.

On one of the Sundays between these busy days, Dan came home. He looked worn and sad, Clara thought, and this was enough to move her gentle heart. She sang to him a new song, and when she found a moment alone with him, began to probe him in regard to his sentiments for Susie. She thought the best thing in the world that could happen, would be the marriage of him and Susie, being in a condition of mind herself to consider marriage a panacea and the divinest of all blessings. Dan expressed a desire to “do the right thing.” Clara snapped at this like a hungry little fish at a bait. “Why not marry her at once, then?” Dan’s reply was not wholly satisfactory, but sufficient to induce her to keep Dr. Delano waiting for her that evening a full half hour, while she was away, no one knew where, but in fact closeted with Mrs. Buzzell. The next Sunday, finding home a little more pleasant, Dan appeared again, and Clara was not long in bringing about a private talk. She repeated her question, “Why not marry Susie?” Dan had, in fact, been thinking of Susie with less hard feelings for her crime of loving him too well, and standing between him and Miss Marston, as he thought. But Susie was the only woman who had ever loved him, and he was tempted to do the “right thing” if only to have some one to adore him! Generous man! But then it must be admitted that he was under a spell he had no power to shake off. Miss Marston had inspired a stronger passion in him than any one else ever had, or perhaps could. He could not appreciate the latent qualities in Susie’s character, and if he could, love does not deal with qualities, as such. It is mind that does this, and Dan was a creature of feeling, impulse, rather than of reason. Susie had loved him too fondly, and only with very superior natures does excess of fondness make the subject dearer. The great charm in Miss Marston was the impassable barrier of her total indifference to him; but he could not see the cause. She was superior to him, and that he knew; so, indeed, was Susie, and just as far out of his reach by the superiority of her nature, though not by circumstances.

Dan said this time, in answer to his sister’s question, half in fun, half in earnest, that Susie didn’t care much for him, and that he had “had about enough snubbing lately from women.”

“Oh, how little you know of women!” was Clara’s response.

Dan defended himself, and a lively discussion ensued, in which Clara illustrated her position by an allusion to his old habit of holding her hands and laughing at her helpless rage. “If you had known the nature of girls you would never have done such a thing,” she said, “for it made me hate you, and to this day I cannot think of it without indignation, though we should not remember wrongs done us by children.”

“You were pert and saucy,” said Dan, “and put on airs of superiority, because you got your lessons and were petted by the teachers.”

“And you wished to show your superiority in something, I suppose. Well, we will not think of disagreeable things. You are my only brother, and are going to be just and kind to Susie, so we shall never quarrel any more;” and Clara, putting down all hard feelings caused by Dan’s betrayal and desertion of Susie, passed her hand affectionately through his arm, and then submitted to being hugged, though she could not forbear a little resentment at his roughness. “No woman of refinement will ever love such a bear,” she said.

“Nonsense! women like to be handled roughly.”

“That shows how much you know about it—about refined women, at least. Do you think Miss Marston—”

“D—n Miss Marston!”

“I am ashamed of you.”

“Of course: you always were. Your big snob, Delano, would not say ‘mill-dam,’ I suppose. You’ll get enough of him, or I’m greatly mistaken. He is one of the kind that understands women, no doubt.”

Clara was very angry, but for Susie’s sake and the object she had set her heart upon, she controlled the expression of it. She had succeeded in making Dan promise to call on Susie that very evening, and both she and Mrs. Buzzell had urged Susie to marry Dan if he proposed it, and he had already assented. Clara went over to Mrs. Buzzell’s with Dan, and, leaving him in the parlor, sent Susie to him, kissing her, and saying, “You know it is not wholly for your own sake, dear, or we would not have urged it.”

As Susie entered, he rose and took her hand. She gave his the faintest little pressure, and left him no time for preliminaries, but said at once, “You know the one cause that has made me yield, against my better judgment, to the desire of your sister and my good friend, Mrs. Buzzell. Understand well, I do so on this condition, which I imagine,” she added, a little bitterly, “you will have no objection to—that you never recognize me as your wife in any way. I, on my part, shall never claim any legal rights any more than if you were actually dead.”

“That seems to me all bosh. We are not to live together, and that is enough. Of course, I marry you because I wish to save you from bearing all the brunt of the battle.”

“The worst is over. All that I can suffer from disgrace I have already suffered; but I have not lost my self-respect, low as I may be in your esteem; and I shall not, thanks to the noble hearts that came to me when I thought God had forsaken me as well as you.”

When Susie said, “low as I am in your esteem,” she had had a sudden hope that it might reveal his unnatural conduct toward her in so terrible a light that he would hate himself, and exhibit some sorrow for the misery he had caused, if not a desire to atone by trying to call back to her his wandering heart—love is so blind, so foolish, in its way of hoping against hope! She had decided that the marriage should be only a legal act, to make her child what society calls legitimate; but oh! it would have been so sweet to her to be forced to change that decision through a tender appeal from Dan—through anything that showed he held her love precious, and would not lose it after all; but no such sign came. He only said, in a way that wounded her deeply, “I don’t see the use of harping on what is past, nor in getting married, if you are not to have the advantage of being known as a wife.”

It cost Susie a terrible effort to not spurn him and his offer with contempt, for her mood was rapidly passing from the negative to the positive; but she was in a peculiar position. Clara and Mrs. Buzzell expected her to take a certain course, and she could make any sacrifice rather than disappoint them. She said, therefore, very calmly, “I have said that it is not for myself that I assent to your marrying me; the child might not live; and then I should regret that you were obliged to be known as the husband of Susie Dykes. Unless it lives, this ceremony will never be made known by my consent.”

“No danger of its not living. That is not the kind that has a weak hold on life. Well, have it all your own way,” he added, cowardly letting every responsibility fall upon her.

Susie was sick at heart, and longed to end the meeting. She had heard enough. She rose, to signify the fact. Dan took his hat, and, as he did so, said, “There’s no use crying over spilled milk. We will be friends, at least. Kiss me, Susie.”

“Why should I kiss the lover of Miss Marston? I confess I had rather not. But do not think me angry, or that I have any desire to reproach you. I know you could not resist a powerful attraction like that, and from my very soul, Dan, I wish I were dead and you her husband;” and controlling her emotion, she smiled and gave him her hand cordially. He was tempted greatly to draw her towards him and kiss her, whether she desired it or not; but something in her face he had never seen there before—something of firmness and womanly dignity that awed him—prevented him, and, pressing her hand hurriedly, he left the house. When he was gone, of course Susie gave way utterly to her sorrow. She had thought lately, that in her reading and study, in her work and in present and prospective cares, she had finally escaped most of her suffering; but this evening had revealed more clinging to straws, more feeding the hungry heart upon dry husks, to use the doctor’s words. The process of robbing the heart of its illusions is long and tedious. Let us have patience with Susie. There is something rare and fine in her nature that begins to show itself through all her hard conditions; and despite the low surroundings of her childhood, she has grown already above that, like the sacred lotus above the mud; and as the mud nourishes and develops the beautiful lily under the sunbeam, so the sad memories of Susie’s early life, aided by the vivifying influence of the kindly human sympathy she has won, will nourish and develop a grace and beauty of soul that will fit her for the work she has to do.

Passively, Susie submitted to the judgment of Clara and Mrs. Buzzell, and a day or two later the marriage was to take place, in a distant town at the terminus of Dan’s railroad route, where he had “six hours off,” he said, and that was “time enough to do considerable damage.” Clara was to accompany her friend, and to see her safely home again. She arrived at Mrs. Buzzell’s some time before the train left, but found Susie ready, even to her hat and gloves, but looking, as she declared, a picture of gloom. She was dressed entirely in black.

“Well, then,” said Susie, trying to smile, “my looks do not belie my feelings. I feel a presentiment that something bad is going to happen.”

“I begin to think,” remarked Mrs. Buzzell, as she insisted upon Susie’s swallowing a glass of her currant wine, “that we have done wrong to urge the poor child to this step. I’m afraid no good will come of it.”

“Come! let us be off at once,” said Clara, gayly. “I don’t like this aspect of indecision in Mrs. Buzzell. It means anything but business.”

Dan came occasionally and sat near them during the journey. He said he had “seen the parson and arranged everything all right.” Susie kept her veil down all the time. On arriving at the terminus, Dan sent them to the ladies’ room in the station, having some matter of business to attend to, and then joined them and conducted them in a carriage to a hotel, though the distance was exceedingly short, and into a fine private room, where an elegant dinner for three was already waiting. Clara tried to be gay, and really could have been so but for Susie, who trembled like a leaf and looked very pale. Clara removed Susie’s hat and shawl, and said a thousand reassuring words. Susie tried hard to respond. Clara saw with pain the effort, and pitied Susie more than ever. Here the waiter appeared, his napkin over his arm, and asked if he should serve the dinner. Clara whispered to Dan to put it off, if he could, a few minutes, and for mercy’s sake to say something comforting to Susie.

“You may wait ten minutes,” said Dan to the waiter; “but bring the wine at once.”

“Gay wedding, sis. Don’t you think so?”

“Oh, don’t mind my feeling a little ill,” said Susie, with an effort. “I feel a little better already.” Dan expressed himself as being “hungry as a wolf,” and no doubt he was. He had, in the simple ignorance of his nature, thought a nice dinner would please Clara and Susie, and felt a little savage to have it put off; therefore, more perhaps from hunger than anything else, he went and sat down by Susie, and took her hand in his. Tears, tears forever! What could the poor child do but cry? Dan was a little touched, and made a very praiseworthy attempt to soothe her.

“Oh, I wish I could cry them all out,” said Susie, wiping her eyes. “You are so good, both of you, to have so much patience with me. There!” she said, laughing dismally, “I believe there are no more.”

When the champagne came—of course Dan had provided that—he poured it out copiously and dismissed the waiter. He insisted upon both Susie and Clara drinking, and, fearing to displease him, they assented. No sooner were their glasses half empty than he refilled them; and then the soup was served. With the second course the waiter brought more champagne, and when he left Clara exclaimed, good-naturedly, “Mercy! Dan, you are not expecting us to drink any more?”

“Why not? It seems we need something to keep our courage screwed up to the sticking point.”

“Oh, our courage is in no danger of failing, is it, Susie? Think of it! In an hour or so you will be a lawful and wedded wife; and oh! you don’t know how much more I shall respect you! Only a nice little bit of juggling, and honor will come out of dishonor, like Jack out of his box.” After awhile Susie talked a little, though she could eat nothing after the soup. Dan’s spirits rose mightily with the second bottle of champagne, and he began to be even sentimental to Susie, who took the liberty, after a while, to beg him to not drink any more champagne.

“What’s two bottles of champagne on your wedding-day?” he roared. “Did you ever hear how they drink whisky in Texas? A friend of mine was traveling out there last winter, and he stopped at a half-way house, and found they had not a drop; but they told him the widow Smith, living a mile further on, had a barrel the Saturday before. He would get plenty there. So he rode on, and driving up to the door, sung out. A woman poked her head out of the door and asked what he wanted. He told her he wanted something to drink. She told him she had not a thing to drink in the house. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘they told me back here that you had a barrel of whisky last Saturday.’

“‘Well, so I did; but what’s one barrel of whisky with five little children and the cow dry?’” Dan laughed vociferously at his story, and his guests laughed also, but more to please him, for they were both a little serious over his drinking. They kept him, however, from ordering a third bottle; but in revenge he visited the bar-room on their way to the carriage, which was waiting at the door. On the way to the minister’s house Susie whispered to Clara, without Dan’s perceiving it, “I should have heeded my presentiment, and stayed at home.”

At the minister’s house they were shown into the parlor, where they were kept waiting some time, Susie growing more and more agitated every moment; but Dan seemed to be quite sober, and behaved very well until the minister came. He was a tall, fat, pompous man, with a face that repelled Clara instinctively. He noticed Susie’s agitation, and asked some questions that Dan took offence at, but he really only remonstrated, Clara thought, in quite proper terms, under the circumstances; but the functionary grew very red in the face, and said: “Your conduct, sir, allow me to say, is exceedingly improper. Allow me to say, sir, I doubt if you are a fit subject for this solemn service.”

“I know my own business, and don’t want any palavering. You do your own business, and I’ll do mine, without your preaching.”

“My business, as you call it, is not at your service to-day,” he said, rising. “I order you to leave the house. I have nothing to do with low ruffians.”

“You shall have something to do with a gentleman though, once in your life,” said Dan, approaching him threateningly. Clara and Susie were already in the hall. Clara called Dan imperatively, and proceeded to the door, supporting Susie, who was ready to faint. They heard the minister say a very insulting thing in reply to Dan’s threat, and the next moment a fall like a sack of wheat was easily interpreted. Dan had applied his “science,” and the fat man was sprawling on the carpet. Before any of the family appeared, the carriage drove off. Dan raved and swore, though he was sober enough so far as the effects of his drinking went. To Clara’s utter astonishment, Susie seemed perfectly recovered from all her anxiety, and even smiled.

“We can get the four o’clock train,” said Clara, looking at her watch. “We will not wait for yours, as we intended.” Dan savagely changed the order to the coachman. At the station Clara would not speak nor look at her brother, with whom she was infinitely disgusted; but Susie shook hands with him, and said, “I was ashamed of you for being so violent, Dan, but I am happier than I have been since I saw you last.”

“I think you are a fool,” he said, sullenly.

“May be I am, dear, but I am not your wife.” She said this without the slightest anger, and smiled on him like a seraph, as she entered the car which was just moving.

Thus ended Dan’s marriage.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE BABY.—LOVERS’ ADIEUX.

The effort Clara had made to do a great service for Susie, had failed dismally, and her mortification was intense, and for the first time she was a little disappointed with Susie, that she could be so serene, and evidently glad even, that the movement had failed. Clara’s refinement of nature and purpose was shocked beyond expression by the coarse conduct of her brother, and not until the doctor came home, late in the evening, and after she had had a long talk with him, did she begin to feel the least return of comfort. “My dear,” he said, “depend upon it, you ought not to feel so mortified. Why, the dignity and real elevation of character that this has revealed in Susie is a compensation for almost anything that could happen. Don’t you see how this shows, beyond a shadow of doubt, that she is no common girl?”

“I’ve known that a long time, papa. She surprises me every day. I shall not be able to help her much more in her botany; nor in anything, indeed. It is well I am going away, to save my credit. The dear girl thinks me so proficient, that it makes me ashamed of myself. Oh, papa! I passed at Stonybrook for a very satisfactory student; but if I had had this experience with Susie before going there, I should have done better. Susie has taught me what application means.”

Clara had not gone into the house on returning with Susie, but left her at Mrs. Buzzell’s door. Susie, on entering, threw her arms around Mrs. Buzzell, and laughed and cried together, and it was some time before she could tell the whole story to her friend. The good old lady was horrified at Dan’s treatment of the parson, but she was quite content at the result of the expedition.

“God, who numbers the very hairs of our heads, Susie, is directing all things for the best. If you bear your yoke bravely, you will be raised up for some good work in the world. I wonder now, how I could have entered into the scheme so confidently; but it was Clara’s enthusiasm. I felt all the time that we might be just whipping the Devil around the stump, and so we were.”

“I could have interfered,” said Susie, “between Dan and the minister, and my appeal would have been heard; but something stronger than my motive to do so, controlled me. I felt ashamed to marry Dan. It seemed to me so unholy a thing, when he does not love me, but is thinking all the time of another and dearer woman.”

“That shame was a noble feeling, dear; and shows me what your nature really is, better than I ever knew it.”

The next day Clara went over as usual to hear Susie’s lessons. She found her alone, by the table in the sitting-room, tearing apart and analyzing flowers with her new microscope. As Clara entered she rose, and as their eyes met, the owlish gravity of Clara struck Susie comically, and this, in conjunction with the memory of yesterday’s proceedings, made her burst out into a low, musical laugh, which Clara’s gravity could not resist.

“Well, you are a study, Susie. I came over here from habit simply. I had no idea you would have any lessons, and here you have already been out botanizing alone.”

“Why, Clara, I have not felt so well in weeks and weeks. A great weight is lifted from my heart. Dan is gone out of my hopes forever, and henceforth I shall stand alone so far as he is concerned. He is free—and oh, it relieves me so to think of that!”

“Well, dear, I guess you are nearer right than any of us. I felt a little hard at you, coming home yesterday, for the triumph that I detected in your eyes every time I looked at them. You are a strange little being, but I am reconciled after a long talk with papa. He applauds you to the skies; but let us get through with our lessons, for he will be here by-and-by. Of course, he will keep the secret, and I think there is no danger from Dan,” she added, laughing.

After the lessons were finished, Susie, obeying a strong impulse, poured out her grateful heart to Clara for all her care and kindness. During the conversation, Clara said: “When I am a married woman I shall be so much more independent. No tongue will dare wag against me because I am your friend.”

“It pains me more than anything else,” said Susie, “to think that being my friend must injure you.”

“It cannot. It cannot injure any one to do what is decent and right. Knowing you, dear, and befriending you in your trouble, has shown me more of the world than I could have learned otherwise in an age. To be sure it has destroyed some illusions. I shall not have Louise Kendrick for bride’s-maid, but I’ve found her out, and that is something. Why, you ought to see the letters she sent me constantly during the four years I was at Stonybrook. Such protestations of unalterable friendship! You, Susie, though you are no spoiled pet of fortune, like her, have a heart that is worth ten thousand of hers. She is a mere fair-weather friend, though I did not suspect it; but you, I know, would never fail me.”

“How I should hate myself if I thought that were possible; but it cannot be. My only trouble is, that I may never be able to be of any real service to you. Do you remember the fable we read of the lion and the mouse? How the mouse gnawed the meshes of the net, ‘and left the noble lion to go where he pleased?’ Remember this, you precious girl, if you are ever in trouble: real, deep affection is capable of creating a will that may work wonders even with the poorest means.” Clara was struck with Susie’s enthusiasm of sentiment, which at times found expression in the most eloquent way; and she remembered these words and the manner of their utterance in after years.

Not many days before the time set for Clara’s wedding, Dr. Delano received a telegram from home. His father was dangerously ill and sent for his son; so the marriage could not take place till January. Meanwhile, and during the very last days of the year, Susie’s baby was born. Mrs. Buzzell virtually adopted it at once. This little helpless one, so charming in all its movements, Susie thought, lifted the last burden from her heart caused by Dan’s unworthiness. She felt strong enough to brave anything for its sake, and before it was a week old her mind was busy with schemes for making money, that she might give it all the advantages of education and culture. She held its tiny, tightly-clinging fingers in hers, looked into its uncertain colored eyes, and marveled, as mothers are wont to marvel, over a mystery as old as nature, and yet ever charming, ever new. The desire to have Dan see the baby often recurred to Susie. She felt more kindly towards him since she had definitely abandoned all hope of his ever loving her again, and since a new and infinitely tender, infinitely absorbing love had been born in her own heart. She could not wholly share Clara’s intense disgust for Dan’s conduct when they had last met, though she by no means approved of it. She spoke to Mrs. Buzzell of her desire that Dan should see the baby, and Mrs. Buzzell admitted that the wish was natural; but even while they were considering the propriety of writing a note to Dan the doctor called, bringing the news that his son had started for California the day before. In a letter to his mother he had said that he should not “come back in a hurry.” Susie was very silent. He had not cared, then, to wait until his child was born—not even cared really whether she or it, or both, lived or died. The next moment there came a new feeling, and this was shame that she had loved so coarse a being. To be sure, she had expressed the same thing to Dan in returning his money; but this was partly real and partly the effect of exaltation of mood. This time, the feeling was the result of pure reason, and it was permanent.

If letters are Love’s barometer, as Dr. Forest once expressed it, Clara must have been well satisfied with the fervency and sincerity of her lover’s devotion, for he wrote continually. The letters were delivered at eight o’clock in the morning—the hour when the doctor’s family were always at breakfast—and though the postman’s ring was a very common occurrence during this family reunion, it had never been so constant before. Leila and Linnie, on sitting down to the table, used to amuse themselves speculating whether it would occur before the hominy was served all around, or during the second cup of coffee. When the ring came, and Dinah marched through the dining-room to open the door, it was a perennial joke with Leila to pass the honey or the sugar-bowl to Clara, and when she good-naturedly refused them, apologizing for their deficiency in sweetness. As Clara could not be teazed in the least, so long as nothing disrespectful was said of her idol, it was wonderful that the sisters could find so much pleasure in an endless repetition of a childish pleasantry. On one of these occasions, when Dinah brought in the regulation letter to Clara, Leila said:

“Papa, do you know how Dr. Delano commences all his letters to Clara?” Clara looked a little annoyed as she put her precious missive in her pocket for future delectation. Could it be possible that her privacy had been invaded by her saucy sisters?

“Why, yes,” the doctor answered, humoring Leila. “I think I could guess; that is, if it were any of my business.”

“Well, guess then,” said Leila, nothing daunted by the implied rebuke; but seeing he did not try, she declared boldly that they all commenced, “Essence of Violet and Consummate Sweetness.” This time there was a general laugh, and Leila was satisfied over the success of a joke that had been concocted hours before. On another occasion when the letter came, Leila expressed the pious hope that Mr. Delano’s case was in the hands of some physician less distracted and harassed for time than Dr. Delano must be. “I’m sure his literary labors must weigh heavily upon him, though perhaps he employs a stenographic amanuensis.”

One day, when the letter was brought in as usual, Clara said, “Why, this is not for me!”

“What!” exclaimed Leila, “you don’t mean to say it isn’t from consummate sweetness, do you?”

“No; but this seems to be addressed to you.” And she handed the letter across the table to Leila, preserving the utmost gravity. Leila’s eyes shone with delight, but she concealed that part of her sensation, and only gave vent to her surprise. “Is it possible,” she said, “that there are two persons in the universe that can command a letter from Dr. Delano?”

“Let us hear what he says, my daughter,” said Mrs. Forest, gravely.

“Yes, do read it, Leila. No doubt it commences ‘Essence of Violet.’”

“No; I don’t receive love-letters, Miss Linnie.”

“You receive only such, I trust, as are proper to be read in the bosom of the family. Are you very sure of it?” asked the doctor, who, from a glance at Clara, suspected some practical joke upon Leila. Thus badgered, Leila reluctantly unfolded her letter. The first word, which she did not read out, caused the most rosy blush imaginable. The laugh was at Leila’s expense this time, and the next day Clara’s letter came to the breakfast-table without comment.

Once, during his father’s illness, Dr. Delano passed a night at Oakdale. It was just cold enough to render the wood fire in the grate, pleasant; for though midwinter, the weather was unusually mild, and the lovers lingered in the parlor long after the family had retired. Every moment was a delight to Clara, and everything the doctor could say possessed a vital interest. He was pleased to commend the old parlor; no room in the world, he said, had so great a charm for him. It was indeed a pleasant old room, permeated and invested by a spirit of comfort and ease that even the new carpet and heavy curtains, lately added by Mrs. Forest, could not destroy. The tall, old-fashioned clock stood diagonally across one of the corners, placidly marking the time and showing the phases of the moon as it had done at least ever since Clara could remember. During the evening’s conversation, Miss Ella Wills was mentioned, and, at Clara’s request, Dr. Delano gave a minute description of all her “points,” as he humorously called them.

“Why, she must be very beautiful!” exclaimed Clara.

“Not beautiful,” he said, “but very pretty. Clara alone, is really beautiful. She is less than ‘moonlight unto sunlight,’ compared to you, dearest.” And he spoke sincerely, though Ella had revived a little of her old charm for him, and not without design on her part, for flirting was her element; she had reduced it to a science; and then she saw in Albert a very different object from the one she had once made her victim. She had been at Newport on the occasion of his return from Europe, and having a rich lion in tow—even the distinguished and very elegant Count Frauenstein—she did not go home with the rest of the family to meet him, it being the first of the season. She contented herself by sending him kind messages, and soon after he established himself for preliminary practice, in Oakdale, a town where the family name had prestige and influence.

The affair with the count at Newport had not terminated to the satisfaction of Miss Mills, he having soon transferred his attentions to a New York belle, not rich, compared to Ella, and a “perfect fright,” in the judgment of her rival. But even the new attraction was but a very temporary affair. Ella was approaching the dreaded state which even friends may designate as that of old maid, and she had just begun to make up her mind to marry Albert when she heard of his engagement. This was unexpected, but she said to herself, “Engagement is one thing, and marriage another.” When he came home at the summons of his father, he was so greatly changed, so infinitely improved, that flirting with him had all the charm of novelty, beside the greater charm involved in the fact of his indifference to the battery of wiles that had once been so potent. She looked very young still. Her mind was youthful enough in its character, and she had preserved all the innocent, kittenish ways that are so irresistible to a certain class of men.

While Albert talked of his old flame, on the evening in question, Clara listened intently, looking all the time straight into his eyes. At length he asked her why she studied his eyes so earnestly.

“Do you not like me to study them?”

“What a question! But I wish to know what you are thinking. You told me once you were afraid of my eyes.”

“That is what I am thinking to-night, Albert. They are surely the brightest eyes in the world, as you know they are the dearest to me. I can find no fault with them; and yet I have an indefinable fear sometimes, when I look into them, as if they could be cold and cruel. I reproach myself, but I tell you every thought. Ought I to tell you this?”

“Yes, for I would hear all the voices of the sea, darling mine; but this voice is a delusion. Albert can never be cold to you. You are his very soul. He could die for you, and count it no sacrifice; and he only cares for life that he may make yours beautiful.”

“Forgive me, beautiful eyes!” Clara said, tenderly caressing their lids. “Can you forgive me, Albert?”

“There is no such thing as forgiveness between lovers, for they can do each other no wrong.”

“I dare not think how perfect my happiness is,” said Clara, fervently, “and yet I can think of nothing else. I am constantly studying love. It seems to me that all married people lose their illusions. Papa and mamma were once romantic lovers. I have lately found a number of his old letters. I could not resist reading some of them. They are the most fervent and tender letters I ever read in my life—except yours, dearest—and yet they are flung away

‘amid the old lumber of the garret,’

like the oaken chest where Ginevra found a grave. It is strange! After all that divine passion, they could be separated for weeks and months without any suffering for the need of each other!”

“That change will never come to us, precious one. Love shall be tenderly nursed; it will not flourish under coldness or inconstancy. It is too tender a plant; only the ruder, coarser vegetation can outlive the cold atmosphere of the frigid zones. With our love, precious one, there shall be no winter. Can you not trust me?”

“Trust you? With all my heart, with all my soul I trust you. You know everything about love and the mysteries of life; but one thing I want to say. I want you to know all about me, dear one. I care nothing about love except as we know it and feel it to-night. If Fate ever cheats us of this, let us not live together and play that the dream still remains. It would be a mockery that would kill me. I am strangely moved to-night. With all my happiness, the thought will come that you will change—that I shall not have the power to keep the freshness of your love.”

“I defy augury, precious one. You are not quite well to-night. I am sure of this, or I should be pained. If I change, it will not be your fault. You are perfect. No one could love with so much infinite tenderness as my darling. If I ever love you less, it will be because I have grown unworthy of you, which the gods forbid. In a week—one short week—and you will be mine, not more surely than you are now, but openly in the eyes of the world.”

Dr. Delano was to leave in the early train, and it was decided to bid good-bye in the old parlor, where the fire was burning low, for they had sat late, forgetting how cold the room had become. Albert wrapped her tenderly in her shawl, and the parting ceremonies commenced. It is a very long process, as lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type are well aware. They separated a few steps and said good-night, and then rushed together for “one more kiss,” which was only the prelude to one more, and that not the last. To the cold-blooded writers of romance, such a parting calls up the vision of the two polite Chinamen, host and guest, who could not allow themselves to out-do each other in etiquette. At the garden gates of the host, they advanced and saluted, and retreated and advanced again, until night came on, when their friends interfered and dragged them apart!

CHAPTER XX.
CLARA’S WEDDING.

Mrs. Forest was in her element preparing for the “show,” as the doctor called the marriage ceremonies; but Albert won her heart by agreeing with her in everything, orange-blossoms, church, and all. Discussing the matter over for the twentieth time, she reproached her husband for his imbuing Clara with his odd notions, and contrasted them with the love of proper and conventional proceedings, which characterized the future son-in-law.

“I wonder at him,” said the doctor, with some impatience. “He is the only sensible man I ever knew who liked that sort of vulgar show. Men generally submit because it pleases women; but to my eyes a young woman conventionally gotten up as a bride, simply suggests a victim tricked out for sacrifice.”

“How dreadful you are, doctor! You have such monstrous ideas; but I did hope Clara would be sensible.”

“Oh, I’m going to be sensible, mamma dear. Albert is satisfied, and I shall offer no further resistance. I submit even to the orange-blossoms, though I can’t bear their oppressing odor. Papa has had his way about the Unitarian minister, who has no church here, and so I shall escape that part of the show, as papa calls it. There’ll be no kissing the bride either, for that is a vulgar custom, no longer tolerated among refined people. I wonder where the custom came from?”

“It is not easy to say where any custom originated. This one can be traced back to feudal times, when the lord of the manor had the first-fruits of everything, and took the brides home to himself for a time, and the bridegroom was forced to submit.”

“Of course, they did not consult the bride at all,” said Clara.

“No,” replied the doctor. “That slaves have no rights which their masters are bound to respect, is a logical deduction from the doctrine that slavery is right. Women are beginning to see that they are slaves in one sense. They are not permitted, legally or morally, to dispose of their affections according to their tastes. When a man assassinates one whom his wife regards too favorably to please him, he is generally acquitted by the courts. Common sense would show that the wife had sufficient interest in the matter to be consulted; but honor does not admit her rights.”

“That is perfectly right,” said Mrs. Forest. “If a married woman so far forgets the duty she owes to society as to fall in love with any one, she deserves no voice in anything.”

“That is simply the spirit of the inquisition, Fannie, and nothing else. I have always admitted the importance of facts, in my reasoning. Now, some of the best women in the world, and I believe the majority of all that ever lived, have been attracted, in a greater or less degree, by other men than their husbands. What will you do with the facts?”

“If any sensible woman is so unfortunate,” said Mrs. Forest, “she never acknowledges it—never admits it, even to herself, that she loves in any improper way. She can do this at least.”

“There you go again, Fannie! measuring the world with your six-inch rule. If the world don’t square with your measurements, so much the worse for the world. Women and men do not create themselves, nor the motives that govern them. A motive does not determine human action because it is weak, or ought to be weak, according to your measuring; it controls from the mathematical law that the strongest must prevail. Suppose the attracting power to be two and the resisting force one; you can tell beforehand what the result will be; therefore the folly of blaming in such a case.”

“I might pity a woman who listens to the promptings of an illegal affection, but I certainly should never admire her. How could I admire one so weak as not to know that by the very fact of listening to improper declarations of love, she always wins contempt, even from the man himself.”

“Not always—not by any means always. If I should love a married woman, and she should listen to my telling her of it, I should by no means despise her. I should despise her if she insulted me by supposing I wished her to do anything base or unwomanly.”

“Oh, you! You are an anomaly. You know I always count you out, when speaking of general principles. The Lord only knows how far a woman might go without being ‘unwomanly’ in your eyes.”

“Ah!” responded the doctor, with a peculiar accent, which was his way of declaring that there was no more to be said upon the subject.

On the day preceding the important event, Leila and Linnie were running here and there in a state of great excitement. They were for once thoroughly interested in everything, and especially in their own toilettes, if not in the bride’s, for they were to be two of the four bride’s-maids. Mrs. Forest had determined that everything relating to this event should be “respectable,” and she always pronounced the word with severe certainty of what it meant. To be sure, to some persons the term is vague and even unpleasant; but these were all ill-regulated minds, according to Mrs. Forest, and she pitied them. After breakfast, Clara made a long visit to Susie, cheered her by earnest protestations of continued friendship, and by promises to write often. The pretty baby was duly petted and caressed, and invited to “kiss auntie”—words of recognition always infinitely sweet to Susie’s ear. The kissing consisted in the baby’s smobbing its uneasy little wet mouth over Clara’s face; not a very satisfactory operation, one would think; but all the tender grace of the woman that had been developed by Clara’s brave friendship for poor Susie, and by the deep love she cherished for Albert, shone through the halo of happiness surrounding the brow of the morrow’s bride.

The wedding-day dawned auspiciously, and the sun shone bright and warm, though it was the middle of January. A full hour before the ceremony, the twins had the bride dressed and paraded duly before the mirrors, to see that her drapery fell with the proper grace, and that nothing was wanting. Mrs. Kendrick had sent quantities of flowers for the decoration of the parlor, and was herself to be present. Louise, finding that the affair was going to be so “nice,” cried with vexation that she had behaved so meanly to Clara.

Mrs. Forest came in just as the bride was dressed.

“Does she not look sweet, mamma,” asked Linnie.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Forest, hesitatingly; “but you are too flushed, my daughter. Let me see if your corset is not too tight. No? Well, Linnie, get her some lemonade—that is cooling.”

“Oh don’t, mamma! you distract me!” exclaimed Clara, scowling under her orange-blossoms. “I do wish no one could look at me for the next ten years. I feel so like a theatre-queen—so utterly ridiculous.”

Mrs. Forest was distressed. The twins uttered exclamations. “Why, she has not said such a word before!” said Linnie.

“No; I meant to be very good, and what mamma calls sensible, but I am so horridly nervous.”

“You are such an incomprehensible child,” remarked Mrs. Forest, severely. “You are veritably sauvage, as the French say. This, the supreme hour to all well-regulated young ladies, you seem to regard as a misfortune.”

“Well, I do. I suppose I am not a well-regulated young lady, for I hate the hot-house odor of these flowers. I hate myself, that I have submitted to make a spectacle of myself. This is the supreme hour for girls, is it? Well, I wonder that they have no more refinement.”

“What on earth do you set out to marry Dr. Delano for, I should like to know,” said Leila, concealing her crossness with difficulty.

“Because I love him, you goosey! but it don’t follow, therefore, that I like to make a guy of myself.”

“A guy! oh! oh!” exclaimed the much-tried sisters. “You never began to look anything like half so sweet before.” Mrs. Forest stood in mute bewilderment, and Clara began to relent.

“There,” she said. “It’s all over. I am sensible now, mamma—a perfect stoic. There’s papa coming!” and opening the door herself, she threw herself into his arms, and sobbed a little, though laughing at the same time. “Oh, I can’t enjoy crying one bit, papa. I’m thinking all the time of my orange-blossoms. Look, papa, and see if you haven’t crushed one of the things.”

“Well, I never saw anybody behave so!” exclaimed Leila, in disgust. “If I ever get married——”

“Your conduct will be perfectly exemplary,” interrupted the doctor, and then giving all his attention to Clara, he said, tenderly: “My poor darling! They would have it so. They don’t understand papa’s girl. Her poetry is inside, and this paraphernalia don’t fitly express it.”

“Now, doctor, you should not encourage Clara’s strange notions. There’s a carriage. I must go. Do calm the child. She is not fit to be seen.”

“That’s just true, mamma. It’s exactly what I feel.”

“All this nonsense, besides being in bad taste, is against common sense,” the doctor said, not noticing his wife’s flurry. “Marriage festivals should take place after marriage, if at all, when the union has proved a success, and there is something to rejoice over. This is like celebrating the purchase of a lottery-ticket.” Mrs. Forest left in despair. The twins bore the “coddling,” as they called the father’s tender manifestations to his favorite child, as long as they could, and then they begged him to go, as they had “only a half hour to dress”; by which they meant but a very small part of the operation, being bathed, and coiffed, and dressed already, except for the robes and veils.

“Well, go on with your dressing,” the doctor said, provokingly. “I don’t mind girls’ dressing, or undressing, for that matter. On the whole, I rather like this flummery, and I think I won’t go without a consideration.”

“I’ll give you two kisses, papa, if you’ll go this minute.”

“Oh, fie! You were always too mercenary with your favors, Leila. I’ll take the kisses, though; but not for going.”

The doctor on leaving, went to his wife’s room, where she was fuming because of his want of sense on such an occasion. “There is not ten minutes,” she said, “and you have not done one thing toward dressing.”

“Bless my soul! I never once thought of it,” he answered. “Why, I’m to put on that new claw-hammer. If I should fail to wear that, the earth’s inclination to the ecliptic would be disturbed.”

“Do, for mercy’s sake, go, if you have any regard for me.” Thus appealed to, the doctor sought his room. Once there, he surveyed the scene. Every article was carefully laid out in the most perfect order. He had only thought of the new claw-hammer, and here was evidently the preconceived design for a perfect change of every rag. Every article was placed where it should naturally come in the order of dressing. New toilet articles, scented soaps, hot water—everything silently commanding him to fall into line. First there escaped from the good doctor a smothered laugh; then a protest, and then—submission to the letter. He set about the work of rejuvenation with a perfect fury of dispatch, and when he found he should be ready in time, the spirit of fun seized him. He kept opening his door and bawling to his wife his distress at a thousand imaginary oversights and delinquencies. Once he declared she had forgotten his “pouncet box,” then his “hoops,” his “chignon,” his “chemisette,” his “gored waistcoat,” and lastly, in an agony, he called for tweezers, pretending he had discovered one hair too many in his “back hair.” But finally he emerged radiant, and sought Clara at once. “Behold me, my daughter!” he said in a tragic voice, applying a delicate, scented pocket handkerchief to his lips. “Are you resigned to your fate now?”

“Why, we thought you were crazy, papa,” said Clara; “but how quickly you have performed all this change. I must say you are looking magnificent. You are one of the very few men I ever saw, who look well in a dresscoat.”

“Well, I came to you for sympathy. Is this my reward?”

“I can’t pity you in the least, papa; you are too sweet.”

“Yes, I am,” he said, sniffing the perfume of his fine handkerchief. “Here, take this, Linnie. I must go and see if I can’t find a handkerchief that will not make me smell so much like a lady’s maid.”

Leila and Linnie both laughed. “You’ll have to smell sweet to-day, papa,” they said, “for mamma has kept all your clothes in a drawer with a perfume sachet, these two weeks!” He left the room to a perfect chorus of laughter, and a few minutes later might have been seen in his study, diligently puffing at his pipe, first for his own comfort, and then to do what he could, at that late hour, to render negative the effect of Mrs. Forest’s sachets.

Notwithstanding all the perturbation of Mrs. Forest, the whole “show” went off in the most perfect order, and without the slightest “impropriety” of any kind. Clara was not flushed, like a hoydenish country bride, but looked very pale and “interesting;” while the bridegroom, in every word and motion, was perfection itself in her eyes, no less than in Clara’s, though judged from a very different standpoint.

CHAPTER XXI.
THE NUCLEUS OF THE FLOWER BUSINESS.

It is early in Summer. Mrs. Buzzell and Susie, now her trusted and much-loved friend, are sitting on the little vine-shaded porch of her cottage—not really a cottage, for it is at least an ordinary-sized country house, strong and well built; but she herself always so designates it. The baby, Minnie, is creeping over the porch floor, crowing with infantine glee, and now and then climbing up by the knees of Mrs. Buzzell, or by the railing which has been constructed to keep her within bounds. The lower leaves and buds of the roses and morning-glories, have suffered at her little hands, but she has learned by this time that they are not good to eat, and so pulls them off and scatters them in pure wantonness. The two women have been discussing a letter just received from Clara.

For a time Clara’s letters were constantly arriving, not only to Susie, to Dr. Forest, to her mother, but alternately to the twins. These letters breathed the happiness that surrounded Clara like an atmosphere, and was rather implied than directly expressed, except to Susie. Mrs. Forest rejoiced that her eldest daughter was well established, and secretly she was greatly relieved to have Clara’s fate off her mind. There was no knowing, in her opinion, what Clara would have come to, with her inherited tendency to freedom, so unlike other girls, if she had not fortunately married young. Why, she might have become a frequenter of conventions, an agitator of woman’s rights—that was indeed what Mrs. Forest feared most—but, thanks to Providence, she had made an excellent match, and the mother’s soul was at rest, or free to plan and scheme for the respectable establishment of her two remaining daughters.

On this summer day, in the little shaded porch, Susie had read to her friend, some portions of Clara’s last letter. Mrs. Buzzell sighed, and said, “It is too exalted for this commonplace world. It will not last.”

“Oh, do not say that!” exclaimed Susie.

“I know it sounds like croaking, Susie, but you will see I am right. It is always so. Clara worships that man, and we should worship nothing but the Creator. When we do, we lose it. When mothers make idols of their children, as her mother did of Dan, they die, or turn out like him. I am glad you do not love yours unreasonably. It is auntie who is in danger here,” said the good old lady, taking up the child and caressing it fondly.

“I cannot believe it a crime to love—even to love inordinately, as Clara does,” said Susie. “Her nature is peculiarly fervent. She told me once that the look, the touch of Albert’s hand, made her tremulous with emotion. If he should fail her, she would suffer more than most of us could, I think.”

“Of course he will fail her,” said Mrs. Buzzell, with unusual feeling. “Men never meet the demands of a nature like that. They think it adorable at first, and then they grow indifferent. It is much better to love in a calm way, and, like Mrs. Kendrick, to show their husbands that heaven is not wholly confined to their smiles, nor hell to their frowns.”

Susie was astonished at the fervency displayed by Mrs. Buzzell. “Could this faded, gray old lady, have had her romance also?” Susie’s reflections were interrupted by the doctor’s gig, which came almost noiselessly around the corner, over the smooth, sandy road. He sprang upon the porch with the supple nerve of a boy, and astonished Mrs. Buzzell by kissing her right in the face of the village. “You two women are as grave as owls,” he said. “What have you been talking about? Out with it, Susie!”

“We were talking of love,” Susie answered, not intending to be specially definite.

“Do ever two women talk of anything else, I wonder? Abusing us dogs of men, I suppose. Can’t you furnish me with a cup of water and a little piece of soap?” he asked, addressing Mrs. Buzzell. “I want to amuse the baby.”

“We were regretting,” continued Susie, “that we are not able to love sensibly and moderately. When we love with all our hearts, are we ever fully met?—after the first, I mean.”

“With that first, you are satisfied, then,” said the doctor, taking a piece of India-rubber tubing from his pocket, and blowing his first bubble. For a time, all the attention was concentrated on the doctor’s bubbles, some of which, by certain movements of his hands, he managed to keep in the air a long time, while the baby crowed with mad delight. For days after, the little thing amused everybody by her attempts to blow bubbles with every stick or pencil she could get, and even labored very hard to accomplish the feat with her teaspoon. When the doctor grew tired of blowing, he resumed the conversation; but Minnie was insatiable: no sooner was one bubble burst, than she cried for another, but was finally pacified by having the tube and cup all to herself. After sucking some of the soapy water into her mouth, and making a very wry face, she succeeded in blowing some little ones on the top of the water, and got very angry after the twentieth attempt to pick them out with her fingers. Susie was scarcely less excited than the baby, over the exquisite beauty of the soap-bubbles, and listened eagerly to the doctor’s explanation of their colors and construction.

Seeing Susie so interested, he said, “It is a pity your studying was interrupted. You have the spirit of the scientific investigator. I wonder if I can’t manage to take Clara’s place?” he said, after a pause.

“Oh, your time is too precious, doctor,” said Susie.

“I couldn’t be regular, but I tell you what I’ll do. If you’ll have some recitation ready whenever I come, I’ll give you a few minutes.” That was enough for Susie, and from that time the doctor became her tutor, taking up, first, chemistry and natural philosophy, and then other branches. But this is wandering from the subject of conversation interrupted by the blowing of bubbles.

“The truth is,” said the doctor, “women, in their love, do not fully meet men. According to my experience, few women ever comprehend the ardor with which men are capable of loving them. Now, the question is, is it when they do, or do not, so respond perfectly, that women meet the fate of Semele?”

“The fate of Semele?” queried Mrs. Buzzell.

“Yes; she loved Jove, and was utterly consumed for her daring.”

“I remember now,” said Mrs. Buzzell, smiling. “Why, her fate was not so bad, for her suffering was but momentary. Her lover was a god. That must be quite an advantage; and then he loved perfectly, and she also, I suppose.” Mrs. Buzzell was in a complaisant mood, or she would not have treated any heathen mythology so considerately. “I never thought of it before in that light,” replied the doctor. “She must have been the only woman whom any lover ever satisfied. Your sex is very exacting. You expect men to keep up to concert-pitch all the time; but, you see, we have to go out into the world and purvey for bread-and-butter. Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, you know.”

“Sine Cerere,” repeated Susie, laboring with the Latin, of which she knew a little.

“‘Without corn and wine love freezes’ will do,” said the doctor.

“True,” said Mrs. Buzzell; “but it is just where corn and wine are abundant, that you feed us on dry husks—not to mention that you seek pastures new, for yourselves.”

“I see I must defend my sex,” said the doctor, with mock gravity. “Now we do not feed you on dry husks, but we assume to know what is best for you. Are we not your heaven-appointed keepers? You would live forever on ambrosia, and that is not good for the constitution as a regular diet; besides the supply is limited, I am sorry to say. The truth is, dear ladies—I am serious now—you women have not yet found the secret of your power. What we call the material forces, in the beginning rule the world. Man gains his freedom first, then women, then children. Women are not free yet. They should be independent, should travel, mix with the world, conduct enterprises, and never be forced to marry from any pecuniary motives. That is the way the ‘statelier Eden’ is coming back to man. Man cannot be happy, and morally strong, until women have worked out their social salvation. No one should stake everything on the throw of a die. Women do that, and are taught that it is wise. They keep their interests narrowed to a point, and what with petty household cares and ‘tying baby sashes,’ as Mrs. Browning says, they cease to grow, except in one direction. They live as though they had but one organ, and that the heart; figuratively speaking, I mean,” added the anatomist. “This is their fate when they are sensitive and emotional. When they are colder in temperament, they gangrene with social ambition; spend their lives in scheming to out-do their neighbors in fashion and display. This would not be possible if they had other resources, but they have not; because at the start, they have no education to speak of, and few are interested in any literature but that of novels and romances, which they waste time over without much discrimination. Good Lord! what an amount of trash they wade through! But then, very few people have the culture implied in the art of getting the nuts out of a book without swallowing husk and all. It is one of the last things learned by the student, and women are rarely students.”

“So, in the end,” said Mrs. Buzzell, “man, mixing with the world and interesting his mind with politics and science, finds his intellectual needs supplied outside of home. Well, he has other needs.”

“Yes, certainly. Home is the nucleus of all his affections; and because it is the nucleus or centre, it should include the possibilities of answering to the greater part of his needs. The woman who responds most fully to a man’s various attractions, will keep his love fresh the longest; but when she can respond to little else except his desire to be petted and caressed, she is in danger of responding too fully to that, and so clogs his appetite with her very sweetness.”

“Women learn this,” said Susie, “and that is why so many become heartless flirts. Who can wonder?”

“That is true of some very lovely women; but not of the finest, Susie. It would not be possible to you, nor to Clara.”

To be compared in any way to the superb Clara, was a compliment that Susie was keenly sensitive to; and her love and gratitude grew with the self-respect and womanly dignity that the nobler course of her few friends, insensibly and continually stimulated into action.

When the doctor rose to go, Mrs. Buzzell detained him to look at her flowers—“or rather Susie’s,” she said. The large table by the south window was full of plants and flowers in flourishing condition. Two orange shrubs, about three feet high, were loaded with young fruit; and in another room, less warm, by an east window, were boxes of violets and mignonette.

“I never saw any one succeed, as she does, with flowers. I never could get violets or mignonette to blossom in winter. I see now, I kept them too warm. Last winter, Susie sent bouquets of these to the new hotel, and sold them at high prices.” “She must apply what she has learned of botany,” said the doctor. “I see here, the result of what can be nothing else than a scientific method.”

“And yet I confess my patience used to be tried a little last summer and fall, over her persistence in dissecting plants and poring over books about them. I think I was foolish, and am anxious to do a little penance. I’ve been thinking seriously of building a conservatory on this south side; using the window as a door. The village has grown so, there must be quite a demand for flowers and plants in pots, and we are only a few miles from the city, you know.”

“It is the best impulse you ever had, Mrs. Buzzell,” the doctor said, very earnestly. “Susie has practical ideas, and this is the door to her independence. Go ahead without any delay. I will put in some money with pleasure, if you need it, besides giving twenty-five dollars out and out. It is June now. By next winter she could have plenty of violets, and that alone would pay well. I see she has a bed of them outside. Where does she get her stock? I never knew violets so fragrant as these are. The Marie Louise violet, I see.”

“Oh, a root, a slip here and there. Everything she touches succeeds. She is constantly bringing leaf mold from the woods. That is one of her secrets. Her fragrant violets she ordered in January from Anderson. They came in square pieces of turf.”

The doctor encouraged Mrs. Buzzell to such good effect, that in two days the carpenters were at work, and in less than a month a nice flower-room, twenty feet by twelve, heated by a little furnace in the cellar, was in working order; only the furnace, of course, was not yet needed. Susie had written to one of the great florists near the city, and ordered some stock; and somehow her letter had elicited an offer of any advice she might need. Besides this, the florist sent her a manual on hot-house culture. This manual was a godsend to Susie. She wrote back her thanks, and, probably, recognizing a soul in the business man, she told him of herself and her hopes. After this there ensued quite a correspondence. In November Susie’s violets were ready in masses, and she sent him specimens, packed nicely in moss. To this he replied:

“Your success greatly surprises me, but your bouquets are awkwardly put up—that is, wastefully, for ten violets are a generous number for a small winter bouquet. You need a few lessons, and if you desire them enough to come here, you can receive them in my establishment gratis. I will admit frankly that your white Neapolitans are better than mine. This is very remarkable, for it is a shy bloomer. I will sell all your violets for you this winter, if you wish it.”

Susie’s heart leaped at the offer of instruction; and packing up all her violets and many other flowers, that the florist might see them, she set out on her journey, leaving many and oft-repeated directions about the care of the conservatory, and very few about the baby; for Mrs. Buzzell was not likely to neglect Minnie, as Susie well knew.

Arrived at the florist’s, Susie set herself at work as if her life depended upon it. The florist was unusually interested in Susie, who talked with him freely and with confidence. He gave her numerous suggestions about her flower culture, and took her home with him to his family, instead of letting her go to a hotel, as she intended, for she had determined to stay a week. In the florist’s family Susie made more friends; but there was a kind of incubus upon her all the while. How could she know if they would be as kind to her as they were, if they knew her history? At the end of the week, however, she felt that she had made good use of her time. She had not contented herself with learning the theories of flower culture, but had put her own hands to everything, and familiarized them with operations destined to be of great service to her. The florist had noticed that there was something peculiar about this young woman, and shrewdly guessed that there was some secret trouble in her life; but her earnestness and gentleness of demeanor were greatly in her favor, and he was not sorry for the offer he had made her, to dispose of all the violets she should produce the ensuing winter, though that act would be of little service to him. It was, in fact, a generous impulse to help the praiseworthy ambition of the young florist, and Susie felt, rather than knew, this to be the fact, and acknowledged it indirectly. When she shook hands with the florist on leaving, she looked searchingly into his eyes and said, “I shall not forget your goodness to me, an utter stranger to you. Your help means more than you know.”

If we could read Susie’s busy thoughts, as she rode home communing with her own soul, to use a trite expression, we should find them running something in this wise: “This visit is a great step gained. I find I need not be modest. I know a thousand times more of flowers than does this great florist who has built up an immense and successful business; and what he knows of practical details more than I do, I can learn without the hard experience he has had. If I am prudent, I need not make any ruinous failures. Oh, to be rich! To own my own house, my own fortune, and never more be a dependent even upon the dearest and noblest people in the world! I may; I must accomplish this. I must! I must! Minnie is bright and pretty. Better that she died than grow up poor and ignorant, to do the bidding of others. I wonder if she will be really intellectual—capable of being highly educated, capable of lofty sentiments and principles. Ah! I am not proud that one like Dan is her father, but not in all the world could she have better blood than that of Dr. Forest. Great, noble, generous man! He knows I am grateful, but he does not know I could kiss his feet, and not then express how I adore his character. In his eyes, I am just as good, just as virtuous, as if baby had never been born. In Mrs. Buzzell’s I am very dear, I know, but still a Magdalen. She would stand by me during good behavior; he would follow me with tender, helpful sympathy, if I should suffer any degradation. He would never lose hope that I could rise and atone for every folly. What a power there is in such trust. It must give the basest nature a very passion to justify it. So will I justify it, or I will die in the attempt. I could die any death much easier than I could take any course that would make him feel he had been mistaken in me. Yet they say he is not a Christian. He is irreverent. Mrs. Buzzell asked him if he had never suffered gloomy, despairing moods, and he assured her he had; but to her question, had he not, under such circumstances, felt the instinct to pray to God, he looked her calmly, seriously in the face, and said he should as soon think of finding relief in turning double-back somersaults. That was just what he said, and she knew he was perfectly truthful. He said, however, it was wise to pray, or go through any innocent manœuvre that would insure relief; and then he showed how the real method was distraction, as he called it—calling into action new faculties of the mind, and thus resting the overwrought ones. I don’t find it much use to pray. Praying cannot remove disgrace, and shame, and suffering; but I trust in the unknown power that underlies all things. That power must be God. Obeying our highest impulses is the only thing we are sure is right. My highest impulse is to work for baby—to make her life all that life can be to her. Yet I have one awful fear, whenever I think of the future. When she goes out among children, in the streets or at school, they will no doubt tell her she is a bastard! She may come to me crying, and ask me what it means. Sometimes I think I would rather she should die than grow up to find her mother—— Oh! no, no! That is cowardly. I will make her respect me. I can read and study and educate myself, so that she will be forced to respect me, whatever others say. If I can only make money enough, I will take her abroad and educate her there; but I will tell her all, just as soon as she can reason, and if she inherits any of the soul of Dr. Forest, all will be well; but if she should not be like him! If she should be like Mrs. Forest, or coarse in soul like Dan——”

Thus thinking and foreshadowing, Susie reached home.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE FIRST CLOUD.

Dr. Delano, on taking his bride home, was somewhat surprised that Ella had left—accepted suddenly an invitation to spend the winter in Maryland, among some old friends of the family. Clara was hurt by this evident desire to avoid Albert’s wife, but his vanity was secretly well satisfied by the act. Ella could not stay and witness a happiness that should have been hers. He excused her going, therefore, with a good grace, and made Clara do so also, though the effort revealed a flaw in the diamond, a touch of vanity she had not dreamed could exist in her idol.

Mr. Delano received his daughter-in-law with a quiet, courteous pleasure, that was evidently felt. Miss Charlotte’s manner was stately, and just what it should be according to etiquette, though a good deal out of harmony with Clara’s exalted happiness, which made her a little impatient to see people so calm and self-possessed.

Mr. Delano, after his illness, yielded to the advice of friends and retired from business. It had proved a very unwise step. He had given all the best years of his life to acquiring wealth—in fact, to preparing for the enjoyment of life; and lo! when the wealth was gained, the enjoyment he had promised himself fled before him like the horizon “whose margin fades forever and forever” as we move. He had been rich enough all his life had he only known it, and the increase of luxurious surroundings in his stately residence on Beacon street were no more than Dead Sea apples in his mouth. During his active business life he had constantly purchased books and extended his library. These also he was to enjoy by-and-by, when he got leisure to read anything beyond the daily papers. He had not counted the fact that there are many things wealth cannot purchase, and among them is the capacity for ease.

On the wide and elegant balcony upon which his library opened, commanding a view of a beautiful garden at the rear of the mansion, there had been swung an elegant Mexican grass hammock for Mr. Delano’s special ease when reading. The house was on a corner lot, and the balcony was protected from the gaze of passers on the side street by screens of fawn-colored gauze. The old gentleman often took a book and lay down in his luxurious hammock, to see if he could not accustom himself to enjoyment, but he never succeeded. His brain was a vast cotton mart and exchange in full blast, and he longed every day to go back to that business which he had spent his life preparing to escape.

The old adage that “habit is second nature” is a very true one, and was illustrated perfectly in the case of Mr. Delano. His nature had come to relish nothing in the world so much as the cares, schemes, responsibilities, and the general excitement incident to money-making by speculation. It had all the charm of gambling, without the moral obloquy attached to it; though, to be sure, certain “crazy radicals” call it all gambling, and to them, one appears as immoral as the other. It is certain that any old gambler at rouge et noir, in Mr. Delano’s situation, would have found the days drag on just in the same weary way. The evenings, which Mr. Delano used to enjoy as a relaxation from business, were now more wearisome than the days, and the coming of his son and daughter-in-law was the signal for throwing the house open for the reception of people that he dreaded. During these receptions he moved uneasily through the drawing-rooms, principally occupied in avoiding stepping on the trains of the ladies, and never knowing what to say to their stereotyped, “How exceedingly well you are looking, Mr. Delano.” The only compensation was to get some old broker or stock gambler, who was bored to death like himself, into a corner, and talk of “the trifling of adults,” which, according to St. Augustine, “is called business.”

During the winter after Clara’s marriage, she saw a great deal of Boston’s choice society, and to please Albert, who was very proud of her, she accepted many an invitation when she would have enjoyed herself much more alone with him, or, in his absence, a quiet hour with the old gentleman, reading to him or talking, as his mood directed. As time passed, Albert was less and less at home evenings, and seemed to find attractions at his club, which secretly troubled Clara, but she uttered no word of complaint, and only sought to make up for those attractions, as best she could, when he spent his evenings at home.

In March, Ella came home. She was full of her pretty ways, and delighted Albert by her multiform flattering attentions to Clara. “I was afraid—you can’t tell how afraid I was—that you would never forgive me for running off like a sauvage; but you have, have you not? I have heard so much of your goodness from Albert. When he came home last November he could talk of nothing but you—your grace, your beauty, generosity, accomplishments. I declare I was quite bewildered. Will you forgive me if I say I did not believe quite all he said? But I do now. I believe every word since I have seen you.” Clara had her doubts about the sincerity of Ella, but she would give no expression to them for fear of being unjust; and as Miss Delano had never attracted her especially—indeed, had never shown any tendency to real intimacy, though she was polite and graciously kind—it was rather pleasant, therefore, to Clara, who had been nearly frozen by a winter of Boston society, to be thawed into spontaneous gayety, even by a gushing, superficial creature like Ella. It was the first time since Clara’s school days that she had given herself up to pure nonsense—to volumes of talk without meaning—and it pleased at first simply by its novelty; and besides this, nothing delighted Albert so much as the good understanding between his wife and Ella. He encouraged every sign of intimacy between them, and this of itself was motive strong enough to induce Clara to be exceedingly gracious to his old friend. To please Albert in all ways constituted the joy of her life, though the halo investing him was dimmed slightly, from time to time, as she discovered little traces of ill-temper and impatience at the smallest and most insignificant disappointments. Once, for example, not long after Ella’s return, he complained of the coffee at breakfast, saying pettishly, “I don’t see how any cook, with good coffee and boiling water, can manage to make such a flavorless mess as this!”

“It is one of your articles of faith, you know,” said Miss Charlotte, “that a perfect cup of coffee is not possible on the Western Continent.”

Albert made no reply, which Clara noted as a signal manifestation of self-control, for this was not certainly “pouring oil upon the troubled waters.” In Paris, Albert had greatly appreciated the excellent quality of the coffee, and had brought home with him a French cafétière, which ever after appeared on the Delano breakfast-table.

“Why, my son,” said Mr. Delano, “I consider this coffee very good;” and he sipped his with gusto.

“But it is not perfect; and there is no excuse for it, that I can see. However, the toast is so infinitely worse, that I suppose the coffee ought to escape comment.” Ella had the bad taste to laugh.

Miss Delano replied satirically, and in the same breath asked for more toast.

“I should like to find one woman,” said Albert, “who could hear the least criticism on any housekeeping detail without immediately taking it as a personal matter. You did not make the toast, Charlotte, and why try to make it out good when it is not, and force yourself to eat more than you want, by way of argument? You must know that it is made of stale bread.”

“I was not aware that toast is usually made of fresh bread,” said Miss Charlotte.

“As a chemist, I can assure you that it makes the best, though stale bread will do; but it does not follow that the older it is, the better. If it did, then the loaves lately excavated at Pompeii would be just the thing.”

“I think a chemist at the breakfast-table,” rejoined Miss Delano, “is about as comfortable as the memento mori of the ancients.”

“The Pompeian loaves,” said Clara, anxious to avoid any more unpleasant words between Albert and Charlotte, “having been toasted to a cinder, some two thousand years ago, would make a sorry toast, even if stale bread is better than fresh.”

“So you find a flaw in my logic, do you? I forgot the original toasting. It takes a woman to keep hold of all the intricate threads of the logical web.” Clara looked at Albert, to satisfy herself that he was not laughing at her, or at women in general, which was much the same thing in effect.

“I always wanted to study logic, but I suppose I could not understand it. I am a little ignoramus,” said Ella, with a pretty moue.

“I am sure you could learn logic or anything else,” said Albert, looking very sweetly upon Ella. “If you could not, so much the worse for logic;” and for the rest of the breakfast Albert devoted himself to conversation with Ella. He seemed to be charmed with every insignificant thing she said—laughed at jokes which were certainly totally innocent of any spirit of wit. This did not escape Clara, and after the family rose from the breakfast-table, she followed Mr. Delano to his private library, where her presence was always a delight.

That afternoon Albert returned earlier than usual. Ella’s bright eyes beamed upon him as he opened the hall door with the latch-key. She held out both her hands to him. He pressed them gently, and as he released them, asked where Clara was. He was thinking how gratifying it was to have his coming always anticipated with pleasure. It flattered him that Ella was always so glad to meet him; it was such a contrast to the old times, when he hung upon every word and motion of hers. He remembered her indifference to him then; and comparing it with her present behavior, he could come to but one conclusion; and in that conclusion there lay hidden a sense of triumph.

When he asked for Clara, Ella’s eyes fell with such a pretty gesture of despair, that he regretted his question. Quickly regaining a pretended lost self-possession, she replied, “She is in Mr. Delano’s library. She reads there almost every day, and has for ever so long. I can hardly get a sight of her.”

Albert knew that Clara liked to sit with his father, and that her presence cheered and delighted him; and for this he was glad; but he did not like her to neglect him, her husband, and on this special day too, when he had left the house without bidding her good-bye. Clearly, she was very remiss in not being in the parlor waiting for him, after he had treated her to so much indifference! That is masculine logic. No?

Albert hung up his hat and light overcoat in the hall, and went with Ella into the sitting-room, and begged her to excuse him for lying down on the lounge, as he was tired and had a slight headache.

“I am so sorry! Can I not cure your head?” and sitting down beside him, she laid her hand on his forehead, and passed her fingers through his hair for some minutes. During the process Miss Charlotte entered noiselessly. Ella started violently. “Don’t stop!” he said, aloud. “You do my head good!” Miss Charlotte left the room.

“Why did you start so, Ella? I was surprised. It was bad, too, for Charlotte is the first of prudes.”

“Oh, she will think me awful! I will go now; there is a step on the stairs.”

“Sit still!” he said very positively, but in a low tone. “I hope it is Clara. No, it is not,” he said, after a moment’s listening. “Well, go if you must, and tell Clara that I am here; but I must pay this pretty hand for charming away my headache;” and saying this, he opened it with both hands, and placing its rosy palm upon his lips, he held it there for some seconds with his eyes closed. Ella drew it away gently, and left the room. He lay there still, with his eyes closed, enjoying sensuously the magnetic thrill that Ella’s touch awakened, and wondering if, after all, this were not the woman whom he should have married. It was a dangerous speculation, as his own thought admitted; and then he thought of Clara’s tender trust in him, and reproached himself as if he had been guilty of betraying it. When he opened his eyes Clara stood beside him, her eyes full of gentle concern.

“Why did you not come to me or send for me at once, Albert?” she asked reproachfully. “I have just met Ella, who says she has been trying to soothe your head. She looked flushed. Oh, Albert! can any one take the place of Clara when you are ill?”

“No, dear one. How absurd.”

“Why did she look so flushed? What had you been saying to her? Forgive me. I should not catechise you in this way.” Upon this, Albert rose and took her very tenderly in his arms.

“What would become of me, dearest, if I should lose you?” she said, raising her head from his shoulder and looking into his eyes almost wildly.

“My child, what a question!”

“But answer me, Albert,” she said imperatively.

“I hope you would be sensible enough to forget that you ever cared for one so unworthy of you,” he replied.

“Sweet words! Do you know, Albert, I could never be jealous of you?”

“Are you sure? They say if you can love you can be jealous,” he said, bending his head on one side and searching her eyes.

“I am sure. Jealousy implies anger with the loved one, or hatred of the rival. I could never feel either. I could only suffer;” and with a deep, long sigh, she laid her head back upon his shoulder. Presently raising it, she continued, “You said you learned abroad the meaning of the term ‘illusions,’ as applied to love. Except you, my father is the only person whom I ever heard use it in the same sense. There is no word that can supply its place. It implies the distinction between the love of lovers and all other kinds of love, and more than that, it implies all that is divine in loving. I think it hard to preserve these precious illusions, but without them love would have no charm for me. I should become a wretched wife.”

“But we will not lose our illusions, precious. What should come between us? Are we not irrevocably bound to each other by the very act of marriage?”

“No,” Clara said decidedly and with emotion. “We are only bound by those very illusions. The divine spirit of Love makes and justifies marriage. The body is nothing to me, when the soul is gone. You are a very elegant man, Albert—elegant and beautiful in all eyes, but in mine you are beauty and strength and tenderness in one. You are everything to me; but your dear eyes, your lips, your eloquent tongue, would lose all their charm, with the loss of the soul of all.”

“Why, child, you are trembling like a leaf. Are you quite well?”

“Albert, why did she look flushed?” and she looked appealingly, searchingly into his eyes.

“I—I believe you are jealous after all,” he said.

Clara turned slowly and left the room without a word.

“Jealous, by Jove!” he said to himself when she was gone, and the idea flattered his vanity as it would that of the commonest soul. Clara had told him she could not be jealous, as the word is generally understood. That she could only suffer; but the words meant little to him. She had spoken the exact truth. In her venture, she had staked everything, and believed, as all women do under the same circumstances, that notwithstanding the coldness and indifference of married people, visible everywhere to the most superficial observer, that it was the result of a lack of wisdom—that love in all its divine freshness, could be preserved. Albert had held the same opinion, and had often said the danger lay in the first withholding of perfect trust. “Love should be cultivated like the most tender plant,” he had said.

He mused over the matter for a half hour, and then went to Clara’s room, where he found her, not “drowned in tears,” as he had anticipated, but very calmly dressing for dinner.

“I was afraid my Clara was going to be silly,” he said, smoothing her fine hair the wrong way, as men will, for it was rolled back at the sides over a heavy twist, and, of course, his caresses endangered the elegant finish of her coiffure, which had cost Clara more effort than he knew.

“Smooth my hair back, dear,” she said. “Don’t you see the way it is brushed?” and taking his fine hand, she passed it over her hair in the right way.

“You mean I had better keep my hands away. Don’t you?” he asked, pleasantly.

“No, no; only that you should not endanger the structure, or I shall have it to do over again. You may pull my curls, baby. You can’t hurt them.”

“Don’t call me baby. You know I hate it.”

“Excuse me. I am sorry you dislike it. There is no pet word that seems so tender to me. I wonder what possible word could offend me, if you found it a real medium of fondness?”

“Suppose I should call you ducky?”

“That sounds common and trivial; but if it served to express the tenderness that the word ‘baby’ does to me, I should soon find it adorable. Albert,” she said, after a pause, and with great enthusiasm, twining her bare arms about his neck, “Clara loves you as you have never dreamed of loving. Her love is greater than you need—greater than you can possibly respond to—and one day you will find it a millstone around your neck!”

“Well, that is pleasant. How long since you arrived at that astute conclusion?” he asked, laughing, as if greatly amused. “I thought my love satisfied you.”

“Do not speak in that tone. Do not make me regret wearing my heart upon my sleeve. Your love satisfied me when I had not understood the depth of my own; now, when a crisis comes, and you see me shaken like a reed, you do not answer seriousness with seriousness, intensity with intensity. You call me jealous, and treat me like a pretty butterfly woman, who must be managed by her husband.”

“A crisis! I like that. You find me alone a moment with an old friend, who happens to be a charming woman, and you call it a crisis!”

“I think a physician should reason more nicely than that; he should look at effects. Was the princess in the story, who was made all black and blue by sleeping on a crumpled rose-leaf, any the less black and blue because it was a rose-petal, and not a brush-heap?”

“There are some princesses who are morbidly sensitive. I would have them harden their epidermes a little.”

“I understand,” Clara said, deeply hurt, but controlling her emotion through a sense of pride never before experienced in Albert’s presence, for she had been as frank and trusting as a little child, not dreaming that he could ever fail her in sympathy. “Perhaps,” she added, forcing herself to smile, “I shall think best to commence the hardening process. Go now, or I shall keep the dinner waiting.” Then followed a wealth of cheap endearments and caresses on Albert’s part, which Clara responded to mechanically. She was positively relieved when he was gone. She knew well she had not exaggerated the importance of this first jar in the harmony of her life with Albert, but just now there was no time to think—no time to give way to tears that would have been a relief. She bit her lips to bring the color into them, and felt, as she took her seat at the table, that she bore well the scrutiny of Albert’s and Ella’s eyes. Miss Delano was very grave, and rather more attentive to Clara than usual.

Ella felt certain that there had been a “scene,” as she would have called it, between Clara and Albert. She had betrayed her confusion to Clara an hour ago on leaving him; but here was Clara all smiles and self-possession. “Evidently she thinks me too insignificant to ruffle the current of her bliss,” was Ella’s thought, and had been for some time. It piqued her as it would any flirt; and the devil had possessed her from the first to try if her old influence upon Albert was entirely lost. This was the secret of her going from home when the happy couple were to arrive. “Let him have enough of his village beauty,” she had said. “By the time the spring comes he will find her society rather tame.” To do Ella justice, she had not intended to create any serious disturbance between Albert and his wife, though she could not forgive him for marrying any one until he had made certain that his old love was forever beyond his reach, and there was a secret spite in her heart when she found the “village beauty” superior in culture and manners, as well as in personal charms, to most of the women she had met. It was a dangerous experiment, as it proved, her effort to discover the state of Albert’s feeling towards her, for she had found herself thinking and dreaming of him constantly, while he seemed still wholly absorbed with his devotion to Clara. That day, however, had brought a little triumph to the flirt.

Any disinterested observer would have pronounced the family dinner-party a very happy one, and much interested in the various topics that were discussed. How much we talk of candor and frankness, as if any one of us ever admitted either, among the virtues of society. The frankness that passes current as such, is but a base counterfeit, as any one may find by circulating an infinitesimal quantity of the genuine metal. He will be set down instantly as an uncomfortable Marplot. Little children alone exemplify real candor, and how we adore it in them! But it doesn’t do for grown people, any more than the religion of Christ, as taught by him and his Apostles, will do, according to Mrs. Kendrick, for the exigencies of modern times. There was Miss Delano presiding at the table with suave good-breeding, while under the smile with which she served the dessert to Ella, there lurked a deep contempt of that young lady’s “ways” with Albert; Clara, apparently without a care and conversing easily upon various subjects, was in fact suffering and longing to get away; Albert’s light laugh and animated chit-chat, mostly with Ella, concealed a dismal dissatisfaction with fate, that had made him appear something less than absolute perfection in his wife’s eyes; Ella appeared as gay as a bird and as transparent as crystal, yet she would have cut off her little finger sooner than have her real thoughts and feelings engrafted on the consciousness of those present. Mr. Delano, indeed, had not much feeling of any kind except that of general weariness, which he carefully concealed, and so was in some degree masked like the rest.

After dinner Albert played backgammon with Ella, who affected to be very fond of the game. Clara knew well that it was an affectation, for whenever Mr. Delano proposed playing, Ella was very slow to respond. To the old gentleman, this game was almost his only evening amusement, and though Clara disliked it, she often played out of pure kindness to him. Clara was by no means displeased that her husband’s society was agreeable to Ella. It was natural and right; but this special evening she would have been flattered by some devotion of Albert’s time to herself. She was all gentleness and kindness, and feared, above all things, being unjust or seemingly selfish, through her exceeding fondness for her husband. “He will not play long,” she said to herself, and sat down by Miss Charlotte with her sewing. When the game or games were finished, Albert left the house, saying only that he was to meet some board of medical men. Clara’s heart sank. She looked at him, and his eyes met hers with the most ordinary indifferent smile, such as he might bestow upon his father or Charlotte. She went to her rooms earlier than usual, and sat for a long time musing before the fire of their pleasant, private sitting-room. The reflection would come that, since Ella’s return, Albert had cared less and less for that room. Until very lately, he had always sought it immediately after dinner, whether Clara was there or not, knowing well she would not wait long before seeking him there. As she recalled every incident of the past month, little events that had meant nothing at the time, were full of significance, and her heart cried out in anguish with the fear that Albert was changing. When he had left her before dinner, she had suffered a moment of intense pain. He had not seemed to understand her, and for the first time she felt that something had gone out of her life; and now, as she sat waiting for him, she almost dreaded his coming. She did not wish to conceal any little heart-ache from Albert: it was torture to think it necessary. Why could he not soothe it away? Why should it not seem important to him, whatever its cause? Was she indeed too sensitive? Yet he had adored her for that very sensitiveness! She repeated his words “morbidly sensitive,” and out of the fear to do injustice to him, tried to believe that she was suffering some indisposition—that she was nervous, and had exaggerated a very slight misunderstanding. Clearly she was nervous, and ought not to meet Albert until sleep and rest had restored her. “I should not see him in this mood,” she said to herself, as she entered her bedroom. “Oh, if I might have one right the Turkish woman has!—if I might put my slippers outside my door, with the certainty that it would protect me from all intrusion, even from that of my husband!”

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE INVITATION TO THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.

The first cloud obscuring the heaven of Clara’s perfect happiness as a wife, had passed. The sun shone again, but never with its ineffable brightness. Love’s perfect Eden was forever lost.

Dr. Delano and his wife had been keeping house a little over a year. Clara performed all wifely duties with perfect care. She had been apparently satisfied with Albert’s course to Ella. She made no complaints, was cheerful always, received all his friends with a cordial grace that pleased him well, and if her caresses had lost their old tenderness, he had not wondered at the change—alas! he had not even noticed it;—and yet Clara believed that the trusting, childlike happiness that had been theirs at first, would, by some miracle, return. She cherished this hope as the drowning cling to straws. Ardent and romantic in her nature, feeling certain that her love was perfect and could meet all the needs of Albert, she was terribly shaken by the discovery that the petting, the flattery, the languishing ways of Ella, charmed him more than anything else in the world. She did not blame him nor Ella. It was inevitable that they should like each other, but there were times when her life seemed unendurable.

Ella was often at the house, and Clara received her as she did many of Albert’s friends, with whom she had no special sympathy; but when one day Albert reproached her for showing no affection to Ella, and dwelt upon Ella’s virtues, among which were her simplicity, her affection, her childlike innocence, Clara’s patience gave way: “I do not love her,” she said, “and you know it well. Why should I play the hypocrite? I will treat her well, because she is your friend. We pretend that we have a higher guide than mere conventional rules, which would forbid your ever asking me to receive a woman who stands between me and your love. Ask no more of me, Albert,” she said, with an expression he but partly comprehended. “Ask no more of me, Albert, or I shall fail you, not only in this but in all things.”

Sometimes the temptation was great to open Albert’s eyes as to Ella’s childlike innocence, but Clara was really above using such a weapon against her rival; besides, she doubted that they could be opened. Ella was, apparently, without a single flaw in his eyes.

With the summer came the discussion of passing the heated term at the White Mountains. Albert declared that Clara was looking a little fatigued, and the change would give her tone and color. She received this evidence of anxiety about her health with great pleasure. The prospect of several weeks, in a delightful country, alone with Albert, was in itself sufficient to bring color to her cheeks, and to reawaken her fondest hopes. Mr. Delano, with Charlotte and Ella, were to spend the summer as usual at Newport; but it happened that just before Miss Charlotte announced to her father that her preparations were completed, Ella decided to wait and join Clara and Albert in their trip to the White Mountains. Miss Delano expressed unqualified surprise.

“I don’t know why you should be surprised. Am I not old enough to choose for myself?”

“You are old enough to be discreet,” said Miss Delano, severely; “but, I can assure you, you are not.”

“I know. It is always indiscreet to do what you wish to.”

“No, Miss Wills; it is indiscreet to wish to do what good sense condemns.”

“I’m sure I cannot see that good sense condemns my wish to go to the White Mountains with Clara and Albert.”

“You mean with Albert and Clara. I would ask you if you have been invited by Albert’s wife?”

Ella winced. She saw but one escape, and that was through a falsehood.

“Certainly I have,” she said, with effrontery.

“What is this?” asked Mr. Delano, slow, like most men, to understand the disputes of women. Miss Delano having the issue clearly thrust upon her, explained very succinctly.

“My dear Ella,” said the mild old gentleman, mildly, and as if a sudden thought had struck him, “you know you were an old flame of Albert’s, and you know he is a very hot-headed fellow. I think you are playing with the fire.”

The very mildness of the old gentleman was like tinder to flames, in its effect. Ella answered insolently, and flirted out of the room. Under such circumstances, she thought the best way to convince Mr. Delano and his daughter that they had wronged her, was to show them that they had made her ill. She stayed in her room two whole days, and by great effort, refusing all food during that time, she succeeded pretty well. During the second day she wrote the following letter to Albert:

“Dearest Friend:—I am ill and suffering. It is useless to struggle against fate. No one cares for Ella but you—no one understands her—and they would have me think it wicked to see you. What does it matter that we know our love is pure? They will not believe it. Let us submit to fate, dear, dearest Albert. We had better not meet again, since we cannot be understood. Though it breaks my heart to say it, farewell forever!

“Your unhappy

“Ella.”

Whether Ella guessed what would be the result of this epistle or not, she felt she had done a sublime stroke of duty. She had bade him an eternal farewell, and if he did not abide by it, the fault was not hers. Albert, of course, flew to the rescue gallantly, and that no time should be lost, ordered the carriage for the purpose. He called for Ella, who refused to see him; whereupon he called for his sister, and expended considerable brotherly fury upon that staid maiden. She, on her side, told him some very unpalatable truths, and gave him some advice, which was yet more distasteful, and to which he replied angrily:

“You know no more of my wife than you do of Ella, whom you never understood.” Miss Delano gave her views of Ella’s character and general motives of conduct in most well bred but unmistakable terms, and ended by saying, “If Clara Forest is a woman to be deceived by Ella Wills, to ‘love’ her as you say, then I am fearfully mistaken in the woman. The truth is, you are using her love for you, to abuse her good sense.”

Albert did not fail to show that he had a profound contempt for such ideas of love as might be entertained by prudes and old maids, though he was too polite to use the latter term to any lady. People who are married are apt to think that only they have any understanding of love, just as parents presume that they are better qualified to bring up children from the fact of their maternity or paternity, than others who have no children; though all experience shows that the capacity to bear children, by no means implies the capacity to rear them properly.

In this encounter of brother and sister, Miss Charlotte manifested the calm dignity of one sure of her position, while Albert showed all the blustering, virtuous indignation of the guilty man; however, in the end he succeeded, not only in seeing Ella, but in bearing her away in triumph.

Clara was sufficiently surprised when he arrived with his charge, and supported her upstairs in an apparently dying condition, though she had contrived to look exceedingly interesting in a white cashmere wrapper, fastened at the throat by a huge scarlet ribbon, which made her pallor more noticeable by contrast. The old family physician, Dr. Hanaford, had been called in, but when he came the patient was gone. Mr. Delano advised him to follow her. This Dr. Hanaford was much inclined to do on learning that Albert was unaware that the family physician had been sent for; and further, he did not wish to trust his patient in the hands of young Dr. Delano, which proved that he did not understand the nature of her case. Arrived at Ella’s bedside, he examined her tongue, her pulse, and asked all the usual impertinent questions which doctors seldom omit, even when summoned to prescribe for a sty on the eyelid. Ella, who had never in her life been seriously ill, and knew well that she was not now, winced under the doctor’s examination into her case, the gravity of which he measured by his inability to comprehend it. By dint of nasty medicaments, a low diet, and close confinement, he succeeded in a few days in making Ella very comfortably ill, and she enjoyed greatly the care and anxiety of her friends. Clara was wholly deceived, and nursed Ella with the greatest care, but said nothing about her joining their summer excursion. This vexed Ella, who was determined that Clara should extend the invitation voluntarily. On the occasion of Dr. Hanaford’s next visit, he recommended change of air. “Oh, doctor, I can’t go anywhere,” she replied, languidly. “I don’t wish to move.”

“But, my dear Miss Wills, I advise it. It is the only thing for you in your present condition.”

“Well, then, don’t send me to the sea-side. I hate the sea, and am always made ill by being near it. Now, you will not, will you, dear doctor?” she added, in her most caressing manner. “If you do, I will die just to spite you.”

“No, my dear Miss Wills, I am rather inclined to think a mountain region——”

“No, no; don’t advise anything to-day, doctor dear. Wait till to-morrow. I have such a horrid pain in my side.”

“In your right side? That is a favorable symptom. The bile——”

“Oh, don’t. I haven’t any such horrid thing!” she said, insinuating her little jeweled hand into his large palm by way of mollifying him. “What hour will you come to-morrow?”

“At two o’clock.”

“Precisely? I cannot bear to wait for you a minute. It makes me so nervous.” The doctor declared his intention to be punctual, which was all Ella cared to know, and she was glad when he was gone. The next day, a few minutes before two, she sent for Clara, pretending to need greatly her soothing presence; and when the doctor came she insisted upon Clara’s remaining. This was a part of her plot. Pretty soon she managed to lead up to the subject of the proposed change of air by saying,

“Oh, I am such a trouble to you, Clara dear! but it will not be long. The doctor is going to send me to the sea-side.”

“On the contrary,” replied the unsuspecting old doctor. “I wish you to have the bracing atmosphere of the mountains.” Ella turned her head to the wall with a weary sigh. The doctor expressed regret at recommending anything contrary to the young lady’s inclinations. Clara herself had not the slightest suspicion of Ella’s scheme, and from the goodness of her heart said, “We are going to the White Mountains, doctor, and can take her with us. I have no doubt that the mountain air will be better for her than anything else.” This was a pure, generous self-sacrifice on Clara’s part, costing more effort than any one could guess.

When Albert heard of the gracious offer of his wife, he was exuberant in his thanks—called her his sensible, generous love, and was so demonstrative in his tenderness, that Clara forgot to reflect that it was all due to her making a sacrifice to Ella.

As the days passed, Ella grew tired of being desperately ill; so she secretly threw away Dr. Hanaford’s medicines and ate everything that was offered her. She wished to be ill enough to alarm Albert, and yet she must contrive to look charming in his eyes, and the work required a good deal of study. Pretty soon she left her bed, and spent her time in planning ravishing convalescent toilettes, complaining to Albert all the time of the dire condition of her health. On one occasion he found her reclining on a lounge in a pretty white-and-blue gown, her hair exquisitely dressed, and looking a picture of health. She complained of “utter weariness”—would not talk further than to say she cared for nothing in the world but to die and be out of everybody’s way. Of course he called her endearing names, and begged her to live for his sake; he could not endure life without her. Finally he persuaded her to eat some delicious hot-house grapes he had brought her, and to consent to endure existence a little longer!

During Ella’s illness Mr. Delano called upon her, and the day following Miss Charlotte also. She was a very kind person at heart, though her manner was a little of the forbidding style. She urged Ella to go home, and talked to her of the danger and the impropriety also of courting the affections of married men. Ella could not be angry, for Miss Delano’s manner and accent on this occasion were really sympathetic and friendly. Ella could now declare with a good grace that she was engaged to accompany Albert and Clara to the White Mountains—that Clara had urged it and desired it. Miss Delano was nonplussed, and soon after took her leave.

CHAPTER XXIV.
A SPASMODIC MOVEMENT OF LOVE.

A few days later, and when nearly all the preparations for the White Mountain trip were finished, Clara expressed a desire to run home to Oakdale for three or four days. It was a lovely morning in the last days of June, and the scene was at the breakfast-table. Ella floated languidly in at the last moment, in a lovely morning-dress of white lawn, puffed and flounced, and with wide flowing sleeves that exposed well her pretty arms. At her breast she wore a knot of narrow blue ribbons and a little bouquet of fresh rosebuds. Her hair, which curled naturally, she had brushed out and passed her fingers through and through it, until it lay in innumerable fluffy ringlets and curls kept back from her face by a wide blue ribbon, fringed at the ends and tied in an elegant bow at the top of her head. “How pretty she is!” said the eyes of Albert. Ella seated herself in her place languidly, as if life were the very burden she pretended it was. “How pretty you look, Ella!” said Clara, generously. “It does not seem as if you could ever grow old.”

“Like you, for example,” said Albert, smiling.

“I know I am young enough,” replied Clara, “but I do not think I ever looked as fresh as Ella does.”

“I am sure I would exchange all the freshness that you seem to admire so much,” said Ella, “for a nose as elegant as yours.”

“Yes, I believe my nose is irreproachable,” replied Clara, smiling; “but as a child, it was certainly a pug.”

“Like mine.”

“No, yours is not that by any means. I think you should be quite satisfied with your person.”

Albert looked from one woman to the other. He knew Clara was several years younger than Ella, and yet she looked older—an effect heightened by her dress, a plain light gray with plain cuffs, and collar fastened by a bow of rich black ribbon. Albert wondered why she would wear black, when she knew he hated it. Clearly she did not study to please him, as Ella did. He did not reflect, possibly he did not know, that Clara’s little dower from her father had been exhausted, though managed with the greatest care, and that it would scarcely have permitted her to dress like Ella for a single year. Clara had never yet asked Albert for any of the money that he spent freely upon his own dress, on his friends in wines and cigars, at his club, and in many ways; and as he had several times expressed surprise at the extent of the household expenses, she had endeavored, in ways he never suspected, to reduce them. She may be blamed, but she simply could not bring herself to ask him for any money for herself. The old, perfect, childlike confidence was gone. She thought, moreover, that a husband’s duty was to set aside for the mistress of the house, a certain generous allowance for her personal and household expenses; and not dole money out week by week, to meet current expenses. It seemed to her very undignified, to say the least, and not what her father would have done, as he had proved ever since the growth of Oakdale and the increase of his practice enabled him to count on a steady income. She did not, however, attribute Albert’s course to penuriousness or selfishness, but simply to ignorance of the ideas of a wife on this subject. Time would harmonize all this, she thought, if ever the old Eden came back, with that divine mutual confidence that makes it wise to express every thought freely and frankly. So she went on from day to day managing Albert’s house with a rare skill, improved by constant experience and a quick practical intelligence, receiving his friends, gracing his table and his drawing-rooms with her sweet presence, and in return receiving such attentions from him as his nature suggested, when not absorbed by Ella’s charms, or by the claims of other friends. She learned to be a hypocrite, as many a wife has done. If she expressed the grief that was in her heart, even by a tone, a word, Albert’s pleasure was affected by it. To be sure, his course was much like that of a person holding your head under water, and then feeling injured because you are so inconsiderate as to look strangled! At times Clara felt as if she could go mad at Albert’s persistence in declaring that his love had in no way changed. A thousand words and acts and movements, proved his protestations utterly false; and between her struggle to please him by liking Ella, whom any other woman of spirit would have felt justified in hating, to attend to all the household responsibilities, to show a smiling face when her heart was breaking, to do strict justice to Albert and Ella in all her thoughts—between all these trials, no wonder she looked old beside the rosy freshness of triumphant love, that shone unclouded in Ella’s pretty face. No wonder she desired to go home to her father—to one who never misunderstood her, who never required her to conceal any thought or emotion—one whom she could please wholly, by being herself in all things. Sometimes it seemed that she could not wait one moment; that she must fly to him, whatever the result. But when she mentioned this desire on the morning in question, Albert was astounded. His gesture and words made her indignant. She compared him mentally to her father. The expression of a strong desire for anything, created in Dr. Forest an instinctive impulse to help gratify it.

“I wish much to go,” she said simply, as if that alone should be enough.

“But at this time, my dear.”

“I will return in less than a week.”

“Indeed! You would go alone! Do you suppose I can permit my wife to go home for the first visit after our marriage, without her husband? I shall go with you, of course.”

Ella winced. Here was an evidence of the husband’s pride in his position. Why, he was not fully hers, after all; and for the first time she felt jealous of the wife. Very soon after she left the room.

Later, in Clara’s room, Albert came to her, evidently to talk over the matter. She put her arms about him, and tried the little coquettish arts that used to charm him, only to find for the twentieth time, with secret mortification, that they had lost their power. Ella had the monopoly of all pretty arts now. Clara knew it, and despised herself for the foolish persistency of hoping against hope, lowering her dignity by seeking to regain anything that such a kitten as Ella Wills could win; but it would be worse than useless to show her feelings. Unhappiness was a crime in Albert’s eyes, and he had not seen a tear in hers for many a month. In answer to his question, what had given her such a sudden desire to go home, she answered, “It is not sudden. I have been thinking of it a very long time. I don’t think I am over well, and I so wish to see papa. I cannot tell you how strong the desire is.”

“You have not mentioned being ill, Clara;” and with the fatality of many people who wish to avoid a scene, he took the surest means to produce one, for he added, “but you have no faith in me as a physician.”

“That is very unjust, Albert.”

“If you had any faith in me, you would tell me if you had symptoms of illness.”

“Perhaps I should be more flattered if it were not necessary to tell them.”

“I do not profess to be a magician, like your father,” he said, ironically.

“This is a reflection upon my father,” replied Clara, indignantly. “It is not necessary for me to tell you what I think of it. I am not alone in the opinion that he is a very superior physician.”

“I did not mean it in the light of a reflection. I know he is a fine French scholar, and keeps himself au courant with the methods and discoveries of modern science; but of course he is a graduate of the old school.”

“The subject is painful to me, Albert. I am deeply mortified that you should institute any comparison between yourself and my father in this respect.”

“You seem pleased to treat me like a sophomore,” he said, angrily, assuming an air of superiority that could not deceive Clara. “You will pardon me for saying, that if this is good taste, it is at least unwise.”

“Unwise?” echoed Clara, with disgust. “I deny that I even dreamed of treating you with the slightest disrespect; but tell me, please, what result I ought to fear.”

“Oh, nothing; my respect, my admiration, amount to nothing, of course;” and Albert took out his cigar-case, and selecting a Havana, was about to strike a match.

“Put away your match!” said Clara. “You have not my permission to smoke in my room to-day.”

“Madame is obeyed,” he said, bowing and putting away his cigar. The tone and manner of Clara were so strangely unlike all he knew of her, that he was astonished into good-humored admiration.

“Respect is due to me from you, and all the world, until I forfeit it by ignoble conduct. Your admiration I have thought and hoped I could never lose, for no true man or woman can really love when that is gone;” and as Clara said this, she glanced at her reflection in the glass.

“I think you are right, my dear,” he said, coldly.

“It is sad for a woman to lose what little beauty she has, for I think the admiration of most men depends wholly on personal beauty.”

“No, Clara. It is happiness that most charms the lover.”

“Then, indeed, I have no chance, for I am not happy.”

“I was fool enough to think my wife ought to be happy.”

“No; the woman you love should be happy. I am proud of being your wife, as you well know, but I would gladly change my state to that of your mistress, could I regain what I feel that I have lost forever. Oh, Albert! the world seems vanishing under my feet, when I think we have come to this.”

There was something in the whole attitude of Clara, and especially in the evidence of emotions long repressed, that filled not only the husband, but the physician, with alarm and self-reproach, and he did what all men do when unusually conscious that they are murdering by inches the women who love them. He took her in his arms, covered her with kisses, wept over her, called himself unworthy of a love so divinely tender as hers, and when in some sentence Clara alluded to Ella, he begged she would not mention the name of any other woman to him. What were all the women in the world to him? He had been a brute to even seem to put any other woman before her, or to do anything to cause her the slightest pain. Clara nestled close to his heart, and sobbed herself into a blissful state of trust and hope, as Albert went on. He would never pay any marked attention to Ella since it displeased Clara.

Clara, too happy in being restored to her husband’s confidence, answered generously, and through happy tears:

“No, dear one, you must not make her unhappy by an inexplicable change of manner. Do you not think she is really in love with you?”

“There is no doubt of that,” he said, with a touch of vanity, for he was but human, and to see this woman, who had caused him so many “pangs of despised love,” now wholly and helplessly enamored of him, was a triumph bearing in it a poetic justice, a healing sweetness, impossible to resist. He had not desired that any one should occupy his heart but his wife; for theirs had been a love worth preserving in its freshness. He really desired so to preserve it; and therefore he would have been consistent if, upon the first signs of Ella’s passion for him, he had shown her something of his devotion to his wife. It might not have been gallant, according to the creed of men, but it would at least have been profoundly wise. Women instinctively yield to any securely enthroned rival; perhaps men know this, and hence they so rarely show one woman that they love any object specially, or even act in a manner that will let such fact pass for granted. This is generally true of men in whose temper there is a latent melancholy. They are passionately attracted to their opposites, to those who are gay and happy, and therefore they would fly from suffering, even when they themselves are the cause of it.

Clara found in the bliss caused by Albert’s spasmodic return to his old tenderness, an adequate compensation for deferring her visit to Oakdale. She expressed earnestly the wish to please Albert in all things.

“My darling,” he said, “you can please me always if you will remain in this sweet mood. Only be happy, and there will be no more clouds.”

“But my moods, dear one, depend upon you. How can a dethroned queen be happy? No: I mean,” she added quickly, “when her throne is in danger. You know I am not jealous and selfish. I would have all women love you, and I would stay by myself without a murmur, if you wish to ride, or walk, or flirt with them, for nature has made you very gallant and fond of the incense of admiration. I only would feel certain that I hold my old place—mine by right of loving you more than any other can, as you have always admitted. There is something in the confident air of Ella when she speaks to you in my presence, that distresses me; makes me feel that you have not shown her my true place in your heart. Have you, dearest?”

Albert knew he had not. To have said yes, would certainly have been false, and he had a repugnance to direct falsehood. The position was awkward, but he managed to satisfy Clara, and in a most heavenly frame of mind she sent him to tell Ella that she had decided to put off going to Oakdale for the present.

CHAPTER XXV.
LETTERS.—A CONVERSATION.

“Oakdale, June 25, 18—.

“My Dear Girl: I have just come from Mrs. Buzzell’s. It is about the happiest family I ever knew. The baby flourishes like a weed, and is as pretty a child as you would wish to see, and actually resembles your mother so much that everybody remarks it. This is a piece of poetic justice that makes me grin with delight. She ignores still the existence of Susie, the child, and good Mrs. Buzzell; but she is the only one who hears anything from Dan. He is in San Francisco, and wears a huge diamond. That is all I know of my only son.

“Susie’s new establishment for flower culture is a perennial delight. She has written you, so you are doubtless posted as to the money she made last winter. Everything promises well for the next. She is bound to succeed, and if she had capital, could build up a fine business; but what is better than all, is the fact that she has outgrown all her heart-aches, and is really and truly happy. See, my girl, what we have done for her! When we remember how ignorant she was, how deficient in any moral or other training, and therefore how certain to be guided by her emotions, if we had ‘passed by on the other side,’ like the rest, she might have been damned beyond salvation; yet still I doubt it after all. She reads a great deal, and is the best patron of the new circulating library. ‘Give me a list of books,’ she said to me, ‘that you know are good. If I select for myself I shall waste time, and I want to make up for what I have lost.’ Some people would call this lack of individuality, but the fact is, it is real wisdom. Life is too short to read all the books of unknown and new authors. Let them sift through the ten million general readers of the country. If anything is too big to go through the sieve, there will be a noise about it, and then it is time for the discriminate to take it up. Susie devours history, biography, travels, and entertains me greatly by her fresh comments upon them. She has not yet complained of my selection being too serious for her. You see, I keep a copy of my lists, and when I think the pabulum too nutritious, I throw in a few lollypops in the shape of novels, though I don’t mean to include all novels under that head. Have you read George Eliot’s last? I ask, because I would have you not only read, but read very carefully, everything she writes. In my opinion she is the closest observer and the profoundest thinker among women to-day. Susie has an appreciation of her that is delightful to me. You know, of course, that I am teaching Susie French and natural philosophy. Upon my word, I think I missed my calling. I should have been a teacher of girls—women I should say, for girls are only interesting because they are women in posse.

“The great event in Oakdale is the arrival of the Count Von Frauenstein. I met him at the Kendrick’s last night, and I like him more than any man I ever met. That is saying a good deal, but I know when a man has the ring of the true metal. He is a Prussian by birth, but no more belongs to that country than I do to this 10 × 12 study. In fact, he is a genuine cosmopolitan. He graduated at Cambridge, for his family took up their residence in England when he was a boy; then he took a degree in Philosophy in Heidelberg (which don’t count for much in my opinion), then lived some years in France, where he was sent on some government business. Some years ago he came into his inheritance, when he made for this country for the purpose of investing it. Kendrick says he is worth two millions to his knowledge, and much more in all probability. Kendrick is laying pipe to interest him in the new insurance company, but so far has only succeeded in getting him to help on the new railroad.

“It was a very stylish affair, the Kendrick reception last night; music, chef d’œuvres of confectionery, ladies in undress, and all that. Your mother was furious about the display of charms, and of course I defended it—not on principle, but because she was too savage. Leila and Linnie were invited, and they would have rejoiced in a state of décollété extending to their boots, I think. Your mother compromised the matter with black lace, and so they still live. Frauenstein has a fine voice, and Linnie was in the seventh heaven when she got a chance to play him an accompaniment to a song from Der Freischutz.

“I never met a real lion in society before, and I studied both with interest. This fashionable society is nothing, after all, but a kind of licensed policy-shop. They want Frauenstein’s money, and Kendrick thinks he has the best right to it because his cousin was Frauenstein’s mother—an American woman; so you see he has blood! The Delanos are related to him in about the same degree; so of course you have heard of him. I like the count for one reason, and this is, that notwithstanding the display and cajolery of the women, and the flattery of most of the men, he had the good taste to talk with your old doctor more than to any one there; so the race is not wholly degenerate! In politics he is soundly radical, and hates war like a Quaker. He sees in it the degradation of the people. It was refreshing to hear him talk. He says the wealth-producers of the world are not dependent upon capital so much as capital upon them, if they only knew it; for they have everything in their own hands, and are slowly coming to realize the fact, and to see how they can organize and accomplish great things. He was very eloquent when the subject of education came up, and presented the whole matter in a clear and new light to most of those who heard him. He said it was a disgrace to the age that we have no text-book of morals for the public schools; and as the various systems of religion have monopolized the teaching of codes of morals, by shutting out all religious instruction, we have shut out moral training as well. It is right to exclude all creeds from schools supported by the people, but it is a great and vital error to deprive the young of constant and unremitting instruction in the laws that should govern human beings in their mutual relations. He would have a text-book on morals compiled from the writings of all the great teachers, whether pagan or Christian, excluding every myth and unverifiable hypothesis. Such a book could be made as acceptable to all religious sects, as works on arithmetic or chemistry now are. He talked also of woman’s coming position as that of perfect social and political equality. It is astonishing how radical Kendrick, old priest Cooke, and many other out-of-her-sphere noodles, have suddenly become. Kendrick actually assented to the very propositions he has repeatedly pooh-pooed when presented by me. I made him feel a little uncomfortable by saying, ‘Mind, Kendrick! I shall see that you stick to that.’

“I come now to the important part of your letter. The old Serpent has got into your Eden. Two things I would say to you as a preliminary: first, don’t go off at half-cock. This is a common weakness of women. Second, don’t expect better bread than can be made of wheat. Your Albert is not so fine in nature as you supposed, or the fact of your being unhappy, even disturbed in your mind about his affection, would be the very strongest motive to self-examination. For myself, I don’t much believe in marriage, any way: it don’t seem to work. If it could be prevented until the age of forty or so, it would work better. If you were an ordinary woman, I should recommend flirting; but that would be useless in your case. So, my girl, I cannot help you as I would. I need not dwell on my feelings in the matter. In such cases there is only one physician, and he is the old mower with the hour-glass. Do not forget, that although a woman, you are really a philosopher. Love is not all there is of life; and as you depend less on its intoxication for your happiness, the more smoothly will work the machinery of destiny, just as the circulation of the blood is effected more normally when we trust to Nature, instead of trying to aid her by counting the beating of our hearts.

“The truth is, I am at a sad loss what to write you on this matter. I feel sure that you will act wisely, and be unjust to no one. The best I can do is to trust to your finer instincts. Action and reaction are equal: so the doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments is true in principle, though we look for heaven and hell in the wrong places. Be sure that Nature always restores the equilibrium. This is always the thought that I comfort myself with. It answers the place that praying does to the devotee. Nature’s laws are immutable, and cannot fail us. Be patient, dear girl, and know that there is one old fellow on whom you can rely, no matter what may happen.

“Yours, as you know,

“G. F.”

To the ordinary observer, there might not seem to be anything in the doctor’s letter to his daughter that should move her deeply; yet she read all the latter part of it through blinding tears. She received it a few days after her reconciliation with Albert, and answered it immediately as follows:

“Dear, dear Papa: Your letter consoles and blesses me, but I almost regret mentioning my troubles to you. I feel how they sink into your heart, and as I read I was filled with gratitude by the thought that you are still strong and hale and may live as long as I do, which I fervently desire. The very thought of losing you, is terrible. No one can ever understand me like my good, my precious, father. Your character is my ideal of all that is noble in manhood, and it was not wise, perhaps, for me to marry, because I must measure all men by your standard, and then be disappointed when they fall below it. I am unreasonable. I should never expect to find any one with your sense of justice, or with your delicate appreciation of everything fine in human motives. I could never deceive you: you see below the surface. I can deceive Albert, and do constantly, and hate myself for it. I can make him happy by wearing a smiling face when my heart is as heavy as lead. About a week ago we had an explanation. He confessed he had been wrong, had neglected my love, and we cried together, and played that all our clouds had passed forever. I thought it was possible; but there is something false and forced about our re-established happiness, that mocks our once proud state like a beggar’s rags upon a king. Still, I am much happier. I try to dress more showily. Albert likes the lilies-of-the-field style of Ella. Think of your Clara’s pride! She enters the lists in a toilet display to regain the admiration of her husband. Is it not pitiful?

“O papa, what am I saying? I meant to write you such a happy letter, but I fear the iron has entered my soul; yet I would not try, even for your sake, to deceive you, and believe me, I am suffering very little now, and I really think I shall recover my lost state. It is this hope that sustains me; but if I am disappointed, I shall rise above it and live. I am papa’s own girl, and more proud of being the daughter of such a man than I should be in being the queen of the grandest monarch that ever lived. If for no other reason than for your sake, I would bear up philosophically.

“‘What matters it if I be loved or not?

And what if he who works shall be forgot?

The work of Love is no less surely wrought,

And the great world shall answer me.’

“Are not those grand words? They have just come to the surface of my memory, like the artist’s negative under the developing solution. I mean to keep them before me henceforth, like the mene tekel on Belshazzar’s wall.

“Good-bye, dearest father, mine. I have written myself into a horrid mood. I have written to Susie, mamma, and others. Trust me, and believe in the good sense of

“Papa’s Own Girl.

“P. S.—I can write a letter without a post scriptum. You will bear me witness; but I must say just this: do not be worried about me so long as I am silent.

“C. F. D.”

The next day the White Mountains party set out on their journey, where we will leave them for the present and go back to Oakdale.

The time is sunset, and it is summer. A little child, whose flesh seems moulded from its mother’s milk, is playing on the little green lawn before Mrs. Buzzell’s porch. It is a creature of exuberant life, of movement incessant, of inexhaustible joy. She has pure blue eyes, and her hair is long, straight, and fine like spun gold. It dances and streams out in the sunlight with the movements of her little frame, as she dances, and laughs, and sings. At first, being carefully and very coquettishly dressed by “Auntie,” and let loose upon the lawn, it was joy enough to simply dance and carol in the sunlight, but soon this ceased to suffice her. Her active brain and fingers must have more positive occupation; and a few minutes later “Auntie,” coming out on the porch, discovered the sprite pirouetting around her beautiful caladium, a huge leaf-tip in each dimpled hand.

“Min! Min! what are you doing?” The electric current of joy was cut off instantly, and the child pouted:—

“I’m only dancing with auntie’s cladium.”

“Will you let my cladium, as you call it, alone? I won’t have its leaves twisted to rags.” But further admonition was unnecessary, for Minnie descried a well-known horse and “sulky,” and she ran toward the gate, crowing at the top of her voice. The doctor jumped out of the vehicle and took the child in his arms, saying, “Well, how is my little Min to-day?”

“Auntie’s cwoss,” was the somewhat irrelevant response.

“Cross, is she?” he repeated, taking Mrs. Buzzell’s hand; “then Minnie must have been a naughty girl.”

“No, se wasn’t naughty; an auntie nee’n’t be so wough” (rough).

She was one of those elfin creatures whose accents and gestures, and charming self-asserting confidence that the machinery of the universe is run for their special amusement, make it difficult to resist indulging them in every way. Minnie made you laugh at her, and then she felt sure of her victory over you. The only dispute Mrs. Buzzell and Susie had ever had, was on Min’s account; the former declaring that Susie was not quite tender enough to the child. Susie replied, “I think I love her as much as any mother should. I shall devote my life principally to her care and education; but I cannot spend so much time in amusing her as you do, unless I neglect what is of far more consequence.”

Susie was reading when the doctor entered. She rose, and greeting him, as she always did, with frank cordiality, held out her book. It was a copy of Roderick Random.

“Doctor, you choose my serious reading, I believe with exemplary discretion; but shall I waste my precious time and peril my immortal soul over such trash as this? Trash is too flattering a name for it. I must borrow yours. I call it, unqualifiedly, rot.” The doctor laughed, and said:

“Why, you must have some light reading.”

“Thank you; but the levity of this is too great altogether.”

“You see, I don’t know much about modern novels; so after George Sand, George Eliot, Thackeray, Balzac, and Dickens, I’ve reached the end of my tether, and fall back upon the old standard stock.”

“Standard!” repeated Susie. “If this is a standard, I pity the dwarf varieties.”

“You borrow your rhetorical figure from your business. It smells of the shop,” said the doctor smiling.

“Listen! ‘O Jesus! the very features of Mr. Random! So saying, Narcissus kissed it with surprising ardor, sheds a flood of tears, and then deposited the lifeless image in her lovely bosom.’ Then,” said Susie, explaining, “Mr. Random broke from his concealment, when Narcissus ‘uttered a fearful shriek, and fainted in the arms of her companion.’ Then Roderick, telling his story, says: ‘Oh that I were endowed with the expression of a Raphael, the graces of a Guido, the magic touches of a Titian, that I might represent the fond concern, the chastened rapture and ingenuous blush, that mingled on her beauteous face when she opened her eyes upon me, and pronounced, O heavens! is it you?’”

The doctor laughed like a boy. “Why,” said he, “I know any quantity of young women who would read that with rapture.”

“And would they this?” asked Susie, reading the last sentence of the book.

“Ah? I confess that is utter nastiness. Smollet! rot!”

“We have just finished Richardson’s Pamela, taking turns reading it to each other while sewing,” said Mrs. Buzzell. “I can scarcely believe that it is the same story that, in my mother’s time, was read aloud in the best family circles. Why, I consider it positively indecent.”