Transcriber’s Note:

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

POPULAR NOVELS.

BY

Mrs. Mary J. Holmes.

1.— TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE. 2.— ENGLISH ORPHANS. 3.— HOMESTEAD ON THE HILLSIDE. 4.— ‘LENA RIVERS. 5.— MEADOW BROOK. 6.— DORA DEANE. 7.— COUSIN MAUDE. 8.— MARIAN GRAY. 9.— DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT. 10.— HUGH WORTHINGTON. 11.— CAMERON PRIDE. 12.— ROSE MATHER. 13.— ETHELYN’S MISTAKE. 14.— MILLBANK. 15.— EDNA BROWNING. 16.— WEST LAWN. 17.— EDITH LYLE. (New.)

“Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”

All published uniform with this volume. Price $1.50 each and sent free by mail, on receipt of price, by

G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers,

New York.

Edith Lyle
A Novel.

BY

Mrs. MARY J. HOLMES,

AUTHOR OF

TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE—LENA RIVERS—MEADOW BROOK—MARIAN GREY—CAMERON PRIDE—ETHELYN’S MISTAKE—EDNA BROWNING—WEST LAWN, ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK:

G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers.

LONDON: S. LOW & CO.

MDCCCLXXVI.

Copyright, 1876, by

DANIEL HOLMES.

John F. Trow & Son,

Printers and Stereotypers,

205–213 East 12th Street,

NEW YORK.

TO

MY ESTEEMED FRIENDS,

Francis S. Street and Francis S. Smith,

Editors of the New York Weekly,

TO WHOM

I AM INDEBTED FOR SO MANY KINDNESSES IN THE PAST,

I DEDICATE

THIS STORY.

CONTENTS.

EDITH LYLE.

INTRODUCTORY.
BY ESTHER OLIVIA ARMSTRONG.

As I sit here, this bright autumnal morning, and from the window of my room look out upon the river winding its way to the sea, there falls upon my ears the merry chime of bells from the tower of the old gray church,—wedding-bells they are,—and their echoes float across the water, and up the mountain side, and then die away among the wooded cliffs beyond, where the foliage has just been touched with the October frost, and has here and there a gay trimming of scarlet and gold on its summer dress of green. There is a wedding at St. Luke’s to-day, and the bridal party is passing now, and I kiss my hand to the beautiful bride, who flashes a smile at me from those wonderful eyes of hers,—eyes so like in expression to those of the elder lady who sits beside her, and but for whom that wedding at St. Luke’s would never have been. They are gone now from my sight, and only the pealing of the bells is heard in the quiet street, and as I muse upon the strange event which has made the people of our town wild with excitement and curiosity, and of which I, perhaps, know quite as much as any one, I ask myself, “Why not write out the story, suppressing names, and dates, and localities, and give it to the world, as a proof that real life is sometimes stranger than fiction.”

And so, just as the sound of the marriage-bells dies away among the distant hills, I take my pen to begin a tale which will have in it no part of my own life, save as it was sometimes interwoven with the lives of those whose history I write. I am only Esther Armstrong, the village schoolmistress, a plain, old-fashioned woman of thirty-five, with no incident whatever in my life worth recording; and so, with no thought that any one will accuse me of egotism or conceit, I write down

CHAPTER I.,
AND CALL IT ABELARD.

The Schuylers were of Holland descent, and had married and intermarried in England and America, and had in their family a title, it was said, and they boasted of their Dutch blood, and English blood, and American blood, and, like the famous Miss McBride, “were proud of their money and proud of their pride,” and proud to be known as “the Schuylers of New York,” who had for so many years kept themselves free from anything approaching to plebeianism, and whose wealth and importance had been steadily on the increase since the first English Schuyler left his ancestral halls in Lincolnshire across the sea. But the race was gradually dying out, and the only male member of the direct line in America was Colonel Howard, a proud, reticent man, who, a few years before my story opens, had married Miss Emily Rossiter, a lady fully up to the Schuyler standard of moral and social worth.

It was true she brought with her a plain face and a brain not overburdened with ideas, but she added to these the sum of two hundred thousand dollars and an exclusiveness which saw nothing outside her own narrow circle of friends. At the time of her marriage her husband, Colonel Howard Schuyler, who loved the fresh grass and the air from the hills better than brick walls and stony pavements, suggested that they should spend a portion of the summer at his country-seat on the river, but to this the lady would not listen. Hampstead was too quiet. Her elegant laces, and satins, and diamonds, would be sadly out of place in that rustic neighborhood, she thought; and so she went first to Europe, and then, season after season, to Newport and Saratoga, and had a cottage at Nahant, and climbed the White Mountains and the Catskills, and tired herself out in her pursuit of happiness, until, at last, broken in health and spirits, she signified a wish to go to Hampstead, where she could find the rest she needed.

And so one April day Colonel Schuyler came up to our little town with a whole army of workmen, who began at once their task of tearing down and rebuilding the old house, which had belonged to the Schuylers so long, and which latterly had been unoccupied and gradually going to decay. The house, which was very large, stood upon an eminence overlooking the town of Hampstead and the river below, and from this fact the place was known as Schuyler Hill, though for years and years not a Schuyler had lived there or manifested the slightest interest in it. There was a time, however, within my mother’s memory, when all through the summer months high festival had been held at the old place by the Schuylers, whose graves were now in a little inclosure at the summit of the hill, where the tall evergreens were growing, and where the weather-stained headstones were, with their quaint devices and eulogies of people dead long before I was born. Sometimes on a bright summer afternoon I used to climb over the low railing into this yard, to gather the roses and sweet-brier which grew there in such profusion, and, seated on the grass, I would muse upon the dead folk who slept below, and wish so much for a return of the days of which my mother had told me, when the great house was full of high-born people, who made the neighborhood so gay, and whose revellings were sometimes prolonged far into the night.

At last, however, there was a prospect of those days coming back again, and the whole town was alive with wonder and curiosity when it was known that not only was the old house to give way to a new and elegant modern structure, but that the family was really coming there to live a good portion of the year. Hampstead, which had slept so long, was alive now. Property went up, and the people began to talk of a bank, and a new hotel, and sent a petition that the express trains from Albany should stop there, instead of thundering by on the wings of the wind with a snort and a scream, which I thought was tantalizing and impertinent in the extreme. Great, too, was the excitement and interest with regard to the new house, which, under swift and efficient workmen, grew so rapidly that, early in June, the framework of the tower could be seen above the tree-tops, and was watched eagerly by the curious villagers.

“Lady Emily,” as her English maid always called her, came up one day to see the place and give some directions with regard to certain rooms intended expressly for herself, and with her came little Godfrey, her only son, a brown-eyed, sweet-faced boy not quite six years old. I remember just how they looked as they drove through the town in their open barouche, Lady Emily in her jaunty bonnet, which I thought too small and young for her pale, faded face, and little Godfrey in his velvet suit, with his long hair curling on his neck. He was a pleasant, sociable child, and soon made the acquaintance of all the workmen, but was best pleased with Abelard Lyle, the young Englishman who was employed upon the tower, and who at night, when his work was done, made wonderful wagons and carts for the pretty little lad. All day long Godfrey played about the building, and sometimes climbed the highest possible point, and stood watching the men at their work below. Especially was he delighted with the tower where Abelard was; and one morning, the third after his arrival at Hampstead, he mounted to a timber above the young man’s head, where he stood waving his cap and hurrahing to his mother, who was driving leisurely about the grounds in her pony phaeton. She saw him, and with a frantic gesture of her hand motioned him to come down, while Abelard, too, called aloud to him and warned him of his danger. How it happened Godfrey never could explain. He only knew that he stepped backward and fell, that Abelard caught him by the arm and threw him with a desperate effort upon a narrow platform, where he lay unharmed, while his brave deliverer lay on the rubbish far below, a crushed, bleeding thing! Only a thing now,—no life, no motion, no soul, for that had gone to God; and they took the limp, insensible object and laid it upon the grass, which was wet with the blood pouring from the deep wound upon the temple where a sharp stone had struck. Trembling with fear, little Godfrey came down the long ladders and across the piles of boards to the mutilated form upon the grass; and young as he was, he never forgot the look of the pale, dead face upturned to the summer sun.

“Oh father!” he cried, as Colonel Schuyler came up, “he catched me and throwd me onto the board, and tried to hold on himself, but couldn’t; and now he’s dead, and I liked him so much; what shall we do?”

They could do nothing but bear the poor youth to his boarding place near by, where they washed the blood and dirt from his stained face and matted hair, and then began to ask where he came from, and who his relatives were, if he had any. He was an English boy, and had not been long in the country, some one said; but nobody could tell anything definite concerning him or his friends, until there stepped from the crowd an elderly, dignified woman, whom the people recognized as Mrs. Fordham, a comparative stranger to them all. She, too, was English, and she knew the youth who had lost his own life in his efforts to save another. She had known him on the ship, she said. He had come to America in the same vessel with herself a few months before. If they liked, they could take him to her house and bury him from there, as she was the only acquaintance he seemed to have, and he had sometimes called upon her since coming to Hampstead. To this proposition the matron of the boarding-house assented eagerly. A dead body and a funeral were not at all to her taste, and besides she was not sure as to the pay she might receive for her trouble, and she thanked Mrs. Fordham so cordially, and evinced so strong a desire to be rid of her late boarder, that the matter was arranged at once, and Mrs. Fordham started for home to make ready for the dead man, who had been there only the night before, and had left her so full of life, and health, and hope for the untried future.

CHAPTER II.
HELOISE.

Of Mrs. Fordham but little was known in Hampstead at that time. She had only been with us since the first of May, and soon after her coming she had said that if she could not have the best society she would prefer to have none; and as the so-called best society was a little shy of strangers and foreigners, she was left mostly to herself, and was seldom seen except at church, where she was a regular attendant, and where her daughter, a young girl of fifteen or more, attracted much attention by the exceeding beauty of her face, and the delicate refinement of her manner.

Subsequently we learned more of her history, which was as follows:

A native of Berwick, in England, she belonged to what might be called the “higher poor class.” A nursery governess in her girlhood, she had come in constant contact with many high-born ladies who visited in the family of her employer, and whom she watched and imitated until there was in her manner a certain dignity and air of cultivation which marked her as different from others in her own rank of life. Exceedingly ambitious, she refused many an offer which her companions called good, and at the age of thirty was married to Henry Fordham, a poor curate, whose parish was on the Scottish border among the heather hills. Here, after three years of wedded life, she buried him and returned to her lonely home in Berwick, with one only child, a little girl, whom she called Edith Heloise.

As the daughter of a clergyman Edith was a born lady, and Mrs. Fordham felt all her old ambition revive, as she thought what her daughter might one day become,—a titled lady perhaps, and certainly the mistress of some rich man’s home; and to this end she was carefully secluded from the common people around her, and early taught to think that a brilliant future lay before her if she would follow implicitly the instructions of her mother. From a distant relative Mrs. Fordham had received a small annuity, on which she managed to live very comfortably until Edith, or Heloise, as she preferred to call her, was fifteen, when she determined upon emigrating to America, where her daughter’s chances for a high social position were greater than in England.

In the same vessel with her was Abelard Lyle, a young carpenter from Alnwick, who was also going to seek his fortune in the western world. Arrived at New York he found employment at once on Col. Schuyler’s house in Hampstead, whither, at his instigation, Mrs. Fordham removed early in May. She was wanting a cottage in the country, she said, and Abelard found one for her and persuaded her to take it, and attended himself to fitting it up, and stood waiting to welcome her when she came at last to take possession. Mrs. Fordham was very gracious and thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and said he was very good and she should not forget his kind interest in her; and yet there was in her manner something which he understood, and which made him doubly anxious to please and propitiate her. He was well enough as a friend and adviser, and during the voyage and after their arrival in New York, Mrs. Fordham had found it convenient to call upon him for help whenever she pleased, but she always managed to make him feel how immeasurable was the gulf between him and her daughter, whose servant he might be, but nothing more.

Heloise was wondrously beautiful, with an ease and grace about her which would have become a princess. From her father’s side she had inherited “good blood,” a fact which her mother kept constantly before her mind. And as she talked of the brilliant matches which had been made in the new world and could be made again, Heloise listened, at first quietly, with a peculiar look in her eyes and a bright flush on her cheek. Latterly, however, there had been a worried, anxious expression on her face when her mother was talking to her, and on the morning of which I write she had left her coffee untouched and stolen from the room so as not to hear what her mother was saying of Abelard Lyle. He had called upon them the previous night, and stayed too long and seemed too much at home, Mrs. Fordham thought.

“He is a fine young man, I know, and I respect him very much,” she said; “but he is only a carpenter, and I do not think it well to be very intimate with him. I saw you give him a rose. I wouldn’t do it again, or encourage him to come here.”

Mrs. Fordham was talking to herself now, for Heloise was in the garden, with her face turned toward Schuyler Hill, where the men were already at work. She could hear the sound of their hammers, as stroke after stroke fell upon the heavy timbers, and it seemed to her as if there were a low undertone of music in it all, especially in the strokes which rang out from the tall tower rising above the trees. There was a fascination about that tower; and all during the morning, while her mother, who had an errand in the village, was away, Heloise sat by the window, where she could see the square frame and the broad-shouldered figure upon it.

Once, when she felt sure the face was turned toward her, she waved her handkerchief, and was rewarded with a flourish in the air of the right arm, and then she knew that Abelard could see her; and she sat very still, and applied herself to the ruffle she was hemming, and thought such thoughts as made her cheeks the color of the rose she had given to Abelard the previous night.

And while she sat there thus, there was the sound of carriage-wheels, and Lady Emily Schuyler drove slowly down the road with her English maid in attendance. Heloise had seen the lady in church the day before, but instead of staring at her as the others had done, had shrunk from view, and was glad that she sat behind the Schuyler pew instead of in front of it. And now, as the carriage came near, she leaned back in her chair to avoid being seen.

Thus screened from observation, she sat waiting for it to pass, and her heart gave a great thump when she heard it stop directly before the house, while Mrs. Schuyler uttered an exclamation of delight at the roses growing so profusely in the yard.

“Oh, Janette, how lovely those roses are! I must have some for my hair,—they will brighten me up at dinner, and I am looking pale and forlorn, and that vexes Colonel Schuyler so. I wonder if there is any one at home.”

“There must be, for both doors and windows are open. Wait while I see.”

And, suiting the action to the word, the maid, Janette, sprang to the ground, and, opening the gate, walked up to the door of the room where Heloise was sitting.

There was no help for her now. The danger, if danger there was in seeing Mrs. Schuyler, must be met, and Heloise rose at once, and to Janette’s explanation that “Lady Emily would like a few of those lovely roses,” she bowed assent, and went herself to get them.

“It may as well come first as last,” she thought, and, without any covering for her head, she went out into the yard, and, gathering a bunch of the finest flowers, carried them to Mrs. Schuyler, who looked curiously at her, while she expressed her thanks.

Very curiously, too, Heloise looked at her, thinking it would take more than roses to brighten up that sallow, sickly face, and not much wondering that Colonel Schuyler did not like it.

“I don’t believe she remembered me,” she said, as she returned to the house and watched the carriage disappearing from view. “And why should she?” she continued. “She was not at all interested in the matter, and only thought of me as some common girl doing a very foolish thing, I daresay. She looks paler than she did then, and more fretful, too. I wonder if she is happy with all her money?”

And Heloise fell to speculating as to whether she could be happy if she were Mrs. Schuyler and lived in that handsome house on Schuyler Hill. It would be a fine thing, no doubt, to have all the money one wanted, and not to be obliged to turn and fix and mend the Sunday dress until there was but little of the original left; and she tried to fancy herself the mistress of Schuyler Hill, with Colonel Schuyler away and some one else in his place, and her eyes went over the tree-tops to the tall tower and the figure working there.

“Better as it is,” she thought, and leaning back in her chair she went off into a pleasant kind of reverie, from which she was roused by the sound of horse’s feet, galloping swiftly down the road as if on an errand of life or death.

The rider was one of the men from Schuyler Hill, and swiftly as he rode Heloise detected a look of terror on his face and wondered what had happened.

Involuntarily she glanced again toward the tower, and missed the form she had seen there a short time before. But there was nothing strange in that. She often missed him when he went down for nails or orders from his overseer, and she thought no more of it until an hour later, when her mother came up the walk, looking very red and disturbed, and asking, abruptly:

“Have you heard of the dreadful accident at the Hill?”

Heloise never could explain why it was that she seemed intuitively to know that the accident had reference to the only one through whom she could be deeply touched. But she did know it, and her lips were pale as ashes, and trembled in a grieved kind of way as she said: “It is Abelard.”

“Yes; who told you?” her mother asked.

And Heloise replied:

“No one told me. I knew without telling. Is he much hurt? Where is he?”

And she caught her bonnet from the nail and started for the door.

“Stop, child. Where are you going?” Mrs. Fordham said.

And Heloise replied:

“Going to Abelard. Didn’t you tell me he was hurt?”

“Yes; but,—Heloise”—and Mrs. Fordham hesitated a little, frightened by the expression on her daughter’s face, “you must not go. There is no need; he will be here soon. I told them to bring him, as we are the only friends he has, and I hurried home to get the front room ready. Abelard is dead; he fell from the tower and was killed; there they are now.”

And pointing to the group of men coming slowly down the road, Mrs. Fordham hastened to open her best room, and did not see the look of unutterable anguish and horror which came into her daughter’s face when she heard the news.

Heloise did not faint, but she uttered a low, gasping cry, and held fast to the back of a chair, while everything turned dark about her, and she was conscious of nothing except that in the yard there was the tramp of feet as the men came up the walk, bearing the body of him who had left her only the night before, full of life and health. Then she started, and fleeing up the stairs to her own room, threw herself upon the bed, where she lay listening to the sounds below, and trying to realize the full extent of the horror which had come upon her. At last when all was quiet, and the men were gone, she crept to the window and looked out upon the day, which had seemed so bright to her in the early morning, but was so dark and dreary now.

Colonel Schuyler himself was just going through the gate, so occupied with his own thoughts that he nearly stumbled over a little girl who was coming into the yard, and in whom Heloise recognized Phebe Young, the daughter of the woman with whom Abelard had boarded. Heloise was not afraid of Phebe, but she drew back from the window till Colonel Schuyler was out of sight, feeling as if she almost hated him for having built the house where Abelard lost his life.

There was a knock at the door, and ere Heloise could answer it little Phebe Young came in. She had caught a glimpse of Heloise at the window, and thinking it no harm, had come straight up to her room.

“Please, miss,” she said, laying a paper on the young girl’s lap, “we found this under his jacket pinned tight, and ma knew most it comed from your rose bush, for there hain’t no more like it in Hampstead, and she sent it to you, cause she guesses you liked him some.”

It was the rose Heloise had picked for Abelard and fastened in his buttonhole the night before, when they stood for a moment by the gate, and he told her to watch for him on the morrow as he was to work upon the tower. Now he was dead, and the rose, which had been so fresh and dewy then, was wilted and crushed, and right in the centre, upon the pure white petals, was a little drop of blood, or rather the stain of one. Abelard’s blood, Heloise knew, and she felt a strange sickness steal over her as she held the faded flower in her hand and gazed upon that bright red spot, the sight of which seemed to stamp a similar mark upon her heart, which ached and throbbed with a new pain.

“Yes, Phebe, thank you; it was kind in your mother; and now, please go; my head is aching badly,” she said; and motioning Phebe from the room, she thrust the blood-stained rose into her bosom and went again to her bed, where she lay until her mother came to see what she was doing.

There were no tears on Heloise’s cheeks, no trace of them in her eyes, but her white face told volumes to Mrs. Fordham, who laid her hand on her daughter’s hair, saying, kindly:

“I never knew you cared so much for him. Poor boy, I am so sorry. He looks very natural. Would you like to see him?”

“No, mother, not now,” was the answer, and that was all that passed between them on the subject of Abelard that day.

Heloise was very sick with headache and kept her room, and at night her mother brought her toast and tea, and tried to make her eat, and told her how kind the Schuylers were, and what a sweet little boy Godfrey was, and how badly he felt at Abelard’s death. He had been to see the body, and his mother had been there, too, and Mrs. Fordham dwelt upon her fine manners and handsome dress, and Godfrey’s velvet suit and manly face, until Heloise felt as if she should go mad, and begged her mother to leave her.

She hated the Schuylers one and all, for through them Abelard had met his death, and she did not dare look into the future or question what it had in store for her. She only felt that all the brightness of her life had been suddenly stricken out, leaving her utterly hopeless and desolate, and long after her mother was asleep in the next room she lay awake wondering what she should do, and if, as she feared, it would be necessary for her to tell. And even if it were not necessary, was it right for her to withhold the secret which was torturing her so cruelly? Was it just to Abelard, and did it not look as if she were ashamed of the past as connected with him?

“I am not, darling, I am not!” she moaned; “and to-morrow, when they lower you into the grave, I will be there, and, in a voice everybody can hear, I’ll tell the truth, and face the entire world, mother and all.”

The facing mother was the hardest part of all, and Heloise felt her pulse quicken and her head throb violently as she fancied her mother’s look of surprise and anger when she heard the story which she meant to tell at the grave, and, while thinking how she should combat that anger and reproach, the early summer morning crept into her room, and she heard the watchers with the dead go through the yard into the street, and knew that another day had come.

CHAPTER III.
THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL.

There was a great crowd out to attend the funeral of Abelard Lyle, and, long before the hour appointed for the services, Mrs. Fordham’s cottage was filled to overflowing, as were also the yard and street in front, and it was with some difficulty the Schuyler family could make their way through the dense mass of people.

They came late, and little Godfrey had a knot of crape upon his arm, while Mrs. Schuyler wore a black silk, with no shade of color to relieve her sallow face, and she looked, with her high-bred city air, very much out of place, and very much bored, too, as if she wished it well over, and wondered why her husband should take so much trouble for a poor young man, and an entire stranger. And yet Lady Emily was not without kindly feelings, and she felt very grateful to Abelard Lyle, and very sorry that he should have lost his life in saving that of her son; and, at her husband’s suggestion, she had been to the cottage the day before to see that everything was right, and had spoken civilly to Mrs. Fordham, and asked for some more roses, saying:

“I have had some once to-day. I was driving by just before the terrible accident, and saw such a lovely young girl,—your daughter, I suppose?”

“Yes, my daughter,” Mrs. Fordham replied, a new hope rising within her that through the Schuylers Heloise might make her way to distinction.

Heloise had a headache, she said, else she would like so much for Mrs. Schuyler to see her, and she thanked her for speaking so kindly of her, and hoped she would call again when the funeral was over.

To all this Lady Emily pretended to listen and nod assent, and, when she had all the roses she cared for, she said good-morning, and went back to the hotel, where she recounted the particulars of her call to the English maid, with whom she was on very familiar terms.

“Such assurance,” she said, “as that woman has! Why, she talked to me as if I were her equal, and even asked me to call again. She wanted me to see her daughter,—that beautiful young girl whom we saw in our drive this morning. Did I tell you that is where they have taken the young man? I should not be surprised if he were the lover of the girl, only she looked so very young. It seems to me I must have seen her before.”

The appearance of Colonel Schuyler brought to an end the lady’s conversation with Janette, and turning to her husband, she asked where they were intending to bury the young man.

“In our own family lot,” was the reply; and then Lady Emily dropped the flowers she was arranging, and her eyes opened wider than their wont, and fixed themselves upon her husband with a look of incredulity as she said: “Why, Howard, you must be crazy! Surely there are places enough without putting him there.”

“Yes, I know; but, Emily, consider for a moment,—he saved our boy’s life, and I feel like paying him every possible respect, and have ordered his grave to be made just under the pine tree at the far side of the lot. There is room enough between for all the Schuylers who will ever be buried there.”

Lady Emily knew from experience that when her husband’s mind was made up, it was useless to argue with him, so she said no more, but thought within herself that when her time came to die, she would request that her aristocratic flesh be laid in Greenwood beside the Rossiters, and not on Schuyler Hill, in that little yard where a few gray, time-worn stones marked the last resting-place of such of the Schuylers as were buried there, and where Abelard Lyle was to be taken. Colonel Schuyler was in one sense as proud as his wife, but with his pride he had much good sense and genuine kindness of heart. But for Abelard Lyle he would have lost his bright-faced boy, and he felt truly grateful to the young man, and resolved to show him every possible respect. So he ordered the funeral himself, and sent to the cottage a handsome rosewood coffin, and was in and out several times to see that all was right, and when the hour for the services arrived, drove down with his wife and son, and enacted the part of chief, and, indeed, only mourner, for Abelard had no relatives, and Mrs. Fordham was too much afraid of being identified with “that class of people” to admit of any great manifestation of feeling on her part. For the sake of the mother country, and because he had been kind to her on the ship, she had allowed the body to be brought to her house, but she managed to impress every one with the great distance there was between herself and the dead man, who looked so calm and peaceful, and handsome in his elegant coffin, with a half-opened rose upon his breast. Mrs. Fordham had put it there at Heloise’s request; but Heloise herself had taken no part in anything, or even seen the body. She had abandoned the idea of going to the grave and startling the people with her story, as she had meant to do the previous day. The pain in her head was too great to admit of her sitting up, and during the entire day she never once appeared below, but lay on the bed in her chamber, with her aching head buried in the pillow, and the faded, blood-stained rose hidden away in her bosom. She heard the people as they assembled in the house and yard below, and knew when the Schuylers came by the suppressed hush among the crowd. She heard, too, the clergyman’s voice as he read the burial service, and when they carried the body out she arose from her bed and through the half-closed shutters watched the funeral procession as it moved up the road, to the top of Schuyler Hill, where the open grave was waiting for all that was mortal of Abelard Lyle. Heloise could not pray then, her heart was so hard and rebellious, and ached so with a sense of actual pain, and loss, and a horrid fear of what might be in the future; and once when this fear got the mastery of her she arose, and going to her private drawer, where she kept her hidden treasures, took from it a box, in which she sought for and found, as she supposed, the instrument which was to help her in the hour of need, when she told the world what she must ere long tell. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and felt herself grow cold and faint, when she saw that instead of the article which was to prove her innocent and pure, she held only a receipt for goods bought and paid for by her mother in New York. Search as she might, she could not find the document she sought. That was gone, how or where she could not guess until she remembered having burned some waste papers accumulating in her drawer, only a few days before. She had it then and read it over, and supposed she laid it back in the box where she always kept it, but she must have put in its place the receipt which was folded and looked much like it, and burned the only evidence she had that she was not the wicked thing she felt herself to be as she sank upon the floor and wished that she could die. It was terrible to see such grief in one so young, for Heloise, though well grown and tall, was little more than fifteen, and her face when in repose was the face of a child. But it seemed old now, and gray, and pinched with that look of anguish upon it, mingled with something akin to shame, as she crouched upon the floor and whispered to herself:

“What if mother and the world do not believe me?” Then swift as thought the answer came: “I’ll drown myself in the river;” and sitting upright upon the floor, the young girl went through in fancy with all the sickening details which such a catastrophe would involve. The anxiety of the mother, the alarm, the search for her body, the finding it at last, and the coroner’s inquest, where possibly her secret would be discovered and she be disgraced all the same.

“No, no,” she moaned, “better live and fight it out, knowing I am innocent, than carry a sullied name to a suicide’s grave.”

“And lose your soul,” something whispered in her ear, making her start with a new horror as she remembered the hereafter she had in her madness almost forgotten.

Falling upon her knees, she sobbed, “Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.”

That was all she could say, but Jesus knew what she meant,—knew that she wanted help, and He helped her as He always does when asked aright, and her heart ceased to throb so painfully, and the hard look left her face, and the tears came to her relief as she said:

“I know I am innocent, and so does God; and I’ll tell mother the truth, keeping nothing back.”

Heloise had risen now, and with trembling hands was binding up her beautiful hair of golden brown, which Abelard had admired so much, and which she, too, knew was wonderful for its brightness and luxuriance. Would she ever care for it again? she asked herself, as she put it away under a net where not even a single curl could find its way to neck or brow, when suddenly, as if it had been a vision, she saw an elegant room which seemed to be at Schuyler Hill, and in that room a lady of marvellous beauty, with a face like her own, save that it was older and more mature,—a lady, clad in satin and lace, with jewels in her flowing hair and on her snowy neck, and to herself she said:

“That’s I. How came I there?”

Then the mist, if mist it was, which had for a moment clouded her mind, lifted, and she was herself again,—Heloise Fordham, standing in her own humble room and making herself ready for the meeting with her mother, and the confession she meant to make before she slept again.

I was at the funeral and saw Abelard in his coffin, and thought how dreadful it was to die so far from home and have no tears shed for me, for there were none shed for him. Everybody looked sorry, and sober, and shocked, Colonel Schuyler particularly so, and Lady Emily put her fine cambric handkerchief to her eyes when the rector spoke of the noble deed which never could be forgotten by those for whom it was done; but she did not cry, I know, for I was watching her, and I wanted to shake little Godfrey, who, though he was very subdued and quiet, actually nodded in his high chair before the remarks were over.

It was a sad funeral and a big funeral, but one void of genuine heartache, save as one young heart upstairs was breaking, and of this I did not then know.

Although more than two years the junior of Heloise, I perhaps knew her better than any one else. Intimate friends she had not, but between her and myself an acquaintance had sprung up, born of our common love for flowers and rambles by the river side. We had exchanged slips of roses and geraniums, and talked over the gate of our flower-beds, and once, when caught in a rain-storm, she had taken tea with us and delighted us all with her pretty, ladylike manners and soft, gentle speech. I was charmed with her, and having, as I believed, a secret of hers in my possession, I felt greatly interested in her, and when at the funeral I missed her and heard of the sick headache which was keeping her upstairs, I had my own private opinion with regard to the cause of that headache, and with all the curiosity of a girl of thirteen, determined upon seeing her and judging for myself how a girl looked who had lost her lover. Accordingly I lingered after the funeral, and when the people were gone and I had taken several turns in the garden I ventured up the stairs to her room and knocked softly at her door.

“Come in,” was spoken in a frightened tone, and I went in and found her standing in the middle of the room, her hands pressed to her head and her eyes fixed upon the door with an expression of alarm.

At sight of me, however, they changed at once, and with a smile she said:

“Oh, it’s you. I thought it was mother.”

“No, she hasn’t had time to come back yet,” I replied; and then, touched by the look of her white face, I burst out: “Oh, Heloise, isn’t it terrible, and he so young and handsome? I am so sorry for you.”

“Hush-sh,” she said, in a tone of alarm. “Why are you sorry for me? Why should any one be more sorry for me than for another?”

She was gazing fixedly at me, and, impelled by something I could not or did not try to resist, I replied:

“Because,—because I guess he was your beau.”

Heloise’s eyes were almost black now in her excitement, and her voice was husky as she said:

“You guess he was my beau! Why do you guess so? What business have you to guess so? Tell me, child.”

She seemed many years my senior then, and in obedience to her question I answered:

“I’ve seen him look at you just as brother Tom looks at Samantha Blackmer, and he’s her beau; and then I saw him kiss you once down by the river, that time I came upon you suddenly, you remember; but I never told. He was your beau, wasn’t he?”

She did not answer for a moment but her lips moved as if she were trying to speak, and at last she said:

“No, he was not my beau, Ettie (that was my pet name twenty years ago, before I was the village schoolmistress)—Ettie, I believe you like me, and I want—I want—you—to,—oh, Ettie, if ever people say bad things of me don’t you believe them, but stand by me, won’t you?”

She had both my hands in hers, and was looking straight into my eyes with an expression which half-frightened me out of my wits, as I told her I would stand by her, without, however, knowing at all what she meant. I was a little proud to be thus appealed to, and when the fixed expression of her face gave way and the tears began to roll down her cheeks, I cried too from sympathy and tried to comfort her and made her lie down upon her bed, and when she was more quiet sat by her until I heard her mother’s step below. Then I took my leave, for I was afraid of Mrs. Fordham, whom I met on the stairs, and whose face I fancied looked brighter and more cheerful than faces usually do when returning from a grave.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CONFESSION.

“Heloise,” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed, as she entered her daughter’s room. “What is the matter? You look as if you had been sick for years. Can it be you loved him so much?”

“Yes, mother; more than you can guess. I’ll tell you about it by and by; to-night, maybe, when I feel stronger. I can’t talk now.”

“Would you like me to tell you how well everything passed off at the grave, and how thoughtful Col. Schuyler was?” Mrs. Fordham continued, and Heloise replied:

“No, mother, not a word, now nor ever. I can’t bear it. I almost hate the Schuylers, and I wish I, too, was dead.”

It was not often that Heloise was thus moved, and her mother looked at her curiously, but she said no more of the Schuylers or Abelard, and busied herself with putting the cottage to rights and preparing a tempting little supper for her daughter. But Heloise could not eat, and after the supper was cleared away and her mother had taken her usual seat upon the back porch, she crept to her side, and putting her head in her lap, said entreatingly:

“Mother, I have something to tell you which will surprise and probably offend you. I ought to have told it before, but I was afraid and kept putting it off. It was wrong, I know, but it cannot now be helped. Abelard and I were married!”

“You married to Abelard Lyle!” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed, starting back as if a serpent had stung her.

She did not say, “I am glad then that he is dead,” but she thought it, and the thought must have communicated itself to Heloise, for she lifted up her head and looked reproachfully in her mother’s face, while her lip quivered in a grieved kind of way, but she did not cry, and her voice was steady as she said:

“Oh, mother, don’t speak so to me, as if marrying him was the most disgraceful thing I could do. I loved him so much, and he loved me. It was during the long voyage when I saw so much of him. You know you were sick most of the time, and that left me to him, and he was so kind, and before we reached New York I promised to be his wife some time, and meant to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

The tone was harsh and unrelenting in which Mrs. Fordham put this question, and Heloise flushed a little and answered, hurriedly:

“It was wrong, I know, but you are, you were,—forgive me, mother,—you are prouder, more ambitious than I am. You think I might marry a nobleman, and I shrank from telling you for fear you would separate us and that time you went to Hoboken and stayed a week with your friend, Abelard persuaded me to be married. We could keep it a secret, he said, until he had something beforehand and was in a better position.”

“Umph! As if he could rise to a better position. Child, with your face and manner you might be the first lady in the land, instead of throwing yourself away on a poor carpenter.”

Mrs. Fordham spoke very bitterly, and her eyes had in them a hard, angry look, which roused all the temper there was in the young girl, who answered, hotly:

“Abelard’s profession was an honorable one. Joseph was a carpenter. Abelard was not to blame for being poor; one of his sisters married into as good a family as there is in Scotland, and had he lived he would have risen above poverty and obscurity. America has many avenues for such as he, and I should one day have been so proud of him. Oh, my darling, my husband!”

The temper was all gone now, and the girl’s voice was like a wailing sob as she uttered the name, “My husband,” but it did not touch the mother’s heart or make her one whit sorry for her child.

“Where was it? I mean who married you?” she asked; and Heloise replied:

“A Mr. Calvert, in New York.”

“A dissenter?” was the next question; and Heloise answered:

“Yes, I believe so; Abelard did not care who it was, so we were married, and he looked in the Directory and found the name of the Rev. Charles Calvert, and persuaded me to go there. I think he was not preaching anywhere, but he could marry us the same, and he did.”

“Without any reference or asking you any questions?” Mrs. Fordham said, and Heloise hesitated a little.

She did not like to tell that Abelard had represented her as alone in this country, and had given that as a reason for marrying so young; so she evaded the question, and answered:

“The minister was satisfied, only he said I seemed like a child; and one of the ladies present said so, too, and asked how old I was. Abelard told her, ‘older than I looked,’ and that was all they said.”

Heloise paused a moment, and then went on:

“I have heard since that Mr. Calvert was a half brother of Mrs. Schuyler, who was in the room when we were married, and had little Godfrey with her.”

“Mrs. Schuyler saw you married!” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed. “The matter grows worse and worse. Now that Abelard is dead, I hoped it might not be known. You have seen her since,—do you think she recognized you?”

“I know she did not. She could not have seen me distinctly that night in New York. She was sick, I think; at all events, she lay upon a couch, and did not get up at all. I know it was Mrs. Schuyler, because the other lady, Mrs. Calvert, called her Emily, and the little boy told Abelard his name was Godfrey Schuyler.”

“Have you a certificate of the marriage?” was Mrs. Fordham’s next question, and her daughter replied:

“I did have, and kept it in a box Abelard gave me, but I’ve lost it. I had it out the other day with some other papers, and thought I put it back, but must have burned it and substituted for it a receipt which looked like it. Oh, mother! will people think I never was married at all, when they know it?”

The girl was crouching at her mother’s feet in such an agony of shame and fear that at first she hardly heard what her mother was saying about there being no need for people to know of the marriage.

“Godfrey is too young to remember it, or he would have recognized Abelard,” Mrs. Fordham said; “and it is not likely the two ladies thought enough of you to keep you in mind a week. There is nothing but Abelard’s peculiar name to make any impression. They might remember that.”

“No, mother.” And Heloise lifted her head quickly. “His first name was James, and as he liked that the best, he called himself ‘James A. Lyle,’ and it was so written in the certificate.”

“Then it never need be known that you made this low marriage!” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed, in a tone of intense relief.

“Mother!”—and starting up from her crouching posture, Heloise’s eyes flashed indignantly as she said,—“do you think I am ashamed of my love for Abelard, or that I will consent to act a lie all my life, even if I could do so without detection, which I cannot, for, mother, I have not told you all; the dreadful part is to come. I—I—oh! I can’t speak it. You must know what I mean.”

Heloise was at her mother’s feet again, her hands clasped together nervously, and her breath coming in quick, panting gasps, as she whispered the dreadful thing she had to tell, and then fell forward on her face, fainting entirely away.

For an instant Mrs. Fordham sat like one stunned by a heavy blow, powerless to move or speak; but her ever-active, far-seeing mind was busy, and before she stooped to raise her unconscious daughter, she had come to a decision.

All her hopes for the future should not be thus blasted. Her daughter should yet ride in the high places of the land, and should never be known to the world as the widow of a carpenter. She repeated the last words sneeringly, and then lifting up her child bore her to the window, where the cool evening air could blow upon her. It was not long ere Heloise came back to consciousness, but her face still wore the same white, frightened look it had put on when she whispered her secret. Ere long, however, the pallid hue changed to a scarlet flush as she listened to her mother’s plan, and her fixed purpose to carry it out. They were to leave Hampstead at once and go back to England, where in London they would for a time live in obscurity, unknown to any one save those with whom they were compelled to come in contact.

“Nobody here will believe in your marriage,” she said, as she saw Heloise about to speak, and guessed that it was to oppose her. “Your certificate is lost.”

“Yes, but Mr. Calvert must have a record; he would remember,” Heloise said, faintly; and her mother replied: “Possibly; but I do not care to have him remember. I do not wish your marriage known, and it shall not be. Hear me, Heloise, it shall not be, I say.”

“But I cannot live a lie,” the poor girl moaned, as she rocked to and fro, with her head bent down, and her whole attitude one of great mental distress.

“You forget that you have been living a lie these three months past. It is rather late now to make it a matter of conscience, and I shall not listen to such foolishness. So far as this you may be truthful. In England you may take his name. Lyle is better than Fordham, and for a time you must of course pass for a married woman; after that,—I have not decided.”

There was a hard, implacable expression in Mrs. Fordham’s face as she said this, and she looked at that moment as if capable of almost anything which would promote her own ends. Though kind and affectionate in the main she had always kept her daughter in a state of rigid obedience, if not subjection to her will, and she had no idea of being thwarted now. Heloise, who understood her so well and knew how useless it was to contend with so strong and fierce a spirit, felt herself powerless to oppose anything, and thus gave a tacit consent at least to her mother’s plans. For two or three days, however, she kept her room, and did not go down when Mrs. Schuyler came with little Godfrey, and asked for more of the “lovely roses.”

There was nothing said of Abelard. Lady Emily had forgotten him, and had no thought or care for the young girl watching her from the window as she flitted about the rosebush, in her dainty white morning dress, with its lace and fluted ruffles. She was not pretty at all, but her movements were very graceful, and she made a pleasant picture in the little yard, and Heloise half envied her as she thought how blessed she was in home, and husband, and children she was not ashamed to own. She was waiting now, it seemed, for the colonel, who was to take her for a drive, and who soon came down the road, and stopping before the gate asked Mrs. Fordham to come to him for a moment.

He intended raising a monument to the memory of Abelard Lyle, he said, and he would like to inquire his age, place of birth, and if he had another name than Abelard. Mrs. Fordham was sorry she could not give the desired information. Indeed, people were laboring under a misapprehension with regard to herself and the young man. He was a mere ship acquaintance, but she believed he had a mother and possibly a sister. She had never liked this country much, and was intending to return to England very soon, where she would find his friends or communicate with them in some way. Colonel Schuyler was very kind to be so much interested in the young man. She had liked him, too, so far as she knew him, but she had only done for him what she would do for any of her countrymen under similar circumstances.

Mrs. Fordham spoke loftily and decidedly, and Colonel Schuyler looked at her a little curiously as he said:

“Ah, indeed! I am sorry you don’t know his age, though it does not matter much. I wish you good-morning, madam.”

He lifted his hat and was turning away, when from the upper window there came a clear, ringing voice, which said:

“Colonel Schuyler, I can tell you what you wish to know. He was born in Alnwick, England; he was twenty-three last March, and his first name was James.”

“Thanks,” and Colonel Schuyler started in surprise, both at the voice and the beautiful young face, which looked so eagerly at him for an instant and then was withdrawn from sight.

“That was a most remarkable face, Emily. Do you know who the young girl is?” Colonel Schuyler asked, as he drove off with his wife.

Mrs. Schuyler believed it was the daughter of that woman, and she guessed she was rather pretty, though she did not notice her particularly.

“That class of people do sometimes produce very fine complexions and tolerably good features.”

That was the lady’s reply, and then she talked of something else, and forgot Heloise entirely. But that night, strangely enough, the colonel dreamed of that window in the cottage round which a honeysuckle was trained, and of a pale, sweet face framed in the net-work of green, and the clear, hazel eyes, which for a moment had looked at him. And, when he woke, he was conscious of a feeling of interest in the young girl, and resolved to make some inquiries concerning her. But the next day he went down to New York to order the monument for Abelard’s grave; and when, after an absence of two weeks, he returned to Hampstead, the cottage was shut up, and he learned that Mrs. Fordham had gone to England and taken her daughter with her.

Remembering what Mrs. Fordham had said to him when he went to make some inquiries concerning Abelard Lyle, he was not as much surprised as the villagers had been when they heard of Mrs. Fordham’s intention to give up her pretty cottage and return to her friends. She laid great stress upon her friends, and hinted broadly that the people of Hampstead were not to her taste. Nobody cared especially, though many wondered at her fickleness in changing her residence so soon. I was sorry, for I liked Heloise and hated to part with her. Remembering what she had said to me of the dreadful thing which might happen to her, and to which my championship was pledged, I felt disappointed not to have a chance of proving myself her friend, and I told her so when I went to say good-by, and found her in the little room where I had seen her on the day of the funeral. Her eyes were almost black, and there was a peculiar expression in them as she regarded me fixedly for a moment without speaking.

“Ettie,” she said at last, “I deceived you the other day. I told you Abelard was not my beau, and that—that was not quite the truth, for though he was not what you meant, he was—, I liked him, oh so much, and he liked me, and—and—oh, Ettie, I am very, very miserable.”

She was sobbing piteously, and I could only smooth her hair by way of comfort as I did not know what to say.

“Ettie,” she began again, when she had dried her eyes, “they say Colonel Schuyler is fixing up the grave and will put a grand monument there. I am thankful to him for that, but after a time he will forget all about it, and grass and weeds will grow where only flowers should be. Ettie, you like me, I think, and will you, for my sake, keep his grave up nice and pretty, and put fresh flowers there in the summer time? Put them in this vase; I give it to you for that; he bought it for me in New York.”

She placed in my hand a small vase of creamy white, with a band of gold around it, and on its side a bunch of blue forget-me-nots, in the centre of which were two hearts transfixed with a golden arrow.

“It will make me happy to know this is on his grave when I am so far away,” she added; “and, Ettie, don’t tell any one, but last night, when everybody was asleep, I went there and planted a little rosebush like that tree in the garden, you know. I am sure it will live, for it had a good root, and I want you to water it and nurse it to life, and when they put up the stone don’t let them trample it down. Will you do this for me?”

I promised that I would, and she went on:

“Some time when I am older and have money I shall come back to see his grave. You’ll have it nice for me, won’t you?”

I promised her again, and then, taking the scissors from the table, she cut from the back of her head one of her long, bright curls, and laying it in my hands bade me keep it as a remembrance of her.

“Mother is coming and you must go,” she said, with a little shiver, as we heard Mrs. Fordham’s voice below, and with a hurried kiss and the whispered words, “Remember about the grave, good-by, I shall see you again some time, and possibly write to you,” she pushed me toward the door, and when I saw her again she was waving her hand to me from the window of the car which took her away from Hampstead.

CHAPTER V.
EDITH LYLE.

It was a dark, dreary, January afternoon, and the dreariness and darkness were increased by the dense fog which since noon had settled like a pall over the great city of London, and by a pitiless rain, which, mixing with melting snow, ran in muddy puddles down the gutters and in dirty streams down the windows of the third floor back room of the lodging in Dorset Street, where a very young girl was lying. Her face was whiter than the pillow against which it lay, and in the eyes there was a look of utter helplessness, as if all life, and hope, and energy had been crushed out, and there was nothing left but apathy and utter indifference to the future. And yet this was the same face which Colonel Schuyler had seen framed in a net-work of green, and of whose bright beauty he had dreamed, with his lady wife beside him: but he would not have known it now. Months of mental anguish and continual combat with the mother’s stronger nature, added to days of intense suffering, and homesickness, and longing for the dead in that far-off grave in Hampstead, had left their marks on the young girl, until now that the crisis was past she lay quiet and passive in her mother’s hands and seemed to assent to whatever the mother proposed.

That estimable woman had chosen lodgings in Dorset Street, knowing she would be safe there from any one whom her daughter might meet in the future. The name Heloise had been dropped, and she was Edith Lyle now, a young widow, whose husband had died soon after her marriage, and so no suspicions were excited and no comments made by the few who occasionally saw her stealing up or down the stairs which led to her apartment. Only the housemaid, Mary Stover, was interested in her, or paid much heed to her extreme youth and beauty. And even Mary but seldom came in contact with her, so that Edith hardly knew of her existence, or how much she was in the serving woman’s thoughts. Since the birth of her baby, a wee little creature, with masses of golden hair and a look in its blue eyes of the dead, Edith had scarcely thought of anything, but had lain with the child held closely to her bosom, as if fearful of losing it. Baby was now four weeks old, and the impatient Mrs. Fordham could wait no longer, and on the dreary day of which I write she sat by her daughter’s side and said to her, in the tone which Edith had never yet had courage to withstand:

“Edith, you are strong enough now to leave this wretched place. Baby will be four weeks old to-morrow, and I have everything arranged. I have made particular inquiries about the —— Street Foundling Hospital, and learned that in no other place are the children so well cared for. The matron and nurses are very kind, and the little ones healthy and happy, and in nine cases out of ten are adopted by good families and grow up respectable men and women.”

“But, mother,” Edith gasped, while her hold tightened on the little pink fingers which lay on her neck, “I cannot let her go. She is mine,—truly, lawfully mine,—and you shall not take her from me.”

“Hush, child, you do not know what you are talking about,” came impatiently from Mrs. Fordham’s lips. “I tell you we cannot be hampered with a child, and it shall be as I say. I know it will be well cared for. I shall keep sight of her, and see that no harm befalls her, and if you ever should wish to claim it, that mark on its bosom is sufficient to identify it.”

At the mention of the peculiar birthmark on her child, Edith moaned faintly, and thought of the white rose with the blood stain in the centre, and the awful day when it was brought back to her, and she had laid it next her breaking heart. There was a blood-red spot over baby’s heart, and Edith knew how it came there, and shuddered and grew sick as she remembered it, and held tighter to the little one whom her mother would wrest from her. At last, wearied with the controversy which was exciting her daughter so much, Mrs. Fordham seemed to give up the contest, but it was only seeming. She was one who never gave up, and what she could not accomplish by fair means she was not too scrupulous to attain by foul. Baby must go. It was something in her way, and must be sacrificed; so, when the hour came round for her daughter’s medicine, she mixed with it one of the sedative powders which Edith had taken for wakefulness when her illness was at the worst. As it had been successful then so it was now, and she ere long fell into a heavy sleep, which Mrs. Fordham knew from experience would last for several hours. This was her time for action, and going to the bed she stooped to take the child from the arms which held it so fast. Even in her sleep Edith must have had a dim consciousness of the threatened danger, for she held firmly to the little one, while her white lips moaned:

“No, she is mine; you cannot have her.”

But for this Mrs. Fordham did not hesitate, and with a firm hand she carefully unclasped the clinging arms and lifted the child from the bed.

Had it been a gentleman’s offspring, and Edith the mistress of some luxurious home, she might have felt some love and tenderness for the little creature, which, roused from its sleep, opened its blue eyes and looked into her face. But it was lowly born, a descendant of the Lyles, who lived in obscurity among the heather hills of Alnwick, and she steeled her heart against it, and never faltered in her purpose, even when the pretty lips parted and gave forth a sound, which made Edith start and half turn upon her pillow as if about to waken. But the sedative was good, and the young girl slept on, while her mother robed the little one in its best attire, and wrote upon a bit of paper which she pinned upon its bosom:

“Her name is Heloise, and she is not a child of shame, but of an imprudent marriage, and inherits from her mother, who is a lady, some of the best blood in England.”

“That will save her from a life of servitude; the high bloods always take such children as these,” she said, “and it will be much better so than a drag on us.”

Ten minutes later and she stole softly down the stairs, bearing under her cloak a bundle which, when she retraced her steps, was not with her. But it was safe from the chill air of the night, for she had rung the bell of —— Street Hospital, and depositing her burden on the steps had retreated swiftly behind a clump of shrubbery until she saw the door opened and the child received into the warmth and light within. The rain had ceased and the fog had cleared away with the going down of the sun, but no one could have recognized her in the dim starlight, with the hood of her water-proof drawn closely over her head, and when she reached the house in Dorset Street she felt as if cut loose from everything which could in any way interfere with her ambitious projects.

Edith had slept soundly, and when at last her mother came and stood beside the bed she lay in the same deep slumber, with a bright flush on her cheeks and her arm still stretched over the spot where but an hour ago a little pink-and-white baby lay. It was gone now, but she did not know it, or dream of the anguish in store for her when she should rouse from the sleep which lasted until near midnight. Then with a sudden start and sense of danger she woke, and sitting up in bed felt for her child under the sheet,—on the pillow,—under the pillow,—on the counterpane,—everywhere, but all in vain. Baby was gone, and in a voice husky with fright and terror she called to the figure sitting so motionless by the fire, “Mother, mother, where is baby? Is she in your lap, mother?” and, alarmed at Mrs. Fordham’s ominous silence, Edith sprang to her side, and with a sensation as if her heart was bursting from her throat, gasped out:

“Mother, tell me;—what have you done with my child?”

And Mrs. Fordham did tell her, while Edith listened like one paralyzed beyond the power to move. Speak she could not at first, for a horrible suffocating sensation in her throat; but her face was deadly pale and her lips quivered, while the fury of a tigress when bereft of its young glared from her eyes. At last she found her voice, and the words rang through the room with terrible distinctness.

“Mother, may God’s curse fall on you, if a hair of baby’s head is harmed, and if, when I am strong and well, and able to cope with you, I fail to find my darling may He turn every happiness I ever hope to know into sorrow, and blight the dearest earthly wish I may ever have again.”

Then she fell fainting at the feet of her mother, who, if not moved by the denunciation against herself, was alarmed at the death-like unconsciousness which lasted so long. But youth and health can endure much and live, and Edith came back to life and sense again, but lay utterly prostrate and helpless, with a choking lump in her throat which prevented her from speaking above the faintest whisper. To move her that day to other and better quarters was impossible, nor did Mrs. Fordham care particularly to do it. No one there would know of the child’s absence, for no one ever came into their room except Mary Stover, who was always quiet and respectful, and who on this day when she brought up warm water for the tea, never spoke or seemed to notice anything.

Next morning Edith was better, and when Mary came with the breakfast she was bidden to tell her mistress that Mrs. Fordham was going away at once, but would pay the month’s rent just the same.

“Very well, ma’am. I’ll tell her when she comes in. She’s out marketin’ now,” was the girl’s reply as she left the room; and when Mrs. Jones, the owner of the house, returned, her late lodgers were gone, and Mary handed her the rent for the whole month, as Mrs. Fordham had bidden her to do.

Mrs. Jones was surprised at the sudden departure of people of whom she had been a little proud, inasmuch as they were above the class which usually stopped with her, but the money for the whole month and the certainty that she knew of other lodgers to take the rooms, kept her quiet, and she merely said:

“They were in a mighty hurry to be off. Do you know where they are gone?”

Mary did not. A handsome carriage had come for them, and madam almost carried the young lady to it, she said, adding:

“That was a very pretty lass, with the sweetest face I ever saw.”

To this Mrs. Jones assented, and as just then there was a ring, and people were announced looking for rooms, her late tenants passed as completely from her mind as they passed from her surroundings to a new life in a pleasanter part of London.

CHAPTER VI.
THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE.

The shock of finding her baby gone, together with the removal from Dorset Street, in her weak state brought on another faint; and when the carriage stopped before the house in the vicinity of Belgrave Square, Edith lay unconscious in the arms of her mother, who carried her up the steps and into the large airy room, where for a time they were to stay until she had decided upon her future course, and her daughter’s health was restored. In a few weeks at most they should move again, Mrs. Fordham thought, but in this she was mistaken. Edith did not rally; the fainting fit was succeeded by a low nervous fever, which lasted for so long that the hedge roses were in blossom, and the breath of early summer was stealing in at her window when she was at last able to walk across the floor.

“Now, mother,” she said one morning, when for the first time in months she was dressed and sitting up. “Now, you must go for baby; go to-day,—will you,—or shall I send some one else?”

She spoke decidedly, and Mrs. Fordham, who felt that there was a change in her daughter, and that henceforth their relations to each other must be different from what they had heretofore been, did not oppose her, but answered, readily:

“I will go myself;” and an hour later she stood again at the door of —— Street Foundling Hospital. She was a clergyman’s widow, she said, and had come to make inquiries concerning a child named Heloise, which was left there some time in January. Could they tell her anything about it?

They could tell her, and they did, and with a throbbing of the heart and a relieved expression on her face, she started home, where Edith was waiting for her.

“Where is it, mother?” was the question asked eagerly.

“Edith, baby is dead. It only lived three weeks, they told me. It was born, it seems, with some affection of the heart, which, under any circumstances, would have ended its life in a short time, the physician said. It had every possible care, and died with little or no pain. I was particular to inquire about that, as I knew you would wish to know. There, there, my child, don’t take it so hard,” and Mrs. Fordham laid her hand on the bowed head of the sorrowing girl, who was weeping passionately. “It was wrong perhaps to take it from you, and I am sorry now did it. I thought then it was for the best, for a baby would be in our way. Forgive me, Edith, and let us bury the past forever.”

She stooped to kiss her daughter, in whose mind there was no shadow of doubt that what her mother had told her was true. Her baby was dead, and though she mourned for it truly she knew that it was far better off in heaven than in that hospital, with only strangers to care for it; and gradually, as the days went by and she felt her strength and health coming back again, the sense of loss and pain which at first had weighed so heavily upon her, began to give way, and more than one of the lodgers in the house noticed and commented upon the great beauty of the young girl, whom they sometimes met upon the stairs or saw sitting by her window. They knew the grave woman dressed in widow’s weeds was Mrs. Fordham, and as the young girl was her daughter they naturally supposed her to be Miss Fordham, a mistake which the mother took no pains to rectify; while Edith, who had suffered so much, began to feel an utter inability to oppose her own will to that of her mother, and when the latter said to her, “It is not necessary for you to explain to others that your name is not Fordham,” she passively acquiesced: and thus none of the lodgers ever heard the name of Lyle, or dreamed of that grave across the sea at Schuyler Hill, or the dreary room in Dorset Street, and the scenes enacted there. All these were buried in the past, and there was nothing in the way of Mrs. Fordham’s plans, except, indeed, the means to carry them out.

Once the mother had hoped much from her daughter’s voice, which was a fine contralto of great power and compass; but that hope was gone, for on the dreadful day when, with the fury of a tigress, Edith had invoked Heaven’s curse upon her mother if so much as a hair of baby’s head was harmed, it seemed as if a hand of iron had clutched her throat with a remorseless grasp, which had for a time deprived her of her powers of utterance, except in a hoarse whisper. At intervals, even now, she felt the grip of those fingers, and would start suddenly with a sense of suffocation, which soon passed away, and left her breathing free as ever. But the glorious voice did not come back, and though she sometimes sang some sweet, low song, her voice was very weak, and a musical education, so far as singing was concerned, was of course out of the question; but for all other branches the best of teachers were procured, and Edith, who possessed a fondness for books, progressed so rapidly as to astonish even herself, while her mother would have been perfectly content but for one little annoyance which haunted her continually, and which increased with every succeeding day. Her finances were fearfully low; nor did she know where aid was to come from.

Since leaving Dorset Street she had assumed a mode of life far above her means, and she was seriously considering the propriety of taking lodgers herself instead of being lodged, when fortune sent in her way a kind, simple-hearted old man, with less of brains than money, as was proved by his offering himself to Mrs. Fordham, whose comely face and dignified bearing attracted his fancy, and who accepted him at once and became Mrs. Dr. Barrett, with a pleasant home in a quiet part of London, and money enough to supply every comfort of life, as well as some of its luxuries.

Though twice married Dr. Barrett had never had a child, and his kind, fatherly heart went out at once to Edith, whom he loved and treated as a daughter, and who spent under his roof the happiest, most peaceful years of her life.

As it is not my intention to narrate in detail the incidents of those years, during which Edith was first a pupil, then a governess, and then an organist at St. John’s, I shall pass over them silently, and take my readers with me to a time when in her full maturity of beauty and grace, such as few women have ever possessed, she stood just on the verge of the brilliant life her mother had so desired for her, and which proved to be so different from anything of which the wily, scheming woman had dreamed.

CHAPTER VII.
ELEVEN YEARS LATER.

Dr. Barrett was dead; and as with his life the income ceased which had made Mrs. Fordham so comfortable, she was again reduced to the necessity of earning her daily bread, which she did by doing plain sewing, and letting two or three rooms of the little cottage, which was all her husband had left her.

Edith was not with her. For two years or more she had been the companion of a Mrs. Sinclair, a wealthy invalid, who had advertised for some young person who was a good reader and did not object to sick people. The salary offered was not large, but as there was a prospect of permanency, Edith had answered the advertisement in person and been preferred to scores of others, who sought for the place. For six months and more Mrs. Sinclair had been abroad, but she was now in her pleasant home, a few miles from London, and on the summer morning of which I write she lay on the couch in her sitting-room, which opened upon the terrace, where, on a rustic bench beneath the shadow of a maple tree, a young girl was sitting, her white hands holding idly the book she was not reading, and her eyes looking far away, as if in quest of something never found. That was Edith, whom one would hardly recognize, so entirely changed was she in style, and manner, and general appearance. The bright color which had once been so noticeable was gone, and her complexion was clear and white, and smooth as marble, save when some sudden emotion called a faint color to her cheek. The eyes, too, were darker now, and when kindling with excitement, seemed almost black with the long curling lashes which shaded them. There was also a darker shade on the beautiful golden brown hair, which was coiled in heavy braids around her well-shaped head, and added to her apparent height. Perfect in form and face, graceful in manner, always self-possessed and ready, with the right word in the right place, Edith Lyle was a favorite wherever she went, and, during the two years she had been with Mrs. Sinclair, that lady had learned to love her as a sister, and treated her with all the consideration of a friend and equal. And Edith was very happy, save when a thought of the past came over her, and then there would steal into her eyes a look of pain, and the muscles about her mouth would contract, as if she were forcing back words she longed to utter, but dared not.

Her marriage was still a secret to every one save her mother. Even Dr. Barrett had known nothing of it until just before he died, when she told him her story, and begged him not to hate her, because it was not earlier told.

The doctor was surprised, but not angry, and, laying his hand fondly on the young girl’s head, he said:

“Poor child, you have suffered a great deal, and I pity you so much; but I am not angry,—no, no. I reckon your mother is right. She generally is. She’s a most wonderful woman for business. You’ll get on better as a girl than you would as a widow,—that is, you’ll be saved a great deal of idle, curious questioning, and make a better match by and by. With that face and that manner of yours, you ought to marry a title; as Widow Lyle you could not. Had the child lived it would be different; now it is dead, you had better let matters remain as they are. It will please your mother so, and be quite as well for you.”

This was the doctor’s advice, which lifted a heavy load from Edith’s mind. Perhaps it was better to keep silent with regard to her marriage, she thought, especially as no one could be harmed by it; and gradually, as time passed on, she came to think of the past as a horrible dream, from which she had awakened to find the horror gone and the sunlight of content, if not of happiness, still shining around her. She, however, preferred her real name, and when she went to Mrs. Sinclair it was as Edith Lyle, and when that lady on hearing her mother mentioned as Mrs. Barrett asked how that was, Edith replied:

“Mother has been married twice. Dr. Barrett was my stepfather.”

Thus Mrs. Sinclair had no suspicion of the truth, and soon learned to regard Miss Lyle as more than a mere hired companion, and was never long easy when away from her. On the day of which I write, they had returned the previous night after an absence of several months, and, attracted by the freshness of the morning and the beauty of the grounds, Edith had left Mrs. Sinclair to read the pile of letters she found awaiting her, and stolen out to her favorite seat beneath the maples, where, through an opening in the distant trees of the park, she could catch glimpses of the Thames and the great city with its forest of spires and domes. And as she sat there in her tasteful cambric wrapper, with only a bit of blue ribbon at her throat and in her hair, no one who saw her would have dreamed of that tragedy of by-gone years in which she had been so greatly interested, and of which she was thinking that June morning, so like that day at Schuyler Hill when the brightness of her life had so suddenly been stricken out. Should she ever go there again,—ever see that grave which Ettie had promised to keep against her coming? Yes. She would go alone some time across the sea, and lay her face upon the grass which covered her lost love, and tell him of the child that died and whose grave she never saw.

“But I will see it before I go,” she said; “I will find where they laid my little one, and it may be—”

She did not finish the sentence, for just then the silvery stroke of a bell reached her ear and she knew she was wanted within. She found Mrs. Sinclair with many letters lying open before her, and one in her hand which she had evidently just read, and which seemed to disturb her.

“I am sorry to call you when I know how fresh and bright it is out doors,” she said, as Edith came to her side, “but I find here a letter, written weeks ago, which must be answered at once. It is from my brother——”

“Your brother!” Edith repeated, in some surprise, for that was the first allusion she had ever heard Mrs. Sinclair make to any near relatives.

“Yes, my half brother Howard,” was the reply. “I’ve never spoken of him because—because,—well, there was a kind of coldness between us on account of his wife, whom I did not like. He brought her here when they were first married, and had she been a duchess she could not have borne herself more loftily than she did. I did not think her manners in good taste, and told my brother so; and as he was in the heyday of his honeymoon and saw nothing amiss in his Emily, we had a little tiff and parted coldly, and I have not seen him since. Regularly at the birth of his children he has written to me, and just before you came he wrote to say that Emily was dead. I answered, of course, and said I was sorry for him, and that I should be glad to see him and his children. There are three of them, and the eldest, a boy, bears my maiden and married name, Godfrey Sinclair Schuyler——”

“Schuyler!” Edith said, and if possible, her always white face was a shade paler than its wont at the sound of that name.

But Mrs. Sinclair was intent on her letter, and did not look at her as she replied:

“Yes, my brother is Howard Schuyler, and his father, who was of English descent, married my mother, Mrs. Godfrey, when I was seven years old, and took us to New York, where mother died when Howard was a baby. I stayed in New York till I was seventeen, and then came back to live with my aunt and have seen but little of Howard since.”

“And does he live in New York!” Edith asked; and Mrs. Sinclair replied:

“Yes, or rather a little way out, in the town called Hampstead, on the Hudson river. He has a beautiful place, I am told, which they call Schuyler Hill.”

“And you have news from him?” Edith said next, her heart beating rapidly at the lady’s reply.

“Yes. He is in Scotland, it seems, and wrote to know if I could receive him and his son Godfrey about this time,—let me see, the 15th of June he said, and this is the 14th. I was to answer at once, and direct to Edinburgh, where he would wait my reply. His letter was written ten days ago, and I am so much afraid he has become impatient at not hearing from me, that he will perhaps go directly to the continent without stopping here at all. My head feels so badly, would you mind writing a few lines for me, just to say that I am home, and shall be glad to see him?”

“Certainly not,” Edith answered in a voice which did not in the least betray the storm of feeling she experienced at being thus unexpectedly brought face to face as it were with a past she had almost outlived.

To stay in that room with Mrs. Sinclair while she wrote to Colonel Schuyler was impossible, and asking permission to withdraw, she went to her own chamber to be alone while she penned a letter which by some one of those subtle emotions or presentiments which none can explain, she felt would influence her whole future life. She could not understand it, nor did she attempt to seek a reason for it, but she felt certain that Colonel Schuyler was the arbiter of her fate, and that with his coming would begin a new era for her, and her hand trembled so at first that she could scarcely hold the pen, and much less write a word. At last she commenced:

“Oakwood, June 14th, 18—, Colonel Schuyler,” and there she stopped, overpowered with the memories which the sight of that name evoked. Once more she stood with her lover at the garden gate, and saw the night fog creeping across the river, and heard in the distance the faint rumble of the fast coming train which had thundered by just as she gave her boy-husband the last good-by kiss, and fastened in his buttonhole the rose, which she still carefully preserved together with a silken curl cut from baby’s head during the first days of her maternity.

How every little thing connected with that curl and rose came back to her now, and for an instant she felt faint and sick again, just as she had felt when they brought the dead man in and carried him out again. In her desolation she had said: “I hate the Schuylers,” and she almost hated them now, even though she knew them innocent of any wrong to her. Col. Schuyler she remembered as a tall, fine-looking man, and she had him in her mind just as he was when he stood in the garden path and glanced wonderingly up at her as she called out the name and age and birth-place of the poor youth whose memory he wished to honor. That was the only time he had ever seen her, and she had no fear that he would recognize her now. So it was not this which made her tremble as she again took up her pen to bid him come to Oakwood, his sister’s country-seat. It was a shrinking from she did not know what, and after the letter was written and approved by Mrs. Sinclair, she felt tempted to tear it up instead of giving it to the servant whose duty it was to post it. But this she dared not do, and the letter was sent on its way, and as soon as it was possible to receive an answer one came to Mrs. Sinclair, who read aloud at the breakfast table:

“Dear Sister Helen:—Yours of the 14th received and contents noted. Shall probably be with you the day after you get this. Godfrey will accompany me.

“Truly, your brother, Howard.”

“That is so like Howard,” Mrs. Sinclair said. “‘Short and crisp and right to the point.’ One would almost think he had no heart, and yet I know he has, though he is very peculiar in some things, very reserved, and very proud, and a great stickler for justice and honor. Why, I do not suppose he would say or act a thing he did not mean even to save his life or that of his best friend.”

“Yes,” Edith said, idly toying with her spoon and feeling a still greater dread of this man of honor, who would not act a lie to save his life. “Yes: how old is he?”

“How old? let me see. I was past eight when he was born, and I am forty-nine; that makes him almost forty-one; quite a young man still, and fine-looking, too. I dare say he will marry again;” and, glancing across the table at the beautiful lady sitting there, a curious thought sprang into Mrs. Sinclair’s mind, which, however, had no echo in Edith’s heart.

She had asked Col. Schuyler’s age more for the sake of saying something than from any curiosity, and she hardly heard Mrs. Sinclair’s reply, so little did she care. His age or personal appearance was nothing to her. It was his presence in the house she dreaded, because it would awaken so many unpleasant memories, and take her back to a time she had almost forgotten in the pain which had come to her during the later years. But he was coming to-morrow, and at Mrs. Sinclair’s request she herself saw that his room and Godfrey’s were made ready, and then at another request from her mistress she practised her best instrumental pieces, for “Howard used to be fond of music, and was sure to like Miss Lyle’s playing.”

“Try that little Scotch ballad, please. I thought your voice stronger when you sang it to me last. Strange that it should have left you so suddenly! What was the cause of it, did you say?” Mrs. Sinclair asked.

“A sudden shock to my nerves when I was sick,” was Edith’s reply, and she felt again the iron fingers on her throat, and that choking sensation as if her heart were leaping from her mouth.

Mrs. Sinclair was very fond of music, especially of singing, and knowing this, Edith had frequently sang to her some simple ballads which were written so low as to come within the compass of her weak voice, but she could not do it now, and excusing herself, she rose from the piano saying she had a headache and needed fresh air.

“I have not seen mother since my return. She was out the day I called, and if you are willing I would like to go into town this morning; the ride will do me good.”

Mrs. Sinclair was willing, and accordingly an hour later a handsome carriage stopped before Mrs. Dr. Barrett’s gate, and Edith went slowly up the walk toward the open door.

CHAPTER VIII.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

The world had not gone very well with Mrs. Dr. Barrett since her husband’s death. Her house was too small to admit of many lodgers, and as those who came were mostly Americans, they did not stop long, and required so much of her that she was glad when they left, hoping to do better the next time. A pain under her left shoulder made it hard for her to sew, and but for Edith’s generosity she would have been badly off. Edith was very kind to her, and gave her the larger part of her salary, and Mrs. Barrett was very proud of her daughter, even though that daughter had sorely disappointed her in not having married or shown any disposition to do so, nor, so far as Mrs. Barrett knew, had she received but one offer, and that from so questionable a quarter that a refusal was the only alternative. She had been away from home when Edith called upon her the day following her return from the Continent, but she found the card which Edith left, and when her maid glowingly described the carriage, and the beautiful young lady who came in it, she said, with a great deal of pride, “That was my daughter.”

“And sure she walked as if the ground wasn’t good enough for her to step on,” was Kitty’s mental comment, as she wondered at the difference between mother and child.

After that day Mrs. Barrett was constantly expecting Edith, and once she thought of going to Oakwood to see her, but on the occasion of her first and only visit there, Mrs. Sinclair, whose likes and dislikes were very strong, had conceived a great aversion for her, and had intimated to Edith that though she was at liberty to visit her mother when she pleased, it was not desirable that the latter should come often to Oakwood. Knowing this, Mrs. Barrett did not like to venture, and she remained at home, waiting impatiently for Edith until the morning when she saw at last the well-known carriage at the gate, and Edith coming up the walk.

How beautiful she was, and how like a princess she looked even in her simple muslin dress and straw hat, with a lace scarf around her graceful shoulders. Everything which Edith wore became her well, and now with a faint flush on her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes, she had never seemed fairer to the proud mother than when she swept into the house with a grace and dignity peculiarly her own, and put up her lips to be kissed. Mrs. Barrett was glad to see her, and asked her many questions concerning her journey, and admired her dress, and scarf, and boots, and gloves, and asked what they cost, and told about herself, how she had but one lodger now, and that he found fault with everything, and that the day before she had received application for rooms from a respectable looking woman, who seemed to belong to the middle or lower class. “Indeed, she said, she had been out to service before her marriage, but that her husband had left her a few shares in the —— Bank, so that she was quite comfortable now.

“I never thought I would take any one who was not first-class,” Mrs. Barrett said, “but my purse is so low that I should have made an exception in favor of Mrs. Rogers if she had not told me her cousin was waiting-maid at Oakwood.”

“Oh, that is Norah Long,” Edith answered indifferently, and her mother continued:

“It seemed like coming down, to lodge and serve a cousin of Mrs. Sinclair’s maid, and when she said she had a little girl about eleven years old, and that she wished her to have a room by herself, I made that an excuse for refusing her. I could not give up my best room to a child, I said, and I did not care to take children, anyway.”

“I think you were very foolish, mother; if this Mrs. Rogers would pay well, and is respectable, why not take her as soon as another? The child is certainly no objection, and it might be pleasant to have it in the house.”

“Perhaps so, but I did not like the woman’s manner. When she asked for the extra room I told her it belonged to my daughter, Miss Lyle, who was travelling with Mrs. Sinclair, of Oakwood. ‘Oh, Miss Lyle,’ she said, ‘I have heard my cousin speak of her. She is very beautiful, I believe.’ I thought her impertinent, and answered, ‘People call her so. Can I do anything more for you?’ Even then she did not go, but offered me a shilling more than my price for the rooms. Indeed, she seemed resolved to have them, and only a positive refusal on the ground of not liking to have the child availed to send her away. I never thought I should be reduced so low that the cousin of a servant would insist upon lodging with me,” and Mrs. Barrett began to break down a little; then rousing herself, she said, suddenly, “Edith, will you never marry and raise me out of this? Did you find no one abroad?”

“No one, mother,” and Edith flushed to her forehead, while her voice had in it a tone of irritation, as she continued: “How many times must I tell you that I do not go about the country trying to sell myself. I am willing to work for you as long as I have strength, but marry I never shall, and probably could not if I would.”

“You, with that face, say you could not marry!” Mrs. Barrett exclaimed.

And Edith rejoined:

“The man who would take me for my face alone I do not want, and the man whom I could respect enough to marry must know all my past, and, after knowing it, how many, think you, would care to have me?”

There was a gesture of impatience on the part of Mrs. Barrett, but, before she could speak, Edith continued:

“Colonel Schuyler, of Schuyler Hill, is expected at Oakwood to-morrow.”

“Colonel Schuyler!” and Mrs. Barrett was surprised. “How does he happen to come to Oakwood?”

“He is Mrs. Sinclair’s half brother. I never knew it until the other day, and Lady Emily is dead, and he is travelling in Europe with Godfrey.”

“Lady Emily dead! She was a sweet-mannered lady, and young, too. Why, Colonel Schuyler cannot be very old. Not much past forty, I am sure, and he was very fine-looking.”

Edith had risen to go, and did not in the least understand what was in her mother’s mind; and buttoning her long gloves, she said:

“While Colonel Schuyler is there, Mrs. Sinclair’s time will be occupied with him, and she will not have so much need of me. I will try to see you oftener. I wish I could take you out of this altogether, mother, for I know how distasteful the life is to you after having known one so much better; but my salary is not large, and Mrs. Sinclair will never raise it. It is a principle of hers to give so much and no more. If she were not so kind, I would try for another situation.”

“No, no,” the mother said, in some alarm; “don’t leave Oakwood on any account. I’ve always felt that something would come of your being there. I can do very well as I am, only it was humiliating to have that Mrs. Rogers, who had been in service, come to me for rooms, and act as if she were my equal.”

“I do not see it in that light, mother,” Edith said. “If Mrs. Rogers is respectable, and can pay, I advise you to take her. It is far better to have some one permanently, than the changing, floating class you usually have about you. Beside that, it must be pleasanter to have a decent woman in the house than a lot of foreign men of whom you know nothing. Suppose I speak to Norah, and tell her you will take her cousin if she has not secured apartments elsewhere; and if she wants my old room for her child, let her have it. I do not occupy it often, and would rather some nice little girl was in it than any one else. Yes, I think I’ll speak to Norah.” And without waiting for her mother to object, even if she wished to do so, Edith went hastily down the walk to the carriage waiting for her.

She found Mrs. Sinclair asleep, and Norah mending a lace handkerchief for her outside the door.

“Norah,” she said, “has your cousin, Mrs. Rogers, yet suited herself with lodgings?”

“No, ma’am. She was just here. You must have met her and the little girl somewhere in the park. You would have noticed the child.”

But Edith had been too much occupied with her own thoughts as she drove through the park to see the woman and child sitting on a bench beneath the trees, and looking curiously at her as she drove by.

“No, I met no one,” she said; “but I wish you would see your cousin, and tell her that Mrs. Barrett, of Caledonia Street, No. —, will accommodate her with rooms.”

“Two rooms?” Norah asked.

And Edith replied:

“Yes, two rooms, if she likes, and pays in advance.”

“She’s sure to do that,” Norah answered, quickly; “and she’s able, too. Her man left her well beforehand, and the child has something, too. That’s what makes Mary,—my cousin, please,—so careful of her. She isn’t her own, you see; she’s adopted, and has a little money, and Mary worships her as something different from common ones; and well she may, for a sweeter, prettier lass was never born in England than little Gertie Westbrooke.”

There was a sound in Mrs. Sinclair’s room, and Edith hastened to remove her hat and scarf so as to be in readiness for the lady when she was needed, and what Norah had said to her of her cousin and the child was scarcely heeded, except, indeed, the name, Gertie Westbrooke, which struck her as very pretty, and twice that day she caught herself repeating it, while in her dreams that night it seemed constantly in her mind; and when at an early hour she woke from a troubled sleep, her chamber was full of the faint echoes of the name of the little girl who was to occupy her old room and bed in Caledonia Street.

CHAPTER IX.
GODFREY SCHUYLER.

It was the day after Edith’s visit to her mother, and taking advantage of the hour when Mrs. Sinclair took her after-lunch nap, she went out with her book into the grounds, and strolled on until she came to a clump of trees at the farthest extremity of the park, where was a little rustic chair. This had always been her favorite resort, the place she sought when she wished to be alone, and here she sat down, ostensibly to read, but really to think,—not so much of the past as of the future. That her kind, indulgent mistress, who had been an invalid for so many years, was failing fast, was very apparent to her experienced eyes, and only that morning she had observed that the handkerchief Mrs. Sinclair held to her lips after a paroxysm of coughing had a faint coloring of blood upon it.

“And where shall I find a home like this when she is gone?” Edith asked herself, sadly. “I might go back to mother and help her with her sewing, and take Kitty’s place,” she said, shuddering a little as she thought of the small house in Caledonia Street, so different from the pleasant home which had been hers for more than two years.

She might go out as a governess again, but when she remembered the insult which she had twice received when a governess, once from the young man of the house, who looked upon her as lawful prey, and once from the master, a brutal wretch who could not withstand her beauty, she thought any life preferable to that. Her face and manner were both against her, and if Mrs. Sinclair died, her only safety was in her mother’s house.

“Yes, that will be the end of it,” she said, a little bitterly, as she remembered all her mother had hoped for her and what she had once hoped for herself.

So much was she absorbed in these reflections that she did not at first see the two gentlemen who had entered the Park by a side gate, and were walking slowly up the path, which led directly past the chair in which she was sitting. Two young gentlemen she thought them, for one at least was very young, with a supple, springy grace in every movement, while the other, whose step was quite as rapid, though it had more dignity and character in it, could not be old; or even middle-aged, with that fine, erect form, that heavy, silken beard, and wealth of dark brown hair. That it could be Col. Schuyler and his son she never dreamed, for though Mrs. Sinclair had said her brother was not forty-one, Edith, who, like most young people, held forty as an age bordering on antediluvianism, thought of him always as a grayish-haired man, with a stoop, perhaps, and a slow tread, and not at all like this man coming so swiftly toward her, and pointing out something in the Park to his companion. He had evidently been at Oakwood before, for she heard him say:

“We ought to see the house from this point. This must be a new path since I was here, and yet I remember that little foot-bridge. Your mother and I used often to come down to it; she liked to see the water falling over the white stones. That was nineteen years ago.”

“Hush-sh, father! look, there’s a young lady sitting in the shadow of those trees,” came warningly from the younger man, or boy, and then with a great heart throb, Edith knew who the strangers were and arose to her feet.

They were quite up to her now, and both removed their hats and stood with heads uncovered, while the elder said to her:

“I beg your pardon, miss, but will this path take us directly to the house at Oakwood? I was here many years ago and ought to know the way, but it seems a little strange to me.”

His voice was very pleasant and his manner deferential as he stood looking at her, while Edith replied that the path did lead directly to the house, which could be seen as soon as he reached the slight elevation yonder. Then with eyes cast down she stood waiting for him to pass on, she thinking of that one time when she had spoken to him from the window of the cottage in far-off Hampstead, and he thinking of the marvellous beauty of her face, and wondering who she could be.

“Some guest at Oakwood, undoubtedly,” he thought, and then he put another question to her and said, “Do you know if Mrs. Sinclair is at home this morning? I am her brother, Colonel Schuyler, from America, and this is my son Godfrey.”

With a bow to both gentlemen Edith replied:

“Mrs. Sinclair is at home, and is expecting you. I am Edith Lyle, Mrs. Sinclair’s hired companion.”

She said this proudly, and with a purpose not to deceive the gentlemen with regard to her position longer than was necessary. She had so often been spoken to by strangers in just the respectful, deferential tone with which Colonel Schuyler had addressed her, and then had seen the look of unmistakable interest give place to one of surprise and indifference when her real position was known, that she wished to start fair with these guests of her employer, and she was neither astonished nor disappointed when she saw the peculiar look she knew so well steal over the grave, proud face of Colonel Schuyler, who bowed as he said:

“Oh, yes. I knew she had some young person staying with her. Thanks for your directions. We shall find our way now very well. Come, Godfrey.”

But Godfrey was in no particular haste. A beautiful girl was attractive to him under all circumstances, whether the daughter of a hundred earls or the paid companion of his aunt, and his manner had not changed one whit when Edith announced herself as his inferior according to the creed of the beau monde.

“Come, my son,” Colonel Schuyler said again, and then Godfrey passed on with a look at Edith, which plainly meant: “I’d enough sight rather stay with you, but you see it’s impossible.”

It was the old, old story; contempt from the older ones and impertinence from the younger so soon as she was known for a dependant, Edith thought, and a few hot, resentful tears trickled through the white fingers she pressed to her eyes as the two men walked away and were lost to view over the hill. And yet for once she was mistaken. Colonel Schuyler had felt no contempt for her; he never felt that for any woman, and the change in his manner, when he found who she was, was involuntary, and owing wholly to his early training, which had built a barrier between himself and those who earned their daily bread! He had taken Edith for the possible young lady of some noble house, and was disappointed to find her only the companion of his sister, but a lady still, judging from her manners and speech; while Godfrey would sooner have parted with his right hand than have been rude to any woman.

A dress, whether it hung in slatternly folds around a washerwoman, or adorned the daughter of a duchess, was sacred in his eyes, and though in a certain way he had all the pride of the Schuylers and Rossiters combined, it was a pride which prompted him to treat every one kindly. His mother, who had been very fond of him, had done her best to make him understand that, as a Rossiter and Schuyler, it behooved him to demean himself like one worthy of so illustrious a line of ancestry; but Godfrey did not care for ancestry, nor blood, nor social distinctions, and played with every ragged boy in Hampstead, and sat for hours with old Peterkin the cobbler, and kept little Johnnie Mack at Schuyler Hill all day when his mother was out working, and the child would have been alone but for this thoughtfulness. Everybody knew Godfrey Schuyler, and everybody liked him, especially the middle and poorer classes, to whom he was as the brightness of the morning.

An intolerable tease, Godfrey was something of a terror to his eldest sister Julia, whose imperious and sometimes insolent manners he mimicked and ridiculed, while to Alice Creighton of New York, who he knew had been selected for his wife, he was a perpetual source of joy and annoyance,—joy when he treated her with that tenderness and gentleness so natural to him in his intercourse with girls, and annoyance when even with his arm around her waist he mimicked her affected ways and her constant allusions to “when I was abroad.”

In stature Godfrey was tall, with a graceful, willowy form, a bright, though rather dark complexion, soft, laughing blue eyes, with a world of mischief in them, and rich brown hair which clustered in curls about his forehead, and which he parted in the middle until his sister Julia, who did not like it, called him a prig and an ape, while Alice, who did like it, said it was “pretty, and just as the young noblemen wore their hair when she was abroad.” That was enough for Godfrey. If Alice Creighton liked it because she saw it abroad, he surely would not follow the fashion, and the next morning at breakfast his curly locks were parted on the side very near to his left ear, and a black ribbon bound two or three times around his head to keep his refractory hair in its place.

“If ever he went abroad he hoped he should not make a fool of himself,” he said, and now that he was abroad, he bristled all over with nationality, and wore his country outside as plainly as if he had had placarded on his back, “I am an American, and proud of it, too.”

Nothing was quite equal to New York in his estimation, and he was particularly averse to the rosy, healthy-looking girls whom he everywhere met, and in his first letters to his sisters and Alice he told them they were beauties compared with the English girls; “even if Alice’s nose was a pug and Jule’s forehead so low that it took a microscope to find it, and Em’s ankles no bigger than a pair of knitting-needles.”

But when he came upon Edith Lyle, in her simple white wrapper, with her perfectly transparent complexion, and the knot of blue ribbon in her golden-brown hair, he acknowledged to himself that here at last, even on English soil, was a woman more beautiful than anything he had ever seen across the water, and he took off his hat and stood uncovered before her as readily as if she had been the queen. That she was only his aunt’s companion, instead of the high-born lady he had at first supposed her to be, made no difference with him. She was a woman, and as he reached the little hill beyond where she was sitting, he turned to look at her again, and said:

“By George, father, isn’t she a beauty?”

Mr. Schuyler knew to whom his son referred, and answered, in his usual grave, quiet way:

“She had a fine profile, I thought. Yes, certainly, a remarkable profile.”

They were near the house by this time, and in the excitement of meeting with his sister and the long conversation which followed, Colonel Schuyler hardly thought of Edith again until dinner was announced and she came in with Godfrey. That young man had soon grown tired of listening to talk about people and things dating back to a time he could not remember, and had sauntered out into the grounds in quest of Edith, who was more to his taste than the close drawing-room and the invalid on the couch.

Edith was in the summer-house now, and Godfrey joined her there, and in his pleasant, winning way asked if he was intruding, and if he might come in and occupy one of the chairs, which looked so tempting under the green vines.

“It was an awful bore to hear old folks talk about a lot of antediluvians,” he said; “and if she did not mind he would sit with her awhile.”

Edith nodded assent and motioned him to a chair, which he took, and removing his soft hat and brushing back his curls, he said:

“Now let us talk.”

To talk was Godfrey’s delight; and to Edith’s interrogatory:

“What shall we talk about?” he replied:

“Whatever you like;” and when she rejoined:

“Tell me of yourself and your home in America,” he mentally pronounced her a fine girl, with no nonsense about her; and in less than an hour had told nearly all he knew of himself and of his family. They had a splendid place in Hampstead, he said, not so big and rambling as the fine houses in England, but pleasanter every way, and more home-like, with such a fine view of the Hudson and the blue mountains beyond.

“You have never been in America?” he said, affirmatively, thus saving Edith the necessity of answering, “and so you do not know how beautiful the Hudson is. Why, it beats the Rhine all to nothing.”

“Have you seen the Rhine?” Edith asked, smiling at this enthusiastic youth, so wholly American.

“No,” and Godfrey blushed as he met her smile; “but I’ve read of it, and heard Alice Creighton rave about it by the hour, and still I know the Hudson is ahead. You ought to see it once in the neighborhood of the Highlands; the view from our tower is magnificent, with those blue peaks stretching away in the distance, and rising one above the other until I used to think them the stairs which led to Heaven.”

How Edith’s heart throbbed as she listened to his description of a place she, too, knew so well, though of her knowledge she dared not give a sign; and how she longed to question her companion of that grave on the hillside! But she could not, and as Godfrey evidently expected her to say something, she asked if he had always lived in Hampstead.

“No; I was born on Fifth Avenue, in a brown-stone front, so that the first breath I drew was sufficiently stuffy and aristocratic; but I went to the country when I was five or six years old. Father took the old house down and built the new one. I never shall forget it,—never, for the dreadful thing which happened.”

Edith knew just what was coming, and steeled herself to listen to the details of that tragedy which had colored her whole life. Again the fingers of iron were clutching her throat, while Godfrey told of the young man whom he liked so much, and who had saved another’s life at the loss of his own.

“And when they reached him, the grass was red with blood, and he lay white, and still, and dead.”

Godfrey’s voice trembled as he said these words, and he paused a moment in his tale, while Edith clasped her hands tightly together and tried to speak, but could not for the smothered sensation choking and stifling her so.

“We buried him in our own lot, and bought him a grand monument, and there are many flowers round, the spot,” Godfrey continued: and then he glanced at Edith, and starting up, exclaimed: “Why, what is the matter? You are whiter than a ghost. You are not going to faint? You must not faint! I don’t know what to do with girls who faint. Alice did it once, or made believe, and I kissed her and brought her to quick.”

He did not kiss Edith, but he fanned her with his soft hat until she waved him off, and found voice to say:

“It is the heat, and your vivid description of that poor fellow’s death. Did you tell me he was married?”

She asked the question from an intense desire to know if anything had ever been said of herself in connection with the dead.

“No, he was not married, but there was some talk of an affaire du cœur between him and a young English girl, who went off soon after. There’s a bug on your dress, Miss Lyle. Why,”—and, as if it had just occurred to him, Godfrey continued,—“your name is the same as his. It cannot be, though, that you were at all related. He lived up near Alnwick. On our way from Scotland, father and I hunted up his friends, a sister and widowed mother,—poor but honest women, as the biographers say. The mother lives with her daughter, and we gave them a thousand dollars, and the young woman promised to call her little boy after me. The Governor,—that’s father,—did not quite like it, I guess, but I don’t see the harm. Why, I’ve named three different Dutch babies in Hampstead, all the children of Mrs. Peterkin Vandeusenhisen. Two of them are twins,—and I called one Godfrey Schuyler, and the other Schuyler Godfrey,—while the third, which happened to be a girl, was christened Alice Creighton,—that’s a young lady from New York, fathers ward, who is at Hampstead a great deal,—and so proud! You ought to have seen her bit of a pug nose go up when she heard the Dutch baby baptized. Why, she nearly jumped out of her skin when Mrs. Van,—as I call her for short,—on being asked for the name, replied: ‘Alice Creighton Vandeusenhisen, if you please.’ The last was a suggestion of my own, by way of making a more striking impression on Alice, because you see, Mrs. Vandeusenhisen had a son,—Peterkin, junior, who was in love with Miss Creighton, and used to send her cakes of maple sugar and sticks of molasses candy he made and pulled himself. You ought to see his hands! The day before the christening I dressed up like a gypsy and deceived the girls and told their fortune, and said Alice would marry a Dutchman, with a long name, like Vandue something. So complete was my disguise that they did not suspect me, and when Alice heard the name at church, Alice Creighton Vandeusenhisen, she started up as if to forbid the banns, and then catching sight of my face she understood it at once, and was so angry, and when we were home from church she cried and said she hated me and would never speak to me again. But she got over it, and last Christmas sent a wax doll with a squawk in its stomach to her namesake.”

Godfrey had wandered very far from the woman on the heather hills who had called Abelard Lyle her son, and though Edith wished to know something more of her she did not venture to question her companion lest he should wonder at her interest in an entire stranger. She had laughed immoderately at his account of the babies named for himself and Miss Alice, and when he finished she said:

“You must be very fond of children, I think.”

“Yes, I am. I’d like a houseful, and when I marry I mean to have enough boys to make a brass band. I told Alice so once, and her nose went higher than it did when she heard the baby’s name. She called me a wretch, and an insulting dog, and said she hated boys, and me most of all. I knew she didn’t, though, because you see,—well, Alice has ten thousand a year, and that will straighten the worst case of turn-up nose in the world. She is an orphan and father is her guardian, and he and mother and Uncle Calvert, that’s my half-uncle and Alice’s, too, put their heads together and thought she’d be a good match for me, and it is rather an understood thing that we will marry some time, but I don’t believe we are half as likely to as if they’d said nothing about it. A fellow don’t want his wife picked out and brought to him off-hand as Eve was brought to Adam.”

Here Godfrey paused, and rising from his chair shook down his pants, a habit of his when he was interested or excited, and as his sister Julia said, “had talk on the brain.” He certainly had it now, for Edith was the first one he had found whom he had cared to talk to since leaving the ship, and after two or three shakes he resumed his seat, and told her of himself particularly; how he was going to college the next year, if he was home in time, and after that intended to study law and distinguish himself, if possible.

“Mother was very proud of me, and hoped great things of me,” he said. “I do not wish to disappoint her, for though she is dead, I cannot help thinking that she knows about me just the same, and when I am tempted to yield to what you call the small vices, I always feel her thin white hand on my head where she laid it not long before she died, and said, ‘Be a good and great man, Godfrey, and avoid the first approaches of evil.’ Mother was what they call a fashionable woman, but she was good before she died, and so sure as there is a heaven, so sure she is there, and I’ve never smoked, nor touched a drop of spirits, nor sworn a word since she died, and I never mean to either.”

Godfrey’s voice was low and tender, and his manner subdued when he spoke of his mother, but very different when he touched upon his sisters and ridiculed Julia’s fine lady airs and Emma’s readiness to be stuffed,—his definition for believing everything she heard, even to the most preposterous story. They were at Schuyler Hill now, he said, and Alice was there too, studying with their governess, Miss Browning, who, between the three, was awfully nagged, though she was quite as airy and stuck-up as Alice and Jule, and called him “that dreadful boy!”

“Boy, indeed! and I most eighteen, and standing five feet ten in my socks, to say nothing of this incipient badge of manhood,” and he stroked complacently his chin and upper lip where the beginning of a brown beard was visible.

How he rattled on, his fresh young face glowing and lighting up with his excitement, and how intently Edith listened and watched the play of his fine features, and admired his boyish beauty! Surely in him there was nothing but goodness and truth, and as she looked at him she felt glad that his young life was spared, though she could not understand why her husband must have been sacrificed for him. Once in her bitterness she had felt that she hated Godfrey Schuyler, but she did not hate him now, and as she walked slowly with him toward the house, she would have given much to have been as fresh, and frank, and open as he was, instead of living the lie she was living. And to what intent? What good had the deception ever done her? What good could it do her, and why continue it longer? Why not be just what she was, with no concealment hanging over her, and startling her ofttimes with a dread of discovery? Why not tell Godfrey all about herself just as he had told her of himself? Surely, his recent talk with her would warrant such confidence, and why not commence at once a new life by openness and sincerity, even though she lost her place by it?

“I’ll do it and brave my mother, who alone has stood in my way so long,” she thought; and she began: “Mr. Schuyler”—but before she could say more, he interrupted her with:

“Don’t call me that. I’m too much of a boy. Call me Godfrey, please, unless the name is too suggestive of ‘Godfrey’s Cordial,’ in which case say Schuyler, but pray leave off the Mister till my whiskers will at least cast a shadow on the wall. Why, I dare say I shall call you by your first name yet. You cannot be much my senior. How old are you, Miss Lyle?”

It was a question which a little later in life, when more accustomed to the world and its usages, Godfrey would not have asked; but Edith answered unhesitatingly; “I am twenty-seven.”

“Zounds!” said Godfrey. “You don’t look it. I did not imagine you more than twenty. Why, you might almost be my mother! No, it will never do to call you Edith. Father’s eyebrows would actually meet in the centre at such audacity on my part; that’s a trick he has of scowling when disagreeably surprised. Notice it sometimes, please. The only wrinkle in his face is that valley between his eyes.”

They were in the hall by this time, and bowing to her voluble acquaintance, Edith passed on to her room, where for half an hour or more she sat thinking of the strange Providence which had brought her so near to her past life, and wondering, too, what the result would be, and if she should tell Godfrey as she had fully intended to do, when he interrupted her with his tide of talk. It did not seem as easy to do it now as it had a little while ago; the good opportunity was gone and might not return.

While thus musing the dressing-bell rang, and turning from the window she began to dress for dinner with more interest than usual. Her salary would not allow a very extensive or expensive wardrobe, even if she had desired it, which she did not. Her taste was simple, and she was one of the few to whom every color and style is becoming. Whatever she wore looked well upon her, and in a little country town she would undoubtedly have set the fashion for all. Selecting now from her wardrobe a soft, fleecy, gray tissue, with trimmings of pale blue, her favorite color, she tied about her throat a bit of rich lace which Mrs. Sinclair had given her, and wore the pretty set of pink coral, also that lady’s gift. It was not often that she curled her hair, but to-day she let two heavy ringlets fall upon her neck, and knew herself how well she was looking, when, at the ringing of the second bell, she descended to the hall where Godfrey was waiting for her. He had thought her very handsome in her morning wrapper and garden hat, and when he saw her now he gave a suppressed kind of whistle, and with as much freedom as if she had been Alice Creighton, or one of his sisters, said to her, “Ain’t you nobby, though!”

It is doubtful if Edith knew just what nobby meant, but she set it down as an Americanism, and knew she was complimented.

“Allow me,” Godfrey said, and offering her his arm, he conducted her to the dining-room, where his aunt and father were already assembled.

CHAPTER X.
COLONEL SCHUYLER.

He looked up in some surprise when he saw the couple come in, and the scowl between the eyes, of which Godfrey had spoken, was plainly perceptible.

“My son is getting very familiar with that girl,” was his thought; but he was very polite to Edith, who sat near to him, and during the dinner he occasionally addressed some remark to her, while his eyes wandered often to her face with a questioning look, which brought a bright color to her cheek, and made her wonder if he was thinking of the young girl who had looked at him from among the vine leaves and told him Abelard’s name.

He was not thinking of her; he was only speculating upon the rare beauty of the face beside him, and trying vaguely to recall where he had seen one like it.

“In some picture gallery; a fancy piece, I think,” was his conclusion, as with a growing interest in Edith he resolved to question his sister concerning her at the first opportunity.

As yet he had only talked with Mrs. Sinclair of the past, and all that had come to them both since their last meeting years ago. She had told him of her life and failing health, so apparent to him that, as she talked, he had involuntarily taken her thin hands in his, and wished he had come to her sooner; and then he told her of himself and his children and his wife, who, whatever she might have been while living, had died a good true woman, and gone where neither a Rossiter nor Schuyler is preferred, but only they who have His name upon their foreheads. Of Godfrey he had spoken with all a father’s pride for his only son, saying he hoped that this trip would tone him down somewhat and make him more of a man and less of a wild, teasing boy; but of Edith he made no mention. Indeed, he had not given her a thought until he saw her come in on Godfrey’s arm, when there awoke within him a strange kind of interest in her, and an inexplicable feeling that in some way she was to affect him or his. He supposed her much younger than she was, and noticing Godfrey’s evident admiration he inly resolved to leave London very soon and take the lad out of harm’s way, if indeed any harm threatened him from this beautiful woman, who fascinated and attracted him as well.

“Sister,” he said to Mrs. Sinclair, when dinner was over and they were alone together, “who is this Miss Lyle? She has a remarkable face.”

Most women have a hobby, and Mrs. Sinclair’s was Edith, of whom she was never tired of talking. She had liked her from the first, and two years of intimate acquaintance had only increased her fondness for the girl, and for hours she would sit and ring her praises if she could but find a listener. So, now, when her brother said what he did, she began at once:

“Yes, she is a remarkable person every way. She has been with me more than two years, and I like her better every day. Such a face and figure are rarely seen in this country, and her manners would become a royal princess; and yet she is only the daughter of a poor curate, who must have made a foolish marriage with one not his equal. I cannot endure the girl’s mother. I’ve never seen her but once, and then she impressed me very unfavorably, as if she was not real, you know. Edith must be like her father. He is dead, and the mother takes in lodgers.”

“Ah,” and Colonel Schuyler’s voice was indicative of disappointment, but his next question was: “How old is this girl?”

“Twenty-seven, I believe,” was the reply, “though she looks much younger.”

“Yes, she does. I thought her about twenty,” Colonel Schuyler said, and with his fear for Godfrey removed, he arose and joined the young people, who had just come through a side door into the music room.

“Edith,” Mrs. Sinclair called, “play something for my brother.”

It was Mrs. Sinclair’s right to command, Edith’s business to obey, and without a word of dissent she sat down and played, with Godfrey on one side of her and the colonel on the other, both listening with rapt attention to her fine playing, and both admiring the soft, white hands which managed the keys so skilfully.

“Edith, dear, sing that pathetic little thing,

‘I am sitting alone to-night, darling.’

You can surely manage that, it is written so low,” Mrs. Sinclair said: and rising from the couch where she had been reclining, she came into the music room, and explained to her brother: “Her voice is not strong and cannot reach the higher notes. She had a great fright when she was quite young, wasn’t it, Edith?”

“Yes,” Edith answered faintly, as she felt the iron hand closing around her throat and shutting down all power to sing even the lowest note.

“I don’t like sitting alone at night, darling. I’d rather have somebody with me, so give us your jolliest piece,” Godfrey said, making Edith laugh in spite of herself, and lifting the invisible hand, so that her voice came back again; and, at Mrs. Sinclair’s second request, she sang:

“I am sitting alone to-night, darling,

Alone in the dear old room;

And the sound of the rain,

As it falls on the pane,

Makes darker the gathering gloom.

“For I know that it falls on a grave, darling,

A grave ’neath the evergreen shade,

Where I laid you away,

One bright autumn day,

When the flowers were beginning to fade.”

Oh, how soft and low and sweet was the voice which sang the song of which Abelard Lyle had been so fond, and there was almost a tear in Godfrey’s eye, and the colonel was beginning to look very grave, when the white hands suddenly stopped and fell with a crash among the keys, while Edith gasped, “I can’t finish it; the iron fingers are on my throat, just as they were that dreadful day.”

She evidently did not quite know what she was saying, and her face was deathly pale.

“You are sick, Miss Lyle; come into the air!” Colonel Schuyler said, and leading her out upon the veranda, he made her sit down, while Mrs. Sinclair brought her smelling salts, and Godfrey hovered about disconsolately, remembering the scene in the summer-house, and wondering if she had such spells often. And, having knocked his head against his father’s, when they both stooped to pick up Edith’s handkerchief, he concluded he was de trop, and walked away, saying to himself: “I do believe he is hit real hard. Wouldn’t it be fun to call that regal creature mother!”

He laughed aloud at the idea, but did not think it would be fun, and did not quite believe in his father’s being “hit,” either; but when half an hour later he returned and found the Colonel still sitting by Edith, who had recovered herself, and was talking with a good deal of animation, he felt irritated and impatient, and went off to his room and wrote in his “Impressions of Europe,” a kind of journal he was keeping of his tour, and which he meant to show “the girls,” by way of proving that one American could go abroad and not indorse everything he saw, and make a fool of himself generally. His entry that night was in part as follows:

“Oakwood is a fine old place, with an extensive park, a smoke-house, fine stables, a dog-kennel, and seven servants, to take care of two unprotected females. Edith Lyle, aged 27, is the handsomest woman I ever saw, even in America. Her features are perfect, especially her nose, which might have been the model for the Greek Slave. Not a bit of a pug, and her eyes are large and soft and liquid, as those of the ox-eyed Juno (I like that classical allusion; it shows reading), while her ears are the tiniest I ever saw,—just like little pink sea-shells,—and her splendid brown hair, with a shade or two of yellow sunshine in it, rippling back from her smooth white brow, just exactly curly enough, and natural, too, I’ll be bound. She don’t put it up in crimps, not she. Why, what a scarecrow Alice Creighton was, though, that time I caught her with those two forks hanging down about her eyes, with a kind of clamp or horse-shoe on them. I like people natural, as I am sure Edith is. I wonder what makes her go off into a kind of white faint all of a sudden. She did it twice to-day, and I would not wonder if she was given to fits. The governor is hit, sure. I never knew him seem as much interested in any one before. The idea of his leading her into the air and then holding those salts to her nose till he strangled her,—bah!”

And, while Godfrey wrote thus in his journal, his father sat talking to Edith, and wondering to find how much she knew and how sensibly she expressed herself. Colonel Schuyler was not a man of many words, and seldom talked much to any one, but there was something about Edith which interested him greatly, and he sat by her until the twilight began to close around them, and his sister came to warn him against taking cold and exposing Edith, too. Then he went into the house, and, without exactly knowing it, felt a little disappointed when she left the room and did not come again.

Colonel Schuyler kept a journal, too, in which he occasionally jotted down the incidents of the day; and that night, after recounting his arrival at Oakwood and his grief at finding his sister so great an invalid, he added:

“She is exceedingly fortunate in having secured a most admirable person for her companion. Besides being educated, and refined, and beautiful, Miss Lyle impresses me as a remarkable woman. Yes, as a very remarkable woman.”

The next night Godfrey recorded:

“There is nothing quite so foolish as an old man in love! I wonder if he thinks she can care for him!—and yet he blushed to-day when I found him turning the leaves of her music and listening to her singing. I never knew him listen two minutes to Alice and Jule,—and no wonder, such operatic screeches as they make when Professor La Farge is there, and the boys in the street stop and mock them. Edith’s voice is the sweetest I ever heard, and so sad that it makes a chap feel for his bandanna. Why, even father told auntie that her singing made him think of poor Emily, meaning my mother! It is a bad sign when a live woman like Edith Lyle makes a man think of his dead wife. I wonder what she thinks of him! She looks as unconcerned as a block of marble; but you can’t tell what is in a woman’s mind, and widowers are awful. Why, there have been forty women after father already; but I must say he has behaved admirably thus far, and never spoken to a bonnet outside our own family, unless it were to Miss Esther Armstrong, and that is nothing. She is the Hampstead school-ma’am, and has thrashed me more than twenty times.”

In Colonel Schuyler’s journal the record was as follows:

“I wonder if my dear Emily knows how much Miss Lyle’s singing makes me think of her and her grave under the evergreen, where we did

‘Lay her away, one bright autumn day,

When the flowers were beginning to fade.’

Miss Lyle has a singularly sweet, plaintive voice, and it affects me strangely, for I did not know I cared for music. Emily never sang, and the young ladies at home make very singular sounds sometimes. It is strange about her losing her voice, or rather her power to reach the higher notes. It must have been a fearful shock of some kind, and she evidently does not like to talk of it; for, when I questioned her a little and advised her seeing a physician, she seemed disturbed and agitated, and even distressed. Dr. Malcolm at Hampstead would know just what to do for her, and she ought to have medical advice, for she has a remarkable voice,—a very remarkable voice.”

When Colonel Schuyler liked a thing, it was remarkable, and when he liked it very much, it was very remarkable; so, when he wrote what he did of Edith and her voice, he had passed upon her his highest encomium.

Four weeks went by, and he still lingered at Oakwood, and on the last day of the fourth week wrote again:

“I fully expected to have been in France before this time, but have stayed on for what reason I hardly know. It is very pleasant here, and my sister’s health is such that I dislike to leave her so soon, even though I leave her in excellent hands. Miss Edith is certainly a very remarkable person, and I am more interested in her than I have been in any one since I first met my dear Emily.”

Here the colonel paused, and laying down his pen went back in thought to the time when he was young and first met Emily Rossiter, the proud, pale, light-haired girl, whose two hundred thousand in prospect had made her a belle in society, and little as he liked to own it now that the daisies were growing above her, had commended her to his consideration. His courtship was short, and wholly void of passion or ecstasy. She knew he was a suitable match and she wished to go abroad, and accepted him readily enough, and they were married without so much as a kiss exchanged between them. He had so far unbent from his cold dignity as to hold her hand in his own while he asked her to be his wife, but as soon as her promise was given he put it back in her lap very respectfully, and said, “That hand is now mine,” and that was the nearest approach to love-making which he reached with Emily. After marriage he was scarcely more demonstrative, though always kind and considerate, and when at her father’s death it was found that her fortune was one hundred thousand instead of two, he kept it to himself if he felt any chagrin, and never in a single instance checked her extravagance, but suffered her in everything to have her way. At the last, however, when she stood face to face with death, and her life with him lay all behind, there came a change, and he could yet feel the passionate kiss which the white lips pressed upon his as they called him “dear husband.”

“Poor Emily,” he said, aloud; “we were very happy together.”

Just then, upon the terrace below there was the sound of a clear, sweet voice, which thrilled him as Emily’s never had, and Edith looked up to the windows of the room adjoining his, where Godfrey was calling to her. It was a beautiful face, and as he watched her gliding away among the shrubbery he thought how she would brighten and adorn his house at Schuyler Hill, and how proud he should be of her when his money had arrayed her in the apparel befitting his wife. Every barrier of pride and prejudice and early training had gone down before Edith Lyle’s wonderful beauty, and the proud, haughty man was ready to offer her his name and hand on one condition. Her mother could not go with her, and in taking him she must give up her family friends, if indeed she had any besides the mother. He knew nothing against Mrs. Barrett, but his sister disliked her, and that was enough, if he ignored, as he tried to think he did, the fact that she took in lodgers and sewing. Many highly respectable ladies did that, he knew, but he had a feeling that Edith’s mother was not highly respectable, and he doubted if she was a lady even. His sister, when questioned with regard to Edith’s family, had reported the mother as a pushing, curious, disagreeable woman, who assumed to be what she certainly was not.

“Edith is not like her in the least, and must inherit her natural refinement and delicacy from her father,” Mrs. Sinclair had said, and the colonel was satisfied if one side of the house was comme il faut.

As a Schuyler he could afford to stoop a little, and he felt that it was stooping to marry his sister’s hired companion. As far as position was concerned, he might as well take poor, plain Ettie Armstrong, the village schoolmistress, who in point of family was undoubtedly Edith’s equal. There was, however, this difference. The people at home could know nothing of Edith’s antecedents, save that she was an English girl and the daughter of a curate; while another fact, which outweighed all else, was her exceeding great beauty and queenly style, which, with proper surroundings and influence, would place her on the highest wave of society. And he was ready to give her the surroundings and the influence, and felt a thrill of exultant pride as he saw her in fancy at the head of his table and moving through his handsome rooms, herself the handsomest appendage there.

“I may as well settle it at once,” he thought, and the next day he found his opportunity and took it, with what success the reader will learn from a page in Edith’s diary.

CHAPTER XI.
EDITH’S DIARY.

Oakwood, July 15th, 18—.

Am I dreaming, or is it a reality that Col. Schuyler has asked me to be his wife? He says he thinks I am more beautiful than any woman he has ever seen, and that I would make such a rare gem for his house at Hampstead, and he would surround me with every possible luxury. And in his voice, usually so cold and calm and impassioned, there was a little trembling, and his forehead flushed as he went on to state the one condition on which he would do me this honor:

“My mother must have no part in my grandeur! She must remain here. If necessary, money should be freely given for her needs, but she could not live with me!”

Poor mother, with all her planning and her dreams of my brilliant future she never once thought that when the chance came she would be left out and have neither part nor lot in the question! What would she say if she knew it, and what will she say when I tell her I refused him? For I did, and told him it could never be. For a moment, though, weak woman that I am, I was tempted to end this life of dependence and poverty, and take what he offered me; not his love: he never hinted at such an emotion, and I think that feeling is rare in such natures as his. I doubt if he felt it for the Lady Emily, whom he married in his May time, and surely now in his October he has no place for foolishness of that kind. He does not love me, but he admires my face and form, and would no doubt be very kind and careful of me, just as he would be kind to and careful of a favorite horse whose looks depended on such treatment. He would hang upon me jewels rare, with silks and laces and satins, and I could wear them and feel my heart break afresh each time I looked from my window across the lawn to that grave under the evergreen where Abelard is lying. I should hear him discussed, and with Colonel Schuyler stand by the mound and listen to a story I know so well, and loathe myself for the lie I was acting, for if I was there as Colonel Schuyler’s wife, my life would be one tissue of falsehood and deceit. He, of all men in the world, would not take me if he knew the truth, and during that interval when I hesitated I had resolved not to tell him! I would go to him, if I went at all, as Edith Lyle the maiden, and not Edith Lyle the widow. But only for an instant, thank Heaven, did the tempter have me in his control ere I cast him behind me with the resolve that whatever else I might do, I would be frank with the man whom I made up my mind to marry, and as I had not made up my mind to marry Colonel Schuyler, I did not tell him who I was. I only declined his offer, and said it could not be, and when his remark that I did not know what I was doing angered me, I burst out impetuously:

“I do know what I am doing. I am refusing a match which the world,—your world, would say was far above me; but, Colonel Schuyler, poor as I am, and humble in position, I am rich in the feeling which will not let me sell myself for a name and a home. And if I accepted you it would be only for that. I respect you. I believe you to be sincere in your offer, and that you would try to make me happy, but you could not do it unless I loved you, and I do not; besides——”

Here he stopped me, and took both my hands in his, and seemed almost tender and lovable as he said

“Edith, I did not suppose you could love me so soon, but I hoped you might grow to it when you found how proud I was of you, and how I would try to make you happy.”

“Colonel Schuyler,” I interrupted him, “you have talked of your pride in me, and your admiration of me, but you have said nothing of love. Answer me now, please. Do you love me?”

He wanted to say yes, I know, for his chin quivered, and there was in his face the look of one fighting with some principle hard to be overcome. In his case it was the principle of truth and right, and it conquered every other feeling, and compelled him to answer:

“Perhaps not as you in your youth count love. Our acquaintance has been too short for that; but I can and I will; only give me a chance. Don’t decide now. I will not take it as a decision if you do. Wait till my return from the Continent, and then tell me what you will do. I had hoped to take you with me, and thought that the glories of Rome, seen by me twice before, would gain new interest with your eyes beside me. But my sister needs you; stay with her during my absence, and try to like me a little, and when I come back I know I can say to you, ‘Edith Lyle, I love you.’”

I was touched and softened by his manner quite as much as by what he said, and I replied to him, gently:

“Even then my answer must be the same. My love was buried years ago. I have a story to tell you of the past.”

Again those dreadful fingers clutched my throat as I tried to tell him of Abelard, and my dead baby, buried I knew not where. My voice was gone, and my face, which was deadly pale, frightened him I know, for he led me to the window and pushed my hair from my brow and said to me:

“Edith, please do not distress yourself with any tale of the past. You say you have loved and lost that love, and let that suffice. I suspected something of the kind, but you are not less desirable to me. I have loved and lost, and in that respect we are even; so let nothing in the past deter you from giving me the answer I so much desire when I return to Oakwood. Godfrey is coming this way. I hear his whistle; so good-night, and Heaven bless you, Edith.”

He pressed my hand and left the room just as Godfrey entered the door in another direction, singing softly when he saw me:

“She sat by the door one cold afternoon,

To hear the wind blow and look at the moon;

So pensive was Edith, my dear, darling Edith.”

He did not get any farther, for something in his light badinage jarred upon my feelings just then, and assuming a severe dignity, I said:

“You mistake the name. I am not Edith. I am Miss Lyle.”

He looked surprised an instant, and then, with a comical smile and a shaking down of his pants, he said:

“I beg your pardon, Miss Lyle. I meant Kathleen O’Moore, of course, but seeing you at the moment I made a mistake in the name, and no wonder, dazed as I am with a letter just received from Alice, who hopes I shall return from my foreign travel greatly improved in mind, and taste, and manners, as if the latter could be improved. She sent her picture too. Would you like to see it?”

He passed me the carte-de-visite, and I saw the likeness of a girl who he said was only sixteen, but whom I should have taken for twenty, at least, judging from the dress and the expression of the face, which I did not like. It was too supercilious, if not insolent, to suit me, while the turned-up nose added to the look. And still there was a style about her which marked her as what is called a “high-bred city girl,” and I have no doubt she will eventually become a belle, with her immense fortune and proud, arrogant demeanor.

“What do you think of it?” Godfrey asked; and feeling sure that with regard to her his feelings could not be wounded, I answered:

“I do not quite like her expression, and she looks too old for you.”

“Good! I’ll tell her that some time when she is nagging me unmercifully,” Godfrey said, adding: “I had a letter from Jule too, with her photograph, and also one of our house and grounds. This is Julia.”

It was the face of a brunette, dark, handsome, but proud and imperious, and I was glad that she was not to be my step-daughter.

“Jule is handsome, except her ears, which are as big as a palm-leaf fan,” Godfrey said, and I replied:

“Yes, she is handsome, and will make a brilliant woman.”

“This is our home,” he continued, and he put into my hand a large photograph of the house on Schuyler Hill, and a considerable portion of the grounds.

There were the tops of the evergreens, and there was a white stone shining through the green, and I said to Godfrey,

“Whose monument is that?”

“That? Let me see. Why, that is young Lyle’s, the man who saved my life. You remember I told you about him? Mother’s is farther on and out of sight.”

How faint and sick I felt to have Abelard’s grave thus brought near to me, and there was a blur before my eyes, which, for a moment, prevented me from seeing distinctly. Then it cleared away, and I was able to examine the picture and see how the grounds had been improved since that morning when Abelard’s blood was on the grass where now the flowers were growing. It was a fine place, and as I looked at it and thought it had been offered me, ay, might yet be mine, if I would take it, did I feel any regret for having refused it? None whatever. If I were to tell Col. Schuyler everything I should never go there, and if I were to go without telling him my life would be one of wretchedness and hatred of myself. No, better bear with poverty and servitude than live a greater lie than I am living now. So I gave the picture back to Godfrey, and bidding him good-night, came up to my room, where I could be alone, to think over the events of that eventful day.

EXTRACT FROM GODFREY’S JOURNAL.

“What a regal creature Edith is! and I do believe father thinks so too, but that would be an awful match for her. Jule would scratch her eyes out, and if ever I should marry Alice, which I never shall, but if I do, and bring her home to Schuyler Hill, wouldn’t I have lively times between step-mother and wife; but that is too absurd to consider for a moment. I wish she was younger or that I was older. Let me see,—’most eighteen from ’most twenty-eight, leaves ten. No, that will never do. A man may not marry his grandmother, much less a boy, as Jule calls me in her letter, giving me all sorts of advice, and hoping I will overcome that habit of wriggling,—meaning the way I have of shaking down my pants. As if I knew when I did it. Alice’s letter was a very good one, only why need she call me “Dear Godfrey” when I’m not her Dear Godfrey, and never shall be. Why, she looks older than Miss Lyle herself in that picture, with her hair stuck on the top of her head like a heathen Chinee. I believe I’ll tear the picture up. Miss Lyle did not like it, neither do I, and I will not have it in my possession. I wonder if Miss Lyle would give me hers. I mean to ask her to-morrow.”

He did ask her and received no for his answer, and then tore up Alice’s photograph, and packed his valise, and with his father set off for Paris the following day.

CHAPTER XII.
EDITH AND HER MOTHER.

“And you refused him?”

“Yes, mother, I refused him.”

“Are you crazy, child?”

“Not as crazy as I should be to accept him.”

Edith was sitting with her mother in the little house in Caledonia Street, when the above conversation took place. It was the day of Col. Schuyler’s departure for Paris, and she had driven into town, with permission to stay to tea if she liked. She had not intended to tell her mother what had been said to her by the colonel, but when questioned of him something in her manner excited Mrs. Barrett’s suspicion, and in her usual forcible way she wrung from her daughter the fact that Schuyler Hill had been offered to her and refused. To say that Mrs. Barrett was angry would feebly express her emotions. In all her dreams for Edith she had never hoped for anything quite equal to an alliance with Col. Schuyler, and now that she had wilfully thrown the chance away she was exceedingly indignant, and expressed her disapprobation in terms so harsh and bitter that Edith, who seldom felt equal to a contest with her mother’s fierce, strong will, roused herself at last and answered back:

“Mother, you have said enough, and you must stop now and listen to me. You upbraid me for having thrown away the chance for which you have waited so long, and to which you say you have shaped every act of your life since I was born, and you accuse me of ingratitude when you have done so much for me. Mother, for all the real good you have done me I am grateful, and you know how gladly I will work for you so long as I have health and strength to do so, but for the secrecy you have imposed upon me with regard to my past life I do not thank you, and could I go backward a few years, or had my baby lived, I would have no concealments from the world. To me it is no shame that I was once the wife of Abelard Lyle; the shame is that I try to hide it, and when Colonel Schuyler asked me to be his, the truth sprang to my lips at once, and but for that terrible choking sensation which came upon me when you took baby away, I should have told him all.”

“And ruined your prospects forever,” Mrs. Barrett said, angrily.

“Yes, ruined them forever so far as Col. Schuyler is concerned, but that would have mattered little,” Edith answered, proudly. “I have no love for him; he has none for me. I asked him the question, and he could not tell me yes. His fancy was caught, and he talked of my beauty, and grace, and voice, and culture, and hinted that I was a fitting picture for his handsome home in Hampstead. You saw Lady Emily once. You remember how pale, and sallow, and thin she was. Neither gems nor rich gay clothing could make her fair to look upon, and I have no doubt her husband would be prouder of me than he ever was of her, with all her money and Rossiter blood, that is, if he took me as Edith Lyle, the daughter of an English curate, and nothing more; but once let him know the truth, as he assuredly must have known it if I had for a moment considered his proposition,—and think you he would not have spurned with contempt the widow of a carpenter, and that carpenter his own hired workman?”

“Not if he truly loved you,” Mrs. Barrett interposed; and Edith answered impetuously:

“But I tell you he does not love me. He only cares for my personal attractions,—he would like to show me off as his young English bride, whose family must be ignored, for, mother, he told me that distinctly; he said he knew nothing of my friends, and did not care to know, as he wished for me alone; that if I married him, you must stay behind,—a mother-in-law always made more or less trouble, and he preferred to have you remain where you are, and if money was needed for your support, it should always be forthcoming in sufficient amount for every comfort.”

“And yet he knows nothing of me to dislike,” Mrs. Barrett faltered, her countenance falling, and her eyes having in them a look of disappointment.

That she was to be set aside and have no part in Edith’s grandeur, had never occurred to her, and in fancy she had already crossed the sea and was luxuriously domesticated at Schuyler Hill, as the mother of the mistress and general superintendent of everything, with plenty of money at her command, and herself looked up to and envied by the very people who had once treated her slightingly, and who would never suspect of having known her as Mrs. Fordham. She looked much older now than she had eleven years ago, and her hair was white as snow, while the deep black she wore constantly was a still more complete disguise. So there was no danger of detection,—no link to connect her with the cottage by the bridge where she once lived, or that grave under the evergreen. But all this was of no avail. Col. Schuyler would not have her on any terms, and knowing this she was the more easily reconciled to Edith’s decision, until by dint of questioning she learned that the colonel did not consider the matter settled, but would urge his suit again on his return to England. Then her old ambition revived, and with a mother’s forgetfulness of self, she thought, “She shall accept him then. I will see her a lady even if I starve in a garret.”

But she wisely resolved to say no more upon the subject at present, and Edith had arisen to go, when down the stairs came the patter of little feet, and a sweet, childish voice was heard warbling a simple Scottish ballad, and Edith caught a gleam of bright auburn hair falling under a white cape bonnet, as a young girl went past the window and out upon the walk.

“Whose child is that? Has Mrs. Rogers come?” she asked, and Mrs. Barrett answered:

“She has been here nearly two weeks, and that is little Gertie Westbrooke.”

CHAPTER XIII.
MRS. BARRETT’S LODGERS.

Mrs. Rogers had received a message from her cousin Norah, which sent her again to Caledonia Street, where she found Mrs. Barrett more civil than before, and more inclined to let her rooms. Some little hesitancy there was, it is true, with regard to the chamber which had been Edith’s, and where she now occasionally spent a night.

“Surely your daughter can sleep with you, and does not require an extra room,” Mrs. Barrett said; and Mrs. Rogers replied:

“I prefer that she should have a room to herself. As I told you before, she is not my child, and I am more particular on that account to bring her up different. She has as good blood in her veins as many a would-be fine lady.”

So Mrs. Barrett gave up the point and prepared Edith’s old room for little Gertie, to whom Mary was as devoted as if she had been a scion of nobility. If Mrs. Barrett had cared for children she would have been interested in Gertie at once, but as it was she did not notice her particularly till she had been for several days an inmate of the house. Then one afternoon, as she sat at her sewing, her ear caught the sound of a sweet voice singing a familiar air. Something in the tone of the voice arrested her attention, and carried her back to the time when Edith was young and sang that very song. Moving her chair so that she could command a better view of the back porch where Gertie sat, she noticed for the first time how very pretty she was. She was rather small for her age, and had a round, sweet face, with a complexion like wax, and the clearest, sunniest blue eyes, which seemed fairly to dance when she was pleased, and again were so dreamy and indescribably sad in their expression as if the remembrance of some great sorrow had left its shadows in them. The long, thick eyelashes, and heavy arched brows gave them the appearance of being much darker than they really were, and when the lids were raised one was surprised to find them just the color of the summer sky on a clear, balmy day. But Gertie’s hair was her greatest point of beauty, her bright, wavy hair which in her babyhood must have been almost red, but which now was auburn, with a shading of gold in it. Taken altogether, she was a very beautiful child, and one whom strangers always noticed and commented upon, and even Mrs. Barrett, as she sat watching her, felt a sudden throb of interest in her, and thought of another little one, who might have called her grandma and made her old age happy.

“Gertie,” she said, after a moment, “come here, please. I want to talk with you.”

Startled by the voice and a little surprised to be addressed by the cold, quiet woman who had never before evinced the slightest interest in her or scarcely spoken to her, Gertie arose, and coming timidly to Mrs. Barrett’s side, stood waiting for her to speak.

“Gertie,” Mrs. Barrett began, “have you always lived in London?”

“Yes, ma’am, but not with auntie,” was Gertie’s reply: and Mrs. Barrett continued: “With whom then did you live?”

“With my mamma, who died when I was two years old,” was the prompt answer; and Mrs. Barrett went on: “Had you no father then?”

“Why, yes, but—but——;” the child hesitated a little and blushed painfully, then added, “he didn’t like me much, I guess, and when the new mother came, it was very bad, and so auntie, who isn’t my auntie, you know, only she lived there and liked me, took me for her own little girl, and I’ve been so happy with her, though mamma’s house was much bigger and nicer than any we have had since, and there were servants there just as there are at Oakwood, only not so many. But I like living with auntie best.”

Mrs. Barrett was interested now, and was about to question the child further of that home like Oakwood, when Mrs. Rogers appeared and called the little girl away. That afternoon Mrs. Barrett was attacked with a nervous headache which was so severe as to send her to her bed, where she lay with her eyes closed and moaning occasionally, when a light footstep crossed the floor, and a low, sweet voice said: “You are real sick, aren’t you? May I do something for you?” and before Mrs. Barrett could speak, two soft hands were pressed upon her aching head, which they rubbed and caressed until the throbbing ceased entirely, and the pain was less hard to bear. Gertie was a natural nurse, and she smoothed the lady’s pillow, and folded up a shawl and put it away and adjusted the shutters to exclude the light and still admit the air, and did it all so quietly and noiselessly that Mrs. Barrett would hardly have known she was there.

“You are very kind,” she said, “and I thank you so much, but don’t trouble yourself anymore. I shall do very well now.”

“Oh, I like to take care of you,” Gertie answered. “It’s funny I know, but you see I make believe I am caring for my grandma. I have one somewhere, auntie says, although I never saw her, and I guess she don’t like me very well.”

“Not like you!” Mrs. Barrett exclaimed. “How can she help it?”

“You see she don’t know me,” Gertie answered. “If she did, maybe she would. Do you like me?”

The question was put timidly, and the little face was very grave until the answer came, “Yes, very much;” then it flushed all over, and the blue eyes shone like stars while the warm red lips touched Mrs. Barrett’s cheek so lovingly, as Gertie exclaimed: “I am so glad. I want to be liked. I want everybody to like me.”

A desire to be loved was a part of Gertie’s nature, and with it she seemed to possess the faculty of making everybody love her, even to Mrs. Barrett, who, after that day, was exceedingly kind to the little girl, and ceased to care because she was an occupant of Edith’s room. That there was some history connected with her she was sure, but no questioning on her part availed to elicit any more information than had been volunteered during their first interview. Mrs. Rogers must have cautioned Gertie not to talk of her parents and old home, for she was very reticent, and answered evasively whenever Mrs. Barrett broached the subject to her, as she did once or twice.

“Auntie can tell you,” was her reply, when asked where her father had lived, and as Mrs. Barrett did not care to talk to Mrs. Rogers, she knew nothing definite of little Gertie Westbrooke when Edith came to see her and brought news of her rejection of the colonel.

CHAPTER XIV.
COLONEL SCHUYLER RETURNS.

“Oakwood, May 25th, 18—.

“Colonel Schuyler:—Your sister, Mrs. Sinclair, is lying very low, and desires to see you as soon as possible.

“Respectfully, Edith Lyle.”

This short epistle found Col. Schuyler in Florence, and brought him back to England at once. During the winter and the early spring Mrs. Sinclair had been failing, and when May came, the change in her for the worse was so perceptible that she asked Edith to write for her brother, whom she wished to see once more. To Edith the thought of losing her kind mistress was terrible, for, aside from the genuine love she bore the lady, she knew that losing her involved also the loss of the home where she had been so happy, and she dreaded to encounter the curious suspicions she would have to meet alone and unprotected.

“What will you do when I am gone?” Mrs. Sinclair said to her one day when speaking of her approaching decease, and as Edith made no reply, except to cover her face with her fingers, through which the tears trickled slowly, she went on: “You seem to me like a daughter, and I shrink from the thought of leaving you alone. If it were possible I would make you independent, but at my death the Oakwood property reverts to a nephew of my husband’s, and I cannot control it. I can, however, do something for you, and will. Edith, I have never mentioned the subject to you before,—but, was there not,—did not my brother offer himself to you last summer when he was here?”

“Yes,” came faintly from Edith; and Mrs. Sinclair continued:

“And you refused him, subject, I believe, to a reconsideration?”

“I refused him, and with no thought of reconsideration on my part. My decision was final,” Edith said; and Mrs. Sinclair continued:

“It is not for me to dictate in such matters, perhaps, but it seems to me you will do well to think of it again should he renew the matter on his return. It is an offer which any woman should consider seriously before rejecting it. I know he can make you happy, and you would far better be his honored wife even if he is many years your senior, than be cast upon the world with your face and manner as a lure to evil-minded men, who hold a governess as only fair spoil.”

“I know it; I know all that, and feel it so keenly,” Edith answered, and for an instant there came over her such a feeling of utter loneliness and desolation, and such a shrinking from the future which might be to her what the past had been until she knew Mrs. Sinclair, that she would almost have taken Colonel Schuyler had he been there then.

Smothering her sobs and commanding her voice as well as she could, she continued:

“I would rather die than meet again what I have met in the families where I was employed before I knew you, but mother is poor and growing old, and I must do something.”

“Why not take the home offered you?” Mrs. Sinclair asked, while Edith sat motionless as a stone, her face as white as ashes, and that horrid sensation in her throat which kept her from uttering a word.

When at last she could speak she astonished Mrs. Sinclair by falling on her knees beside the bed, and crying out:

“Oh, Mrs. Sinclair, you do not know, you cannot guess what and who I am, or you would know that could never be. Forgive me, I have been an impostor all these years, but now I must speak and tell the whole, and then you shall judge if your proud brother, knowing all, would take me for his bride.”

Twenty minutes passed, and then Edith sat, paler and more motionless, if possible, than before, her hands pressed tightly together, and her eyes cast down as if afraid to meet the wondering gaze fixed upon her. She had withheld nothing, and Mrs. Sinclair knew the entire story, from the hasty marriage in New York, up to the day when the message came that the little baby was dead. She had been astonished and shocked, and indignant with the mother rather than with the daughter, who, she readily saw, had been only a tool in an ambitious, heartless woman’s hands, and whom she could forgive for a deception which had wronged no one and in which no one but herself was as yet involved. So, when at last she spoke, her voice was just as kind and gentle as of old, as she said:

“My poor child, yours is a strange experience for one so young. Truth is always best, and it would have been just as well if it had been confessed at first. I am glad you have told me; and if my brother asks you again, as I think he will, you must tell him. It may make a difference with him. I do not know. Certainly it would, if withheld till after marriage. That deception he would hardly forgive. Leave me now, please; I am very tired, and you, too, need the open air after your great excitement.”

The next day Col. Schuyler came alone, as Godfrey was in Russia. But Mrs. Sinclair was too weak to talk much, and could only look her pleasure at her brothers presence. Three days after she died, with her head on Col. Schuyler’s bosom and Edith kneeling at her side. Just at the last she had taken the girl’s hand, and putting it in that of her brother had whispered:

“Take care of her, Howard. She is worthy, and has been like a daughter to me.”

“I will,” he answered, emphatically, as his hand closed tightly over that of Edith, who felt as if that hand-clasp bound her to the fate which she had no longer power to resist.

Immediately after the funeral she returned to her mother’s cottage, but before she went Col. Schuyler asked for a private interview, which she granted with a feeling that it was of no use to struggle against what was inevitable. Col. Schuyler had tried to forget her during his travels; had tried to reason with himself that a poor unknown girl, who was his sister’s hired companion, was not a fitting match for a Schuyler whose first wife had been a Rossiter. But one thought of the beautiful face, and of the sweet voice which had sung to him in the twilight was sufficient to break down every barrier of pride and make him willing to sacrifice a great deal for the sake of securing her. And so it was that on his return to England he was resolved to renew the offer once made and rejected, and to take no refusal this time. His sister approved his choice, and had sanctioned it with her dying breath, and thus reassured he went to Edith with a feeling of security as to the result of the interview, which manifested itself somewhat in his manner, and made Edith feel more and more how helpless she was, and how certain it was that her secret must be told.

“Edith,” he began in his stiff way, as he took a seat beside her, “just before I left Oakwood last August, I held a conversation with you which I know you have not forgotten. I asked you to be my wife, and you asked me if I loved you. I could not say yes, then, for though I admired and respected, and wanted you, I did not experience any of those ecstatic thrills of which we read in books, and which very young people call love. And even now,”—he paused a moment and hesitated, and a flush spread itself over his face, “even now I may not feel as a younger man would in similar circumstances; but when I tell you that you have scarcely been out of my mind for a moment during my absence, that I have dreamed of you night and day, and that in all the world there is nothing I desire so much as I desire you, I think you will be satisfied that if I do not love you as you have imagined you might be loved, I am in a fair way to do so, if I receive a little encouragement.”

He paused, but Edith did not speak, and sat before him with her long eyelashes cast down and her hands working nervously together. She knew he was sincere, though his wooing was so different from what Abelard’s had been, or what Godfrey’s would be were he in his father’s place. But Godfrey was young, and Abelard had been young, too, and both were different from this cold, proud man of forty, who had unbent his dignity so much, and who seemed so earnest, and even tender as he went on to tell her of all she had to gain if she would go with him to the home he would make more beautiful than it already was, for her sake. It was a very pleasant picture he drew of the future, but it did not move Edith one whit, because she felt certain that this life could not be hers if she told him all, as she must surely tell him, if he persisted in his suit. She admitted to him that he was not disagreeable to her; that she found his society pleasant; that she believed him to be a man of honor, who would try to make her happy; and when he asked why she hesitated, she opened her lips to tell him, but could not speak the words.

“I can write them better,” she thought, and when she could command her voice, she said to him: “Give me a few days, a week, in which to think, and then I will write you my decision. I know you honor me, and I thank you for it, and believe you sincere, and for that reason, would not for the world deceive you. I have something to tell you which I can better put on paper. Let me go now, for I feel like suffocating.”

She spoke slowly and with difficulty, and her face was so white, that Col. Schuyler felt alarmed lest she should faint, and passing his arm around her, led her to the balcony and brought her a glass of water, and laid his hand softly on her hair, and seemed so kind and thoughtful, that for the first time there awoke in Edith’s heart a throb of something like affection for this man who might make her so happy.

“Oh, if I only could forget the past and accept the life offered me,” she thought, as an hour later he put her into the carriage which was to take her to her mother’s, and then pressing her hand deferentially, said to her: “I shall await your answer with a great deal of impatience, and shall not consent to receive an unfavorable one.”

He lifted his hat, and the carriage drove away to Caledonia Street, where her mother was expecting her.

CHAPTER XV.
EDITH’S ANSWER.

Gertie Westbrooke had gone to the country with Mrs. Rogers for a few weeks, and Edith occupied her old room, and slept in the child’s bed, and dreamed strange things which haunted her waking hours, and sent her heart back to the little one lost long ago with a yearning such as she had not felt in years. And with this pain, this sense of loss still clinging to her, she sat down one morning and wrote the story of her life, word for word, keeping nothing back and finishing by saying:

“If, after knowing all this, you still wish me to be your wife, I will not refuse, but will do my duty faithfully, so help me Heaven!”

She showed the letter to her mother, who, finding that it was useless to oppose her daughter, offered to take it to Oakwood herself.

“Better so than to trust it to the post,” she said. “Besides, it is well for me to be there to answer any questions he may ask, and to take the blame wholly upon myself, as I deserve.”

Edith did not refuse. She was rather glad than otherwise to have her mother go as a kind of mediator between herself and the man whom she began to find it would be a little hard to lose. Accordingly Mrs. Barrett arrayed herself in her deepest mourning, and with her thick veil drawn over her face, started for Oakwood and asked for Colonel Schuyler. He had passed the four days drearily enough, and in his impatience had more than once resolved to go to Caledonia Street, and claim Edith’s answer. But he had promised her not to do so, and he remained at Oakwood in a state of great suspense, until the day when a lady was announced as wishing to see him.

“It surely cannot be Edith,” he thought, as he started for the parlor, where the closely-veiled figure arose and introduced itself as “Mrs. Dr. Barrett, mother of Miss Lyle.”

Colonel Schuyler was one of the preoccupied kind of men who take little note of what does not directly concern them, and though he must have heard the name of Edith’s mother, he had paid no attention to it, or thought strange that it was not Lyle. Now, however, he noticed it, and with only a stiff bow to the lady said:

“Barrett? Mrs. Barrett? And you Miss Lyle’s mother? How is that?”

“I have been twice married, and my last husband was Dr. Barrett,” was the reply, which satisfied the colonel, who took a seat at some distance from his visitor and waited for her to communicate her business.

Evidently it was a little awkward for her to do so, for she hesitated and fidgeted in her chair and grew very red under her black veil, and wished Colonel Schuyler would not scan her as curiously as he was doing. At last, with a great effort, she began:

“My daughter has told me all that has passed between you, and I am come with a message from her.”

“A message!” Col. Schuyler repeated, in some surprise; “I supposed she was to write.”

He did not like this interference by a third person, and that person a woman, whom his sister had described as “pushing and inquisitive,” and for whom he had conceived a prejudice without knowing why. She was very deferential, almost cringing in her manner, and her voice was apologetic in its tone, as she replied:

“Yes, I know, she meant to send a letter, and she did commence one yesterday, but grew so nervous over it that she finally gave it up, and allowed me to come instead.”

Here she stopped a moment, and her hands worked together restlessly while Col. Schuyler, in haste to know the worst, if worst there were, said stiffly:

“Well, you are here, then, to say your daughter has refused me;” and as he spoke the words, he was conscious of a sharp pang which told him how hard such news would be to bear, and when Mrs. Barrett continued, “No, not to tell you that,” the revulsion of feeling was so great that, forgetful of his aversion for his prospective mother-in-law, he arose and came near to her, while she continued:

“Her acceptance depends wholly upon yourself, and how you take the story I am here to tell, and which she could not write. Some years ago, when Edith was very young, scarcely fifteen, she fell in love with a well-meaning, good-looking youth, greatly her inferior in the social scale, though perfectly respectable, I believe. Of course, I opposed it, both on account of her extreme youth and because, as the daughter of a clergyman, with good family blood, she ought to do better. Without my knowledge, however, they were engaged, and would have been married if he had not been suddenly killed. It was a terrible shock to Edith, and one from which she has never quite recovered. You know something of that spasmodic affection of her throat which attacks her at times. It came upon her then, and now when an allusion is made to the violent death of any one, or she is over-excited, she experiences the same peculiar sensation, so that I try to keep her as quiet as possible, and when I found that writing to you about it, as she felt she must, was affecting her so much, I persuaded her to desist and let me come instead. She is morbidly conscientious, and would not for the world marry you until you knew all about her past life. She loved the young man with such love as very young girls feel; but that was years ago, and now I do not believe she would marry him if he were living. She bade me tell you everything, and say that if, after hearing it, you still wished her to be your wife, she would do her best to make you happy, stipulating only that no reference shall ever be made to a past which it is her duty and wish to forget.”

Colonel Schuyler was not much given to talking at any time, and he surely had no desire to speak to his fiancée of her dead love. Could he have had his choice in the matter there should have been no dead love between himself and Edith, but when he reflected that he could not offer her his first affection, for that was buried in Emily’s grave, he felt that it was not for him to object to this poor, unknown youth who had been obliging enough to die and leave Edith free. A few times he walked up and down the room, then stopping suddenly before the anxious woman, he said, “Your daughter once hinted to me that there was something she must tell me, and as I knew her life must have been pure and innocent as a babe’s, I supposed it was a matter of this kind, and am prepared to overlook it, though of course I would rather have been the first to move her maiden heart. I will write her a few lines if you will wait here, and this afternoon or evening I shall see her.”

He bowed himself from the room, leaving Mrs. Barrett in a state of fearful suspense as to what he might write to Edith, and whether her wicked duplicity would at once be discovered. In her desire for Edith’s advancement she was willing to do anything, and the slight put upon herself was nothing to her now. She would rather have gone with Edith to her beautiful home if she could, but as she could not she accepted the condition, and was just as eager for Edith to accept the colonel as if she too were to share in the greatness. With Edith she felt almost certain that a full confession of the past would at once end everything, for Colonel Schuyler would hardly marry the widow of one of his workmen, and she resolved that he should not know it, at least not in time to prevent the marriage. With Edith his wife he could not help himself, and would make the best of it, if by chance it came to his knowledge, she reasoned, and when she started for Oakwood with Edith’s letter it was with no intention of giving it to him. She knew just what she would say to him, and she said it, and then waited the result.

Fifteen minutes went by and then he came back to her, and, handing her a note, said, “This is my message to Miss Lyle. I shall see her this evening and arrange our plans.”

Then he meant to go on with it, and Mrs. Barrett could almost have fallen at his feet and thanked him for raising her daughter to the position she had sinned so greatly to secure for her, but the colonel’s proud, cold manner kept her quiet, and she only said, as she took the note:

“Thank you, sir; and please remember not to allude to the past, when you see her. She wished that particularly,—it excites her so much.”

“I shall be careful on that point,” he said, and with another bow he dismissed her from the room, wondering why he breathed so much freer with that woman gone, and what it was about her which affected him so unpleasantly.

“I know Edith is not like her in the least,” he said, “and I will take care to remove her from that influence as soon as possible. Two weeks will not be too soon for our marriage, and when the Atlantic rolls between us I shall be done with Mrs. Barrett forever.”

Meantime Mrs. Barrett was on her way to London, and congratulating herself upon the good luck which had not dried the seal of the note the colonel gave her. Had it been otherwise she would have opened it all the same; but Satan, whose servant she certainly was, was playing into her hands, and the envelope held together so slightly that she opened it with perfect ease, and taking out the letter, read it through with an immense amount of satisfaction, as she saw that she could show it to her daughter and not betray herself.

“My dear Edith,” it began, “do not think I prize you less on account of anything in the past, though of course I would rather that past had never been; but it is not for me, who have loved and lost a wife, to object because of your early love, whose tragical death affected you so strangely. I trust you will overcome that difficulty in time, and be assured, that both for your sake and my own, I shall never in any way allude to the past, nor is it necessary that I should do so. You have been frank and truthful with me, and I thank you for it, and value you all the more. Had it come to me later, I might have found it harder to overlook than I do now. You are very young, and your concealment from your mother is all I can see for which to blame you in the least. Dear Edith, let it all be as if it never had been, and go with me as my wife. I want you more than ever, and I cannot give you up for a trifle. I will see you to-night and arrange for the wedding, which must take place at once, as I have already been absent too long from home, where I am needed so much, and where there will be a warm welcome for you.

“Good-by, darling, till to-night.

“Yours, forever, Howard Schuyler.”

Had there been anything in this letter to awaken a suspicion in Edith’s mind of foul play on the part of her mother, Mrs. Barrett would have unhesitatingly withheld it from her and palmed off some story of her own. But there was nothing, and she hastened home to Edith, whom she found sitting listlessly in her room with Gertie Westbrooke’s things everywhere around her, and a look of apathy upon her face, as if she were fully assured of the nature of her mother’s tidings. She knew Colonel Schuyler could not forgive, and now that the die was cast, and her chance for something better than a governess’ life lost forever, as she believed, she was conscious of a feeling of pain and weariness, and her heart cried out for what she must not have.

As her mother entered the room she lifted her eyes languidly, but said nothing until she read the letter, which made her pulse quicken with a new hope and a restful feeling she had not known in years.

“What did he say to you?” she asked. “Did you talk with him? Tell me all about it, please.”

And Mrs. Barrett told her just what it seemed best to tell, and said she had taken the blame upon herself for the secrecy since Abelard’s death, and that though he was, of course, surprised and shocked, he soon recovered himself, and showed how much he was in love by his readiness to forgive and let the past fade into oblivion.

To say that Mrs. Barrett’s conscience did not disturb her a little as she thus told lie after lie would not be true; but she had committed herself too far to stop now, and then it was for her interest to prevent any conversation with regard to the past between the Colonel and Edith, and she continued:

“Oh, one thing more I must tell you. Possibly Colonel Schuyler may have said something of the kind in his letter. He is quite as averse to any allusions to the past as you can be, and said distinctly that he did not wish you to mention the subject to him. He is satisfied, and that is enough.”

Edith did not reply. She was reading the note again, and feeling a little hurt and disappointed that no direct mention had been made of Abelard.

“He might at least have been generous enough to say how grateful he was to him for having saved Godfrey’s life,” she said to her mother, who answered:

“He did say that to me, and spoke very feelingly of him, and was glad he honored his memory as he did; but you know how proud he is, and must understand that it would grate upon his pride to think his bride elect had been the wife of his servant. I think myself it would be bad taste in him to go to lauding the dead husband of the woman he intends to make his wife. You surely have no desire to praise the Lady Emily, or even to talk of her, and you must give him the same liberty of reticence.”

Edith was silenced and satisfied. If Colonel Schuyler had praised her husband to her mother, that was enough, and she appreciated the motives which kept him silent to her, and as the day wore on there crept into her heart a feeling of rest, and content, and satisfaction which she had never known before. Colonel Schuyler was a man whom she thoroughly respected and liked, and whom in time she might learn to love if she could overcome the feeling of awe with which his presence inspired her. She knew he would try to make her happy, and she more than once found herself thinking with pleasing anticipations of the beautiful home beyond the sea and the new life awaiting her. Never since the days when she arrayed herself for the coming of Abelard had she felt as much real interest in her dress as she did now when making herself ready for her lover. Choosing a pretty robe of white which had been made in Paris, she fastened a knot of lavender ribbon at her throat, and placing a white rose in her hair, was ready for him when he came at last. His wooing of Emily Rossiter had been the stiffest kind of an affair, and this, his second love-making, was stiff and formal too, as became the man. Still there was in his manner genuine kindness, and even tenderness, as he took Edith’s hands in his, and said:

“Are these dear little hands mine?”

“Yes, if you still wish to have them,” Edith answered; and then he bent down and kissed them very devoutly, as if fearful lest his breath should blow them away.

This was a great advance on his manner with Emily. To her he had merely said “This little hand is mine,” and had put it respectfully back into her lap, reserving his right to kiss her, until she was his wife, while in Edith’s case he kissed the hands he claimed as his, and held them in his own a little awkwardly, it is true, as if he did not quite know what he was doing, but still held them and looked at them, and turned them over, and thought how shapely and pretty and white they were, and how they would be improved with the jewels he meant to put upon them. And she would be improved, too, with the rich apparel he would give her; and his heart began to swell with pride as he saw in his home, and at his table, and in society, the beautiful bride, who was sure to be a success. And, as he talked to her, and watched the color mount into her cheeks, and saw the coy drooping of her eyes, and felt her warm breath upon his face, he was conscious of being moved as he had never been moved before, and his words and tones were almost lover-like as he talked of the future, and all he meant to do to make her happy. And only once was there the slightest allusion to the past, and then Edith said to him: “And you are sure that you do not care for what has made me so unhappy?”

“Care! no. I told you as much in my letter. That is all gone by. Don’t let us mention it now, or ever,” he said, as he wound his arm around Edith, who felt that she might indeed forget the past, and take the good offered to her in the new life coming.

It was late when Col. Schuyler left her that night, and before he went he had arranged everything with that precision which marked all his actions. They were to be married very quietly within the next three weeks, and then, after a short trip into the country, go at once on shipboard, and sail for America. The bridal outfit would come from Paris, whither he would forward his order the next day. He would also write at once to Godfrey, who would join them in time to be present at the ceremony. There were to be no invited guests, and only a simple breakfast at Oakwood. The heir was there now, but he had offered the hospitality of the house to Col. Schuyler for as long a time as he chose to accept it, and when told of the projected marriage, had asked the privilege of furnishing the breakfast. Thus matters were arranged, and Edith, who had cared and thought for herself so long, was glad to leave everything to Col. Schuyler and let him plan and think for her. She was beginning to like him very much, and when he brought her the engagement ring, and she saw the superb diamond on her finger, she felt a throb of pride and quiet exultation that at last the ease and luxury which her fine tastes fitted her to appreciate and enjoy were to be hers without stint or limit. That morning, too, a French modiste came and took her measure, and when the second night of her betrothal closed in, the order was on its way to Paris for “an entire outfit for a young bride whose wealth would warrant any expenditure.”

CHAPTER XVI.
BREAKING THE NEWS.

Godfrey returned to Oakwood two weeks before the wedding, and brought with him a young artist, Robert Macpherson, whom he had found in Rome, and who had accompanied him to Russia. As he had not received his father’s letter he was ignorant of the engagement, and Colonel Schuyler blushed like a school boy, and stammered and hesitated, when he tried to tell him. Godfrey had asked for Miss Lyle, and the colonel, after replying that she was with her mother, had continued:

“My son, you may be surprised,—no, you can hardly be surprised, knowing her as you do,—when I tell you that I am,—yes, I am about to,—am going to,—give you a new mother. Yes,” and the colonel walked to the window and spat on a rosebush outside, and wiped his face, and mustering all his courage, added: “Miss Lyle has promised to be my wife, and you will agree with me, I think, that she is a remarkable,—yes, a very remarkable woman.”

He had told his story, and waited for Godfrey’s reply, which came first in a low, suppressed whistle, and then in a merry laugh as he jumped up, and giving his pants a violent shake, said: “I agree with you, father; she is a very remarkable woman, or she would not consent to be my mother and Jule’s; My! won’t she pick her eyes out, and Aunt Christine will help her. Why, she meant to have you herself!”

“Who, Christine?” Colonel Schuyler said, aghast at the very idea of wedding a woman whom he detested, even though she was a Rossiter, and the sister of his wife.

“Yes, she has set her cap at you ever since mother died, and she came up to Hampstead with all her wraps and confounded drugs, and raised Cain generally,” Godfrey replied, and his father smiled a pleased kind of smile, and, man-like, was conscious of a new interest in the woman who had “set her cap for him,” while at the same time he felt intense satisfaction in thinking of Edith in all her youth and brilliant beauty, and comparing her with Aunt Christine, whose body was one great receptacle of drugs, and who, Godfrey said, wore two flannel wraps in the summer, and four in the winter, besides shawls and scarfs innumerable.

Godfrey’s preference was evidently for Edith, and so his father said to him: “You do not object. You like Miss Lyle, I believe.”

“Like her? Yes, I rather think I do, and if she’d been younger, or I older, I’d have gone for her myself. She’s the most splendid woman I ever saw, but, by Jove, I’m sorry for her, though, for what with Aunt Christine, and Alice, and Julia, and Tiffe and Em, she’ll have a sorry time.”

The colonel frowned darkly, and his eyebrows almost met together as he answered with great dignity:

“Everybody in my house must treat my wife with respect; but, Godfrey, perhaps it may be well in your letter home to speak a good word for Miss Lyle, prepare the way, you know. You have great influence over Julia, or at least over Miss Creighton, which amounts to the same thing. I have written, of course, but would like you to do so, too.”

“Certainly, with pleasure,” Godfrey said, and there was a merry twinkle in his saucy eyes as he thought of the “hornet’s nest” he would stir up at home.

The colonel had that day written to his eldest daughter, Julia, in his usual dignified manner, that he was about to marry Miss Edith Lyle, “a lady of good family, the daughter of a clergyman, the friend and companion of my deceased sister, your late Aunt Sinclair. She possesses many and varied accomplishments, and is, what I consider, a very remarkable person, and I shall expect a kind reception for her, and that all due deference will be paid to her by every member of my household. Break the news to your Aunt Christine, and tell Mrs. Tiffe to have the rooms in the south wing made ready for Mrs. Schuyler. I have written to Perry about repairing them, but she must superintend it.”

This was in part the colonel’s letter, while Godfrey’s was widely different.

“We are in for a step-mother, sure,” he wrote, “and may as well make the best of it. Try to imagine father in love, will you? and such a love! Truly she is ‘a very remarkable person,’ as you will say when you see her. Just think of father’s marrying a red-haired woman of forty, with a limp and glass eye, which looks at you with a squint, and a crack in her voice, which sounds like Ettie Armstrong’s old piano, and quite as many aches and pains as Aunt Christine herself! But then, she’s nice, and I like her ever so much, while the governor,—well, it is something wonderful to see how far gone he is; and I tell you, girls, one and all, that if you do not treat this beauty with proper attention there will be the old Nick to pay! She will take your breath away at first, for, after all I have said, you have no idea how she looks, and Alice must hold on to her little nose, and Aunt Christine may as well lay in a fresh supply of pills and Crown Bitters, and get her a new galvanic battery. She’ll need them all to steady her nerves after the shock the bride will give her. I shall be glad to be home once more, though I do not believe I am greatly improved with foreign travel. I still shake down my pants, and say ‘by Jove,’ and don’t believe I shall be ‘so disgusted with New York because it looks so new and backwoodsey,’ or that I shall constantly quote ‘dear, charming Par-ee.’ In short, I am just as much a ‘clown’ as ever, but by way of recompense I mean, if I can, to bring you the nicest kind of a travelled chap, Robert Macpherson, whom I met in Rome, and like so much, even if he does part his hair in the middle, and carry an eyeglass, and put perfumery into his bath, and wear ruffled night-shirts buttoned behind. He’s a good fellow, with money, and a profession, too. He is an artist, and his father was cousin to Lord Somebody or other, and I mean to persuade him to come to America with me for you girls to pull caps about. So you’ve something to live for besides the new mamma, to whom I must pay my respects as soon as I have finished this letter. So no more at present from your brother,

Godfrey.”

The young scamp chuckled with delight as he read over this letter and thought what a bombshell it would be in the staid household at Schuyler Hill.

“I haven’t written a lie either,” he said; “I only told them to think of father’s fancying such a person, and they will think of it, and Aunt Christine will have a fit and swallow more than a quart of her bitters, and take a shock strong enough to knock her down, and Jule’s back will be up, and Alice’s nose, and Em will cry, and Tiffe will snort her indignation, and there’ll be thunder raised generally.”

After these remarks Godfrey folded his letter and shook himself down, and looked in the glass, and started for Caledonia Street to call upon Edith. He found her at home, looking so beautiful as she rose to meet him, with the flush on her cheek, and the new expression of peace and quiet in her eyes, that he was conscious of a sharp pang of regret for the years which lay between them. Then, as he remembered the woman of forty, with the limp and glass eye, and thought of the consternation at Schuyler Hill when his letter was received, and the surprise when the bride herself should arrive, he burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, while Edith looked wonderingly at him, with a rising color in her cheeks.

“You must excuse me,” he said, as he held her hand in his. “It seems so ridiculous to think of calling you mother.”

“Don’t do it, please,” Edith replied. “I’d rather you would not. Let me be Edith.”

And so the ice was broken, and Godfrey plunged into the subject at once, in his half-comical, half-serious way.

“Honestly,” he said, “I am real glad you are going home with us. I never liked any one outside of our family as well as I do you, and once I had serious thoughts of making love to you myself! I did, upon my word, but when I subtracted eighteen from twenty-eight, I said ‘no go.’ So far as years are concerned that is worse than Aunt Christine and father.”

“Who is Aunt Christine?”

“Have I never told you of her? Well, inasmuch as you are to be one of us, I may as well enlighten you with regard to the individuals whose step-mother you are to be. Aunt Christine is mother’s sister, an old maid, whose love died and left her his money. Since mother’s death she has been with us a great deal of her time, quarrelling with Mrs. Tiffe,—that’s the housekeeper,—bullying the servants, nagging the governess, and watching to see that father didn’t look at a bonnet with matrimony in his eye. You see, she wanted him herself, he forty-one and she forty-six, and looking almost a hundred, with all the drugs and nostrums she takes for her fancied ailments. She has the neuralgia, and catarrh, and dyspepsia, and bronchitis, and liver complaint, and doctors for them all, and has her room as full of bottles as an apothecary’s shop, and sits with a dish of tar under her nose, and takes galvanic shocks, and has her hair dressed every day, and wears the richest of silk and finest of lace, and really looks splendidly when she is dressed,—was handsome once, and is very exclusive and aristocratic, and proud of her Rossiter blood, and will never rest until she knows a person’s pedigree, root and branch.”

There were little red spots on Edith’s cheeks and neck as she thought of Aunt Christine finding her out, root and branch. But, after all, what did it matter, so long as her husband knew and did not care? she reflected, and grew calm again, and amused, as Godfrey went on:

“I like her, of course, for she is very kind to me, but I would not have father marry her for the world. Not that he ever thought of it, though she has; and the time he rode out with Ettie Armstrong, the schoolmistress, she was so angry, and wondered how he could let himself down, and he a Schuyler, who had married a Rossiter!”

“Ettie Armstrong! That’s a pretty name,” Edith said, while there came before her mind the vision of a dark-eyed girl who had promised to care for Abelard’s grave, and to whom she had confessed her love for the dead.

“Yes, ’tis a pretty name,” Godfrey said; “though Ettie herself is not pretty. She is most an old maid, I guess, and teaches the village school, and thrashed me like fun the summer I went to her, but never hit me a lick amiss. Father rode with her once,—a mere happen-so,—and Aunt Christine was furious. I say, Edith, except his age, father is a catch, and you a lucky fellow. Why, half the women in New York and Hampstead are after him, and have been ever since mother died. Even at her funeral, when the clergyman, in eulogizing her and telling what a loss she was to her family, asked ‘Who is there to fill her place?’ twenty old maids hopped up——”

“Oh, Godfrey!” Edith exclaimed, shocked at his levity; “you should not talk that way.”

Up to this point Godfrey had rattled on as if he had never had a serious thought or known a genuine feeling of affection; but at Edith’s rebuke the whole expression of his face changed instantly. His chin quivered, and his voice trembled, as he said:

“You think me, no doubt, an unfeeling wretch, who never cared for anybody; but you mistake me there. I loved my mother so much that I never go to sleep at night without thinking of her in heaven, and praying, in my poor way, that I may go to her some day; and I feel her hand on my head, and hear her dying voice bidding me try to be good; and I have tried every day. I loved my mother dearly, and the knowing that father will marry again brings her back to me, and I’ve rattled on like a fool just to keep—to keep—to keep from crying outright for the mother who died.”

He was crying now, and Edith cried with him and held his head on her lap, where he involuntarily laid it, while he sobbed out his grief. Nor did she like him less for it. Indeed, the bond between them was stronger than ever, now that she saw how deep his feelings were, and that under his gay exterior was hidden so much genuine affection and sterling worth. As she would have soothed and comforted a brother, she soothed and comforted him until the little burst was over, and lifting up his head, he said in his old playful way:

“There, I’ve had it out, and cried in your lap anyway. Quite a little tempest, wasn’t it? I say, Edith, you are not to think I don’t want you to marry father, for I do. I like you ever so much, and I’m going to stand by you through thick and thin, and at first there’ll be more thick than thin, for Julia will not be pleased with a step-mother, and Em will follow Julia, and Alice, who is there a great deal, will sniff any way, and Aunt Christine will ride her highest horse; but you are sure to win in the end. Only wear your most queen-like air, and keep a stiff upper lip, and act as if born to the purple, and you’ll conquer at last, with the governor and me to uphold you. It’s a grand old place, and you’ll be happy there. Who is that? Look quick, do,” he exclaimed suddenly, and glancing toward the window Edith saw a cab standing before the gate, and a plainly dressed woman coming up the walk.

“That is Mrs. Rogers,” she said. “She lodges here, but has been absent several weeks. We were not expecting her so soon.”

“Mrs. Rogers,” Godfrey repeated. “I don’t mean that woman. It’s the girl in the cab, with the bright hair and blue eyes, and the prettiest face I ever saw. I wish she’d look out again.”

“That must be Gertie Westbrooke, Mrs. Rogers’s daughter,” Edith said. “She is very pretty, I believe, though I have never seen her distinctly.”

“Pretty! I should think she was! Why, she’s beautiful. I wish Bob Macpherson could see that face and paint it. He went off this morning to find some friends of his, but he’ll be back to the wedding. He is an artist I found in Rome. You are sure to like him. I must go now. Good-by, mother that is to be.”

He kissed her fondly, and then hurried out to see again the face in the cab. Very curiously he gazed at the child, whose little fat hands went up to the eyes, ostensibly to push back the stray locks of auburn hair, but really to hide the blushing face. How pretty they looked as they lay like white rose leaves against the mass of bright wavy hair, and how Godfrey deplored the absence of Robert Macpherson, and wished he were himself a painter as he walked away, carrying with him that image of Gertie Westbrooke, with the shy, timid look on her face, the bright hair veiling her soft blue eyes and the white hands brushing back the hair.

CHAPTER XVII.
THE BRIDAL.

Mary Rogers had been in the country for several weeks and had written to Mrs. Barrett that she was to return to London sooner than she had intended, as Gertie was not very well and needed the advice of her physician. To this Mrs. Barrett had at once replied, telling of the approaching marriage and asking Mrs. Rogers to defer her return as long as possible, as Miss Lyle was at home and occupying Gertie’s room. Accompanying this letter to Mrs. Rogers was one from Norah Long, who also told of the expected marriage of Colonel Schuyler with Miss Lyle, and the breakfast to be given at Oakwood, and then added that as both the colonel and Miss Lyle wished her to accompany them to America, she had decided to do so, provided her cousin Mary, to whom she was strongly attached, would go too. Colonel Schuyler owned several cottages, he said, and Mary could have one, if she liked, at a low rent.

Two days before the receipt of this letter Mrs. Rogers had heard of the failure of the bank where her money was invested, and knew that henceforth she must earn her own living. This she could do better in America, and after due reflection she wrote to Norah that she would go, and started for London the next day, intending to take up her abode in the vicinity of Oakwood until the time for sailing. And that is how the cab came to be standing at Mrs. Barrett’s door. Gertie did not alight, but waited while Mrs. Rogers explained to Mrs. Barrett the change in her circumstances and plans, and said that she would come in a few days and take her things away. Mingled with Mrs. Barrett’s exultation at her daughter’s good fortune there had been more than one feeling of loneliness and desolation as she thought of being alone in her old age, even if that old age was to be well provided for, as Colonel Schuyler had promised. But there was one comfort left her in little Gertie Westbrooke, whom, with Mary Rogers, she meant to keep as long as possible. She was not fond of children, but no one could resist the bright, sunny little girl who filled the house with so much life and gladness, and whose feet and hands were always ready for some act of kindness. And Mrs. Barrett loved the beautiful child with a strong, intense love, which she could not define, unless it was that the child loved her and hung about her neck with soft caresses and words of love. And now she was going away,—and the woman’s heart was heavy as lead, and there were traces of tears on her face as she went about her usual work and thought of the desolate future with Gertie Westbrooke gone.

Owing to Mrs. Sinclair’s health Edith had not visited her mother very often during the past year, and had never met Gertie face to face, so she was only sorry for her mother in a general kind of way when she heard that she was to be left alone. She was very much occupied with her own affairs, and Colonel Schuyler and Godfrey took all her leisure time. The colonel came every other day, Godfrey every day, and between them both she had little time for reflection, but was hurried on toward the end, which approached so fast, until at last the very day had come, a soft, warm August day, when the sky seemed to smile in anticipation of the bridal, and the whole earth to laugh for joy. And Edith felt happy and glad and peaceful as she dressed herself for the occasion, and with her mother and Norah Long, her waiting-maid, started for the church near Oakwood, where her bridegroom waited for her, and where just a few of the late Mrs. Sinclair’s friends were assembled. Thanks to Godfrey and Robert Macpherson, who had returned from visiting his friends, the little church was decked with flowers, and Edith stood under a canopy of roses as she pledged her troth a second time, and was made Mrs. Howard Schuyler. Just to the right of the chancel, and where they could command a good view of everything, Mary Rogers sat, and with her Gertie Westbrooke. It was the child’s first sight of a wedding, and when that morning Mary had said to her, “Gertie, how would you like to go to church to-day and see Miss Lyle married?” she had clapped her hands for joy, and could scarcely eat her breakfast for thinking and talking of the wonderful wedding.

“Don’t they sometimes throw a bouquet at the bride’s feet?” she asked.

And when told that they did, she gathered and arranged an exquisite little bouquet, which she tied with a white ribbon, and then, moved by some impulse she did not try to define, she wrote on a slip of paper, in her childish hand:

“From little Gertie Westbrooke, with her love, and God bless you.”

This she folded and put inside the flowers, saying to herself:

“She’ll know who Gertie Westbrooke is, and maybe speak to me on the ship.”

Gertie was much interested in the beautiful lady, whom she had occasionally seen from the window when Edith came to call upon Mrs. Barrett, and her interest was increased when she heard she was to be married to a gentleman rich enough and grand enough to be a lord, and that she was to see the sight, and then go to America in the same vessel with the bridal pair.

It was all like a bit of romance, and the little girl’s heart beat high, and her cheeks were like carnation, as she arranged her bright hair and twisted a blue ribbon in it, and put on her best muslin dress, and the string of pearl beads a lady had given her at the last Christmas, and then went with Mary to the church, where, with her face all flushed and eager, she stood with her dimpled white arms leaning on the pew railing, her straw hat falling back from her head, and her sparkling blue eyes fixed upon the bridal party as it came up the aisle.

“Look, Bob! there’s the very face I told you about, over there in the corner!” Godfrey whispered to Robert Macpherson, with a pinch of the arm, which made Bob wince with pain.

But he saw the face, and started suddenly,—it was so like another dear little face lying under the daisies in the English sunshine. The same blue eyes, the same sweet mouth, the same bright, flowing hair he had tried so hard to put upon the canvas, and failed each time he tried, because of the treacherous memory, which, good in other things, could not retain with vividness the image of the lost one, loved so passionately and laid away from sight amid so many tears and heart-throbs.

“The likeness is wonderful,” he thought. “I must ascertain who this child is. Schuyler will find her for me.”

The ceremony was commencing now, and all eyes were fixed upon the bride, save those of Robert Macpherson. He looked only at Gertie Westbrooke, who, unconscious of his gaze, stood watching Edith in silent wonder and admiration, thinking how beautiful she was in her rich bridal robes, and how happy she must be,—only the bridegroom was a trifle too old, and dignified, and grave, Gertie thought; and then, as she glanced at the tall, handsome Godfrey, she thought if she were the bride she should prefer him to the father, and she wondered a little at Edith’s choice.

“I require and charge you both that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God’s word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.”

The clergyman uttered these words with great solemnity, and by mere chance, looked full at Edith, who involuntarily raised her eyes, and felt glad that there was nothing unconfessed on her part. Had there been, she must have shrieked it out even then at the last moment. But Col. Schuyler knew all about that grave at Schuyler Hill; all about the baby girl who died, and liked her just the same. There was no reason on her part why she should not be his wife, and she met the clergyman’s eyes frankly, and felt a thrill of joy and peace even while she wondered if the bridegroom thought of that other bridal, when Abelard Lyle stood beside her in Mr. Calvert’s parlor, with Emily looking on. And Godfrey had been there too, his first experience of a wedding, perhaps. Had he ever thought of it since? Would his father ever tell him who the boy-husband was, who the childish bride? Probably not, and it was just as well. Godfrey had no concern in her past; only the father was interested, and if he was satisfied, that was sufficient. Thus Edith reasoned to herself, and saw the broad band of gold upon her finger, and felt the pressure of her hand which the colonel gave her, and knew that he was glad because of her, and when it all was over she left the altar as happy as half the brides who embark upon the sea of matrimony, with the uncertain future before them.

As she turned and passed near Gertie, a bouquet fell at her feet, and the face of the child who threw it was something wonderful to look at as she watched to see if her gift would be observed and accepted. It was, for Godfrey and Robert both sprang forward to get it, but Godfrey was the one who picked it up, and turning toward Gertie, he pressed it to his lips, and then, with a sign which Gertie understood, indicated that the bride should have it.

“Oh, wasn’t it nice, though!” Gertie said, when she was home again, and talking of the event. “Such a sweet, beautiful lady, only I thought her face was kind of sorry, and Col. Schuyler was a great deal too old. I’d rather have the son, Mr. Godfrey, you call him. His face is smooth and handsome, and his eyes so full of fun. He is the one who looked at me so in the cab at Mrs. Barrett’s, and he stared at me to-day, and kissed my flowers. I like Godfrey Schuyler ever so much. Do you believe I’ll see him in America?”

Mrs. Rogers had listened with a good deal of interest to Gertie’s remarks about the wedding, but when she came to Godfrey, and began to speculate upon the probability of seeing him in America, a shadow flitted across her face, and she said: “Gertie, listen a moment. You probably will see Mr. Godfrey Schuyler in America, and perhaps on shipboard, and if he noticed you in the cab and at church, as you say he did, he may try to talk to you, but you are not to encourage him. Gentlemen’s sons do not talk to girls like you for any good.”

Gertie lifted her great blue eyes to her auntie’s face a moment, and then, casting them down, seemed to be thinking for a time, when she said, suddenly:

“Auntie, wasn’t my mother a lady, and wasn’t my old home most as big and pretty as Oakwood?”

“Yes,” was the reply; and Gertie continued:

“Then why should not a gentleman’s son talk to me for good?”

“I cannot explain to you now, only seeing you with me, and knowing you are my adopted child, they would naturally place you in my rank; do you understand?” Mrs. Rogers said; and Gertie replied:

“Yes, but I could tell them;” then after a moment she added: “Auntie, who can I talk to? You said those children at the farmhouse were not good enough for me to associate with, and that people like Mr. Godfrey are too good.”

It was a puzzling question, which Mary Rogers could not answer satisfactorily. She had carefully guarded her beautiful child from all contact with children of her own rank, and as she could not hope to find friends in the higher circles, Gertie had led a secluded life and knew very little of young people, and what they did and said. In one sense this made her old, and in other respects she was much more a child than a girl of twelve should be. But the latter character suited Mary, who wished she might keep her darling always as she was now, her very own, with no other love or interest between them. The thought of Godfrey Schuyler jarred upon her painfully, as if through him mischief might come to her pet, and so she raised a note of warning, which Gertie pondered upon the remainder of the day, wondering if she should see him on the ship, and if he would speak to her, and what she should say if he did, and who the man was who parted his hair in the middle, and stared at her quite as hard as Godfrey did, only in a different way, and wondered what her aunt would say if she knew she had given an old photograph of herself to Abel Browning, the freckled boy at the farmhouse, who cried when she came away, and told her “she was the ’andsomest girl he had ever saw.”

“I just wish I was one thing or the other,” the little girl said to herself. “It is real mean to be too good to play with Abel and Bettie Browning, and not good enough to be talked to and looked at by Mr. Godfrey Schuyler.”

CHAPTER XVIII.
AT OAKWOOD AFTER THE BRIDAL.

The wedding breakfast was over, and Edith was in her room with her maid, Norah Long, and her mother, dressing for the short trip she was to make into the country before embarking for her new home.

There were many beautiful bouquets on her table, and Norah was to keep them for her till she returned, especially the one thrown at her feet by Gertie Westbrooke. Godfrey had brought this to her and told her whence it came, and she had found the slip of paper hidden in it, and read, “From little Gertie Westbrooke, with her love, and God bless you.”

She had received costly gifts that day, but with none had there come a “God bless you,” save with this tiny bouquet, and as she placed it herself in water, she whispered: “I do believe it’s the only blessing I have had. I’ll find the child when I come back, and thank her for it.”

She was dressed at last in her handsome black silk, with her jaunty round hat and feather, which made her look so young and girlish, and then turning to Norah she bade her leave the room, as she wished to be alone with her mother for a few moments.

“Mother,” she said, when the door had closed on Norah, “Col. Schuyler is so kind and generous, he has told me to ask him anything to-day, and he will grant it; and so I have concluded just for once to bring up the past and ask him if, before leaving England, I may find where baby was buried, and order her a grave-stone. You can attend to it, you know, and I shall feel that everything has been done which I ought to do. What do you think of it?”

She was buttoning her gloves as she turned toward her mother, but stopped suddenly, struck by the expression of the face which met her eyes, and which she knew meant so much.

“Do nothing of the kind. Are you crazy, girl? Never allude to the child, if you wish to be happy.”

Mrs. Barrett spoke rapidly and excitedly; and with a nameless terror of some threatened danger, Edith asked:

“Why, mother? Why not mention the child to-day, when he said, ask what I pleased? Why must I not?”

“Because—because—” and Mrs. Barrett came close to her and whispered: “He don’t know there was a child. I did not tell him that.”

“Don’t know there was a child!” Edith repeated. “What do you mean? I wrote it in the letter,—all, everything; if he read it he knows about my baby. Moth——! Moth——!”

She could not say the whole name,—could not articulate another word, for the awful suspicion which flashed upon her, bringing back the hand which clutched her in a death-like grasp, and made her writhe and gasp for breath.

“Edith, listen to me;” and Mrs. Barrett spoke sternly. “It is time this folly ended. Do you think I would let you throw away the chance for which I had waited so long? Had Colonel Schuyler known the truth as you wrote it, he would not have married you, and as your mother it was my duty to interfere and save you from the consequences of your rashness. I kept your letter, and told him what I liked. I said you were in love when very young,—scarcely fifteen,—that the object of your love was greatly your inferior, and that I opposed the affair—that in spite of all you were secretly engaged, and would have been married, no doubt, had he not been suddenly killed. I told him, too, that the manner of his death was a fearful shock to your nerves, from which you had not yet recovered, as you now sometimes felt a choking sensation in your throat when reminded of the past, and asked him never to refer to it if he wished to spare you pain. He promised he would not. He did not ask the name of the young man, nor where he lived; indeed, he was not at all anxious to discuss the matter, and stopped me before I was quite done by telling me he had heard enough, and that he was satisfied. I think, however, he was annoyed, and you can judge what would have been the result had I given him your letter. Believe me, I acted for the best, and though you can now tell him, if you like, I trust you have too much good sense to do so, or at least will take time to consider. You are his wife; nothing can alter that, and the past cannot in any way affect him, provided he knows nothing of it. To tell him now would be to wound him cruelly, and my advice to you is to let the matter rest, and take the good offered to you.”

Edith made no reply. Indeed, she could not have spoken to have saved her life for the choking, palpitating sensation in her throat, where her heart seemed beating wildly with such throbs of pain as she had never felt before. Gradually as her mother talked she had sank down upon the couch where she lay in a crumpled heap, her face as white as ashes, and her eyes staring wildly like the eyes of one choking to death. And when at last she spoke, it was only in a whisper that she said:

“Oh, mother, you make me wish I was dead.”

There was the sound of wheels upon the gravelled road, and Col. Schuyler’s voice at the door, saying the carriage was waiting.

“Let it wait; I cannot go now,” Edith gasped, trying in vain to struggle to her feet, and then falling back among the cushions, weak and powerless to help herself.

Opening the door Mrs. Barrett bade Col. Schuyler enter, and then closing it again drew him quickly into the little dressing-room before he caught sight of Edith lying so still and helpless in her misery.

“I am sorry, but I suppose she cannot help it,” she began, “she is so weak and nervous; but something I said to her of that early affair, you know, has affected Edith so much as almost to bring on a faint, and she is there on the sofa, unable to sit up. Be very gentle with her, do. It is all my fault.”

For a man to be told that his two hours’ bride has fainted because reminded of a former love affair, is not very pleasant, and Col. Schuyler grew hot and cold, and a little annoyed. But he had known all the time that Edith’s love in its full extent was yet to be won, and so the humiliation was not nearly so hard, and his voice was very tender and kind as he bent over her, and said:

“Edith, my darling, it distresses me to see you thus. I had thought,—I had hoped,—Edith, you are not sorry you are my wife, when I am so glad?”

There was something pleading in his tone, and it roused Edith, and sitting up, she said:

“No, Col. Schuyler, I am not sorry, and Heaven helping me, I’ll be a good, true wife to you, but oh—oh—you must—bear with me, and if I am not all, or what you believe me to be, forgive me, will you? I am not to blame.”

He did not in the least know what she meant, nor did he care. She was excited and nervous, he thought, and he tried to comfort and soothe her, and laid her head on his shoulder and held her closely to him, and told her to calm herself, and motioned Mrs. Barrett away with a gesture of impatience, and when Godfrey came to the door, and said, “Hurry up, or you’ll be late,” he answered back, “Send the carriage away. We will take the next train. Mrs. Schuyler is suddenly ill and cannot go just yet.”

He had called her Mrs. Schuyler, she was his wife, and a feeling of reassurance and quiet began to steal over Edith as she sat with her head on her husband’s shoulder and his arm around her waist, and with this feeling came a sensation akin to love for the man who was so kind to her and who had been so deceived. But not by her; she was not to blame, and she meant to tell him all, but not then. It was neither the time nor the place. It should be when they were away alone, before the day was over, and then if he chose to put her from him, and go back without her, he could do so, and she would say it was right. She grew better rapidly after this decision was reached, and though her face was very pale, and there was a frightened look in her eyes, she met her friends at last with a smile, and gave some laughing excuse for her sudden faintness,—said the day was warm,—that she had not been well or slept much for weeks,—that she was subject to such attacks, but thought it most unfortunate that she should have one that day of all others.

She was much better when the time for the next train drew near, but there was a steady avoidance of her mother, who had deceived her so,—a coldness of manner which Mrs. Barrett felt but did not mind. So long as her end was obtained she was not scrupulous as to the means. She loved her daughter in her way, and now that she was Mrs. Howard Schuyler she would like to make much of her and be made much of in return, but if Edith was foolish enough to resent the means she had used to place her where she was, she could not help it, and bore her punishment very meekly, and was not at all demonstrative when at last her daughter said good-by to her just as she said it to the others and took her seat in the carriage.

Col. Schuyler noticed the formal leave-taking, and though he was better pleased to have it thus than he would have been had there been kissing and crying over the woman he secretly disliked and distrusted, he was a little surprised, and wondered if it were a feeling of pride born of her elevation which had so soon affected Edith.

Alas, he little understood her or dreamed of the conflict going on in her mind as she was borne rapidly along the road, through the beautiful English country, to the place where they were to spend the night and where Edith meant to tell him all.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE BRIDAL DAYS.

Dinner was over in the house where they had stopped for the night, and drawing his chair near to the open window of their little parlor, Col. Schuyler sat down to enjoy the sweet summer air, as it came stealing in laden with the perfume of flowers and the freshly-cut hay upon the lawn of the castle near by. Edith was in the dressing-room adjoining, pretending to arrange her hair, but in reality trying to make up her mind how to begin the story she must tell. And how would he receive it? Would he spurn her at once, or, rather than let the world know of his disgrace, would he keep her with him, a wife merely in name, whom he never could love or respect?

“Oh, Father in Heaven,” she whispered, “you know I am not to blame in this; help me to tell him, and incline him to receive it aright.”

Strengthened by this prayer for aid, she gave herself no time, for further hesitation, but going swiftly to her husband’s side she laid her hand on his shoulder in an appealing kind of way and said to him, softly:

“Colonel Schuyler!”

During the few hours in which the colonel had had Edith all to himself and felt that she really was his own, he had almost fallen in love with her in sober earnest. Before that day he had greatly admired and liked and respected and desired her, but something in the actual possession of her had stirred a deeper feeling in his heart than mere pride in her personal attractions, and when he felt the touch of her hand and heard the sound of her voice, a great throb of delight thrilled through his veins, and drawing her to him he made her sit upon his knee, and smoothing her cheek caressingly, said to her:

“Don’t call me Colonel Schuyler, please. I’d rather be Howard to you, now that you are my wife. It will seem to lessen the years between us, and I do not want to be so much older than my darling. Call me Howard now, and let me hear how it sounds.”

“Not yet,” Edith said; “not till I have told you something which should have been told before, and which may make a difference.”

She spoke slowly and painfully, and Colonel Schuyler detected signs of choking in her voice, and guessing at once that she was thinking of the early lover, said to her, very kindly but firmly: “Don’t, Edith, please; don’t tell me anything which will distress you. I do not wish to hear it. Your mother told me enough,—all I care to know,—and I am satisfied.”

“But, Howard,”—she called him thus involuntarily, and there was a world of pathos and pitiful entreaty in her voice, while the eyes she fixed upon him were swimming in tears—“but, Howard, mother did not tell you the whole——”

“Then you need not,” he answered, quickly. “If you are pure, and good, and true, that is all I ask, and I know you are all of these. I daresay your mother did not tell me as eloquently as you could have told me how much you loved that man, and how your heart ached for him; and you wish me to know it all, but I am satisfied. You are my wife, and nothing can make any difference, even if you were his widow, instead of his affianced, though widows are not to my taste. I am satisfied, and to prove that I am, I do not even care to know his name or where he lived. In fact, I would rather not know it, would rather you should never refer to it again, for it is not a pleasant topic; and now for the favor you were to ask me on our wedding day, and which I was to grant even to half my kingdom.”

He spoke playfully and held her closer to him while the hot tears poured over Edith’s face. What should she do? Should she tell him in spite of his protest and his assurance that he was satisfied? She could not with the memory of his words, “Widows are not to my taste,” still ringing in her ears, and so she let the opportunity pass, and the only favor she asked was that whatever might come in the future he would have faith in her and believe that she meant to do right.

“Of course I will, you foolish little girl. You are nervous and tired to-night,” he said; and then, as if struck with a sudden thought, he added: “Only tell me one thing,—if that young man had lived and not improved beyond what he was when you knew him, and you had grown to be what you are, could you have loved him now as you did then?”

“Perhaps not. I never thought of it in that light,” Edith said; and her husband continued:

“One question more. Do you believe you can in time love me as well as you did him?”

“Yes, Howard, I know I can,” Edith spoke quickly, and her arms wound themselves involuntarily around her husband’s neck, while for the first time she kissed him unsolicited.

“Then, my darling,” he responded, “there is nothing before us but happiness, if God so wills it, and may He deal by me as I do by you, my precious wife.”

He was growing to love her so fast, and Edith knew it, and felt her misery giving way, and her heart grew light again as it had been when she fancied he knew the whole.

Edith had known from the first that it was the colonel’s plan to visit Alnwick and go over the grand old castle which at this season of the year was open to visitors, and she did not oppose him, though the neighborhood of Alnwick was fraught with sad memories for her as having been Abelard’s home. His friends were still living there, she knew from Godfrey, and the first night at the inn where they took rooms was passed in wakefulness, with a feeling of oppression and sadness which she could not shake off. Abelard had told her so much of Alnwick and the castle, and had talked of the time when she would visit it with him; and now, he was dead, and she was there, the wife of another man, with that great secret weighing her down at times and casting a shadow on everything. How she wished she might see his home and the old mother he used to talk of so fondly, and yet when her husband said to her one morning: “Edith, I am going to call on some poor people who live about two miles from here. Perhaps you will like to go with me when I tell you who they are,” she trembled and grew cold, and scarcely heard a word of the story he told her, and which she knew so much better than he did. “I called upon them last summer,” he said, “when Godfrey was with me, and it is not necessary that I should go again, but I know it will please them, and I am so happy myself that I feel like conferring happiness on others. Will you go, darling? They will feel honored if I bring them my young bride.”

“Oh, Howard, no! Please don’t ask me. I’d so much rather not,” Edith cried, feeling how terrible it would be to go with her husband into the presence of Abelard’s mother and hear her talk of him, as she assuredly would.

She could not do it, and she expressed herself so decidedly, that the colonel looked at her curiously while a cloud passed over his face; and, without meaning to do so, he seemed displeased and out of sorts. He was not accustomed to have his wishes thwarted, and he had set his heart upon taking his wife with him when he visited the Lyles, and after he had told her of his indebtedness to them he thought she ought to go out of deference to his wishes. Surely it was not pride which prompted her unwillingness to call upon such people, for what business had she to be prouder than himself, he thought, and he seemed so moody and silent that Edith detected the change in his manner at once, and resolving to conquer her own personal feelings, went up to him and said:

“Howard, I have changed my mind; I will go with you if you wish it.”

His face cleared as he said: “Thank you, darling, I am very glad, both because I like to have you with me, and because I know the attention will be sure to please those people. Did I tell you of the little boy to whom Godfrey gave his name, when we stopped there last year on our way to Oakwood? He is always doing such things; has two or three namesakes at home, a thing of which I do not altogether approve, but in the case of these Nesbits I could not oppose it. Shall we start at once? It is only two miles distant; will you walk or ride?”

Edith chose to walk, and they set off together across the fresh green fields, and through the quiet, shaded lanes toward the low-thatched cottage where Abelard Lyle was born, and where his mother sat knitting by the door with a placid expression on her calm face, and the sunlight falling on her snowy hair. It would be impossible to describe Edith’s emotions as she walked with her husband through the lanes, and fields, and woods where her boy-lover had so often been, and where he had thought some day to bring her and show her to his mother, and it seemed to her almost as if he was there, moving silently beside her, and once when a leaf rustled at her feet, she started with a nervous cry and clung close to her husband’s arm. And yet it was not regret for the dead which thus affected her. Her life with Abelard was like a far-off dream to her now, a thing apart from herself and her present life, and had her husband known, she would not have felt as she did with that secret on her mind, making her breathe quickly, and grow faint and pale when at last the house was reached and she saw for the first time how humble and poor Abelard’s home had been. Everything pertaining to it, however, was scrupulously neat, and the little grass-plat before the door showed frequent acquaintance with sickle or shears, while the old-fashioned flowers on the narrow border told of good taste in some one. But it was all so small and meagre and poor, and the calico dress of the old lady, knitting on the porch, was faded and patched, and the white kerchief pinned about her neck was darned in several places. She had a fair, sweet old face, with a resemblance to Abelard, Edith thought, when at the sound of their footsteps she looked up with a smile of welcome and inquiry. From having always lived near the border she spoke with a broad Scotch accent, which Edith did not comprehend at first. She was evidently greatly pleased and flattered that Col. Schuyler had come to see her again, and brought his bonny bride, whose hand she held in her own, and into whose face she gazed curiously as she bade her welcome, and led her into the house where Mrs. Nesbit, the daughter, sat with her sleeves rolled up combing her long black hair, with a bit of glass before her, and Godfrey Schuyler asleep in his rude cradle.

Mrs. Nesbit, or Jenny as she was called, was not naturally as refined as her mother, and she kept on combing her hair without any apology, talking rapidly all the time, and saying what an honor she felt it to be for the likes of Col. Schuyler to visit the likes of them, though to be sure he owed them something for her poor brother’s death. “You know about that, I s’pose,” and she looked at Edith, whose dress she had been closely inspecting between each passage of the comb through her hair.

Edith nodded in token that she did know. She could not speak; the room was so small and so close, and the iron fingers held her throat with so firm a clutch that she could only sit perfectly still and listen while the old story was told again by Colonel Schuyler, and the mother wept silently, ejaculating now and then, “Oh, my puir bairn, my puir bairn!”

Jenny did not cry. She was looking at the bride in her rich apparel, and thinking how proud she was to be so unmoved, as if it was nothing to her how many poor men lost their lives to save that of a Schuyler. And Colonel Schuyler too had similar thoughts with Jenny, and believed it was contempt for these people and their surroundings which kept Edith so silent, in spite of his efforts to draw her into the conversation and make her seem gracious and interested. Alas! he could not guess what she was enduring as she sat there in Abelard’s home, and heard them talking of him and all the incidents concerned with his death.

“You dinna ken my lad,” the mother said to her; “an’ so you dinna ken how sair I was for him. Ah, he was a bonny lad and gude.”

Edith nodded, and the old lady went on, now addressing the colonel:

“A maun who kenned my boy and see him kilt coomed here onc’t an’ tauld me about it, and said there was a young lass there who moight be Abel’s sweetheart; heard ye tell of her like?”

No, the colonel had not heard of her, or he had forgotten, and as Edith was not supposed to know anything of the circumstances she was spared the questioning, and Mrs. Lyle went on to say that if there was such a lass she’d like so much to know something of her.

“Mayhap,” and she turned again to Edith; “mayhap you’ll foind her some day, and if you do wool ye let me know?”

Had her life depended upon it Edith could not have spoken, and a nod was her only answer, while her cheeks burned scarlet and the perspiration gathered about her mouth. The colonel was angry, and rose to take leave, while Jenny, who was angry also at what she believed to be the lady’s pride, began in a flippant way to say that, poor as they were, they had some grand relatives; her oldest sister, Dorothea, had married into one of the high Scotch families, where they kept twenty servants and dined at six o’clock.

“Hoity-toity, Jenny, my lass,” said the mother, “what was the good o’ that? Dinna them foine folk turn my Dolly and her maun out o’ door and never spake to ’em till he died?”

“Yes, mother, but their boy got the money at last, and was here to see us a spell ago, lookin’ as foine as any gentleman,” Jenny said, and then having given the final twist to her hair, and seeing that their guests were really going, she woke the little Godfrey Schuyler, and took him proudly to Edith, who could and did kiss him; an act which made amends for much of her silence and seeming haughtiness of manner.

Had Edith followed out her impulse she would have kissed Abelard’s mother, for the sake of the dead son, but after her persistent silence and reserve there could be no excuse for such a proceeding, and so she merely took the withered hand in her own and pressed it hard, managing to say “good-by,” and then she passed through the low door, out into the sunshine, like one passing from prison walls into freedom again.

For a time the colonel was silent, and never spoke a word until they reached the border of the wood through which a path led to Alnwick; then, as Edith paused a moment and looked back at the thatched roof with the creeper climbing over it, he, too, looked back and said:

“I am glad my lot was not cast among such people; I cannot say they are to my taste, especially that garrulous Mrs. Nesbit, with her fine comb and bare arms. The old lady is better, and has a good deal of natural refinement. I think our visit did her good; such people are always pleased with attention from their betters, and it certainly does us no harm to give it. Edith, my dear——” He spoke a little sternly now, and his face was overcast. “I am sorry you chose to be so quiet and reserved. It would have pleased me better if you had made an effort to be more social with them, and I really owe them so much.”

“Oh, Howard, please forgive me. It was not pride which kept me silent. I wanted to talk, but could not,” Edith said, while the tears rained over her face.

He had made her cry, and he was sorry for it at once, and made her sit down beside him on a rude bench by the path, and said he was hasty and had expected too much from her, who could not of course sympathize with his interest in the Lyles. And Edith listened to him, and felt like a felon who is hiding his secret from the world. Why had she not told him that first day of married life with him? Why had she not shrieked it in his ear and compelled him to hear it? It had been easier then, sure, than it was now, when so much had happened to make it hard, if not impossible. Yes, impossible, she said to herself, as she remembered the bare arms and the fine comb and the talkative Mrs. Nesbit. She could not declare that woman to be her sister-in-law, and she forced the secret still further down into her heart, and when her husband bade her kiss him in token of forgiveness, she kissed him twice, and there was peace between them as they walked arm in arm through the leafy woods and grassy lanes back to their rooms at Alnwick.

But Edith’s mind was not at rest. Thoughts of that white-haired, sweet-faced old lady, knitting in the sunshine, were constantly in her mind. She had been cold, almost rude to her, and she wished to make amends,—to leave, if possible, a good impression of herself in Abelard’s old home,—to have his mother’s blessing as a guaranty of happiness in the life before her, and as she lay awake many hours of the night, her thoughts gradually formed themselves into a plan she resolved to carry out. Her husband had been invited to dine at the castle with a party of American gentlemen, who were about to introduce some farming implement to the agent of the estate, who acted as host on the occasion. As no ladies were included, Edith was to be left alone for several hours, and she determined to improve the opportunity for redressing any wrong she might have done to Mrs. Lyle.

It was twelve o’clock before her husband left her, and as soon as he was gone she donned her walking-dress, and set off for the cottage near the wood. Fortunately for her Mrs. Nesbit was out, but the old lady sat knitting again on the porch, with little Godfrey Schuyler playing near her on the floor. She recognized Edith, and seemed both glad and surprised to see her.

“I wanted to come again,” Edith said, sitting down close beside the woman. “I was not feeling well when I was here yesterday, and I could not talk as I wished to do, but I did not mean it for coldness or pride. Colonel Schuyler is so grateful for what your son did for him, and I—I am interested in you, too,—more even than he can be, and if you like you may tell all about your boy who died in that dreadful manner.”

There were tears in Edith’s eyes, and her voice trembled as she spoke, while Mrs. Lyle stopped her knitting and looked curiously at her. She had thought her proud and haughty, and had felt a little hurt by her silence and reserve, while her daughter, in her coarser way, had not hesitated to call her airy and an upstart, wondering who she was to feel so much above them. That she was pretty, even Jenny conceded, while the mother thought her very beautiful and grand. “Fit to be a duchess,” was her verdict now, when she saw her again so humble and sweet, apologizing for her reserve of the day before, and asking to hear about her poor dead boy. She liked to talk of him, and once launched upon the subject did not know when to stop, but talked on and on, narrating incidents of his babyhood, boyhood and early manhood, while Edith listened with hands clasped tightly together and a heart which beat almost audibly.

“And ye are goin’ where he’s buried,” Mrs. Lyle said to her. “And if ye want an old woman’s blessin’, maylike you’ll keep his grave fresh and clean, and send me a posy from it some day.”

“I will, I promise you I will, and if I can ever tell you about that girl who loved him, I will do so,” Edith said vehemently; and then, impelled by an impulse she could not resist, she continued: “Mrs. Lyle, I want to ask you something which you’ll please keep to yourself. You are old, and I am young; you are good, and I am not, but I want to be, so much. If there was something in your life which you supposed your husband knew, and which, after you were married, you found he did not know, though through no fault of yours, and if you felt almost sure that, had he known it, he would not have married you, and might think less of you now, would you consider it your duty to tell him?”

Edith gasped out the words and sat panting with excitement and agitation, while Mrs. Lyle considered for a moment, and then replied in the following words, which I render in good English:

“Is the something which he don’t know a sin, a crime, a wrong to him, or anybody?”

“No, not a sin, or wrong, only a mistake,” Edith replied; and the woman continued:

“Would the withholding it now do harm to any one?”

“No; on the contrary, the telling it might cause my husband to think less of me, and make us very unhappy.”

“Then if you meant no wrong, and the telling it can do no good, and might do harm, and no one is interested but yourself, keep it to yourself,” Mrs. Lyle said, while Edith felt herself growing light as air.

It was strange how much comfort she derived from Mrs. Lyle’s advice, and how much confidence she felt in the judgment of this woman, whom she had seen but once before. It was almost as if absolution had been granted her for her sins, past, present, and to come, and no religious devotee ever felt lighter and freer after a full confession than Edith did for a few moments after hearing Mrs. Lyle’s decision.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said. “You have done me so much good. I have been so miserable, and there was no one whom I could talk with about it. I shall not forget you, Mrs. Lyle, and sometimes I may perhaps write to you, and tell you of my home. And now I must go; but first, will you give me your blessing. I want it so much.”

And kneeling before the old lady Edith bowed her beautiful head, while a hand was laid gently on her shining hair, and a trembling voice said reverently: “Will God bless and keep my bonny child and make her a gude and happy wife, an’ gi’e her many bairns to comfort her auld age.”

She was thinking of her Abelard who died, and Edith thought of him too, and there were tears in her eyes as she rose from her knees, and, kissing the white-haired woman who had done her so much good, went out from her presence with a happier, lighter heart than she had known for many a day.

It was all right, since Abelard’s mother had said so and blessed her, and she could be happy now, and when her husband returned from the castle he met a very bright, beaming face at the door of his room, and his young wife’s arms were round his neck, and his wife herself was on his knee when she told him that she had been again to see Mrs. Lyle, and made ample amends for all yesterday’s reserve. She did not tell him of the advice or blessing, but she said:

“I know I left a good impression, and I promised to write to her some time and tell her of my home. She seems a very nice old lady.”

Col. Schuyler kissed her glowing cheek and called her a conscientious little puss, and thought how very beautiful she was in her pretty evening dress, with the wild flowers in her hair, and felt himself the most fortunate man in England to possess so much youth and beauty.

A few days later found them again at Oakwood, where Godfrey met them at the station and saluted Edith as his “mamma,” while his eyes danced with mischief and fun. He did not tell her of the letter of dismay which had come to him from home in answer to his own, wherein the charms of the new mother had been so graphically described. But he laughed to himself every time he thought of it, and what they were prepared for, and then thought of the rare type of loveliness whom he teasingly called mamma, and to whom he was as attentive as if he had been her lover instead of her step-son. Robert Macpherson was still at Oakwood, and greatly to Godfrey’s delight had decided upon going to America. “The very nicest chap in the world,” Godfrey still continued to think him, in spite of the hair parted in the middle, and the night-shirts ruffled and buttoned behind.

“But something has come over the spirit of his dream,” he said to Edith, when talking of him. “Ever since he came from visiting those friends of his he has fits of melancholy and acts a good deal like a man in love, but when I put it to him he denied it indignantly, and said no girl whom he would have would ever marry him, and then he went straight off to see the little Westbrooke who threw you that bouquet, you know. He is wonderfully struck with her, and wants to paint her portrait as a fancy piece, and call it ‘La petite sœur;’ but that Rogers dame guards her pet like an old she-dragon, and will not let Gertie sit on any account, even though I promised to be present at the sittings and see that fair play was done.”

Edith smiled derisively, and felt that she did not blame Mrs. Rogers for objecting to Godfrey Schuyler, with his saucy eyes and teasing ways, as a protector for her child. The little girl was going out with them, Godfrey said, and maybe Bob could study her a little on the ship. He had made two or three sketches of her already, drawing from his memory, of course, but none of them quite suited him. He must have her sit to him, and he,—Godfrey,—thought it a shame for that Rogers woman to be so much afraid of having her protégée looked at by such nice chaps as himself and Bob!

Edith had never fairly seen the child whom Robert Macpherson desired as a model for “La Sœur,” but she felt a deep interest in her, both for the blessing sent on her bridal day, and because of the strong affection the child had inspired in Mrs. Barrett, who seemed to feel worse at the thought of parting with her than with Edith herself.

The first meeting between mother and daughter had been rather cool and constrained, for Edith had lost confidence in her parent’s integrity, and could not help showing it. Still she was about to leave her, and at the last, when she went to say good-by, her manner softened greatly, for in spite of all it was her mother whom she kissed with many tears, and who herself broke down and cried, when the last farewell was said, and Edith went from her door forever. But Mrs. Barrett did not sob as pitifully then as when an hour later Gertie Westbrooke came and hung about her neck so lovingly, and said:

“I am sorry to leave you alone. I wish you would go too.”

Edith had not said that; Edith did not wish it, and Mrs. Barrett knew why, but it hurt her none the less, and Gertie’s fond regrets and words of love were very dear to her.

“I shall never forget you, never; and, maybe, if I am ever married, you shall live with me, and be my grandma,” Gertie said, with a dim perception that her friend’s heart was sore with a longing to go with her daughter, who did not want her; and then Mrs. Barrett sobbed aloud, and held the girl close to her bosom, and said:

“I never thought I could love a child as I love you, little Gertie. I am a hard, wicked woman, no doubt, but I want you to be good, and surely I may pray for that. God bless you, Gertie, and make your life as happy as you are sweet and pure. Good-by.”

She put the child gently from her, and went quickly into her own room, where she could be alone, and I am almost certain that the parting with her daughter did not hurt her half as much as the parting with Gertie Westbrooke.

CHAPTER XX.
ON THE SEA.

They had been at sea three days, and Edith in her warm wraps and pretty hood was sitting on deck in the large easy-chair her husband had bought in Liverpool for this purpose. Every comfort which ingenuity could devise and money pay for he had procured for her in order to make the voyage bearable. One of the largest, most commodious staterooms was hers, so that she need not feel too much confined, and when all this did not avail to avert the evils of sea-sickness, he and Norah nursed her assiduously, until she was able to be lifted in his arms and carried upon deck, where, with the fresh breeze blowing in her face, she felt her strength coming back, and thoroughly enjoyed the blue expanse of sky above, and the deep, dark waters beneath, which now were smooth and quiet as a river. The colonel was never sick, and walked the planks from first to last as firmly and steadily as a general at the head of his troops; but alas for poor Godfrey. During the voyage out he had been perfectly well, even in a storm, and boasted much of his ability to keep so.

“You have only to exercise your will and you are well enough,” he said, with a certain sniff of contempt for the weaker ones who are never seen from port to port. “Pluck is all you need to keep you straight, even when chairs and tables and shovel and tongs are dancing a cotillon, and raising Ned generally.”

This was Godfrey’s opinion, when in his clean, light summer suit he stepped airily on board and gave his hand to Bob Macpherson, even then growing pale about the lips and unsteady in his feet. But when they had been out a few hours, and a great lurch came, and the waves broke over the deck, and splashed Godfrey’s clean pants, and dashed the salt spray in his face, he, too, began to turn white, and feel, as he expressed it, as if the ends of his toes were coming up through his stomach to pay his throat a visit, and when the toes reached there and showed signs of going still further, the young man succumbed to his fate, and suddenly disappearing from view, went headlong into the room where poor Bob had lain from the first, caring little whether his perfumed hair was parted in the middle or not, or his elaborate night-shirt buttoned before or behind. Personal appearance was nothing in that stateroom where the two young men lay, one in the upper, one in the under berth, and both too sick for more exertion than to groan, when a swell, heavier than usual, sent them rolling on the floor. Regularly each morning Dan went in to see how it fared with them, offering chicken-broth and coffee, and bidding them “keep up their courage and have a little pluck; it was nothing to what it would be.”

To these consolatory remarks Bob offered no response. He was too nearly crushed to speak, and afraid, withal, to do so, as the least movement raised a tornado in his stomach; but Godfrey was more demonstrative, and having plunged into bed in his boots, which he had succeeded in getting off and had beside him, he hurled one at the head of poor Dan, who adroitly dodged it and then graciously adjusted the spittoon, knowing it would be needed after such exertion. And it was!

“Talk to me of pluck!” Godfrey said, between the upheavings which nearly burst his throat; “I believe my soul I’m throwing mine up!” and then he lay back upon his pillow, white, quivering and subdued, and took a swallow of the broth and declared it was made of dishwater, and bade Dan clear out and never show himself there again.

Regularly, twice each day, the colonel visited his son, and made set speeches to him, and bade him try to dress himself and get on deck, where the air would soon restore him.

“Mrs. Schuyler is there, and nearly well, and she was as bad as you, and worse, for she could not flounce as you do. A little effort of the will is all that is necessary to set you on your legs.”

Unconsciously, he was quoting Godfrey’s own words, and poor Bob ventured a little chuckle, which he paid for afterward, while Godfrey wished there was no such commandment as the third, so that he might free his mind for once.

And how, these days, had it fared with little Gertie, the second-class passenger, whose stateroom was small and close and hot, for the window had been closed and fastened since the water came in with a dash and wet the little hard bed. Poor Gertie, how the ship tumbled and rolled and tossed, and how she tossed and rolled and tumbled with it, and clutched at everything in her reach, with a feeling that they were tipping over and she was standing on her head. And how the cold, clammy sweat stood on her face and hands, and the dreadful, death-like faintness crept from her feet through every nerve, as, with fearful contortions, her stomach tried in vain to relieve itself, and she fell back, panting and helpless, upon the hard, scant pillow. It was horrible, and the poor child wished so much that she could die, or that the ship would stop for just one minute, and give her time to breathe, even though it were the fetid air, which almost stifled her and made her long so for the hedge-rows and fields of dear old England, now so far away. But Gertie did not die, and the vessel did not stop, and the window was not opened. She was merely second-class, and it was not worth one’s while to open and shut windows just for her; and though Mary Rogers did all she could for her sick child, and brought her many things to tempt her appetite, Gertie turned from them all, and sobbed piteously, “I am so sick,—shall we ever get there? Is everybody sick, and are all the rooms as close and hot and small? Where is the pretty lady, Mrs. Schuyler? I wish she’d come and see me. I think I should be better. Would you dare ask her?”

Mrs. Rogers did not know whether she dared or not. She would see, she said, and when that afternoon she saw Edith on deck, she ventured upon some trivial remark as the cousin of Norah, and finally spoke of her little girl, who was suffering so much.

“Oh yes; Gertie Westbrooke. I remember now. She was to go with us; and you are Mrs. Rogers, Norah’s cousin, and the little girl is very sick and uncomfortable; I am so sorry for her. I know just how it feels. Can I do anything for her?”

Mary hesitated and then said:

“She has felt interested in you since the day you were married. She was there.”

“Yes, and threw me the pretty bouquet,” Edith said; and Mary continued:

“She talks a great deal of you, and thinks now if you could come and see her it would do her good; but, ma’am, I told her how it wasn’t likely you would or could do that. Our room is very small and close, and the pillows are so hard and poor.”

“I do not believe I can go now; I am hardly strong enough,” Edith said; “but I will come some day if she does not get well; and now carry her this soft shawl; it will answer for a pillow. I do not need it at all, and Norah shall take her some oranges and wine.”

Mary demurred at the shawl, but Edith insisted, and remembered the oranges and wine, which so refreshed the child that she slept soundly that night with Edith’s shawl for a pillow, and a dream of Edith in her heart.

The next day she was better, and Mary took the shawl back to Edith, who was again on deck, with her husband standing beside her.

“Poor thing,” Edith said, kindly; “I am glad she is better. Tell her I’ll come and see her when I can, and as soon as she is able to be moved I’ll have her brought up to my stateroom for a while; it must be dreadful there with the windows shut and the air so close and confined.”

She glanced at her husband, whose face was overcast.

“Who is this woman and who is the child you propose moving into our stateroom?” he asked, stiffly, when Mary was gone; and Edith replied by telling him what she knew of Gertie Westbrooke and her mother.

Colonel Schuyler could reproach Edith for seeming cold and proud toward the Lyles, to whom he felt that he owed something, but he was far from wishing her to treat people like Mary Rogers with any show of familiarity. There his pride came in strongly, and he said to her at once:

“You can send the child any delicacy you choose, and I will see that her window is opened so she can have air, but she must not be brought to our stateroom; and if she slept on your shawl, as it seems she did, I desire you to give it to her altogether. You surely will never wear it again. Norah?” And he turned to their maid, who stood near:

“Take this shawl to your cousin’s child and tell her Mrs. Schuyler sent it, and wishes her to keep it.”

Norah looked wonderingly at him, while Edith blushed painfully, but neither said a word, and after Norah was gone with the shawl Colonel Schuyler continued: “I do not wish to distress you, my dear, or to interfere with your actions unnecessarily, but I think it just as well not to have too much to do with the lower class unless, as in the case of the Lyles, we are under obligations to them. And as this Rogers child is nothing to us, you are not called upon to visit her. She will soon recover. Such people always do. I’ll go now and speak about the window.”

He felt uncomfortable and wished to get away, for he did not quite like the grieved look in Edith’s eyes, or the pained expression of her face. Edith herself could not tell why his words hurt her as they did, or why she felt so interested in the sick girl whom she had as yet never seen distinctly. But she was interested in her, and though she did not visit her as she had intended doing, she sent her many delicacies and a pillow from her stateroom, and felt almost as much pleased as Mary Rogers herself when she heard at last that she was better.

Gertie had been very sick, and her bright color was all gone, and her round cheeks looked thin and wan, when at last Mary dressed her in her warm wrapper, with its facings of pink, and then folding Edith’s shawl about her carried her on deck, and propping her up with pillows and cushions made her as comfortable as she could.

Though pale and worn with marks of suffering on her face and in her soft blue eyes, Gertie was pretty still, and made a very attractive picture as she sat in her quiet corner with a book, whose pages she was turning listlessly, when she heard footsteps approaching her, and a voice exclaimed:

“Hallo, Bob, by George, if there isn’t ‘La Sœur,’ looking like a little ghost; here, this way;” and Godfrey Schuyler, who was also better and able to be up, came quickly to her side, followed by Robert Macpherson, who moved more slowly and showed more signs of weakness than the active, restless Godfrey.

Robert Macpherson had seen and talked with Gertie at her lodgings near Oakwood, and had asked her to sit for her picture, and she had said she would, and a day had been appointed for the sitting, when Mary Rogers interfered and refused in toto, and kept her child so close that neither Robert nor Godfrey saw her again except in her aunt’s company or through the window of her room.

Godfrey, indeed, had only spoken to her once, and that when she sat in the door eating blackberries, her lips and pretty fingers stained with the juice, and her bright hair falling about her face. Mrs. Rogers had come upon him then just as he was going to make some flattering speech, and called her little girl away, and he had not seen her since until now, when he esteemed it a great piece of luck to stumble thus upon her with the dragon out of sight. Gertie knew him, and a pleased smile broke over her face and shone in her eyes, when he stopped before her and asked if she had been sick and how she liked the feeling of it. She did not like it at all, and she and Godfrey grew very social and sympathetic as they compared notes, he going far ahead of her, of course, inasmuch as he did not hesitate to draw upon his imagination when necessary, while she adhered strictly to the truth, saying only that she felt at times as if she were standing on her head, while he averred that he did stand on his head until he was black in the face. She did not believe him, but she laughed merrily at his droll sayings, and then acquaintance was progressing rapidly when he asked what she was reading, and stooped down beside her to see the title-page.

Godfrey was very fond of little girls, and this one had interested him greatly from the time he first saw her in the cab on Caledonia Street, and now as he bent his face so close to hers that his brown curls touched her auburn hair, he could not resist the temptation, but snatched a kiss from her lips ere she was aware of his intention. Though small of stature Gertie was twelve years old, and very womanly in some respects, and at this liberty all her instincts of modesty and propriety awoke within her, and while the hot tears glittered in her eyes, which flashed angrily upon the offender, she said:

“You stop! You mustn’t! You shan’t! You have no business to kiss me, Mr. Godfrey, and I am very indignant!”

She wiped her lips two or three times, while Godfrey, who considered it a good joke, and was vastly amused at her rage, said to her:

“Why oughtn’t I to kiss a pretty girl like you when I find her all alone?”

“Because I am alone,” Gertie replied, with a very wise shake of the head. “Because men like you shouldn’t kiss girls like me whom they don’t like.”

“But I do like you immensely,” Godfrey said, “and think you the prettiest girl I ever saw.”

“Hush!” Gertie rejoined, with all the dignity of a woman of twenty. “You shall not talk to me like that, and you wouldn’t either if I was somebody else.”

“Who, for instance?” Godfrey asked, and looking him steadily in the face, with her clear, honest eyes, Gertie said:

“Mr. Godfrey, if I were one of your sisters would you have done it?”

“Certainly, I have a right to kiss my sister,” Godfrey said, and Gertie continued:

“I don’t mean that. I mean if you were somebody else and I was one of your sisters.”

“Still wrong,” Godfrey said, “for even if I were somebody else and you my sister I would kiss you many times.”

He would not understand, and Gertie glanced appealingly at Robert Macpherson, who had been listening languidly, while with an artist’s interest he attentively studied the little face which so puzzled and attracted him. As he met her glance he came a step nearer to her, and said:

“Let me tell you how to put it. Suppose you are my sister?”

“You are a gentleman born?” Gertie asked, while the young man colored to the roots of his hair, and answered:

“I believe I am.”

“Well, then,” and she turned again to Godfrey, “suppose I was his sister and you were yourself, and you found me a sick, tired little girl, sitting by myself, would you have dared to kiss me then?”

There was in her manner so much sweetness and dignity withal that languid Bob roused in her behalf, and said:

“If he did I’d knock him down,” while Godfrey, wholly driven to bay, answered humbly:

“No, Miss Gertie, I would not, and I beg your pardon, and assure you I meant no harm, but really you looked so pretty, so piquante——”

“You must not tell me that either,” Gertie said. “I’m glad if you think me pretty, and glad to have you like me, but you mustn’t tell me so. It’s very bad, for Auntie Rogers says young men like you never talk to girls like me for good, and I must not let you.”

“What kind of a girl are you, pray?” Godfrey asked, feeling more and more amused and interested with this quaint little creature, who replied:

“I am poor, and have not any relatives except a grandmother, and I don’t know where she is. But my mother was a lady, auntie says, and I once lived in a big house with servants, and auntie was my nurse. I don’t know where it was or why I left it when mother died. Auntie does not tell me, and she is so kind, and I have forty pounds a year of my own, and maybe I shall learn a trade, or teach school in America, and some time marry respectably, but I’m not the kind of girl for a man like you to kiss and talk to.”

“Gertie, you are a brick!” came emphatically from the amused Godfrey, who felt a great desire to kiss the full lips again in his admiration of the child.

But he dared not do it. Indeed, there was something about her which inspired him with a respect such as he had never before felt for a girl, and as he told Robert Macpherson in confidence, he wanted to crawl into his boots when, after his assertion that she was a brick, she lifted her eyes so wonderingly, and said:

“I’m a what?”

“A brick,” he answered; “don’t you know what that is?”

“Yes, I know it in its place; but I don’t know what you mean when you give the name to me. Nothing bad, I hope.”

“Certainly not; it’s a compliment. I called you so because I like you and think you smart,—clever, you English would say, I suppose.”

And Godfrey began to shake down his pants, and stand first on one foot and then upon the other, in his perplexity how to appear well in the mind of this little girl, who was so young, and innocent, and honest, and yet so old in some things.

“That’s slang, isn’t it?” Gertie asked.

And he replied:

“Yes, I suppose it would be called so, but it is very expressive. Don’t you like slang?”

“No, I do not, and I don’t see why nice people like you should use it so much.”

“Do I use it so much?” Godfrey asked.

And the girl replied:

“I heard you once at Oakwood, when you did not know I was there in the kitchen, say ‘by George,’ and ‘by Jove,’ three times right along, and you called your father the ‘governor,’ and one of the maids said she supposed it was Yankee slang.”

Godfrey’s face was scarlet at this reproof, which he knew he merited, and for a moment he did not know what to say. Soon rallying, however, he said, good-naturedly:

“I guess I am rather given to slang,—the girls at home nag me about it all the time, and I do it to tease them; but I’ll quit it now, by Jo—I beg your pardon. I did not know I was so given to it, and I will reform, by George! There! that was to finish up.”

And Godfrey laughed heartily at himself, while Gertie, too, joined in the laugh, and thought how handsome he was, and what white, even teeth he had, and hoped he was not angry with her. So when he said to her next: “Gertie, if I really try to reform and quit my slang, will you promise to like me a little?” she answered quickly: “Yes, and I like you now,—some, you know,—though I did not like you to stare at me so when I was in the cab at Mrs. Barrett’s gate; but when I saw you in church at the wedding, I thought you very nice, and kept on thinking so until you kissed me, when I was very angry; but I’m over it now, and you’ll never kiss me again.”

That was a fixed fact in her mind, but Godfrey was not so sure of it, and he said to her seriously:

“Gertie, I am sure you are very good and generous, and I really mean to reform, and I want you to promise me one thing. You are going to Hampstead, I believe?”

Yes, Gertie supposed she was, “but,” she added, “I shall not see you, of course.”

“Why not?” he asked, and she replied:

“Why, don’t you know? You are rich and we are poor. You live in the great house, and we are your tenants; that is, I believe auntie is to rent a cottage of your father, if it is not too high. We cannot give much, for auntie lost her shares in the bank last summer, and now she must do fluting and clear-starching and sewing for our living, as she will not touch my forty pounds; that she says is for my education, and I do so want to learn music. We can live on most nothing, only the rent takes money. Will it be very much?”

“No, not much,” Godfrey replied, a sudden thought flashing into his mind upon which he resolved to act, but not till he had made his compact with Gertie.

“You did not let me finish,” he said; “I want to make a bargain with you, which is this: I am to reform, and you are to tell me from time to time if I am improving, and when you really think I am a perfect gentleman, you are to let me kiss you again. Is it a fair bargain?”

Gertie considered a moment, and then said, with the utmost gravity:

“Ye-es,—I don’t believe there would be any harm in it, inasmuch as you did it for pay.”

“Then it is a bargain, and I begin from this minute to be a gentleman,” Godfrey cried, but his zeal was a little dampened by Gertie’s next remark.

“It may be a long time, Mr. Godfrey, and I’ll be grown up, and then it would not be proper at all.”

Here Robert Macpherson burst into a loud laugh and exclaimed:

“Better give it up, Schuyler; the child is too much for you.”

But Godfrey was not inclined to give it up, and said:

“A bargain is a bargain, Miss Gertie, and I shall claim my reward if it is not until you are a hundred. How old are you, little one?”

“Twelve going on thirteen. How old are you?”

“Eighteen, going on nineteen,” was Godfrey’s answer, and as he just then saw his father in a distant part of the vessel, he touched his hat and walked away to set in train the plan he had in his mind for benefiting Gertie Westbrooke.

She interested him greatly, and he wished to do her good, and joining his father, he said:

“By the way, father, have you decided which house you will rent to Mrs. Rogers?”

“Rent to whom?” Colonel Schuyler asked. “Who is Mrs. Rogers?”

He had forgotten her for the moment, but when Godfrey explained that she was Norah’s cousin, he remembered that something had been said about her having one of his cottages, but he had not decided which one. Why, what did it matter to Godfrey?

“It matters this,” Godfrey said. “You know my house, which you gave me for my own. Perry wrote me a few days before we sailed that the tenant had left it suddenly, and there was no one in it. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to let it to Mrs. Rogers.”

“Certainly, let it to her if you like,” the colonel said, pleased to see in his son what he thought a business proclivity, and a wish to make the most of his property.

He little guessed that it was Godfrey’s interest in Gertie which prompted him to wish to see her in his own cottage, the best by far of all the houses known as the Schuyler tenements. It was not new like many of them, but it was very commodious and pretty, with a wealth of vines creeping over the porch, a rose tree near the door, from which Edith herself had plucked the sweet blossoms, and twined them in her hair, for Godfrey’s cottage was the very house where Mrs. Fordham once lived, and from which Abelard Lyle was carried to the grave. And Gertie Westbrooke was going there, and Godfrey was already thinking how, as soon as he reached New York, he would telegraph to Perry to have the house cleaned throughout and put in perfect repair for his new tenants.

Meantime Robert Macpherson was puzzling himself over Gertie’s face and its resemblance to another.

“How can they be so like, and yet nothing to each other?” he said, and once, when an opportunity occurred, he questioned the child closely with regard to her antecedents, but elicited little more information than she had already given Godfrey in his hearing.

“She was Gertie Westbrooke, born in London, January —, 18—. She had lived for a while in a big house, with her mother, whom she could just remember, and who died when she was two years old, and then a new mother came, who was very cross, and Mary Rogers, her nurse, took her away, and had been so good to her ever since.”

“And your father?” Robert asked. “Where is he? Do you never see him?”

“He was cross, too, and drank too much wine,” Gertie said; “and auntie says he’s dead, and I guess I hain’t any relatives now, but a grandmother, and I don’t know where she is. I heard auntie tell a woman once that I had a history stranger than a story-book, but when I asked her about it she looked cross, and bade me never listen, and said if there was anything I ought to know, she would surely tell me. Sometimes when I see grand people, I think, maybe, I am one of them, for I feel just as they act, and could act just like them, if I tried.”

“Maybe you are a princess in disguise,” Robert said, laying his hand kindly on the bright flowing hair. “Gertie, do you know you are the very image of the only sister I ever had? Dorothea was the name, but I called her Dora, and loved her so much.”

“And she died?” Gertie said, guessing the fact from the tremor in the young man’s voice and the moisture in his eyes.

“Yes, she died, and I have no picture of her, and that is why I wanted you to sit for me. You are so much like her. Maybe if you tell your aunt the reason she will allow it when we reach America. I am going to Hampstead, too, for a time, to visit Mr. Godfrey. Will you speak to her about it?”

Gertie promised that she would, and kept her word, and Mrs. Rogers said she would see, which Gertie took as an affirmative reply and reported to the young man, telling him, too, that auntie had forbidden her to talk much with him, and telling Godfrey that he must not come where she was, for auntie did not like it, and said it was “no good.”

“And I didn’t tell her, either, that you kissed me; if I had, she would have been angry, and maybe shut me up in that close, dark stateroom; but you are never to do it again.”

“No, not till you say you think me a perfect gentleman; then I shall claim my reward,” Godfrey said, laughingly, and as Mary Rogers appeared in view, with the look of a termagant on her face, he turned his back on Gertie and pretended to be very intent upon a sail just appearing in the distant horizon.

CHAPTER XXI.
THE LADIES AT SCHUYLER HILL.

Miss Christine Rossiter, aged 46; Miss Alice Creighton, aged 17; Miss Julia Schuyler, aged 16; and Miss Emma, aged 14. These were the ladies who, a good portion of the year, were domesticated at Schuyler Hill, and of whom I will speak in order; and first of Miss Rossiter, whose personal appearance and peculiarities Godfrey had of course exaggerated when he talked of her to Edith. She was his mother’s sister, and forty-six, and had once been engaged to a young man who left her all his money, and for whom she wore black half a dozen years, during which time she gave herself to the church, and went so far as to think of turning Romanist, and hiding her grief in a convent. But she recovered from that, and being good-looking, and only thirty, with a fortune of half a million, she went back to the world again, and became a belle, for she was a handsome woman still, and at times exceedingly brilliant and witty, the result, it was whispered at last, of opium-eating in secret. This habit she had contracted during her seclusion, with a view to deaden her grief, and make her sleep at night. And after the grief was over the habit remained, and grew upon her constantly, until now she was never without her vial of the deadly stuff, and her nerves were completely shattered with the poison.

Exceedingly proud and exclusive, she held herself above the most of her acquaintances, and made them feel that she did, and still exercised over them an influence which would draw every one of them to her side when she wished them to come.

Few women understood the art of dressing better than she did, and when arrayed in evening costume, with her diamonds and her lace, she was still a very handsome and attractive woman, capable of entertaining a roomful of guests, and keeping them delighted with her ready wit and brilliant repartees. She should never marry, she said, and yet more than Godfrey believed that she had no objection to becoming Mrs. Schuyler second, if only she were asked to do so. Since her sister’s death she had spent most of her time at the Hill, giving as an excuse that “Emily’s children needed a mother’s care so badly,” while Howard was always happier to have her there.

Of this last there might have been two opinions, but the colonel was a peaceable man, and always made her welcome, and humored her whims and listened to her advice when he chose to do so, and offered no remonstrance when she appropriated to herself the very best and pleasantest room in the house, the one with the bay-window overlooking the river and the mountains, and which, as it chanced to be in the south wing, was one of the suite intended for Edith, and which she surrendered, with what reluctance we shall see hereafter.

Alice Creighton was Col. Schuyler’s ward and the niece of the wife of Mrs. Schuyler’s half brother, the Rev. John Calvert, who lived in New York, and whose house was properly her home, though she spent much of her time at Schuyler Hill, where her education was progressing under the direction of Miss Browning, the governess. Short, fat, and chubby, with light hair and eyes and complexion, and a nose that turned up decidedly, she was not very pretty, save as young, happy girlhood is always pretty, but she was very stylish, which answered instead of beauty, and made her remarked wherever she went. Whatever was fashionable she wore in the extreme, and at the little church in Hampstead there was on Sundays a great deal of curiosity among the village girls to see the last new style, as represented by Miss Creighton. And after they saw it they copied it as far as was possible, and then found to their surprise that what they had adopted as the latest in the beau-monde, was laid aside for something later by their mirror of fashion.

She expected to marry Godfrey, for the arrangement had been settled between her father, before he died, and Col. Howard Schuyler; and Alice acquiesced in it, and looked confidently forward to a time when she would have a house of her own and furnish it as no house in New York had ever yet been furnished, and keep seven servants at least, with horses and carriages, and nothing to do from morning till night but enjoy herself, and be envied in doing it. To all this grandeur Godfrey would be a very proper appendage. He was good-looking, and came from a family superior even to her own; he could be a gentleman when he chose, and would look very nicely beside her in the Park and at the opera, and when she entered the drawing-rooms on Fifth Avenue on some festive occasion.

This was Miss Alice Creighton, as nearly as I can daguerreotype her at the time of which I write, while Julia Schuyler was much like her in disposition, but different in looks.

Julia was tall and slender, and a brunette, with clear, olive complexion, high color, sparkling black eyes, and a quantity of glossy, black hair, of which she was very proud, and which she usually wore becomingly, let the fashion be what it might. Some people called her beautiful, but that she could never be with her wide mouth and large ears, but she certainly was handsome and bright, and could, if she chose, be very agreeable and fascinating, but, except with her equals, she did not often choose, and was known in town as a proud, haughty girl, caring only for herself and the few favored ones belonging to her circle. And yet she taught in Sunday-school, and made dresses and aprons for the poor, and esteemed herself almost a saint, because she once carried with her own hands a dish of soup to poor, old, bedridden Mrs. Vandeusenhisen, whose grandchild was called for Alice at the instigation of the mischievous Godfrey.

Both Julia and Alice went sometimes on errands of mercy, and wore gray cloaks with scarlet facings to the cape, and felt themselves on a par with the sisters of charity, and had a lump of camphor in their pockets to prevent contagion, and asked the little ones if they knew the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, affecting great surprise if they did not, and telling them if they did that they ought to be confirmed at once and grow up respectable citizens.

Very different from these young ladies was pale-faced, quiet Emma, who believed everybody to be what he seemed, and wished herself as good as Alice and Julia, who were so devout at church, and who read a long chapter every morning and a short psalm every night. Emma did not like to read the Bible, and always glanced ahead to see how long the chapter was, and felt glad when it was ended. And she did not like to visit the poor because as a general thing the close air of the rooms made her sick, and she was always unhappy for a whole day with thinking about them and fancying how she would feel were she also poor.

And yet of the three girls I liked Emma best, for I knew just how true, and honest, and innocent she was, and that though she too was proud, she tried to overcome her pride, because she thought it wrong, and in her heart had a sincere desire to do just what was right. No one ever called Emma handsome; her features were too sharp for that, but there was something in her smile and the expression of her soft, dark eyes which made her very attractive, and, as I thought, prettier than Julia herself.

Take them altogether the ladies at Schuyler Hill were quite distingué in manner and appearance, and we were rather proud to have them with us, for their presence added something of importance to our little town, and gave a certain éclat to our society. Nor was their governess, Miss Helen Browning, much behind in style and personal appearance. Indeed, she prided herself upon manner and good breeding, and knew every point of etiquette, from sitting bolt-upright in her chair, with just the two tips of her boots visible, to eating soup with the side of her spoon, and never on any account allowing her hands to touch the table.

And now, last of all, comes Mrs. Tiffe, the housekeeper, a dignified, energetic woman of fifty, who wore black silk every day, with pink ribbons in her cap, and who, after several hard-fought battles with Miss Rossiter for the supremacy, had come off victorious, and reigned triumphant at Schuyler Hill, where she feared no one save the colonel himself, and liked no one but Godfrey. He was her idol, and he alone could unlock the mysterious closet under the stairs, and call forth jam, and jelly, and even marmalade, if he liked. Such lunches as she gave the ladies when they were alone, and Godfrey not there to coax, or the colonel to insist! A chicken wing and back, with a slice of bread and butter, and possibly a baked apple, if there chanced to be any “standing round” in danger of spoiling; while her breakfasts were delicate and dainty enough for a fairy, or the worst form which dyspepsia ever assumed. “Frugal repasts,” Godfrey called them; but for their frugality Mrs. Tiffe made amends at dinner, which was served with great profusion, and all the elegance the house could command. Nothing was too nice for dinner; and Mrs. Tiffe, felt her heart swell with pride when she saw her ladies, handsomely dressed, filing into the spacious dining-room, where the table was bright with silver and flowers. To her the Schuylers and Rossiters represented the world, and anybody outside that world, unless it were Miss Creighton, was looked upon with disgust, and barely tolerated. Miss Christine, it is true, was not a favorite, but she was a Rossiter, and Mrs. Tiffe charged all her faults to the fact that “she was an old maid, and couldn’t help being queer,” and so endured her quietly when her own wishes were not opposed.

And this was the household into which the news of Col. Schuyler’s second marriage fell like a bombshell in the enemy’s camp, wounding each one, and wringing from each one a cry according to her disposition. But for a description of this I must take a fresh sheet and begin another chapter.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE NEWS AT SCHUYLER HILL.

It came to them one sultry August morning, when the thermometer was 90 degrees in the shade, and the air was like a furnace even before nine o’clock. Breakfast was very late that morning, and Mrs. Tiffe was furious. She had committed the extravagance of broiled chicken and muffins, which of course were spoiled, and she had herself been up since four o’clock and was in a melting condition, in spite of the thinnest muslin she could find and the coolest garments she could wear. Miss Rossiter had not slept well, and, as was her custom after a restless night, she loitered in bed, and dawdled over her toilet and bath, and took so much time in dressing, that the clock was striking nine when she at last entered the dining-room, followed by the three girls and their governess, all panting and inveighing against the weather, except Emma. She liked it. Naturally chilly and cold, the heat suited her, and her face alone was pleasant and contented as she took her seat at the table and attacked the cold chicken and half-warm, heavy muffins, which her dyspeptic aunt could not eat.

“Bring me a slice of dry toast,” Miss Rossiter said to Martha, the waitress, who, on returning with the toast, brought two letters for Miss Julia, bearing foreign post-marks.

“From father and Godfrey,” Julia said. “Excuse me, please, while I read them.”

Leaning back in her chair she broke the seal of her father’s first and read a few lines, then with a start which nearly upset her cup of chocolate, she exclaimed:

“Oh, horrible, girls! Aunt Christine, listen,—father——”

“Martha, you can go, now,” she said suddenly, remembering the girl, who departed to the kitchen, where the news was already known, and where the servants stood open-mouthed around Perry, who was reading the letter his master had sent to him.

“What is it, Julia?” Miss Rossiter asked, when Martha was gone, and Julia, whose eyes had run at lightning speed over the contents of the letter, replied:

“Father is going to be married to a Miss Edith Lyle, Aunt Sinclair’s hired companion. You remember he mentioned her once before as living at Oakwood. Hear what he says of her: ‘She is a lady of good family, the daughter of a clergyman, the friend and companion of my deceased sister, your late Aunt Sinclair. She possesses many accomplishments, and is what I consider a very remarkable personage.’ (How like father that sounds!) ‘And I expect that all due deference will be paid to her by every member of my household.’ (He has underscored that.) ‘Please break the news to your Aunt Christine, and tell Mrs. Tiffe to see that all the rooms in the south wing are made ready for Mrs. Schuyler. I have written to Perry about refurnishing them, but Tiffe must superintend it a little——’

“Oh, dreadful, I believe I am going to faint,—my hartshorn, Emma, please,” Miss Rossiter gasped.

The hartshorn was found, and two palm-leaf fans were brought into requisition, and then Miss Rossiter spoke again, this time hysterically and in tears.

“My poor sister, to be so insulted! A hired companion! and she was a Rossiter! Oh, I cannot bear it, my poor disgraced nieces, my heart is breaking for you.”

“But, Aunt Christine, he says she is a lady, the daughter of a clergyman,” Emma said, soothingly,—hers the only voice raised in defence of the intruder,—the interloper,—the adventuress,—as Miss Rossiter termed the expected bride.

Emma’s heart had throbbed painfully at the thought of a new mother, but it was natural for her to defend whatever she believed abused, and she spoke up for the unknown Edith, until Julia, who had been reading Godfrey’s letter, uttered a cry of bitter anger and scorn, and said, sternly:

“Hush, Em, you don’t know what you are talking about; a lady, indeed, and the daughter of a clergyman! A woman of forty, with a limp, and glass eye, and cracked voice, is a nice mother to bring us!”

“A wha-at?” Miss Rossiter gasped, while Alice and Emma both exclaimed simultaneously: “A limp and a glass eye! What do you mean? Let me see;” and looking over Julia’s shoulder Alice read aloud what Godfrey had written.

Godfrey had said, “The sight of her will take your breath away,” and in fact the very thought of her did that, and for full a minute after the letter was read there was not a sound heard in the room where the indignant and confounded ladies sat, each staring blankly at the other, and neither able to speak or move. Miss Rossiter was the first to stir, and with a moaning cry, “I cannot bear it,” she went into violent hysterics, and Martha was called in, and the poor lady was taken to her room, where she tried, one after another, every bottle of medicine in her closet, but to no effect; even the Crown Bitters failed, and she sank upon the bed, shivering with cold, and asking for shawls and blankets on that August day, with a temperature of ninety degrees in the shade.

Perhaps Miss Rossiter herself had not been aware how much Colonel Howard was to her, or how hard it would be to see another woman there in her sister’s place. She had too much sense to believe she would ever fill it, yet the first smart had been that of disappointment and a sense of wrong to herself, while the second was a keen pang of mortification and anger, that if he must choose another he had chosen that caricature on womanhood described so graphically by Godfrey. It is true she did not quite believe him literally. Neither did his sisters, who sat in the library with white faces and tearful eyes. Julia was wrathful and defiant, and was already in a state of fierce rebellion against the woman of forty with the crack in her voice. So much she believed, but the limp and glass eye were too thoroughly Godfrey’s to be trusted.

“Probably the woman is lame and wears glasses,” she said, when she could trust herself to speak at all, “and perhaps she squints, but I have no faith in the glass eye. Godfrey made that up. Father is not the man to marry such a monster, and then expect us to pay all due deference to her. The idea of my deferring to such a woman. I hate her. I’ll poison her, the wretch!”

Julia Schuyler was terrible in her wrath, and with that expression in her flashing eyes and about the white quivering lips, she looked equal to anything, and Edith might well have trembled could she have seen the dark-faced girl, who, with clenched fists, threatened to poison her. Julia would not of course acknowledge that she really had murder in her heart, but she felt outraged, and insulted, and disgraced, and as if she must do something to avert the horrible evil threatening them all. But what could she do? To oppose her will to her father’s was like trying to move a mountain of stone with her puny strength. The mountain would not be hurt, and only she would suffer from the attempt.

There was no help, no hope, and when her anger had spent itself she burst into tears and sobbed passionately, just as Emma had done from the first, but with this difference, she cried from wrath and indignant mortification, while Emma’s tears were more for the dead mother whose place was to be filled, and whose death it seemed to her now had only been yesterday.

The governess, who knew that remark of any kind from herself would be resented as impertinent, wisely said nothing, while Alice, too, was silent, except as she occasionally said to Julia, “It is too bad, and I am sorry for you; sorry for us all.”

Looking upon Godfrey as her own especial property, Alice felt that whatever affected the Schuylers affected her, and she was sorry accordingly for this thing about to happen, but it did not hurt her as it did Julia and Emma, who must call the strange woman mother, and who wept on until Miss Rossiter sent for them to come to her room together with Miss Creighton. She had taken some brandy, and felt better, though her heart was aching still with a dreary sense of loss, and disappointment, and disgrace, if half Godfrey had written was true, and half was all that any stretch of her imagination would allow her to believe, and when the young girls entered the room she said to them:

“I have sent for you to talk over this dreadful thing, and to say that I do not credit all Godfrey’s story. He is a sad boy to exaggerate, you know. Still, let the woman be what she may, we do not want her here where we have been so happy.”

Miss Rossiter’s voice faltered a little, but soon recovering herself, she continued:

“No, we do not want her here; and I for one declare war,—war to the knife!”

She spoke bitterly now, and her black eyes flashed with contemptuous scorn.

“But Aunt Christine,” Emma said, “it is father’s house, and he will not let you treat her badly.”

“Nor shall I,” Miss Rossiter said, loftily; “I shall let her alone severely, and leave as soon as possible after her arrival. Nor shall I leave my sister’s daughters with the adventuress. I’ve been thinking it over, and have concluded to rent or buy a place in New York, and set up housekeeping for myself, in which case you will go with me, and leave your father to enjoy life with his low-born bride.”

“Father wrote she was a lady, and Godfrey says we shall like her,” Emma quickly interposed, feeling that for herself she preferred staying with the “adventuress” to living with Aunt Christine.

Julia, on the contrary, was caught with the house in New York. The city was far more to her taste than the dull country, and, with a withering glance at her sister, she said:

“I’m ashamed of you, Em, that you cannot appreciate auntie’s offer, but speak, instead, for that woman. I, for one, am greatly obliged to auntie, and shall go with her to New York?”

“And I, too, if she will have me. I’d rather live anywhere than at Uncle Calvert’s,” Alice said; “and I hope the house will be near the Park. Won’t it be nice, though?”

“Yes, I mean to have it nice,” Miss Rossiter said, warming into something like enthusiasm as she thought of a home of her own. “I shall furnish it elegantly, and have a reception every week, with little recherché dinner parties for our circle.”

Julia began to be interested, and hoped she should see a little society before she was quite forty, while Alice resolved to be married from that house near the Park, instead of “Uncle Calvert’s poky little bandbox down on Washington Square.”

And while the three ladies planned and talked of the new house in the city, each was conscious of a pang as she thought of leaving the delightful place, where was so much of comfort and luxury, with no shadow of care or trouble. And of the three, Miss Rossiter felt it the most keenly. Naturally indolent and fond of her ease, she had enjoyed her sister’s house, and hated much to leave it, but the fiat had gone forth.

There was to be a new mistress at Schuyler Hill, whose name was not Rossiter, and she must go. She settled that point at once, and then said to the young girls by way of caution, for pride in her brother-in-law was still strong within her:

“I think it will be better not to mention Godfrey’s letter,—that is, not to speak of the woman’s personal appearance, which may not be so bad as we fear. Let her show for herself what she is. We must tell, of course, of the expected marriage, but we need say nothing further.”

In this reasonable advice all three of the girls concurred, and yet through some agency it was soon rumored all over Hampstead that the new lady of Schuyler Hill was deformed, and homely and poor, and the hired companion of the late Mrs. Sinclair, and that Miss Rossiter had declared war to the knife, while Julia talked of poison, and Emma cried day and night and would not be comforted. Who told all this, nobody knew. Possibly it was the governess, and possibly Mrs. Tiffe, who bristled all over those days with importance and secret exultation over her routed and discomfited foe, poor Miss Rossiter. Mrs. Tiffe had had her letter from Col. Schuyler, and Perry, her son, had his also, in which were numerous instructions with regard to the refurnishing of the rooms in the south wing. “All the rooms,” the colonel had said, and he was minute in his directions with regard to the corner room with the bay-window overlooking the river and the mountains beyond. This was to be Mrs. Schuyler’s boudoir, or private sitting-room, and was to be fitted up in drab and pale rose pink, while the sleeping-room, which was separated from it by bath-room and dressing-closet, was to be furnished with blue, and the little room beyond, where the colonel kept his books and private papers, was to be green and oak.

“Let everything be new and in the latest style,” the colonel wrote to Perry. “You can get men up from New York who will know just what is needful, while the ladies and your mother will give you the benefit of their advice and good taste, so I shall expect to find everything perfect when I come.”

To Mrs. Tiffe the colonel wrote, saying that from past experience he knew he could rely upon her, and hoped she would give the matter her own personal supervision, in which case it would be right. Thus flattered and trusted and deferred to, Mrs. Tiffe espoused the cause of the new wife, and hurrahed for the coming change of government at Schuyler Hill. Anything was preferable to Miss Rossiter, and Mrs. Tiffe cared little whether Edith walked with two crutches or one, provided she freed her from the enemy.

“My son will obey orders to the letter,” she said, crisply, when Julia asked what Perry meant to do. “If the colonel says the south wing must be cleared and refurnished, it will be, and Miss Rossiter may as well vacate to-day as to-morrow. There’s no time to be lost in dawdling.”

Now, the corner room, with the wide bay-window, was the room of all others which Miss Rossiter preferred, and she had appropriated it to herself and held possession of it in spite of Mrs. Tiffe’s broad hints that there were other apartments in the house besides the “very best chamber.” But she must give it up now, and with many a sigh of regret she saw Kitty gather up her bottles of medicine, her boxes of pills, her wine and her brandy, and galvanic battery, and bear them to another closet on the opposite side of the house, away from the river and mountains, where her only view was the little town, which she detested, and the hill rising darkly behind it. It was hard, and Miss Rossiter felt very much injured and aggrieved, and cried softly to herself, and thought very bitter things of that woman who had brought her to this strait, and for whom the house was being turned upside down.

Mrs. Tiffe was already at work with her maids in the south wing taking up carpets, removing furniture, washing windows, and in the room just vacated by Miss Rossiter burning coffee, and sugar, and paper by way of removing the smell of drugs with which the apartment was permeated. But do what she would the faint odor of valerian was still perceptible, making the good woman “sick as a dog,” as she expressed it, and bringing into requisition as a last experiment burnt feathers, which, combined with the valerian, made the atmosphere of the place unbearable.

“Paint will do it and nothing else,” was Mrs. Tiffe’s final verdict, as she retreated to the open window and leaned out for a breath of pure air.

Not the slightest interest did either of the ladies show in the changes being made, but Mrs. Tiffe and her son felt themselves equal to the task until it came to selecting carpets, and furniture and curtains in New York. Then Perry said some one ought to go with him and not let him take the entire responsibility.

But neither Miss Rossiter, nor Julia, nor Alice, made any response, and the probability was that he would go alone until the morning came, when Emma appeared at breakfast in her walking-dress and announced her intention to accompany Perry.

“Somebody ought to go for father’s sake,” she said; “and if no one else will, I must. I shall stop at Uncle Calvert’s and get auntie to help me.”

To this there was no open opposition. Miss Rossiter had the toothache and could not talk, while Julia merely raised her eyebrows in token of her surprise; and Alice said:

“You are certainly very kind, Em, and forgiving, to be so much interested for that woman.”

“It isn’t for that woman; it’s for father, and because I know he wishes it,” Emma replied, as she put on her hat and shawl and started with Perry for New York.

She was gone three days, and at the end of that time four men appeared at Schuyler Hill and commenced the work of measuring, repainting and frescoing the rooms intended for the bride. Then in due time came the carpets, and the lambrequins, and the lace curtains, and the furniture, and more men to see that everything fitted and was as it should be.

“Handsome enough for the queen herself,” Mrs. Tiffe said, when all was done, and she walked complacently through the suite of rooms, sniffing occasionally as she passed the open closet, to see if there lingered yet the faintest approach to valerian or drug of any kind.

There did not. Paint and varnish had killed all that, and the air of the rooms was pure and sweet as the rooms themselves were beautiful and attractive. I used those days to be occasionally at the great house, and, as I never presumed upon my acquaintance with the ladies, or tried to force myself upon their notice, they treated me with a good deal of kindness, and seemed to like my society. So when, one Saturday morning after the repairs were finished, I met Miss Julia in the village, and she said, in her usual half-cordial, half-indifferent tone, “What an age it is since you were to see us. Suppose you come round this afternoon, and have a game of croquet, and stay to dinner,” I accepted the invitation, and at about 4 p.m. rang the bell at Schuyler Hill.

I did not suppose I was very early, especially as we were to play croquet; but the ladies, who always slept after lunch, were not yet dressed, and so I went with Mrs. Tiffe to the kitchen, to see some jelly she had been making, and which had “come beautifully.” As I was about returning to the parlor she said to me:

“Don’t you want to see them rooms?”

I knew what she meant, and answered that I did.

Taking me first into the green room, where the oak leaves in the rich velvet carpet looked as if you might pick them up, Mrs. Tiffe opened the doors through, and asked what I thought of the effect. It was beautiful beyond anything I had dreamed. Especially was I delighted with the parlor, where the carpet was of that soft chiné pattern so tasteful and exquisite; and the furniture was delicate drab, with trimmings of pale rose pink. There were rare pictures on the wall, and curtains of finely-wrought lace before the windows, with lambrequins of rose pink satin to match the furniture, while cushions, and easy-chairs, and ottomans, and inlaid tables, which almost told their price themselves, were scattered about in such a way as to give the room an air of cosey, home-like comfort as well as elegance.

How lovely it all was, and how like a dream it seemed to be looking at it, and knowing that it was real and not a mere illusion! Then, as I remembered what I had heard of the bride’s deformity and plainness, I thought it such a pity that the occupant of these rooms should not be lovely like them, and a fitting ornament for so much grandeur.

Lady Emily, with her pale, sallow face and expressionless eyes, would have looked better there, I said, or even Miss Rossiter herself, who when dressed and feeling well was still very attractive, and when I went down stairs and found her sitting on the veranda, in her white cambric dress, with the scarlet shawl she wore so much wrapped around her, her glossy black hair becomingly arranged, with a single white flower among the heavy braids, I thought the colonel would have done far better to have taken her than the bride he had chosen.

We had a very quiet, stupid, six-hand game of croquet, and the dinner was quieter, stupider still, for all the ladies seemed preoccupied and disinclined to talk. Not a word was said of the marriage by any one until I was leaving, when Emma came up to me, and whispered softly:

“They are in New York. We had a telegram this afternoon.”

She did not say who they were, but I pressed her hand in token of my sympathy, for I knew that they had reference to the new mistress of Schuyler Hill.

CHAPTER XXIII.
MRS. ROGERS AND GERTIE AT HAMPSTEAD.

The voyage, which, owing to adverse winds, had been unusually long, was over, and the names of “Col. Schuyler, lady and maid” were registered at the hotel, where they were to stop for a week or more before going to their home in Hampstead. Macpherson and Godfrey were there also, the latter showing the city to his friend, who cared only for the studios and galleries of paintings. After her husband’s reproof Edith had made no attempt to see Gertie Westbrooke, but she had inquired for her every day and sent many delicacies to her, and once, in the distance, she had seen her shawl wrapped around a little figure which was leaning over the railing, with masses of bright hair falling beneath the scarlet hood, and to herself she said: “That must be Gertie Westbrooke.”

But further than that she knew nothing of the child, until she heard Godfrey talking to his father about the cottage Mrs. Rogers was to have.

“Yes, certainly, I’ll ask Mrs. Schuyler,” Colonel Schuyler said to some suggestion of Godfrey, and then added, with a laugh: “It seems, Edith, that this child in whom you were so much interested is to be my tenant, or rather Godfrey’s, as the cottage is his. He, too, has taken a most unaccountable fancy to the girl, and as I have ordered your suite of rooms to be wholly refurnished, Godfrey has suggested that we let this Mrs. Rogers have as much of the old furniture as will be suitable for that cottage. She has everything to buy, of course, and not much means, I dare say.”

This was just like Colonel Schuyler. He was very generous with his pride, and he really wished to make some amends for his conduct with regard to Gertie and the shawl. Ever since that affair he had felt that he might have acted hastily, while Edith’s meek acquiescence with his wishes touched him in a tender point, and now, when the Rogers people came into notice again, he seized the opportunity to do them a favor if possible.

“They can think they are renting the furniture with the house,” he said; and as Edith signified her approval without in the least suspecting what cottage it was which was to receive the furniture from Schuyler Hill, the matter was decided, and Mrs. Rogers was told that she would find the house partly furnished, a fact which gave her much satisfaction.

Since the failure of the bank, money had been scarce with her, and as she could not afford to remain long in New York, even at a cheap boarding-house, she started for Hampstead the third day after landing. Godfrey’s telegram had been received by Perry, the agent, but there was no time for repairs, nor were they needed, as the house had been well kept up and was clean as soap and water and the hands of the late occupant could make it. At the time of refurnishing Edith’s rooms at Schuyler Hill the old furniture had been stored away, some in the servants’ rooms, some in the attic, and some in the barn, but it was brought together according to the colonel’s orders, and deposited in the cottage, where it lay waiting the arrival of the new tenants, concerning whom there was much speculation in our little town.

I was on my way from school,—for I was still the village schoolmistress,—and, seeing the door open and people moving about inside, I passed through the gate, and entered the rooms, where I had last seen Heloise Fordham. People called it “Vine Cottage,” it was so entirely covered with vines and creepers, and surrounded with flowering shrubs. And a very pretty place it was, too; for, since it had been Godfrey’s, he had taken great pains to keep it up, and beautify the yard and garden, both of which were fashioned a little after the grounds at Schuyler Hill.

Such a place could not go begging for tenants, but for some reason it had been vacant for five or six weeks, when Godfrey’s telegram was received, bidding Perry get it in readiness for Mrs. Rogers. As we have seen, Perry obeyed orders, and, in spite of the wry faces of the young ladies and Miss Christine’s remonstrance, he collected the articles named in Colonel Schuyler’s dispatch, and carried them to the cottage, where I found them scattered about promiscuously, a half-worn velvet carpet here, a marble table and stand there, and in another place a beautiful rosewood bedstead, bearing the marks of the boy Godfrey’s jack-knife, and a handsome bureau, both too tall to stand in any room except the parlor, where they were not wanted.

“What is all this?” I asked, as I stepped over oil-cloth, and hearth-rug, and curtains. “Who is going to live here?”

“A Mrs. Rogers, cousin to the new madame’s waiting-maid,” Perry replied, with a certain intonation in his voice, which showed me that he had taken his cue from the house on the Hill, and was not inclined to regard with favor the cousin of “madame’s waiting-maid.”

“When is Mrs. Rogers expected?” I asked, and he replied:

“She may come any time, but the colonel will not be here for two weeks or more. There’s the old Harry to pay up there,” and he nodded toward the house on the Hill. “I tell you, Miss Rossiter and Miss Schuyler is ridin’ their highest horses.”

It was not for me to question him, and so I made him no reply, but improved the opportunity of going through the house where my old friend, Heloise Fordham, used to live, and where I had bidden her good-by with promises to care for that grave on the hillside. And I had cared for it regularly at first, and then as years went by and she neither came to see my work nor sent me any word, I gradually began to grow a little lax in my labors, and now it was months since I had thought of it. But I remembered it that morning when I stood in Heloise’s old room, where I had seen her with the tears in her eyes and the tremor in her voice as she talked to me of Abelard, who “was not her beau,” and yet very dear to her. There by the window she had stood and cut the long curl of hair and given me the vase for Abelard’s grave.

“And where is the young girl?” I asked myself, “and why has she never written me a line in all these years?”

Then as I thought of the neglected grave, I said, aloud:

“I’ll go there to-morrow and see what I can do. It must be sadly overgrown by this time.”

But it rained the next day and the next, and so I did not go, but came each day by the cottage, where at last I saw the new tenants, Mrs. Rogers and little Gertie Westbrooke.

The child was in the garden close by the fence, and glanced up at me with a look which made me stop instantly to gaze at her, while the smile which broke over her face and shone in her blue eyes took me straight through the gate to her side, and before I knew at all what I was doing or why I was doing it, I was talking to her and seeming to myself like one who walks in a dream and sees there things which he has known and seen before.

Surely that smile, which came and went so frequently, and that voice so clear, and sweet, and ringing, were familiar to me, and I said to the child:

“Have you been here before?”

“No, ma’am; I was born in London. I never was in America until now, and yet it’s funny that this place seems like home, and my room is just what I thought it would be. Won’t you walk in, please, and see auntie?” she said, and I followed her into the cottage, where she presented me to the woman there with all the air and grace of one born to the purple.

“Auntie, Mrs. Rogers; this lady is,—I don’t believe I know your name.”

And she turned inquiringly to me.

I told her who I was, and then inspected Mrs. Rogers curiously, and wondered to find her so different from Gertie. She spoke very well and appeared well, but showed at once the class to which she belonged; nor did she make pretensions to anything else than she really was,—a plain, sensible woman, who had come to America to better herself and be near Norah, her cousin.

She wanted work, she said, and asked what the probabilities were of her obtaining employment in Hampstead, either as plain sewer or dressmaker, or both. Of course, I heard about the lost money in the bank, and received the impression that she had seen better days. Everybody who comes from the old country has, but that was natural, and I liked her on the whole, and thought her a woman of great tact and observation, and promised her my plain sewing and my influence if she pleased me.

She was very anxious to send Gertie to school at once, she said, and the next day she sat in my school-room in her dainty dress of blue, with her white-ruffled apron, and her auburn hair rippling all over her finely-shaped, intellectual head. I walked home with her that night, and found Mrs. Rogers in a great deal of trouble about the bedstead and the bureau, which seemed so out of place in the cottage.

“Where did they come from? Did the other tenants use them?” she asked, and as I did not see fit to enlighten her, she finally determined to store them away in the woodshed until Mr. Godfrey came. “I am able to furnish a few rooms decently well myself,” she said; and three days after, when I called on my way from school, Gertie took me to her room and asked me how I liked it.

It was the same Heloise Fordham used to occupy, and it seemed as if she was there again at my side, as I stood looking at the pretty ingrain carpet and the single bed, with its snow-white draperies, the low chair near the window, and the table for Gertie’s work, and the swinging-shelf for her books.

“It is a pretty room,” I said, “and it looks as it did when Heloise was here.”

“Who?” Gertie asked, sweeping her hair back from her forehead, just as I had seen Heloise do so many times. “Who did you say used to be here?”

“Heloise Fordham, a young girl about my age, or a little older, whose mother occupied this cottage twelve or thirteen years ago,” I replied; and Gertie rejoined:

“Why, that is my name, too!”

“Is it?” I asked, and she rejoined:

“Yes, Gertrude Heloise. I write it Gertrude H. for short. Don’t you know?”

I did not know, and I had no suspicion of that which, had I known it then, would have taken my senses away, I verily believe.

“Tell me about your friend,” she said. “Was she pretty, and good, and happy? I like to know who has occupied my room before me. At Stonewark, where we were a few weeks last summer, they said my room was haunted by a girl who killed herself for love. Auntie did not wish me to sleep there. She’s a bit superstitious, but I was not afraid. I liked it, and tried to keep awake nights to see the ghost which threw itself out of the window just at midnight, but I always went to sleep before it came. Where is Heloise, now?”

I did not know, but, questioned by the eager little girl, I told a part of the story, and then, as she grew interested and begged for “the whole, the very whole,” I told it her, thinking there was no harm in telling, as no one could be wronged. Heloise was either married or dead, the latter probably, or she would have written to me, and so it was no matter if I did tell her story and Abelard’s to the child who listened so intently, her eyes filling with tears, which rolled down her cheeks when I spoke of the dead man lying on the grass, his face all wet with blood and a withered white rose pressed inside his flannel shirt. I suppose she cried for him, and to a certain extent I dare say she did, though her first words were: “Poor fellow, I’m so glad he didn’t let Godfrey be killed.”

This was the first time she had mentioned Godfrey to me, and as I had the impression that she did not know him, I was going to ask her about it when she said, eagerly:

“And he was the young girl’s lover, and she only fifteen; that’s funny. I’m twelve, and I should not think of having a beau; but go on and tell me more, and what they did with him, and what she did, and all of them.”

I told her what they did, and how for a day and a night the body lay in the parlor below, and where they buried it, and about the monument and my promise to keep the grave clean and nice.

“And have you done it?” Gertie asked, her cheeks like roses and her eyes as bright as stars.

I confessed to recent neglect, and said I had not been there once during the summer.

“Then it’s awful by this time,” Gertie said. “Let’s go and fix it to-morrow, you and I, will you?”

I promised that I would, and then, as it was growing dark, I bade her good-night, she saying to me in a whisper:

“I’ll not tell auntie about that girl who used to have my room, because if I did I’d have to tell about the body which lay in the parlor, and she would surely see his ghost. She’s afraid of ’em, you know. I guess that class always are.”

She spoke of her auntie’s belonging to a class different from herself as naturally as possible, and still with no shadow of contempt or disrespect in her voice. Mrs. Rogers had always taught her that though she must expect nothing from others on account of it, she was superior to people like herself and Norah, and Gertie accepted it as a fact, not knowing exactly whether it was the forty pounds a year or the big house where she used to live, or the dead mother, or the father who would not own her, or the grandmother she had never seen, which gave her the precedence.

The next day, true to my promise, I took Gertie to the Schuyler Cemetery and showed her Abelard’s grave.

“James A. Lyle, born in Alnwick, England, 18—. Died June —, 18—, aged 23 years. Honor to the dead who died to save another’s life,” she read aloud, kneeling on the grass before the monument which marked his resting-place.

“Oh, how nice that is. ‘Honor to the dead who died to save another’s life,’ and that other was Mr. Godfrey,” she said. “And Colonel Schuyler put it here. I like him now better than I did. I thought he was proud and cold, but there must be good in him. Why, it’s a splendid stone, and must have cost as much as,—as much as forty pounds.”

Her income was her maximum for an unheard-of sum, and she stood gazing admiringly at the stone, while her busy tongue went on.

“And this is a pretty yard, with all those old Schuylers buried here. I mean, old really, you know. I don’t say it for bad nicknames. They were all old. ‘Emily, beloved wife of Colonel Howard Schuyler, aged 36,’ is the youngest of them all, and she was awful old. That must be Colonel Schuyler’s first wife, Mr. Godfrey’s mother. Was she as pretty, I wonder, as the new lady is? No, you have not kept the grave up nice; that girl would feel badly if she saw it. Let’s go straight to work and pull up the nasty weeds first; and look, here’s a clump of lovely forget-me-nots down in the grass, and sweet English violets.”

She talked so fast and went so rapidly from one thing to another that I had no chance to say a word, but stood watching her silently as she worked with a will, pulling up the weeds and digging about the flowers which had been making a faint struggle for life in the grass which impeded their growth. Whether she was working for the sake of the young girl Heloise, or because it was Godfrey’s life which had been saved by the necessity for that grave, I could not tell. She talked of both, and when her task was done, and flushed and heated with exercise, she sat down to rest, she said:

“There, Miss Heloise Fordham will feel better now, I hope, and I wouldn’t wonder if Mr. Godfrey liked me to be kind to the man who saved his life. Was she very pretty, Miss Armstrong?”

I knew she meant Heloise, although her last remark had been of Godfrey, and I replied:

“Yes, very pretty. Do you know you look a little like her, only your hair is auburn, and hers was golden brown, while your eyes are blue and hers were a brownish gray.”

“Do I? Am I like her? Am I pretty? Mr. Godfrey said I was,” she exclaimed, her face lighting up with a glow which made her, as I thought, the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

“You have spoken of Mr. Godfrey several times,” I said. “Where did you know him?”