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.

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

BY

G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers,

New York.

FORREST HOUSE.
A Novel.

BY

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,

AUTHOR OF

Tempest and Sunshine.—’Lena Rivers.—Darkness and Daylight.—Marian Grey.—English Orphans.—Hugh Worthington.—Millbank.—Ethelyn’s Mistake.—Edna Browning, Etc., Etc.

“Longueville.—What! are you married, Beaufort!

Beaufort.—Ay, as fast

As words, and hands, and hearts, and priest,

Could make us.” Beaumont and Fletcher.

NEW YORK:

G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers,

MADISON SQUARE.

MDCCCLXXIX.

COPYRIGHT, 1879,

BY

DANIEL HOLMES.

[All Rights Reserved.]

Samuel Stodder,

Stereotyper,

90 Ann Street, N. Y.

Trow

Printing and Book-Binding Co.

N. Y.

CONTENTS.

THE FORREST HOUSE.

CHAPTER I.
TWO LETTERS.

The first, a small half-sheet, inclosed in a large thick envelope, and addressed in a childish, unformed hand to Mr. James Everard Forrest, Junior, Ellicottville, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with a request in the lower left-hand corner for the postmaster to forward immediately; the second, a dainty little perfumed missive, with a fanciful monogram, directed in a plain round hand to J. Everard Forrest, Esq., Ellicottville, Mass., with the words “in haste” written in the corner. Both letters were in a hurry, and both found their way together to a brown-haired, brown-eyed, brown-faced young man, who sat under the shadow of the big maple tree on the Common in Ellicottville, lazily puffing his cigar and fanning himself with his Panama hat, for the thermometer was ninety in the shade, and the hour 10 A. M. of a sultry July day. At first it was almost too much exertion to break the seals, and for a moment J. Everard Forrest, Jr., toyed with the smaller envelope of the two, and studied the handwriting.

“I may as well see what Josey wants of me in haste,” he said at last, and breaking the seal, he read:

“Holburton, July 15.

“Dear Ned: You must come to-morrow on the four o’clock train. Everything has gone at sixes and sevens, for just at the very last Mrs. Murdock, who has been dying for twenty years or more, must really die, and the Murdock boys can’t act, so you must take the character of the bridegroom in the play where I am to be the bride. You will have very little to say. You can learn it all in fifteen minutes, but you must come to-morrow so as to rehearse with us once at least. Now, don’t you dare fail. I shall meet you at the station.

“Yours lovingly,

“Josephine Fleming.

“P. S.—Do you remember I wrote you in my last of a Dr. Matthewson, who has been in town a few days stopping at the hotel? He has consented to be the priest on condition that you are the bridegroom, so do not fail me.

Again, with love, Joe.”

“And so this is my lady’s great haste,” the young man said, as he finished reading the letter. “She wants me for her bridegroom, and I don’t know but I’m willing, so I guess I’ll have to go; and now for Rossie’s interesting document, which must be ‘forwarded immediately.’ I only wish it may prove to have money in it from the governor, for I am getting rather low.”

So saying he took the other letter and examined it carefully, while a smile broke over his face as he continued:

“Upon my word, Rossie did not mean this to go astray, and has written everything out in full, even to Massachusetts and Junior. Good for her. But how crooked; why, that junior stands at an angle of several degrees above the Mr. Rossie ought to do better. She must be nearly thirteen; but she’s a nice little girl, and I’ll see what she says.”

What she said was as follows:

“Forrest House, July 14th.

“Mr. Everard Forrest:

“Dear Sir:—Nobody knows I am writing to you, but your mother has been worse for a few days, and keeps talking about you even in her sleep. She did not say send for you, but I thought if you knew how bad she was, you would perhaps come home for a part of your vacation. It will do her so much good to see you. I am very well and your father too. So no more at present.

“Yours respectfully,

“Rosamond Hastings.

“P. S.—Miss Beatrice Belknap has come home from New York, and had the typhoid fever, and lost every speck of her beautiful hair. You don’t know how funny she looks! She offered me fifty dollars for mine to make her a wig, because it curls naturally, and is just her color, but I would not sell it for the world: would you? Inclosed find ten dollars of my very own money, which I send you to come home with, thinking you might need it. Do not fail to come, will you?

“Rosamond.”

Everard read this letter twice, and smoothed out the crisp ten-dollar bill, which was carefully wrapped in a separate bit of paper. It was not the first time he had received money in his sore need from the girl, for in a blank-book, which he always carried in his pocket, were several entries, as follows: “Jan. 2, from Rosamond Hastings, five dollars: March 4th, two dollars: June 8th, one dollar,” and so on until the whole amount was more than twenty dollars, but never before had she sent him so large a sum as now, and there was a moisture in his eyes and his breath came heavily as he put it away in his purse, and said:

“There never was so unselfish a creature as Rossie Hastings. She is always thinking of somebody else. And I am a mean, contemptible dog to take her money as I do; but then, I honestly intend to pay her back tenfold when I have something of my own.”

Thus reassuring himself, he put his purse in his pocket, and glancing again at Rossie’s letter his eye fell upon Miss Belknap’s name, and he laughed aloud as he said: “Poor bald Bee Belknap. She must look comical. I can imagine how it hurts her pride. Buy Rossie’s hair, indeed! I should think not, when that is her only beauty, if I except her eyes, which are too large for her thin face; but that will round out in time, and Rossie may be a beauty yet, though not like Josey; no, never like Josey.”

And that brought the young man back to Miss Fleming’s letter, and its imperative request. Could he comply with it now? Ought he not to go at once to the sick mother, who was missing him so sadly, and who had made all the happiness he had ever known at home? Duty said yes, but inclination drew him to Holburton and the fair Josephine, with whom he believed himself to be and with whom he was, perhaps, as much in love as any young man of twenty well can be. Perhaps Rossie had been unduly alarmed; at all events, if his mother were so very sick, his father would write, of course, and on the whole he believed he should go to Holburton by the afternoon train, and then, perhaps, go home.

And so the die was cast, and the young man walked to the telegraph office and sent across the wires to Miss Josephine Fleming the three words: “I will come.”

CHAPTER II.
DR. MATTHEWSON.

The train from Ellicottville was late that afternoon. In fact, its habit was to be late, but on this particular day it was more than usually behind time, and the one stage which Holburton boasted had waited more than half an hour at the little station of the out-of-the-way town which lies nestled among the Berkshire hills, just on the boundary line between the Empire State and Massachusetts. The day was hot even for midsummer, and the two fat, motherly matrons who sat in the depot alternately inveighed against the heat and wiped their glowing faces, while they watched and discussed the young lady who, on the platform outside, was walking up and down, seeming wholly unconscious of their espionage. But it was only seeming, for she knew perfectly well that she was an object of curiosity and criticism, and more than once she paused in her walk and turning squarely round faced the two old ladies in order to give them a better view, and let them see just how many tucks, and ruffles and puffs there were in her new dress, worn that day for the first time. And a very pretty picture Josephine Fleming made standing there in the sunshine, looking so artless and innocent, as if no thought of herself had ever entered her mind. She was a pink-and-white blonde, with masses of golden hair rippling back from her forehead, and those dreamy blue eyes of which poets sing, and which have in them a marvelous power to sway the sterner sex by that pleading, confiding expression, which makes a man very tender towards the helpless creature appealing so innocently to him for protection.

The two old ladies did not like Josephine, though they admitted that she was very beautiful and stylish, in her blue muslin and white chip hat with the long feather drooping low behind, too pretty by far and too much of the fine lady, they said, for a daughter of the widow Roxie Fleming, who lived in the brown house on the Common, and sewed for a living when she had no boarders from the city. And then, as the best of women will sometimes do, they picked the girl to pieces, and talked of the scandalous way she had of flirting with every man in town, of her airs and indolence, which they called laziness, and wondered if it were true that poor old Agnes, her half-sister, made the young lady’s bed, and mended her clothes, and waited upon her generally as if she were a princess, and toiled, and worked, and went without herself, that Josey might be clothed in dainty apparel, unbecoming to one in her rank of life. And then they wondered next if it were true, as had been rumored, that she was engaged to that young Forrest from Amherst College, who had boarded at the brown house for a few weeks the previous summer, and been there so often since.

“A well-mannered chap as you would wish to see,” one of them said, “with a civil word for high and low, and a face of which any mother might be proud; only——” and here the speaker lowered her voice, as she continued: “Only he does look a little fast, for no decent-behaved boy of twenty ought to have such a tired, fagged look as he has, and they do say there were some great carousin’s at Widder Fleming’s last summer, which lasted up to midnight, and wine was carried in by Agnes, and hot coffee made as late as eleven, and if you’ll b’leve it”—here the voice was a whisper—“they had a pack of cards, for Miss Murdock saw them with her own eyes, and young Forrest handled them as if used to the business.”

“Cards! That settles it!” was repeated by the second woman, with a shake of the head, which indicated that she knew all she cared to know of Everard Forrest, but her friend, who was evidently better posted in the gossip of the town, went on to add that “people said young Forrest was an only son, and that his father was very rich, and lived in a fine old place somewhere west or south, and had owned negroes in Kentucky before the war, and was a copperhead, and very close and proud, and kept colored help, and would not like it at all if he knew how his son was flirting with Josephine Fleming.”

Then they talked of the expected entertainment at the Village Hall the following night, the proceeds of which were to go toward buying a fire-engine, which the people greatly needed. And Josephine was to figure in most everything, and they presumed she was now waiting for some chap to come on the train.

For once they were right in their conjecture. She was waiting for Everard Forrest, and when the train came in he stepped upon the platform looking so fresh, and cool, and handsome in his white linen suit that the ladies almost forgave Josephine for the gushing manner with which she greeted him, and carried him off toward home. She was so glad to see him, and her eyes looked at him so softly and tenderly, and she had so much to tell him, and was so excited with it all, and the brown house overgrown with hop-vines was so cool and pleasant, and Agnes had such a tempting little supper prepared for him on the back piazza, that Everard felt supremely happy and content, and once, when nobody was looking on, kissed the blue-eyed fairy flitting so joyously around him.

“I say, Josey,” he said, when the tea-things had been removed, and he was lounging in his usual lazy attitude upon the door-step and smoking his cigar, “it’s a heap nicer here than down in that hot, close hall. Let’s not go to the rehearsal. I’d rather stay home.”

“But you can’t do it. You must go,” Josephine replied. “You must rehearse and learn your part, though for to-night it doesn’t matter. You can go through the marriage ceremony well enough, can’t you?”

“Of course I can, and can say, ‘I, Everard, take thee, Josie, to be my lawful wife,’ and, by Jove, I wouldn’t care if it was genuine. Suppose we get a priest, and make a real thing of it. I’m willing, if you are.”

There was a pretty blush on Josey’s cheek as she replied, “What nonsense you are talking, and you not yet through college!” and then hurried him off to the hall, where the rehearsal was to take place.

Here an unforeseen difficulty presented itself. Dr. Matthewson was not forthcoming in his character as priest. He had gone out of town, and had not yet returned; so another took his place in the marriage scene, where Everard was the bridegroom and Josephine the bride. The play was called “The Mock Marriage,” and would be very effective with the full glamour of lights, and dress, and people on the ensuing night; and Josephine declared herself satisfied with the rehearsal, and sanguine of success, especially as Dr. Matthewson appeared at the last moment apologizing for his tardiness, and assuring her of his intention to be present the next evening.

He was a tall, powerfully-built man of thirty or more, whom many would call handsome, though there was a cruel, crafty look in his eyes, and in the smile which habitually played about his mouth. Still, he was very gentlemanly in his manner, and fascinating in his conversation, for he had traveled much, and seen everything, and spoke both German and French as readily as his mother tongue. With Miss Fleming he seemed to be on the most intimate terms, though this intimacy only dated from the time when she pleaded with him so prettily and successfully to take the place of the priest in “The Mock Marriage,” where John Murdock was to have officiated. At first the doctor had objected, saying gallantly that he preferred to be the bridegroom, and asking who that favored individual was to be.

“Mr. Everard Forrest, from Rothsay, Southern Ohio,” Josephine replied, with a conscious blush which told much to the experienced man of the world.

“Forrest! Everard Forrest!” the doctor repeated thoughtfully, and the smile about his mouth was more perceptible. “Seems to me I have heard that name before. Where did you say he lived, and where is he now?”

Josephine replied again that Mr. Forrest’s home was in Rothsay, Ohio, at a grand old place called Forrest House; that he was a student at Amherst, and was spending his summer vacation with a friend in Ellicottville.

“Yes, I understand,” the doctor rejoined, adding, after a moment’s pause: “I’ll be the priest; but suppose I had the power to marry you in earnest; what then?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t. You must not. Everard is not through college, and it would be so very dreadful—and romantic, too,” the girl said, as she looked searchingly into the dark eyes meeting hers so steadily.

Up to that time Dr. Matthewson had taken but little notice of Josephine, except to remark her exceeding beauty as a golden-haired blonde. With his knowledge of the world and ready discernment he had discovered that whatever position she held in Holburton was due to her beauty and piquancy, and firm resolve to be noticed, rather than to any blood, or money, or culture. She was not a lady, he knew, the first time he saw her in the little church, and, attracted by her face, watched her through the service, while she whispered, and laughed, and passed notes to the young men in front of her. Without any respect himself for religion or the church, he despised irreverence in others, and formed a tolerably accurate estimate of Josephine and her companions. After her interview with him, however, he became greatly interested in everything pertaining to her, and by a little adroit questioning learned all there was to be known of her, and, as is usual in such cases, more too. Her mother was poor, and crafty and designing, and very ambitious for her daughter’s future. That she took in sewing and kept boarders was nothing to her detriment in a village, where the people believed in honest labor, but that she traded on her daughter’s charms, and brought her up in utter idleness, while Agnes, the child of her husband’s first marriage, was made a very drudge and slave to the young beauty, was urged against her as a serious wrong, and, except as the keeper of a boarding-house, in which capacity she excelled, the Widow Fleming was not very highly esteemed in Holburton. All this Dr. Matthewson learned, and then he was told of young Forrest, a mere boy, two years younger than Josey, who had stopped with Mrs. Fleming a few weeks the previous summer, and for whom both Josey and the mother had, to use the landlady’s words, “made a dead set,” and succeeded, too, it would seem, for if they were not engaged they ought to be, though it was too bad for the boy, and somebody ought to tell his father.

Such was in substance the story told by the hostess of the Eagle to Dr. Matthewson, who smiled serenely as he heard it, and stroked his silken mustache thoughtfully, and then went down to call upon Miss Fleming, and judge for himself how well she was fitted to be the mistress of Forrest House.

When Everard came and was introduced to him after the rehearsal, there was a singular expression in the eyes which scanned the young man so curiously; but the doctor’s manners were perfect, and never had Everard been treated with more deference and respect than by this handsome stranger, who called upon him at Mrs. Fleming’s early in the morning, and in the course of an hour established himself on such terms of intimacy with the young man that he learned more of his family history than Josephine herself knew after an acquaintance of more than a year. Everard never could explain to himself how he was led on naturally and easily to speak of his home in Rothsay, the grand old place of which he would be heir, as he was the only child. He did not know how much his father was worth, he said, as his fortune was estimated at various sums, but it didn’t do him much good, for the governor was close, and insisted upon knowing how every penny was spent. Consequently Everard, who was fast and expensive in his habits, was, as he expressed it, always hard up, and if his mother did not occasionally send him something unknown to his father he would be in desperate straits, for a fellow in college with the reputation of being rich must have money.

Here Everard thought of Rosamond and what she had sent him, but he could not speak of that to this stranger, who sat smiling so sweetly upon him, and leading him on step by step until at last Rossie’s name did drop from his lips, and was quickly caught up by Dr. Matthewson.

“Rossie!” he repeated, in his low, purring tone, “Rossie! Who is she? Have you a sister?”

“Oh, no. I told you I was an only child. Rossie is Rosamond Hastings, a little girl whose mother was my mother’s most intimate friend. They were school-girls together, and pledged themselves to stand by each other should either ever come to grief, as Mrs. Hastings did.”

“Married unhappily, perhaps?” the doctor suggested, and Everard replied:

“Yes; married a man much older than herself, who abused her so shamefully that she left him at last, and sought refuge with my mother. Fortunately this Hastings died soon after, so she was freed from him; but she had another terror in the shape of his son, the child of a former marriage, who annoyed her dreadfully.”

“How could he?” the doctor asked, and Everard replied:

“I hardly know. I believe, though, it was about some house or piece of land, of which Mrs. Hastings held the deed for Rossie, and this John thought he ought to share it, at least, and seemed to think it a fortune, when in fact it proved to be worth only two thousand dollars, which is all Rosamond has of her own.”

“Perhaps he did not know how little there was, and thought it unjust for his half-sister to have all his father left, and he nothing,” the doctor said, and it never once occurred to Everard to wonder how he knew that Mr. Hastings left all to his daughter, and nothing to his son.

He was wholly unsuspicious, and went on:

“Possibly; at all events he worried his stepmother into hysterics by coming there one day in winter, and demanding first the deed or will, and second his sister, whom he said his father gave to his charge. But I settled him!”

“Yes?” the doctor said, interrogatively, and Everard continued:

“Father was gone, and this wretch, who must have been in liquor, was bullying my mother, and declaring he would go to the room where Mrs. Hastings was fainting for fear of him, when I came in from riding, and just bade him begone; and when he said to me sneeringly, ‘Oh, little David, what do you think you can do with the giant, you have no sling?’ I hit him a cut with my riding-whip which made him wince with pain, and I followed up the blows till he left the house vowing vengeance on me for the insult offered him.”

“And since then?” the doctor asked.

“Since then I have never seen him. After Mrs. Hastings died he wrote an impertinent letter to father asking the guardianship of his sister, but we had promised her mother solemnly never to let her fall into his hands or under his influence, and father wrote him such a letter as settled him; at least, we have never heard from him since, and that is eight years ago. Nor should I know him either, for it was dark, and he all muffled up.”

“And have you no fear of him, that he may yet be revenged? People like him do not usually take cowhidings quietly,” the doctor asked.

“No, I’ve no fear of him, for what can he do to me? Besides, I should not wonder if he were dead. We have never heard of him since that letter to father,” was Everard’s reply, and after a moment his companion continued:

“And this girl,—is she pretty and bright, and how old is she now?”

“Rossie must be thirteen,” Everard said, “and the very nicest girl in the world, but as to being pretty, she is too thin for that, though she has splendid eyes, large and brilliant, and black as midnight, and what is peculiar for such eyes, her hair, which ripples all over her head, is a rich chestnut brown, with a tinge of gold upon it when seen in the sunlight. Her hair is her great beauty, and I should not be surprised if she grew to be quite a handsome woman.”

“Very likely;—excuse me, Mr. Forrest,” and the doctor spoke respectfully, nay, deferentially, “excuse me if I appear too familiar. We have talked together so freely that you do not seem a stranger, and friendships, you know, are not always measured by time.”

Everard bowed, and, foolish boy that he was, felt flattered by this giant of a man, who went on:

“Possibly this little Rossie may some day be the daughter of the house in earnest.”

“What do you mean? that my father will adopt her regularly?” Everard asked, as he lifted his clear, honest eyes inquiringly to the face of his companion, who, finding that in dealing with a frank, open nature like Everard’s he must speak out plain, replied:

“I mean, perhaps you will marry her.”

“I marry Rossie! Absurd! Why, I would as soon think of marrying my sister,” and Everard laughed merrily at the idea.

“Such a thing is possible,” returned the doctor, “though your father might object on the score of family, if that brother is such a scamp. I imagine he is rather proud; your father, I mean,—not that brother.”

“Rossie’s family is well enough for anything I know to the contrary,” said Everard. “Father would not object to that, though he is infernally proud. He is a South Carolinian, born in Charleston, and boasts of Southern blood and Southern aristocracy, while mother is a Bostonian, of the bluest dye, and both would think the Queen of England honored to have a daughter marry their son. Nothing would put father in such a passion as for me to make what he thought a mesalliance.”

“Yes, I see, and yet——”

The doctor did not finish the sentence, but looked instead down into the garden where Josephine was flitting among the flowers.

“Miss Fleming is a very beautiful girl,” the doctor said, at last, and Everard responded heartily:

“Yes, the handsomest I ever saw.”

“And rumor says you two are very fond of each other,” was the doctor’s next remark, which brought a blush like that of a young girl to Everard’s cheek, but elicited no reply, for there was beginning to dawn upon his mind a suspicion that his inmost secrets were being wrung from him by this smooth-tongued stranger, who, quick to detect every fluctuation of thought and feeling in another, saw he had gone far enough, and having learned all he cared to know, he arose to go, and after a good morning to Everard and a few soft speeches to Josephine, walked away and left the pair alone.

CHAPTER III.
THE MOCK MARRIAGE.

The long hall, or rather ball-room, of the old Eagle tavern was crowded to its utmost capacity, for the entertainment had been talked of for a long time, and as the proceeds were to help buy a fire-engine, the whole town was interested, and the whole town was there. First on the programme came tableaux and charades, interspersed with music from the glee club, and music from the Ellicott band, and then there was a great hush of expectation and eager anticipation, for the gem of the performance was reserved for the last.

Behind the scenes, in the little anterooms where the dressing, and powdering, and masking, and jesting were all going on promiscuously, Josephine Fleming was in a state of great excitement, but hers was a face and complexion which never looked red or tired. She was, perhaps, a shade paler than her wont, and her eyes were brighter and bluer as she stood before the little two-foot glass, giving the last touches to her bridal toilet.

And never was real bride more transcendently lovely than Josephine Fleming when she stood at last ready and waiting to be called, in her fleecy tarlatan, with her long vail sweeping back from her face, and showing like a silver net upon her golden hair. And Everard, in his dark, boyish beauty, looked worthy of the bride, as he bent over her and whispered something in her ear which had reference to a future day when this they were doing in jest should be done in sober earnest. For a moment they were alone. Dr. Matthewson had managed to clear the little room, and now he came to them and said:

“I feel I shall be doing wrong to let this go any further without telling you that I have a right to make the marriage lawful, if you say so. A few years ago I was a clergyman in good and regular standing in the Methodist Episcopal Church at Clarence, in the western part of this State. I am not in regular and good standing now; the world, the flesh, and the devil, especially the latter, got the upper hand of me, but I still have the power to marry you fast and strong. You two are engaged, I hear. Suppose, for the fun of it, we make this marriage real? What do you say?”

He was looking at Everard, but he spoke to Josephine, feeling that hers would be the more ready assent of the two. She was standing with her arm linked in Everard’s, and at Dr. Matthewson’s words she lifted her blue eyes coyly to her lover’s face, and said:

“Wouldn’t that be capital, and shouldn’t we steal a march on everybody?”

She waited for him to speak, but his answer did not come at once. It is true he had said something of this very nature to her only the night before, but now, when it came to him as something which might be if he chose, he started as if he had been stung, and the color faded from his lips, which quivered as he said, with an effort to smile:

“I’d like it vastly, only you see I am not through college, and I should be expelled at once. Then father never would forgive me. He’d disinherit me, sure.”

“Hardly so bad as that, I think,” spoke the soothing voice of the doctor, while one of Josephine’s hands found its way to Everard’s, which it pressed softly, as she said:

“We can keep it a secret, you know, till you are through college, and it would be such fun.”

Half an hour before Everard had gone with the doctor to the bar and taken a glass of wine, which was beginning to affect his brain and cloud his better judgment, while Josephine was still looking at him with those great, dreamy, pleading eyes, which always affected him so strangely. She was very beautiful, and he loved her with all the strength of his boyish, passionate nature. So it is not strange that the thought of possessing her years sooner than he had dared to hope made his young blood stir with ecstasy, even though he knew it was wrong. He was like the bird in the toiler’s snare, and he stood irresolute, trying to stammer out he hardly knew what, except that it had some reference to his father, and mother, and Rossie, for he thought of her in that hour of his temptation, and wondered how he could face her with that secret on his soul.

“They are growing impatient. Don’t you hear them stamping? What are you waiting for?” came from the manager of the play, as he put his head into the room, while a prolonged and deafening call greeted their ears from the expectant audience.

“Yes, let’s go,” Josephine said, “and pray forget that I almost asked you to marry me and you refused. I should not have done it only it is Leap-year, you know, and I have a right; but it was all in joke, of course. I didn’t mean it. Don’t think I did, Everard.”

Oh, how soft and beautiful were the eyes swimming in tears and lifted so pleadingly to Everard’s face! It was more than mortal man could do to withstand them, and Everard went down before them body and soul. His father’s bitter anger,—so sure to follow, his mother’s grief and disappointment in her son, and Rossie’s childish surprise were all forgotten, or, if remembered, weighed as nought compared with this lovely creature with the golden hair and eyes of blue, looking so sweetly and tenderly at him.

“I’ll do it, by George!” he said, and the hot blood came surging back to his face. “It will be the richest kind of a lark. Tie as tight as you please. I am more than willing.”

He was very much excited, and Josephine was trembling like a leaf. Only Dr. Matthewson was calm as he asked: “Do you really mean it, and will you stand to it?”

“Are you ever coming?” came angrily this time from the manager, who was losing all patience.

“Yes, I mean it, and will stand to it,” Everard said, and so went on to his fate.

There was a cheer, followed by a deep hush, when the curtain was withdrawn, disclosing the bridal party upon the stage, fitted up to represent a modern drawing-room, with groups of gayly-dressed people standing together, and in their midst Everard and Josephine, she radiantly beautiful, with a look of exultation on her face, but a tumult of conflicting emotions in her heart, as she wondered if Dr. Matthewson had told the truth, and was authorized to marry her really, and if Everard would stand to it or repudiate the act; he, with a face white now as ashes, and a voice which was husky in its tone when, to the question: “Dost thou take this woman for thy wedded wife? Dost thou promise to love her, and cherish her, both in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her?” he answered: “I do,” while a chill like the touch of death ran through every nerve and made him icy cold.

It was not the lark he thought it was going to be; it was like some dreadful nightmare, and he could not at all realize what he was doing or saying. Even Josephine’s voice, when she too said, “I will,” sounded very far away, as did Matthewson’s concluding words: “According to the authority vested in me I pronounce you man and wife. What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”

How real it seemed to the breathless audience—so real that Agnes Fleming, sitting far back in the hall, in her faded muslin and old-fashioned bonnet, involuntarily rose to her feet and raised her hand with a deprecating gesture as if to forbid the bans. But her mother pulled her down to her seat, and in a low whisper bade her keep quiet.

And so the play went on, and was over at last; the crowd dispersed, and the tired actors, sleepy and cross, gathered up the paraphernalia scattered everywhere, and went to their several homes. Everard and Josephine were the last to leave, for she had so much to say, and so much to see to, that it was after twelve, and the summer moon was high in the heavens ere they started at last for home, accompanied by the young man with whom Everard was staying in Ellicottville, and who had come down to the play.

It had been arranged that young Stafford should pass the night at Mrs. Fleming’s, and when the party reached the cottage they found a supper prepared for them, of which hot coffee and sherry formed a part, and under the combined effects of the two Everard’s spirits began to rise, and when at last he said good-night to Josephine and went with his friend to his room, he was much like himself, and felt that it would not be a very bad state of affairs, after all, if it should prove that Josephine was really his wife. It would only be expediting matters a little, and the secret would be so romantic and unusual. Still, he was conscious of a feeling of unrest and disinclination to talk, and declared his intention of plunging into bed at once.

“Perhaps you’d better read this first,” Stafford said, handing him a telegram. “It came this morning, and I brought it with me, but would not give it to you till after the play, for fear it might contain bad news.”

Now young Stafford knew perfectly well the nature of the telegram, for he had been in the office when it came, and decided not to deliver it until the play was over. It was from Everard’s father, and read as follows:

“To J. Everard Forrest, Jr.—Your mother is very sick. Come immediately.

J. E. Forrest.”

“Oh, Stafford,” and Everard’s voice was like the cry of a wounded child, “why didn’t you give me this before. There was a train left at five o’clock. I could have taken it, and saved——”

He did not finish the sentence, for he could not put into words the great horror of impending evil which had fallen upon him with the receipt of that telegram. Indeed, he could not define to himself the nature of his feelings. He only knew that he wished he had gone home in answer to Rossie’s summons, instead of coming to Holburton. And in this he meant no disloyalty to Josephine, nor attributed any blame to her; and when, next morning, after a troubled night, in which no sleep visited his weary eyes, he met her at the breakfast-table looking as bright, and fresh, and pretty as if she too, had not kept a sleepless vigil, he experienced a delicious feeling of ownership in her, and for a few moments felt willing to defy the whole world, if by so doing he could claim her as his, then and there. He told her of the telegram, and said he must take the first train west, which left in about two hours, and Josephine’s eyes instantly filled with tears, as she said:

“I am so sorry for you, and I hope your mother will recover. I have always wished to see her so much. Would you mind telling her of me, and giving my love to her?”

This was after breakfast, when they stood together under the vine-wreathed porch, each with a thought of last night’s ceremony in their minds, and each loth to speak of it first. Stafford had gone to the hotel to settle his bill of the previous day and make some inquiries about the connection of the trains, and thus the family were alone when Dr. Matthewson appeared, wearing his blandest smile, and addressing Josephine as Mrs. Forrest, and asking her how she found herself after the play.

At the sound of that name given to Josephine as if she had a right to it, a scarlet flame spread over Everard’s face, and he felt the old horror and dread of the night creeping over him again. Now was the time to know the worst or the best,—whichever way he chose to put it,—and as calmly as possible under the circumstances, he turned to Dr. Matthewson and asked:

“Were you in earnest in what you said last night? Had you a right to marry us, and is Josephine my wife?”

It was the first time he had put it into words, and as if the very name of wife made her dearer to him, he wound his arm around her and waited the doctor’s answer, which came promptly and decidedly.

“Most assuredly she is your lawful wife! You took her with your full consent, knowing I could marry you, and I have brought your certificate, which I suppose the lady will hold.”

He handed a neatly-folded paper to Josephine, who, with Everard looking over her shoulder, read to the effect that on the evening of July 17th, in the Village Hall at Holburton, the Rev. John Matthewson married J. Everard Forrest, Jr. of Rothsay, Ohio, to Miss Josephine Fleming of Holburton.

“It is all right, I believe, and only needs the names of your mother and sister as witnesses to make it valid, in case the marriage is ever contested,” Matthewson said, and this time he looked pitilessly at Everard, who was staring blankly at the paper in Josephine’s hands, and if it had been his death-warrant he was reading he could scarcely have been paler.

Something in his manner must have communicated itself to Josephine, for in real or feigned distress she burst into tears, and laying her head on his arm, sobbed out:

“Oh, Everard, you are not sorry I am your wife! If you are, I shall wish I was dead!”

“No, no, Josey, not sorry you are my wife,” he said, “I could not be that; only I am so young, and have two years more in college,—and if this thing were known I should be expelled, and father would never forgive me, or let me have a dollar again; so, you see it is a deuced scrape after all.”

He was as near crying as he well could be and not actually give way, and Matthewson was regarding him with a cool, exultant expression in his cruel eyes, when Mrs. Fleming appeared, asking what it meant.

Very briefly Dr. Matthewson explained the matter to her, and laying his hand on Everard’s arm said, laughingly:

“I have the honor of presenting to you your son, who, I believe, acknowledges your claim upon him.”

There was a gleam of triumph in Mrs. Fleming’s eyes, but she affected to be astonished and indignant that her daughter should have lent herself to an act which Mr. Forrest was perhaps already sorry for.

“You are mistaken,” Everard said, and his young manhood asserted itself in Josephine’s defense. “Your daughter was not more to blame than myself. We both knew what we were doing, and I am not sorry, except for the trouble in which it would involve me if it were known at once that I was married.”

“It need not be known, except to ourselves,” Mrs. Fleming answered, quickly. “What is done cannot be undone, but we can make the best of it, and I promise that the secret shall be kept as long as you like. Josey will remain with me as she is, and you will return to college and graduate as if last night had never been. Then, when you are in a position to claim your wife you can do so, and acknowledge it to your father.”

She settled it rapidly and easily, and Everard felt his spirits rise thus to have some one think and decide for him. It was not distasteful to know that Josey was his, and he smoothed caressingly the bowed head, still resting on his arm, where Josey had laid it. It would be just like living a romance all the time, and the interviews they might occasionally have would be all the sweeter because of the secrecy. After all, it was a pretty nice lark, and he felt a great deal better, and watched Mrs. Fleming and Agnes as they signed their names to the certificate, and noticed how the latter trembled and how pale she was as, with what seemed to him a look of pity for him, she left the room and went back to her dish-washing in the kitchen.

Everard had spent some weeks in Mrs. Fleming’s family as a boarder, and had visited there occasionally, but he had never noticed or thought particularly of Agnes, except, indeed, as the household drudge, who was always busy from morning till night, washing, ironing, baking, dusting, with her sleeves rolled up and her broad check apron tied around her waist. She had a limp in her left foot, and a weakness in her left arm which gave her a helpless, peculiar appearance; and the impression he had of her, if any, was that she was unfortunate in mind as well as body, fit only to minister to others as she always seemed to be doing. She had never addressed a word to him without being first spoken to, and he was greatly surprised when, after Dr. Matthewson was gone, and Mrs. Fleming and Josephine had for a moment left him alone in the room, she came to him and putting her hand on his, said in a whisper, “Did you really mean it, or was it an accident? a joke? and do you want to get out of it? because, if you do, now is the time. Say you didn’t mean it! Say you won’t stand it, and there surely will be some way out. I can help,—weak as I am. It is a pity, and you so young.”

She was looking fixedly at him, and he saw that her eyes were soft, and dark, and sad in their expression, as if for them there was no brightness or sunshine in all the wide world,—nothing but the never-ending dish-washing in the kitchen, or serving in the parlor. But there was another expression in those sad eyes, a look of truth and honesty, which made him feel intuitively that she was a person to be trusted even to the death, and had he felt any misgivings then, he would have told her so unhesitatingly; but he had none, and he answered her:

“I do not wish to get out of it, Agnes, I am satisfied; only it must be a secret for a long, long time. Remember that, and your promise not to tell.”

“Yes, I’ll remember, and may God help you!” she answered, as she turned away, leaving him to wonder at her manner, which puzzled and troubled him a little. But it surely had nothing to do with Josephine, who came to him just before he left for the train, and said so charmingly and tearfully:

“I am so mortified and ashamed when I remember how eagerly I seemed to respond to Dr. Matthewson’s proposition that we be married in earnest. You must have thought me so forward and bold; but, believe me, I did not mean it, or consider what I was saying; so when you are gone don’t think of me as a brazen-faced creature who asked you to marry her, will you?”

What answer could he give her except to assure her that he esteemed her as everything lovely and good, and he believed that he did when at last he said good-by, and left her kissing her hand to him as she stood in the doorway under the spreading hop vine, the summer sunshine falling in flecks upon her golden hair, and her blue eyes full of tears. So he saw her last, and this was the picture he took with him as he sped away to the westward toward his home, and which helped to stifle his judgment and reason whenever they protested against what he had done, but it could not quite smother the fear and dread at his heart when he reflected what the consequences of this rash marriage would be should his father find it out.

CHAPTER IV.
THE FORREST HOUSE.

Just where it was located is not my purpose to tell, except that it was in the southern part of Ohio, in one of those pretty little towns which skirt the river, and that from the bluff on which it stood you could look across the water into the green fields and fertile plains of the fair State of Kentucky.

It was a large, rambling house of dark gray stone, with double piazza on the front and river side, and huge chimneys, with old-time fire-places, where cheery wood fires burned always when the wind was chill. There was the usual wide hall of the South, with doors opening front and rear, and on one side the broad oak staircase and square landing two-thirds of the way up, where stood the tall, old-fashioned clock, which had ticked there for fifty years, and struck the hour when the first Forrest, the father of the present proprietor, brought home his bride, a fair Southern girl, who drooped and pined in her Northern home until her husband took her back to her native city, Charleston, where she died when her boy was born. This boy, the father of our hero, was christened James Everard, in the grim old church, St. Michael’s, and the years of his boyhood were passed in Charleston, except on the few occasions when he visited his father, who lived at Forrest House without other companionship than his horses and dogs, and the bevy of black servants he had brought from the South.

When James was nearly twenty-one his father died, and then the house was closed until the heir was married, and came to it with a sweet, pale-faced Bostonian, of rare culture and refinement, who introduced into her new home many of the fashions and comforts of New England, and made the house very attractive to the educated families in the neighborhood.

Between the lady and her husband, however, there was this point of difference;—while she would, if possible, have changed, and improved, and modernized the house, he clung to everything savoring of the past, and though liberal in his expenditures where his table, and wines, and horses, and servants were concerned, he held a tight purse-string when it came to what he called luxuries of any kind. What had been good enough for his father was good enough for him, he said, when his wife proposed new furniture for the rooms which looked so bare and cheerless. Matting and oil-cloth were better than carpets for his muddy boots and muddier dogs, while curtains and shades were nuisances and only served to keep out the light of heaven. There were blinds at all the windows, and if his wife wished for anything more she could hang up her shawl or apron when she was dressing and afraid of being seen.

He did, however, give her five hundred dollars to do with as she pleased, and with that and her exquisite taste and Yankee ingenuity, she transformed a few of the dark, musty old rooms into the coziest, prettiest apartments imaginable, and, with the exception of absolutely necessary repairs and supplies, that was the last, so far as expenditures for furniture were concerned.

As the house had been when James Everard, Jr., was born, so it was now when he was twenty years old. But what it lacked in its interior adornments was more than made up in the grounds, which covered a space of three or four acres, and were beautiful in the extreme.

Here the judge lavished his money without stint, and people came from miles around to see the place, which was at its best that warm July morning when, tired and worn with his rapid journey, Everard entered the highway gate, and walked up the road to the house, under the tall maples which formed an arch over his head.

It was very still about the house, and two or three dogs lay in the sunshine asleep on the piazza. At the sound of footsteps they awoke, and recognizing their young master, ran toward him, with a bark of welcome.

The windows of his mother’s room were open, and at the bark of the dogs a girlish face was visible for an instant, then disappeared from view, and Rosamond Hastings came out to meet him, looking very fresh and sweet in her short gingham dress and white apron, with her rippling hair tied with a blue ribbon, and falling down her back.

“Oh, Mr. Everard,” she cried, as she gave him her hand, “I am so glad you have come. Your mother has wanted you so much. She is a little better this morning, and asleep just now; so come in here and rest. You are tired, and worn, and pale. Are you sick?” and she looked anxiously into the handsome face, where even she saw a change, for the shadow of his secret was there, haunting every moment of his life.

“No; I’m just used up, and so hungry,” he said, as he followed her into the cool family room, looking out upon the river, which she had made bright with flowers in expectation of his coming.

“Hungry, are you?” she said. “I’m so glad, for there’s the fattest little chicken waiting to be broiled for you, and we have such splendid black and white raspberries. I’m going to pick them now, while you wash and brush yourself. You will find everything ready in your room, with some curtains, and tidies on the chairs. I did it myself, hoping you’d find it pleasant, and stay home all the vacation, even if your mother gets better, she is so happy to have you here. Will you go up now?”

He went to the room which had always been his,—a large, airy chamber, which, with nothing modern or expensive in it, looked cool and pretty, with its clean matting, snowy bed, fresh muslin curtains, and new blue and white tidies on the high-backed chairs, all showing Rossie’s handiwork. Rossie had been in Miss Beatrice Belknap’s lovely room furnished with blue, and thought it a little heaven, and tried her best to make Mr. Everard’s a blue room too, though she had nothing to do it with except the tidies, and toilet set, and lambrequins made of plain white muslin bordered with strips of blue cambric. The material for this she had bought with her own allowance, at the cost of some personal sacrifice; and when it was all done, and the two large blue vases were filled with flowers and placed upon the mantel, she felt that it was almost equal to Miss Belknap’s, and that Mr. Everard, as she always called him, was sure to like it. And he did like it, and breathed more freely, as if he were in a purer, more wholesome atmosphere than that of the brown house in far-off Holburton, where he had left his secret and his wife. It came to him with a sudden wrench of pain in his quiet room,—the difference between Josephine and all his early associates and surroundings. She was not like anything at the Forrest House, though she was marvelously beautiful and fair,—so much fairer than little Rossie, whose white cape bonnet he could see flitting among the bushes in the garden, where in the hot sunshine she soiled and pricked her fingers gathering berries for him. He had a photograph of Josephine, and he took it out and looked at the great blue eyes and fair, blonde face, which seemed to smile on him, and saying to himself, “She is very lovely,” went down to the sitting-room, where Rossie brought him his breakfast.

It was so hot in the dining-room, she said, and Aunt Axie was so out of sorts this morning, that she was going to serve his breakfast there in the bay window, where the breeze came cool from the river. So she brought in the tray of dishes, and creamed his coffee, and sugared his berries, and carved his chicken, as if he had been a prince, and she his lawful slave.

At Mrs. Fleming’s he had also been treated like a prince, but there it was lame Agnes who served, with her sleeves rolled up, and Josephine had acted the part of the fine lady, and never to his recollection had she soiled her hands with household work of any kind. How soft and white they were,—while Rossie’s hands were thin and tanned from exposure to the sun, and stained and scratched, with a rag around one thumb which a cruel thorn had torn; but what deft, nimble hands they were, nevertheless, and how gladly they waited upon this tired, indolent young man, who took it as a matter of course, for had not Rossie Hastings ministered to him since she was old enough to hunt up his missing cap, and bring him the book he was reading. Now, as she flitted about, urging him to eat, she talked to him incessantly, asking if he had received her letter and its contents safely,—if it was very pleasant at Ellicottville with his friend Stafford, and if,—she did not finish that question, but her large black eyes, clear as crystal, looked anxiously at him, and he knew what she meant.

“No, Rossie,” he said, laughingly, “I do not owe a dollar to anybody, except your dear little self, and that I mean to pay with compound interest; and I haven’t been in a single scrape,—that is, not a very bad one, since I went back;” and a flush crept to the roots of his hair as he wondered what Rosamond would think if she knew just the scrape he was in.

And why should she not know? Why didn’t he tell her, and have her help him keep the secret tormenting him so sorely? He knew he could trust her, for he had done so many a time and she had not betrayed him, but stood bravely between him and his irascible father, who, forgetting that he once was young, was sometimes hard and severe with his wayward son. Yes, he would tell Rossie, and so make a friend for Josephine, but before he had decided how to begin, Rosamond said:

“I’m so glad you are doing better, for——” here she hesitated and colored painfully, while Everard said:

“Well, go on. What is it? Do you mean the governor rides a high horse on account of my misdemeanors?”

“Yes, Mr. Everard, just that. He is dreadful when you write for more money, which he says you squander on cigars, and fast horses, and fine clothes, and girls; he actually said girls, but my,—your mother told him she knew you were not the kind of person to think of girls, and you so young; absurd!”

And Rossie pursed up her little mouth as if it were a perfectly preposterous idea for Everard Forrest to be thinking of the girls!

The young man laughed a low, musical laugh, and replied, “I don’t know about that. I should say it was just in my line. There are ever so many pretty girls in Ellicottville and Holburton, and one of them is so very beautiful that I’m half tempted to run away with and marry her. What would you think of that, Rossie?”

For a moment the matter-of-fact Rossie looked at him curiously, and then replied:

“I should think you crazy, and you not through college. I believe your father would disinherit you, and serve you right, too.”

“And you, Rossie; wouldn’t you stand by me and help me if I got into such a muss?”

“Never!” and Rossie spoke with all the decision and dignity of thirty. “It would kill your mother, too. I sometimes think she means you for Miss Belknap; she is so handsome this summer!”

“Without her hair?” Everard asked, and Rossie replied, “Yes, without her hair. She has a wig, but does not quite like it. She means to get another.”

“And she offered fifty dollars for your hair!” Everard continued, stroking with his hand the chestnut brown tresses flowing down Rossie’s back.

“Yes, she did; but I could not part with my hair even to oblige her. Of course I should give it to her, not sell it, but I can’t spare it.”

What an unselfish child she was, Everard thought, and yet she was so unlike the golden-haired Josephine, who would make fun of such a plain, simple, unformed girl as Rosamond, and call her green and awkward and countrified; and perhaps she was all these, but she was so good, and pure, and truthful that he felt abashed before her and shrank from the earnest, truthful eyes that rested so proudly on him, lest they should read more than he cared to have them.

Outside, in the hall, there was the sound of a heavy step, and the next moment there appeared in the door a tall, heavily-built man of fifty, with iron-gray hair and keen, restless eyes, which always seemed on the alert to discover something hidden, and drag it to the light. Judge Forrest meant to be a just man, but, like many just men, when the justice is not tempered with mercy, he was harsh and hard with those who did not come up to his standard of integrity, and seldom made allowances for one’s youth or inexperience, or the peculiar temptations which might have assailed them. Though looked up to as the great man of the town, he was far less popular with the people of Rothsay than his scamp of a son, with whom they thought him unnecessarily strict and close. It was well known that there was generally trouble between them and always on the money question, for Everard was a spendthrift, and scattered his dollars right and left with a reckless generosity and thoughtlessness, while the judge was the reverse, and gave out every cent not absolutely needed with an unwillingness which amounted to actual stinginess. And now he stood at the door, tall, grand-looking, and cold as an icicle, and his first greeting was:

“I thought I should track you by the tobacco smoke; they told me you were here. How do you do, sir?”

It was strange the effect that voice had upon Everard, who, from an indolent, care-for-nothing, easy-going youth was transformed into a circumspect, dignified young man, who rose at once, and, taking his father’s hand, said that he was very well, had come on the morning train from Cleveland, and had started as soon as he could after receiving the telegram.

“It must have been delayed, then. You ought to have had it Wednesday morning,” Judge Forrest replied: and blushing like a girl Everard said that it did reach Ellicottville Wednesday, but he was in Holburton, just over the line in New York.

“And what were you doing at Holburton?” the father asked, always suspicious of some new trick or escapade for which he would have to pay.

“I was invited there to an entertainment,” Everard said, growing still redder and more confused. “You know I boarded there a few weeks last summer, and have acquaintances, so I went down the night before, and Stafford came the next day and brought the telegram, but did not tell me till the play was over and we were in our room; then it was too late, but I took the first train in the morning. I hope my delay has not made mother worse. I am very sorry, sir.”

He had made his explanation, which his father accepted without a suspicion of the chasm bridged over in silence.

“You have seen your mother, of course,” was his next remark, and, still apologetically, nay, almost abjectly, for Everard was terribly afraid of his father, he replied, “She was sleeping when I came, and Rossie thought I’d better not disturb her, but have my breakfast first. I have finished now, and will go to her at once if she is awake.”

He had put Rossie in the gap, knowing that she was a tower of strength between himself and his father. During the years she had been in the family Rossie had become very dear to the cold, stern judge, who was kinder and gentler to her than to any living being, except, indeed, his dying wife, to whom he was, in his way, sincerely attached.

“Yes, very right and proper that you should have your breakfast first, and not disturb her. Rossie, see if she is now awake,” he said, and in his voice there was a kindliness which Everard was quick to note, and which made his pulse beat more naturally, while there suddenly woke within him an intense desire to stand well with his father, between whom and himself there had been so much variance.

For Josephine’s sake he must have his father’s good opinion, or he was ruined, and though it cost him a tremendous effort to do so, the moment Rosamond left the room, he said: “Father, I want to tell you now, because I think you will be glad to know, that I’ve come home and left no debt, however small, for you to pay. And I mean to do better. I really do, father, and quit my fast associates, and study so hard that when I am graduated you and mother will be proud of me.”

The flushed, eager face, on which, young as it was, there were marks of revels and dissipation, was very handsome and winning, and the dark eyes were moist with tears as the boy finished his confession, which told visibly upon the father.

“Yes, yes, my son. I’m glad; I’m glad; but your poor mother will not be here when you graduate. She is going from us fast.”

And under cover of the dying mother’s name, the judge vailed his own emotions of softening toward Everard, whose heart was lighter and happier than it had been since that night when Matthewson’s voice had said, “I pronounce you man and wife.” And he would be a man worthy of the wife, and his mother should live to see it, and to see Josephine, too, and love her as a daughter. She was not dying; she must not die, when he needed and loved her so much, he thought, as, at a word from Rosamond, he went to the sick room where his mother lay. What a sweet, dainty little woman she was, with such a lovely expression on the exquisitely chiseled features, and how the soft brown eyes, so like the son’s, brightened at the sight of her boy, who did not shrink from her as he did from his father. She knew all his faults, and that under them there was a noble, manly nature, and she loved him so much.

“Oh, Everard!” she cried, “I am so glad you have come. I feared once I should never see you again.”

He had his arms around her, and was kissing her white face, which, for the moment, glowed with what seemed to be the hue of health, and so misled him into thinking her better than she was.

“Now that I have come, mother, you will be well again,” he said, hanging fondly over her, and looking into the dear face which had never worn a frown for him.

“No, Everard,” she said, as her wasted fingers threaded his luxuriant hair, “I shall never be well again. It’s only now a matter of time; a few days or weeks at the most, and I shall be gone from here forever, to that better home, where I pray Heaven you will one day meet me. Hush, hush, my child; don’t cry like that,” she added, soothingly, for, struck with the expression on her white, pinched face, from which all the color had faded, and which told him the truth more forcibly than she had done, Everard had felt suddenly that his mother was going from him, and nothing in all the wide world could ever fill her place.

Laying his head upon her pillow he sobbed a few moments like a child, while the memory of all the errors of his past life, all his waywardness and folly, rushed into his mind like a mountain, crushing him with its magnitude. But he was going to do better; he had told his father so; he would tell it to his mother; and God would not let her die, but give her back to him as a kind of reward for his reformation. So he reasoned, and with the hopefulness of youth grew calm, and could listen to what his mother was saying to him. She was asking him of his visit in Ellicottville, and if he had found it pleasant there, just as Rossie had done, and he told her of the play in Holburton, but for which he should have been with her sooner, and told her of his complete reform, he called it, although it had but just begun. He had abjured forever all his wild associates; he had kept out of debt; he was going to study and win the first honors of his class; he was going to be a man worthy of such a mother. And she, the mother, listening rapturously, believed it all; that is, believed in the noble man he would one day be, though she knew there would be many a slip, many a backward step, but in the end he would conquer, and from the realms of bliss she might, perhaps, be permitted to look down and see him all she hoped him to be. Over and above all he said to her was a thought of Josephine. His mother ought to know of her, and he must tell her, but not in the first moments of meeting. He would wait till to-morrow, and then make a clean breast of it.

He wrote to Josephine that night just a few brief lines, to tell her of his safe arrival home and of his mother’s illness, more serious than he feared.

“My dear little wife,” he began. “It seems so funny to call you wife, and I cannot yet quite realize that you are mine, but I suppose it is true. I reached home this morning quite overcome with the long, dusty ride; found mother worse than I expected. Josie, I am afraid mother is going to die, and then what shall I do, and who will stand between me and father. I mean to tell her of you, for I think it will not be right to let her die in ignorance of what I have done. I hope you are well. Please write to me very soon. With kind regards to your mother and Agnes,

“Your loving husband,

“J. Everard Forrest.”

It was not just the style of letter which young and ardent husbands usually write to their brides; nor, in fact, such as Everard had been in the habit of writing to Josephine, and the great difference struck him as he read over his rather stiff note, and mentally compared it with the gushing effusions of other times.

“By Jove,” he said, “I’m afraid she will think I have fallen off amazingly, but I haven’t. I’m only tired to-night. To-morrow I’ll send her a regular love-letter after I have told mother;” and thus reasoning to himself, he folded the letter and directed it to—

“Miss Josephine Fleming, Holburton, N. Y.”

CHAPTER V.
BEATRICE BELKNAP.

That afternoon Miss Beatrice Belknap drove her pretty black ponies up the avenue to the Forrest House. Miss Beatrice, or Bee, as she was familiarly called by those who knew her best, was an orphan and an heiress, and a belle and a beauty, and twenty-one, and a distant relative of Mrs. Forrest, whom she called Cousin Mary. People said she was a little fast and a little peculiar in her ways of thinking and acting, but charged it all to the French education she had received in Paris, where she had lived from the time she was six until she was eighteen, when, according to her father’s will, she came into possession of her large fortune, and returning to America came to Rothsay, her old home, and brought with her all her dash and style, and originality of thought and character, and the Rothsayites received her gladly, and were very proud and fond of her, for there was about the bright girl a sweet graciousness of manner which won all hearts, even though they knew she was bored with their quiet town and humdrum manner of living, and that at their backs she laughed at their dress, and talk, and walk, and sometimes, I am sorry to say it, laughed at their prayers too, especially when good old Deacon Read or Sister Baker took the lead in the little chapel on the corner, where Bee was occasionally to be seen. Bee had no preference for any church unless it were St. Peter’s, in Rome, or St. Eustace, in Paris, where the music was so fine and some of the young priests so handsome. So she went where she listed, kneeling one Sunday in the square pew at St. John’s, where her father had worshiped before her, and where she had been baptized, and the Sunday following patronizing the sect called the Nazarites, because, as she expressed it, “she liked the excitement and liked to hear them holler.” And once the daring girl had “hollered” herself and had the “power,” and Sister Baker had rejoiced over the new convert who, she said, “carried with her weight and measure!” but when it was whispered about that the whole was done for effect, just to see what they would say, the Nazarites gave poor Bee the go-by, and prayed for her as that wicked trifler until it came to the building of their new church, when Bee, who was a natural carpenter, and liked nothing better than lath, and plaster, and rubbish, made the cause her own, and talked, and consulted, and paced the ground and drew a plan herself, which they finally adopted, and gave them a thousand dollars besides. Then they forgave the pretty sinner, who had so much good in her after all, and Bee and Sister Rhoda Ann Baker were the very best of friends, and more than once Rhoda Ann’s plain Nazarite bonnet had been seen in the little phaeton side by side with Bee’s stylish Paris hat, on which the good woman scarcely dared to look lest it should move her from her serene height of plainness and humility.

In spite of her faults, Beatrice was very popular, and nowhere was she more welcome than at the Forrest House, where she was beloved by Mrs. Forrest and worshiped by Rossie as a kind of divinity, though she did not quite like all she did and said. Offers, many and varied, Beatrice had had, both at home and abroad. She might have been the wife of a senator. She might have married her music-teacher and her dancing-master. She might have been a missionary and taught the Feegee Islanders how to read. She might have been a countess in Rome, a baroness in Germany, and my lady in Edinburgh, but she had said no to them all, and felt the hardest wrench when she said it to the Feegee missionary, and for aught anybody knew, was heart-whole and fancy-free when she alighted from her phaeton at the door of Forrest House the morning after Everard’s arrival. She knew he was there, and with the spirit of coquetry so much a part of herself she had made her toilet with a direct reference to this young man whom she had not seen for more than a year, and who, when joked about marrying her, had once called her old Bee Belknap, and wondered if any one supposed he would marry his grandmother.

Miss Bee had smiled sweetly on this audacious boy who called her old and a grandmother, and had laid a wager with herself that he should some day offer himself to “old Bee Belknap,” and be refused! In case he didn’t she would build a church in Omaha and support a missionary there five years! She was much given to building churches and supporting missionaries,—this sprightly, dashing girl of twenty-one, who flashed, and sparkled, and shone in the summer sunshine, like a diamond, as she threw her reins over the backs of her two ponies, Spitfire and Starlight, and giving each of them a loving caress bade them stand still and not whisk their tails too much even if the flies did bite them. Then, with ribbons and laces streaming from her on all sides, she went fluttering up the steps and into the broad hall where Everard met her.

Between him and herself there had been a strong friendship since the time she first came from France, and queened it over him on the strength of her foreign style and a year’s seniority in age. From the very first she had been much at the Forrest House, and had played with Everard, and romped with him, and read with him, and driven with him, and rowed with him upon the river, and quarreled with him, too,—hot, fierce quarrels,—in which the girl generally had the best of it, inasmuch as her voluble French, which she hurled at him with lightning rapidity, had stunned and bewildered him; and then they had made it up, and were the best of friends, and more than one of the knowing ones in Rothsay had predicted a union some day of the Forrest and Belknap fortunes. Once, when such a possibility was hinted to Everard, who was fresh from a hot skirmish with Bee, he had, as recorded, called her old, and made mention of his grandmother, and she had sworn to be revenged, and was conscious all the time of a greater liking for the heir of Forrest House than she had felt for any man since the Feegee missionary sailed away with his Vermont school-mistress, who wore glasses, and a brown alpaca dress. Bee could have forgiven the glasses, but the brown alpaca,—never, and she pitied the missionary more than ever, thinking how he must contrast her Paris gowns, which he had said were so pretty, with that abominable brown garb of his bride.

Everard had never quite fancied the linking of his name with that of Beatrice in a matrimonial way, and it had sometimes led him to assume an indifference which he did not feel, but now, with Josephine between them as an insurmountable barrier, he could act out his real feelings of genuine liking for the gay butterfly, and he met her with an unusual degree of cordiality, which she was quick to note just as she had noted another change in him. A skillful reader of the human face, she looked in Everard’s, and saw something she could not define. It was the shadow of his secret, and she could not interpret it. She only felt that he was no longer a boy, but a man, old even as his years, and that he was very glad to see her, and looked his gladness to the full. Bee Belknap was a born coquette, and would have flirted in her coffin had the thing been possible, and now, during the moment she stood in the hall with her hand in Everard’s, she managed to make him understand how greatly improved she found him, how delighted she was to see him, and how inexpressibly dull and poky Rothsay was without him. She did not say all this in words, but she conveyed it to him with graceful gestures of her pretty hands, and sundry expressive shrugs of her shoulders, and Everard felt flattered and pleased, and for a few moments forgot Josephine, while he watched this brilliant creature as she flitted into the sick room, where her manner suddenly changed, and she became quiet, and gentle, and womanly, as she sat down by his mother’s side, and asked how she was, and stroked and fondled the thin, pale face, and petted the wasted hands which sought hers so gladly. Bee Belknap always did sick people good, and there was not a sick bed in all Rothsay, from the loftiest dwelling to the lowest tenant house, which she did not visit, making the rich ones more hopeful and cheerful from the effect of her strong, sympathetic nature, and dazzling, and bewildering, and gratifying the poor, with whom she often left some tangible proof of her presence.

“You do me so much good; I am always better after one of your calls,” Mrs. Forrest said to her; and then, when Bee arose to go, and said, “May I take Everard with me for a short drive?” she answered readily: “Yes, do. I shall be glad for him to get the air.”

And so Everard found himself seated at Beatrice’s side, and whirling along the road toward the village, for he wished to post his letter, and asked her to take him first to the post-office.

“What would she say if she knew?” he thought, and it seemed to him as if the letter in his pocket must burn itself through and show her the name upon it.

And then he fell to comparing the two girls with each other, and wondering why he should feel so much more natural, as if in his own atmosphere and on his good behavior, with Beatrice than he did with Josephine. Both were beautiful; both were piquant and bright, but still there was a difference. Beatrice never for a moment allowed him to forget that she was a lady and he a gentleman; never approached to anything like coarseness, and he would as soon have thought of insulting his mother as to have taken the slightest familiarity either by word or act with Bee. Josephine, on the contrary, allowed great latitude of word and action, and by her free-and-easy manner often led him into doing and saying things for which he would have blushed with shame had Beatrice, or even Rossie Hastings, been there to see and hear. Had Josephine lived in New York, or any other city, she would have added one more to that large class of people who laugh at our time-honored notions of propriety and true, pure womanhood, and on the broad platform of liberality and freedom sacrifice all that is sweetest and best in their sex. As a matter of course her influence over Everard was not good, and he had imbibed so much of the subtle poison that some of his sensibilities were blunted, and he was beginning to think that his early ideas were prudish and nonsensical. But there was something about Rosamond and Beatrice both which worked as an antidote to the poison, and as he rode along with the latter, and listened to her light, graceful badinage, in which there was nothing approaching to vulgarity, he was conscious of feeling more respect for himself than he had felt in many a day.

They had left the village now, and were out upon the smooth river road, where they came upon a young M. D. of Rothsay, who was jogging leisurely along in his high sulky, behind his old sorrel mare. Beatrice knew the doctor well, and more than once they had driven side by side amid a shower of dust, along that fine, broad road, and now, when she saw him and his sorry-looking nag, the spirit of mischief and frolic awoke within her, and she could no more refrain from some saucy remark concerning his beast and challenging him to a trial of speed than she could keep from breathing. Another moment and they were off like the wind, and to Bee’s great surprise old Jenny, the sorrel mare, who, in her long-past youth had been a racer and swept the stakes at Cincinnati, and who now at the sound of battle felt her old blood rise, kept neck to neck with the fleet horses, Spitfire and Starlight. At last old Jenny shot past them, and in her excitement Beatrice rose, and standing upright, urged her ponies on until Jenny’s wind gave out, and Starlight and Spitfire were far ahead and rushing down the turnpike at a break-neck speed, which rocked the light phaeton from side to side and seemed almost to lift it from the ground. It was a decided runaway now, and people stopped to look after the mad horses and the excited but not in the least frightened girl, who, still standing upright, with her hat hanging down her back and her wig a little awry, kept them with a firm hand straight in the road, and said to the white-faced man beside her, when he, too, sprang up to take the reins: “Sit down and keep quiet. I’ll see you safely through. We can surely ride as fast as they can run. I rather enjoy it.”

And so she did until they came to a point where the road turned with the river, and where in the bend a little school-house stood. It was just recess, and a troop of boys came crowding out, whooping and yelling as only boys can whoop and yell, when they saw the ponies, who, really frightened now, shied suddenly, and reared high in the air. After that came chaos and darkness to Everard, and the next he knew he was lying on the grass, with his head in Bee’s lap, and the blood flowing from a deep gash in his forehead, just above the left eye. This she was stanching with her handkerchief, and bathing his face with the water the boys brought her in a tin dipper from the school-house. Far off in the distance the ponies were still running, and scattered at intervals along the road were fragments of the broken phaeton, together with Bee’s bonnet, and, worse than all, her wig. But Bee did not know that she had lost it, or care for her ruined phaeton. She did not know or care for anything, except that Everard Forrest was lying upon the grass as white and still as if he were really dead. But Everard was not dead, and the doctor, who soon came up with the panting, mortified Jennie, said it was only a flesh wound, from which nothing serious would result. Then Bee thought of her hair, which a boy had rescued from a playful puppy who was doing his best to tear it in pieces. The sight of her wig made Bee herself again, and with many a merry joke at her own expense, she mounted into a farmer’s wagon with Everard, and bade the driver take them back to the Forrest House.

It was Rossie who met them first, her black eyes growing troubled and anxious when she saw the bandage on Everard’s head. But he assured her it was nothing, while Bee laughed over the adventure, and when the judge would have censured his son, took all the blame upon herself, and then, promising to call again in the evening, went in search of her truant horses.

CHAPTER VI.
MOTHER AND SON.

That afternoon Mrs. Forrest seemed so much better that even her husband began to hope, when he saw the color on her cheek, and the increased brightness of her eyes. But she was not deceived. She knew the nature of her disease, and that she had not long to live. So what she would say to her son must be said without delay. Accordingly, after lunch, she bade Rossie send him to her, and then leave them alone together. Everard obeyed the summons at once, though there was a shrinking fear in his heart as he thought, “Now I must tell her of Josey,” and wondered what she would say. Since his drive with Beatrice it did not seem half so easy to talk of Josephine, and that marriage ceremony was very far away, and very unreal, too. His mother was propped up on her pillows, and smiled pleasantly upon him as he took his seat beside her.

“Everard,” she began, “there are so many things I must say to you about the past and the future, and I must say them now while I have the strength. Another day may be too late.”

He knew to what she referred, and with a protest against it, told her she was not going to die; she must not; she must live for him, who would be nothing without her.

Very gently she soothed him into quiet, and he listened while she talked of all he had been, and all she wished him to be in the future. Faithfully, but gently, she went over with his faults, one by one, beseeching him to forsake them, and with a bursting heart he promised everything which she required, and told her again of the reform already commenced.

“God bless you, my boy, and prosper you as you keep this pledge to your dying mother, and whether you are great or not, may you be good and Christlike, and come one day to meet me where sorrow is unknown,” she said to him finally; then, after a pause, she continued: “There is one subject more of which, as a woman and your mother, I must speak to you. Some day you will marry, of course——”

“Yes, mother,” and Everard started violently, while the cold sweat stood in drops about his lips, but he could say no more then, and his mother continued: “I have thought many times who and what your wife would be, and have pictured her often to myself, and loved her for your sake; but I shall never see her, when she comes here I shall be gone, and so I will speak of her now, and say it is not my wish that you should wait many years before marrying. I believe in early marriages, where there is mutual love and esteem. Then you make allowance more readily for each other’s habits and peculiarities. I mean no disrespect to your father, he has been kind to me, but I think he waited too long; there were too many years between us; my feelings and ideas were young, his middle-aged; better begin alike for perfect unity. And, my boy, be sure you marry a lady.”

“A lady, mother?” Everard said, wondering if his mother would call Josephine a lady.

“Yes, Everard,” she replied, “a lady in the true sense of the word, a person of education and refinement, and somewhere near your own rank in life. I never believed in the Maud Muller poem, never was sorry that the judge did not take the maiden for his wife. He might, perhaps, never have blushed for her, but he would have blushed for her family, and their likeness in his children’s faces would have been a secret annoyance. I do not say that every mesalliance proves unhappy, but it is better to marry your equal, if you can, for a low-born person, with low-born tastes, will, of necessity, drag you down to her level.”

She stopped a moment to rest, but Everard did not speak for the fierce struggle in his heart. He must tell her of Josephine, and could he say that she had no low-born tastes? Alas, he could not, when he remembered things which had dropped from her pretty lips so easily and naturally, and at which he had laughed as at something spicy and daring. His mother would call them coarse, with all her innate refinement and delicacy, and a shiver ran through him as he seemed to hear again the words “I pronounce you man and wife.” They were always ringing in his ears, louder sometimes than at others, and now they were so loud as almost to drown the low voice which after a little went on:

“I do not believe in parents selecting companions for their children, but surely I may suggest. You are not obliged to follow my suggestion. I would have your choice perfectly free,” she added, quickly, as she saw a look of consternation on his face, and mistook its meaning. “I have thought, and think still, that were I to choose for you, it would be Beatrice.”

“Beatrice! Bee Belknap! mother,” and Everard fairly gasped. “Bee Belknap is a great deal older than I am.”

“Just a year, which is not much in this case. She will not grow old fast, while you will mature early; the disparity would never be thought of,” Mrs. Forrest said. “Beatrice is a little wild, and full of fun and frolic, but under all that is a deep-seated principle of propriety and right, which makes her a noble and lovely character. I should be willing to trust you with her, and your father’s heart is quite set on this match. I may tell you now that it has been in his mind for years, and I wish you to please him, both for his sake and yours. I hope you will think of it, Everard, and try to love Beatrice; surely it cannot be hard to do that?”

“No, mother,” Everard said, “but you seem to put her out of the question entirely. Is she to have no choice in the matter, and do you think that, belle and flirt as she is, she would for a moment consider me, Ned Forrest, whom she calls a boy, and ridicules unmercifully? She would not have me, were I to ask her a thousand times.”

“I think you may be wrong,” Mrs. Forrest said. “It surely can’t be that you love some one else?” and she looked at him searchingly.

Now was the time to speak of Josephine, if ever, and while his heart beat so loudly that he could hear it, he said, “Yes, mother, I do like some one else;—it is a young girl in Holburton, where I staid last summer. She is very beautiful. This is her picture,” and he passed Josephine’s photograph to his mother, who studied it carefully for two or three minutes; then turning her eyes to her son she said: “She is beautiful, so far as features and complexion are concerned, but I am greatly mistaken in you if the original of this face can satisfy you long.”

“Why, mother, what fault have you to find with her? Isn’t she a born lady?” Everard asked, a little scornfully, for he was warming up in Josephine’s defense.

“Don’t misunderstand what I mean by a lady,” Mrs. Forrest said. “Birth has not all to do with it. Persons may be born of the lowliest parentage, and in the humblest shed, but still have that within them which will refine, and soften, and elevate till the nobility within asserts itself, and lifts them above their surroundings. In this case,” and she glanced again at the picture, “the inborn nobility, if there were any, has had time to assert itself, and stamp its impress upon the face, and it has not done that.”

“For pity’s sake, mother, tell me what you see to dislike so much in Josephine!” Everard burst out, indignantly.

His mother knew he was angry, but she would not spare him, lest a great misfortune should befall him. She saw the face she looked upon was very fair, but there was that about it from which she shrank intuitively, her quick woman instinct telling her it was false as fair, and not at all the face she would have in her boy’s home; so she answered him unhesitatingly:

“Shall I tell you the kind of person I fancy this girl to be, judging from her picture? Her face is one to attract young men like you, and she would try to attract you, too, and the very manner with which she would do it would be the perfection of art. There is a treacherous, designing look in these eyes, so blue and dreamy, and about the mouth there is a cruel, selfish expression which I do not like. I do not believe she can be trusted. And then, it may be a minor matter, I do not like her style of dress. A really modest girl would not have sat for her picture with so much exposure of neck and arms, and so much jewelry. Surely you must have noticed the immense chain and cross, and all the show of bracelets, and pins, and ornaments in her hair.”

Everard had thought of it, but he would not acknowledge it, and his mother continued:

“The whole effect is tawdry, and, excuse me for putting it so strongly, but it reminds me of the dollar store, and the jewelry bought there. She cannot have the true instincts of a lady. Who is she, Everard, and where does she live?”

Everard was terribly hurt and intensely mortified, while something told him that his mother was not altogether wrong in her estimation of the girl, whose picture did resemble more a second-rate actress tricked out in her flashy finery than a pure, modest young girl; but he answered his mother’s question, and said:

“She lives in Holburton, New York, and her name is Josephine Fleming. I boarded for three weeks last summer with her mother, Widow Roxie Fleming, as the people call her.”

He spit the last out a little defiantly, feeling resolved that his mother should know all he knew about the Flemings, be it good or bad, but he was not prepared for the next remark.

“Roxie? Roxie Fleming? Is she a second wife, and is there a step daughter much older than Josephine?”

“Yes; but how did you know it, and where have you seen them?” Everard asked, eagerly, his anger giving way to his nervous dread of some development worse even than the dollar jewelry, which had hurt him cruelly.

“Years ago, when I was a young girl, we had in our family a cook, Roxie Burrows by name, competent, tidy, and faithful in the discharge of her duties, but crafty, designing and ambitious. Our butcher was a Mr. Fleming, a native of Ireland, and a very respectable man, whose little daughter used sometimes to bring us the steak for breakfast in the morning, and through whom Roxie captured the father, after the mother died. She was so sorry for the child, and mended her frocks, and made much of her till the father was won, when, it was said, the tables were turned, and little Agnes mended the frocks and darned the socks, while Roxie played the lady. I remember hearing of the birth of a daughter, but I was married about that time, and knew no more of the Flemings until a few years later, when I was visiting in Boston, and mother told me that he was dead, and Roxie had gone with the children to some place West. I am sure it must be the same woman with whom you boarded. Has she sandy hair and light gray eyes, with long yellow lashes?”

“Yes, she has; it is the same,” Everard replied, with a feeling like death in his heart as he thought how impossible it was now to tell his mother that Josephine was his wife.

How impossible it was that she would ever be reconciled to the daughter of her cook and butcher, who added to her other faults the enormity of wearing dollar jewelry! And I think that last really hurt Everard the most. On such points he was very fastidious and particular, and more than once had himself thought Josey’s dress too flashy, but the glamour of love was over all, and a glance of her blue eyes, or touch of her white hands always set him right again and brought him back to his allegiance. But the hands and the eyes were not there now to stand between him and what his mother had said, and he felt like crying out bitterly as he took back his photograph and listened a few moments longer, while his mother talked lovingly and kindly, telling him he must forgive her if she had seemed harsh, that it was for his good, as he would one day see. He would forget this boyish fancy in time and come to wonder at his infatuation. Forget it! with those words ever in his ears, “I pronounce you man and wife.” He could not forget, and it was not quite sure that he would do so if he could. Josey’s face and Josey’s wiles had a power over him yet to keep him comparatively loyal. He had loved her with all the intensity of a boy’s first fervent passion, which never stopped to criticise her manner, or language, or style of dress, though, now that his eyes were opened a little, it occurred to him that there might be something flashy in her appearance, and something told him that the massive chain and cross, so conspicuous on Josephine’s bosom, came from that store in Pittsfield, where everything was a dollar, from an immense picture down to a set of spoons. And his mother had detected it, by what subtle intuition he could not guess; and had traced her origin back to a butcher and a cook! Well, what then? Was Josey the worse for that? Was it not America’s boast that the children of butchers, and bakers, and candlestick-makers should stand in the high places and give rule? Certainly it was, and his mother herself had said it was neither birth nor blood which made the lady. It was a nobleness from within asserting itself without, and stamping its impress upon its possessor. And had Josephine this inborn refinement and nobility, or had she not? That was the point which troubled the young man as he went out from his mother’s presence, and sought a little arbor in a retired part of the grounds where he would be free to think it out. With his head, which was aching terribly, bowed upon his hands, he went over all the past as connected with Josephine, detecting here and there many a word and act which, alas, went far toward proving that his mother’s estimate of her was not very wrong. But how did his mother divine it? Had women some secret method of reading each other unknown to the other sex. Could Beatrice read her, too, from that photograph, and what would Bee’s verdict be? He wished he knew; wished he could show it to her incidentally as the photograph of a mere acquaintance. And while he was thus thinking he heard in the distance Bee’s voice, and lifting up his head he saw her coming down the long walk gayly and airily, in her pretty white muslin dress, with a bit of pink coral in her ears and in the lace bow at her throat. One could see that she was a saucy, fun-loving, frolicsome girl, with opinions of her own, which sometimes startled the staid ones who walked year by year in the same rut, but she was every whit a lady, and looked it, too, as she came rapidly toward Everard, who found himself studying and criticising her as he had never criticised a woman before. She was not like Josephine, though wherein the difference consisted he could not tell. He only knew that the load at his heart was heavier than ever, and that he almost felt that in some way he was aggrieved by this young girl, who, when she saw him, hastened her steps and was soon at his side.

“Oh, here you are,” she said, “Rossie told me I should find you in the garden. I came to inquire after that broken head, for which I feel responsible. Why, Ned,” she continued, calling him by the old familiar name of his boyhood, “how white you are! I am afraid it was more serious than I supposed;” and she looked anxiously into his pale, worn face.

His head was aching terribly, but he would not acknowledge it. He only said he was a little tired, that the cut on his forehead was nothing, and would soon be well; then, making Beatrice sit down beside him, he began to ask her numberless questions about the people of Rothsay, especially the young ladies. Where was Sylvia Blackmer, and where was Annie Doane, and, by the way, where was Allie Beadle, that pretty little blonde, with the great blue eyes, who used to sing in the choir.

“By Jove, she was pretty,” he said, “except that her hair was a little too yellow. She looks so much like a girl east that some of the college boys rave about, only this girl, Miss Fleming, is the prettier of the two. I shouldn’t wonder if I had her photograph somewhere. She had a lot taken and gave me one. Yes, here it is,” he continued, after a feint of rummaging his pocket-book. “What do you think of her?” he asked, passing the picture to Beatrice, and feeling himself a monster of duplicity and deception.

Bee took the card, and looking at it a moment, said:

“Yes, she is very pretty; but you don’t want anything to do with that girl. She is not like you.”

It was the old story repeated, and Everard felt nettled and annoyed, but managed not to show it, as he replied:

“Who said I did want anything to do with her? But honestly, though, what do you see in her to dislike?”

“Nothing to dislike,” Bee said, “I do not fancy her make-up, that’s all. She looks as if she would wear cotton lace!” and having said what in her estimation was the worst thing she could say of a woman, Beatrice handed him back the picture, which he put up silently, feeling that he could not tell Beatrice of Josey.

He could not tell anybody unless it was Rossie, and he did not believe he cared to do that now, though he would like to show her the picture and hear what she had to say. Would she see dollar jewelry and cotton lace in the face he thought so divine? He meant to try her, and after Beatrice was gone he strolled off to a shaded part of the grounds, where he came upon Rossie watering a bed of fuchsias. She was not sylph-like and graceful, or clad in airy muslin, like Beatrice. She was unformed and angular, and her dress was a dark chintz, short enough to show her slender ankles, which he had once teasingly called pipe-stems, and her thick boots, which were much too large, for she would not have her feet pinched, and always wore shoes a size and a-half too big. A clean white apron, ruffled and fluted, and a white sun-bonnet, completed her costume. Josephine would have called her “homely,” if she had noticed her at all, and some such idea was in Everard’s mind as he approached her; but when, at the sound of his footsteps, she turned and flashed upon him from beneath the cape bonnet those great, brilliant eyes, he changed his mind, and thought: “Won’t those eyes do mischief yet, when Rossie gets a little older.”

She was glad to see him, and stopped watering her flowers while she inquired after his head, and if Miss Belknap found him.

“Yes, she did,” he said, adding, as he sat down in a rustic chair: “Bee is handsome and no mistake.”

“That’s so,” Rossie replied, promptly, for Bee Belknap’s beauty was her hobby. “She is the handsomest girl I ever saw. Don’t you think so?”

Here was his opportunity, and he hastened to seize it.

“Why, no,” he said, “not the very handsomest I ever saw. I have a photograph of a girl I think prettier. Here she is.” And he passed Josephine’s picture toward Rossie, who set down her watering-pot, and wiping her soiled hands, took it as carefully as if it had been the picture of a goddess.

“Oh, Mr. Everard!” she cried, “she is beautiful; more so than Miss Beatrice, I do believe. Such dreamy eyes, which look at you so kind of—kind of coaxingly, somehow; and such lovely hair! Who is she, Mr. Everard?”

“Oh, she’s one of the girls,” Everard answered, laughingly, and experiencing a sudden revulsion of feeling in Josey’s favor at Rossie’s opinion of her.

Here was one who could give an unprejudiced opinion; here was a champion for Josey; and in his delight, Everard thought how, with his first spare money, he would buy Rossie a gold ring, as a reward of merit for what she had said of Josey. Her next remarks, however, dampened his ardor a little.

“She’s very rich, isn’t she?” Rossie asked; and he replied:

“No, not rich at all. Why do you think that?”

“Because she has such a big chain and cross, and such heavy bracelets and ear-rings, and is dressed more than Miss Belknap dresses at a grand party,” Rossie said: and Everard answered her quickly:

“Rossie, you are a little thing, not much bigger than my thumb, but you have more sense than many older girls. Tell me, then, if you know, is it bad taste to be overdressed in a picture, and is it a crime, a sin, to wear bogus jewelry?”

She did not at all know at what he was aiming, and, pleased with the compliment to her wisdom, answered, with great gravity:

“Not a crime to wear flash jewelry,—no. I wore a brass ring once till it blacked my finger. I wore a glass breast-pin, too, which cost me twenty-five cents, till your mother said it was foolish, and not like a lady. But I do not think it’s a crime; it’s only second-classy. A great many do it, and I shouldn’t wonder a bit if,”—here the little lady looked very wise, and lifted her forefinger by way of emphasis—“I shouldn’t wonder a bit if this chain and cross were both shams, for now that I look at her more closely, she looks like a sham, too.”

Rosamond’s prospect for a ring was gone forever, and Everard’s voice trembled as he took back his picture, and said:

“Thank you, Rossie, for telling me what you thought. Maybe she is a sham. Most things are in this world, I find.”

Then he walked rapidly away, while Rossie stood looking after him and wondering if he was angry with her, and who the young girl was, and if he really liked her.

“I hope not,” she thought, “for though she is very handsome, there is something about her which does not seem like Mr. Everard and Miss Beatrice. They ought to go together; they must; it is so suitable;” and having settled the future of Beatrice and Everard to her own satisfaction, the little girl resumed her work among the flowers, and did not see Everard again until suppertime, when he looked so pale and tired that even his father noticed it and asked if he were sick.

The cut over his eye was paining him, he said, and if they would excuse him he would retire to his room early, and should probably be all right on the morrow. The night was hot and sultry, and even the light breeze from the river seemed oppressive and laden with thunder, and for hours Everard lay awake thinking of the future, which stretched before him so drearily with that burden on his mind. How he wished that it might prove a dream, from which he should awake to find himself free once more,—free to marry Josephine if he chose, and he presumed he should, but not till his college days were over, and he could take her openly and publicly as a true man takes the woman he loves and honors. How he hated to be a sneak and a coward, and he called himself by these names many times, and loathed himself for the undefinable something creeping over him, and which made him shrink even from Josephine herself as Josephine. He said he did not care a picayune for the butcher and the cook, and he did not care for the dollar jewelry and cotton lace, though he would rather his mother and Bee had not used the opprobrious terms, but he did care for the sham of which his mother had spoken, and which even Rossie had detected. Was Josey a sham, and if so, what was his life with her to be? Alas for Everard! he was only just entering the cloud which was to overshadow him for so many wretched years. At last he fell into a troubled sleep, from which he was aroused by the noise of the storm of rain which had swept down the river and was beating against the house, but above the storm there was another sound, Rossie calling to him in tones of affright, and bidding him hasten to his mother, who was dying.

Of all which followed next Everard retained in after life but a vague consciousness. There was a confused dressing in the dark, a hurrying to his mother, whose white face turned so eagerly toward him, and whose pallid lips were pressed upon his brow as they prayed God to keep him from evil, and bring him at last to the world she was going to. There were words of love and tender parting to the stricken husband and heart-broken Rossie, who had been to her like a daughter, and whom she committed to the care of both Everard and his father, as a precious legacy left in their charge. Then, drawing Everard close to her, she whispered so low that no one else could hear:

“Forgive me if I seemed harsh in what I said of Josephine. I only meant it for your good. I may have been mistaken; I hope I was. I hope she is good, and true, and womanly, and if she is, and you love her, her birth is of no consequence, none whatever. God bless you, my child, and her, too!”

She never spoke again, and when the early summer morning looked into the room, there was only a still, motionless figure on the bed, with pale hands folded upon the bosom, and the pillow strewn with flowers, which Rosamond had put there. Rosamond thought of everything; first of the dead, then of the stern judge, who broke down entirely by the side of his lost Mary, and then of Everard, who seemed like one stunned by a heavy blow. With the constantly increasing pain in his head, blinding him even more than the tears he shed, he wrote to Josephine:

“Oh, Josey, you will be sorry for me when I tell you mother is dead. She died this morning at three o’clock, and I am heart-broken. She was all the world to me. What shall I do without my mother?”

He posted the letter himself, and then kept his room, and for the most part his bed, until the day of the funeral, when, hardly knowing what he was doing, or realizing what was passing around him, he stood by his mother’s grave, saw the coffin lowered into it, heard the earth rattling down upon it, and had a strange sensation of wonder as to whom they were burying, and who he was himself. That puzzled him the most, except, indeed, the question as to where the son was, the young man from Amherst College, who drove such fast horses, and smoked so many cigars, and sometimes bet at cards. “He ought to be here seeing to this,” he thought; and then, as a twinge of pain shot through his temple, he moaned faintly, and went back to the carriage, in which he was driven rapidly home.

There was a letter from Josephine in his room, which had come while he was at his mother’s grave. He recognized the handwriting at once, and with a feeling as if something were clutching his throat and impeding his breath, he took it up, and opening it, read his first letter from his wife.

CHAPTER VII.
JOSEPHINE.

Immediately after Everard’s departure she wrote to the postmaster at Clarence, making inquiries for Doctor Matthewson, and in due time received an answer addressed to the fictitious name which she had given. There had been a clergyman in town by that name, the postmaster wrote, but he had been dismissed for various misdemeanors. However, a marriage performed by him, with the knowledge and consent of the parties, would undoubtedly be binding on such parties. Latterly he had taken to the study of medicine, and assumed the title of “Doctor.”

There could be no mistake, and the harrowing doubt which had so weighed on Josephine’s spirits gave way as she read this answer to her letter. She was Mrs. James Everard Forrest, and she wrote the name many times on slips of paper which she tore up and threw upon the floor. Then, summoning Agnes from the kitchen, she bade her arrange her hair, for there was a concert in the Hall that night, and she was going. Always meek and submissive, Agnes obeyed, and brushed and curled the beautiful golden hair, and helped array her sister in the pretty blue muslin, and clasped about her neck and arms the heavy bracelets and chain which had been so criticised and condemned at the Forrest House. They were not quite as bright now as when the young lady first bought them in Pittsfield. Their luster was somewhat tarnished, and Josephine knew it, and felt a qualm of disgust every time she looked at them. She knew the difference between the real and the sham quite as well as Beatrice herself, and by and by, when she was established in her rightful position as Mrs. Everard Forrest, she meant to indulge to the full her fondness for dress, and make amends for the straits to which she had all her life been subjected.

“She would make old Forrest’s money fly, only let her have a chance,” she said to Agnes, to whom she was repeating the contents of the letter just received from Clarence.

“Then it’s true, and you are his wife?” Agnes said, her voice indicative of anything but pleasure.

This Josephine was quick to detect, and she answered, sharply:

“His wife? yes. Have you any objection? One would suppose by your manner that you were sorry for Everard.”

“And so I am,” Agnes answered, boldly. “I don’t believe he knew what he was doing. It’s a pity for him, he is so young, and we so different.”

“So different, Agnes? I wish you wouldn’t forever harp on that string. As if I were not quite as good as a Forrest or any other aristocrat. Can’t you ever forget your Irish blood? It does not follow because the poor people in Ireland and England lie down and let the nobility walk over them, that we do it in America, where it does sometimes happen that the daughter of a butcher and a cook may marry into a family above her level.”

“Yes, I know all that,” Agnes said. “Praised be Heaven for America, where everybody who has it in him can rise if he will; and yet, there’s a difference here, just as much and more, I sometimes think, for to be somebody you must have it in you. I can’t explain, but I know what I mean, and so do you.”

“Yes, I do,” Josephine replied, angrily. “You mean that I have not the requisite qualifications to make me acceptable at the Forrest House; that my fine lady from Boston would be greatly shocked to know that the mother of her daughter-in-law once cooked her dinner and washed her clothes.”

“No, not for that,—not for birth or poverty,” Agnes said, eagerly, “but because you are,—you are——”

“Well, what?” Josephine demanded, impatiently, and Agnes replied:

“You are what you are.”

“And pray what am I?” Josephine retorted. “I was Miss Josephine Fleming, daughter of Mrs. Roxie Fleming, who used to work for the Bigelows of Boston till she married an Irish butcher, who was shabby enough to die and leave her to shift for herself, which she did by taking boarders. That’s what I was. Now, I am Mrs. James Everard Forrest, with a long line of blue-blooded Southern ancestry, to say nothing of the bluer Bigelows of Boston. That’s who I am; so please button my boots and bring me my shawl and fan; it’s high time I was off.”

Agnes obeyed, and buttoned the boots, and put a bit of blacking on the toe where the leather was turning red, and brought the fleecy shawl and wrapped it carefully around her sister, who looked exceedingly graceful and pretty, and bore herself like a princess as she entered the Hall and took one of the most conspicuous seats. How she wished the people could know the honor to which she had come; and when, to the question as to who she was, asked by a stranger behind her, she heard the reply, “Oh, that’s Joe Fleming; her mother keeps boarders,” she longed to shriek out her new name, and announce herself as Mrs. James Everard Forrest. But it was policy to keep silent, and she was content to bide her time, and anticipate what she would do in the future when her marriage was announced. Of Everard himself she thought a great deal, but she thought more of his position and wealth than she did of him. And yet she was very anxious to hear from him, and when his letter came she tore it open eagerly, while a bright flush colored her cheek when she saw the words, “My dear little wife,” and her heart was very light as she read the brief letter,—so light, in fact, that it felt no throb of pity for the sick and dying mother. Josey had heard from her mother of the aristocratic Miss Bigelow, at whose grand wedding governors and senators had been present, and she shrank from this high-born woman, who might weigh her in the balance and find her sadly wanting. So she felt no sympathy with Everard’s touching inquiry, “What shall I do without my mother?” He would do very well indeed, she thought, and as for herself, she would rather reign alone at Forrest House than share her kingdom with another. How she chafed and fretted that she could not begin her triumph at once, but must wait two years, at least, and be known as Josephine Fleming, who held her position in Holburton only with her pretty face and determined will. But there was no help for it, and, for the present, she must be content with the knowledge that Everard was hers, and that by and by his money would be hers also. To do her justice, however, she was just now a good deal in love with her young husband, and thought of him almost as often as of his money, though that was a very weighty consideration, and when her mother suggested that there was no reason why she should not, to a certain degree, be supported by her husband, even if she did not take his name, she indorsed the suggestion heartily, and the letter she wrote to Everard, in reply to his, contained a request for money.

The letter was as follows:

“Holburton, July—.

“Dear Everard:—I was so glad to get your letter, and oh, my darling, how sorry I am to hear of your dear mother’s dangerous illness! I trust it is not as bad as you feared, and hope she may recover. I know I should love her, and I mean to try to be what I think she would wish your wife to be. I am anxious to know if you told her, and what she said.

“I have written to Clarence, as Dr. Matthewson bade me do, and find that he really was a clergyman; so there can be no mistake about the marriage, and if you do not regret it I certainly do not, only it is kind of forlorn to know you have a husband and still live apart from him, and be denied the privilege of his name. It is for the best, however, and I am content to wait your pleasure. And, now, my dear husband, don’t think meanly of me, will you, and accuse me of being mercenary. You would not if you knew the straits we are driven to in order to meet our expenses. Now that I am your wife I wish to take lessons in music and French, so as to fit myself for the position I hope one day to fill in your family. You must not be ashamed of me, and you shall not, if I only have the means with which to improve my mind. If you can manage to send me fifty dollars I shall make the best possible use of it. You do not know how I hate to ask you so soon, but I feel that I must in order to carry out my plans for improvement.

“And now, my darling husband, I put both my arms around your neck and kiss you many, many times, and ask you not to be angry with me, but write to me soon, and send the money, if possible.

“Truly, lovingly, faithfully, your wife, Joe.”

“I haven’t told more than three falsehoods,” Josey said to herself, as she read the letter over. “I said I hoped his mother would recover, and that I knew I should love her, and that I wanted the money to pay for music and French, when, in fact, I want more a silk dress in two shades of brown. And he will send it, too. He’ll manage to get it from his father or mother, and I may as well drop in at Burt’s and look at the silk this afternoon, on my way to post this letter.”

She did drop in at Burt’s and looked at the silk, and saw another piece, more desirable every way, and fifty cents more a yard. And from looking she grew to coveting, and was sorry that she had not asked for seventy-five instead of fifty dollars, as the one would be as likely to be forthcoming as the other. Once she thought to open her letter and add a P. S. to it, but finally decided to wait and write again for the extra twenty-five. The merchant would reserve the silk for her a week or more, he said, and picturing to herself how she should look in the two shades of brown, Josey tripped off to the post-office, where she deposited the letter, which Everard found upon his table on his return from his mother’s grave. It was the silk which in Josey’s mind was the most desirable, but the music and the French must be had as well, and so she called upon a Mrs. Herring, who gave music lessons in the town, and proposed that she should have two lessons a week, with the use of piano, and that as compensation the lady’s washing, and that of her little girl, should be done by sister Agnes, who was represented as the instigator of the plan. As the arrangement was better for the lady than for Josey, the bargain was closed at once, and Mrs. J. E. Forrest took her first lesson that very afternoon, showing such an aptitude and eagerness to learn that her teacher assured her of quick and brilliant success as a performer. The French was managed in much the same way, and paid for in plain sewing, which Josey, who was handy and neat with her needle, undertook herself, instead of putting it upon her mother or poor Agnes, who, on the Monday following, saw, with dismay, the basket piled high with extra linen, which she was to wash and iron. There was a weary sigh from the heavily-burdened woman, and then she took up this added task without a single protest, and scrubbed, and toiled, and sweat, that Josey might have the accomplishments which were to fit her to be mistress of the Forrest House.

Every day Josey passed the shop window at Burt’s, and stopped to admire the silk, and at last fell into the trap laid for her by the scheming merchant, who told her that three other ladies had been looking at it with a view to purchase, and she’d better decide to take it at once if she really wanted it; so she took it, and wrote to Everard that night, asking why he did not send the fifty dollars, and asking him to increase it with twenty-five more.

CHAPTER VIII.
EVERARD.

He was so giddy, and sick, and faint, when he returned to the house from his mother’s grave, that he had scarcely strength to reach his room, where the first object which caught his eye was Josephine’s letter upon the table. Very eagerly he caught it up, and breaking the seal, began to read it, his pulse quickening and his heart beating rapidly as he thought, “She would be so sorry for me if she knew.”

He was so heart-sore and wretched in his bereavement, and he wanted the sympathy of some one,—wanted to be petted, as his mother had always petted him in all his griefs, and as she would never pet him again. She was dead, and his heart went out with a great yearning after his young wife, as the proper person to comfort and soothe him now. Had she been there he would have declared her his in the face of all the world, and laying his aching head in her lap would have sobbed out his sorrow. But she was far away, and he was reading her letter, which did not give him much satisfaction from the very first. There was an eagerness to assure him that the marriage was valid, and he was glad, of course, that it was so, and could not blame her for chafing against the secrecy which they must for a time maintain; but what was this request for fifty dollars,—this hint that she had a right to ask support from him? In all his dread of the evils involved in a secret marriage he had never dreamed that she would ask him so soon for fifty dollars, when he had not five in the world, and but for Rosamond’s generous forethought in sending him the ten he would have been obliged to borrow to get home. Fifty dollars! It seemed to the young man like a fabulous sum, which he could never procure. For how was he to do it? He had told his father distinctly that he was free from debt, that he did not owe a dollar, and if he should go to him now with a request for fifty dollars what would he say? It made Everard shiver just to think of confronting his stern father with that demand. The thing was impossible. “I can’t do it,” he said; and then, in his despair, it occurred to him that Josey had no right to make this demand upon him so soon; she might have known he could only meet it by asking his father, which was sure to bring a fearful storm about his head. It was not modest, it was not nice in her, it was not womanly; Bee would never have done it, Rossie would never have done it; but they were different—and there came back to him the remembrance of what his mother had said, and with it a great horror lest Josephine might really lack that innate refinement which marks a true lady. But he would not be disloyal to her even in thought; she was his wife, and she had a right to look to him for support when she could have nothing else. She could not take his name, she could not have his society, and he was a brute to feel annoyed because she asked him for money with which to fit herself for his wife. “She is to be commended for it,” he thought. “I wish her to be accomplished when I present her to Bee, who is such a splendid performer, and jabbers French like a native. Oh, if I had the money,” he continued, feeling as by a revelation that Josephine would never cease her importunings until she had what she wanted.

But how should he get it? Could he work at something and earn it, or could he sell his watch, his mother’s gift when he was eighteen?

“No, not that; I can’t part with that,” he groaned; and then he remembered his best suit of clothes, which had cost nearly a hundred dollars, and a great many hard words from his father. He could sell these in Cincinnati; he had just money enough to go there and back, and he would do it the next day, and make some excuse for taking a valise, and no one need be the wiser. That was the very best thing he could do, and comforted with this decision he crept shivering to bed just as the clock was striking the hour of eleven.

Breakfast waited a long time for him the next morning, and when she saw how impatient the judge was growing, Rosamond went to his door and knocked loudly upon it, but received no answer, except a faint sound like a moan of pain, which frightened her, and sent her at once to the judge, who went himself to his son’s room. Everard was not asleep, nor did he look as if he had ever slept, with his blood-shot, wide-open eyes rolling restlessly in his head, which moved from side to side as if in great distress. He did not know his father; he did not know anybody; and said that he was not sick, when the doctor came, and he would not be blistered and he wouldn’t be bled; he must get up and have his clothes,—his best ones,—and he made Rossie bring them to him and fold them up and put them in his satchel, which he kept upon his bed all during the two weeks when he lay raving with delirium and burning with fever induced by the cut on his head, and aggravated by the bleeding and blistering which he had without stint. Rossie was the nurse who staid constantly with him, and who alone could quiet him when he was determined to get up and sell his clothes. This was the burden of his talk.

“I must sell them and get the money,” he would say,—but, with a singular kind of cunning common to crazy people, he never said money before his father. It was only to Rosamond that he talked of that, and once, when she sat alone with him, he said:

“Don’t let the governor know, for your life.”

“No, I won’t; you can trust me,” she replied; then, while she bathed his throbbing head, she asked: “Why do you want the money, Mr. Everard? What will you do with it?”

“Send it to Joe,” he said. “Do you know Joe?”

Rossie didn’t know Joe, and she innocently asked:

“Who is he?”

“Who is he?” Everard repeated: “ha, ha! that’s a good joke. He,—Joe would enjoy that; he is a splendid fellow, I tell you.”

“And you owe him?” Rossie asked, her heart sinking like lead at his prompt reply.

“Yes, that’s it; you’ve hit the nail. I owe him and I must pay, and that’s why I sell my clothes. I owe him money,—him,—that’s capital.”

He had told her that he had no debts and she believed him, and had been so glad, and thought he had broken from his old associates and habits, and was trying to do better. And it was not so at all; he had not broken off; he still had dealings with a mysterious Joe, whoever he might be. Some great hulking fellow, no doubt, who drank, and raced, and gambled, and had led Everard astray. Rossie’s heart was very sad and her voice full of sorrow as she asked next:

“Was it gambling? Was it at play that you incurred this debt?”

“Yes, by George, you’ve hit it again!” he exclaimed, catching at the word play. “It was a play, and for fun I thought at first, but it proved to be the real thing,—a lark,—a sell,—a trap. By Jove, I b’lieve it was a trap, and they meant me to fall into it; I do, upon my word, and I fell, and now Joe must have fifty dollars from me.”

“Fifty dollars!” and Rossie gasped at the enormous sum.

Where would he get it? Where could he get it? Not from his father, that was certain, and not from her, for her quarterly interest on her two thousand dollars was not due in weeks, and even if it were, it was not fifty dollars. Perhaps Miss Belknap would loan it if she were to ask her, and assume the payment herself. But in that case she must give the reason, and she would not for the world compromise Everard by so much as a breath of censure. Bee must think well of him at all costs, for Rossie’s heart was quite as much set on Beatrice’s being the mistress of Forrest House, some day, as the mother’s had been. She could not borrow of Miss Belknap, but,—Rossie started from her chair as quickly as if she had been struck, while her hands involuntarily clutched her luxuriant hair, rippling in heavy masses down her back. She could do that for Mr. Everard, but her face was white to her lips, which quivered a little as she resumed her seat, and said:

“What is Joe’s other name? Joe what?”

Everard looked at her cunningly a moment, and then replied:

“Guess!”

“I can’t,” she replied, “I have nothing to start from; nothing to guide me; I might guess all day, and not get it.”

“Suppose you start with some kind of fruit, say pears. What varieties have we in our garden?” he said; and Rossie answered:

“There are the Seckels. Is it Joe Seckels?”

“No.”

“Joe Bartlett?”

“No.”

“Joe Bell?”

“No.”

“Joe Vergelieu?”

“No.”

“Joe Sheldon?”

“No.”

“There’s the Louise Bonne de Jersey. It can’t be Joe Bonne de Jersey.”

“No, stupid.”

“Well, Flemish Beauty? It can’t be that.”

“How do you know? Joe is a beauty, and a Flemish one, if you change the sh into ng. No, try ’em again.”

“Joe Fleming?” Rossie asked, and with an insane chuckle Everard replied:

“You bet! Rossie, you are a brick! You are a trump! You’ve hit it exactly,—Joe Fleming.”

Rossie had in her pocket a pencil, and on a bit of newspaper wrote the name rapidly, and then asked:

“Does he live in Amherst?”

“No.”

“In Ellicottville?”

“No.”

“Well, then, in Holburton, where you were last summer. Didn’t you board with a Fleming?”

“You are right again. He lives in Holburton,” Everard replied, laughing immoderately at the idea of he as applied to Josephine.

Thus far he had answered all Rossie’s questions correctly, but when she said, “Tell me, please, his right name. Is it Joel, or Joseph, or what?” the old look of cunning leaped into his eyes, and he answered her:

“No, you don’t. Joe is enough for you to know. Besides, why are you questioning me so closely? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to try and get you out of your trouble,” Rossie said, and starting up in bed, Everard exclaimed:

“Get me out of the scrape! Oh, Rossie, if you only would,—if you only could!”

“I can, I will!” Rossie said, emphatically, and he continued:

“Out of every single bit of it?—the whole thing, so I’ll be free again?”

“Yes,” Rossie answered at random; “I think, I am sure, I will. But you must keep very quiet and not get excited, or talk. Try to sleep, and I’ll fix it for you beautifully.”

How hopeful she was, and the delirious man believed and trusted in her, and promised to sleep while she was gone to fix it.

“But it may take a few days, you know,” she said, “so you must be patient, and wait.”

He acceded to everything, and closed his eyes as she left the room and repaired to her own, where she went straight to the glass, and letting out her heavy braids of hair, suffered it to fall over her shoulders like a vail. Then Rossie studied herself, and saw a thin face, with great, wide-open, black eyes, which would look larger, more wide-open still, with all that hair gone. What a fright she would be without her hair, which was beautiful. Bee Belknap had said so, others had said so, and, if she was not mistaken, Everard had said so, too, and for his sake she’d like to keep it, though for his sake she was deciding to part with it. Maybe he did not think it pretty, after all. She wished she knew; and, yielding to a sudden impulse, she went back to his room with all her shining tresses about her, and so astonished him that he called out:

“Halloo, Lady Godiva! Are you going to ride through the town, clothed with modesty?”

Rossie was not well versed in Tennyson, and knew nothing of Lady Godiva, but she said to him:

“Mr. Everard, do you think my hair pretty?”

“Nothing extra,” was his reply. “I’ve seen hair handsomer than that. Don’t be vain, Rossie. You will never be a beauty, hair or no hair.”

Her pride was hurt a little, but her mind was made up, and retiring to her room and fastening herself in, she sat down to write to Joe Fleming.

CHAPTER IX
THE RESULT.

Reason said to her, “Perhaps there is no such person as Joe Fleming. Mr. Everard is crazy and does not know what he is saying;” but to this Rossie replied, “That may be, but even then there can be no harm in writing. The letter will go to the dead-letter office and no one be the wiser, and if there is a Joe, he deserves to have a piece of my mind. I shall write any way.” And she did write, and this is a copy of the letter:

“Forrest House, Rothsay, Ohio,

“August 3d, 18—.

“Mr. Fleming—Sir: I take the liberty of writing to you, because I think you ought to know how sick Mr. Everard Forrest is, and how much he is troubled about the money he owes you. He was thrown from a carriage and hurt, more than ten days ago, and his mother died that same night, and you wrote for money, and everything together made him very sick and out of his head, and that is the way I came to know about you and that gambling debt of his. I am Rosamond Hastings, a little girl who lives in the family, and Mr. Everard is like a brother to me, and I take care of him, and heard him talk of Joe and money which he had to pay, and he wanted to sell his clothes to raise it, and I found out from him that your name was Fleming, and that he owed you fifty dollars which must be paid at once.

“I suppose men would call it a debt of honor, but, Mr. Fleming, do you think it right to gamble and entice young men like Mr. Everard to play? I think it is very wicked, and dishonorable, and disreputable, and that you ought not to expect him to pay. Why, he cannot, for he has no money of his own, and his father would not give it to him for that, and would be so very angry that whatever comes he must never know it,—never.

“Now, will you give up the debt and not bother him any more? If you will, please write to him and say so. If you will not, write to me, and I shall try what I can do, for Mr. Everard must not be troubled with it.

“Hoping you will excuse me, and that you will reform and be a better man, I am,

“Yours respectfully,

“Rosamond Hastings.”

“P. S.—You are not to suppose that Mr. Everard knows I am writing, for he does not; nor are you to think that he has spoken ill of you in his delirium. On the contrary, I imagine that he likes you very much indeed, and so I am led to hope that there is much good in you, and that you will not only release him, but quit gambling yourself.”

She sealed the letter, and directing it to “Mr. Joe Fleming, Esq., Holburton, Mass.,” posted it herself, and then anxiously waited the answer.

Three days later, and the clerk in the post-office at Holburton said, in reply to Josey’s inquiry for letters:

“There’s one here for Mr. Joe Fleming; that can’t be you.”

“Let me see it,” Josey said; and when she saw that it was from Rothsay, Ohio, she continued: “It is for me, and it is done for a joke. I will take it.”

Then, hurrying home, she broke the seal and read the curious letter, amid screams of convulsive laughter, which brought both her mother and Agnes to her side.

“Look here; just listen, will you?” she said, “somebody thinks I’m a man, and a gambler, and everything bad.” And she read the letter aloud, while the tears ran down her face, and she grew almost hysterical with her glee. “Did you ever know a richer joke? What a stupid thing that girl must be,” she said.

But Agnes made no reply, and went quietly back to her work, while Josephine read the letter a third time, feeling a little sorry for and a little anxious about Everard. Rossie’s postscript that he seemed to like her very much touched her and brought something like moisture to her eyes; but she never for a moment thought of giving up the debt. She must have the fifty dollars, for the brown silk was nearly finished, and the merchant expected his money, so she wrote to Rossie as follows:

“Holburton, August 7th, 18—.

“Miss Rosamond Hastings:—

“Your letter is received, and though I am very sorry for Mr. Forrest’s illness, and agree with you that it is wrong to gamble, I must still insist upon the money, as I am in great want of it, and Mr. Forrest will tell you that my claim is a just one. I may as well add that twenty-five dollars more are due me, which I shall be glad to have you send. I have written Mr. Forrest about it, but presume he has not been able to attend to it.

“Hoping he is better, I am

“Yours truly,

“Joe Fleming.”

Josephine’s handwriting was large and plain, and she took great pains to make it still plainer and more masculine, and Rossie, when she received the letter, had no suspicion that it was not written by a man. Hastily breaking the seal, she read, with sinking heart, that the money must be paid, and, worse than all, that it was seventy-five instead of fifty dollars, as she had supposed. And she must raise it, and save Mr. Everard from all further trouble and anxiety. He was better now, and very quiet, and had allowed her to remove the satchel of clothes from his bed. Occasionally he spoke to her of Joe, and asked if she was sure she could help him out of the scrape.

“Yes, sure,” was always the reply of the brave little girl; and she must keep her word at the sacrifice of what she held most dear, her abundant and beautiful hair.

Rossie’s mind was made up, and, after lunch was over, she started for Elm Park, where Miss Belknap lived. Bee was at home, and glad to see her little friend. She was very fond of Rossie, whose quaint, old-fashioned ways amused and rested her; and she took her at once to the pretty blue chamber, which Rossie admired so much, and which seemed so in keeping with its lovely mistress. All Bee’s tastes were of the most luxurious kind, and, as she had no lack of means, she gratified them to the full. The fever, which had deprived her of her hair, had hurt her pride sorely; for the wig which she was wearing until her own hair grew again was not a success, and she chafed against it, and hated herself every time she looked in the glass; and when Rosamond, who could not wait lest her courage should fail her, said, “Miss Beatrice, are you in earnest about my hair? Will you buy it now?” she answered,

“Buy it? Yes, in a moment.”

“And give me seventy-five dollars?” Rossie faltered, ashamed of herself for asking this enormous sum.

But it did not at all appall Miss Belknap. Seventy-five dollars was nothing if she wished for anything, and she did want Rossie’s hair. It was just the color and texture of her own, and she could have such a natural looking wig made of it.

“Yes, give you seventy-five dollars willingly;” she said. “But it seems very mean and selfish in me to take it,” she continued; and Rossie, fearful lest the bargain should fall through, answered eagerly:

“Oh, no, it don’t. I want the money very much indeed. I am anxious to sell it, and, if you do not buy it, I shall go to some one else. But you must not ask me why,—I can’t tell that; only, it is not for myself,—it’s for a friend; I don’t think the hair worth seventy-five dollars, but that is what I must have, and so I asked it. Maybe if you can give me fifty, and loan me twenty-five, I can pay it when my allowance is due.”

“You conscientious little chit,” Bee said, laughingly, “you have not yet learned the world’s creed,—take all you can get. I am willing to give you seventy-five dollars, and, even at that price, think it cheap. But you are a little girl, and will not look badly with short hair.”

With her natural shrewdness and her knowledge of some of Everard’s shortcomings, Bee guessed that it was for him the sacrifice was made, and, when the barber’s scissors gleamed among the shining tresses, she saw that they did not cut too close and make the girl a fright. But the loss of her hair changed Rossie very much, and when she went back to the Forrest House she shrank from the eyes of the servants, and stole up to her own room, where she could inspect herself freely, and see just how she looked.

“Oh, how ugly I am, and how big my eyes are!”, she said, and two hot tears rolled down her cheeks; but she resolutely dashed them away, and thought, “His mother would be so glad if she knew I was doing it for him.”

And the memory of the dead woman, who had been so kind to her, helped her. For her sake she could bear almost anything, and, putting on her hat, she left the house again, going this time to the office of the family lawyer, Mr. Russell, a kind, elderly man, who was very fond of Rossie, and at once put aside his papers when she came in.

“Can I do anything for you to-day?” he asked, and she replied:

“I’ve come to ask you to write me just such a receipt as you would write if somebody owed you seventy-five dollars and you paid it in full. Don’t ask me anything, only write it, and make it read as if the debtor didn’t owe the creditor a penny after the date.”

Mr. Russell looked curiously at the flushed face raised so eagerly to him, and in part guessed her secret. Like Bee, he knew of Everard’s expensive habits, and suspected that this money had something to do with him. But he merely said:

“What name shall I use? The receipt will read like this: ‘Received of,—blank,—seventy-five dollars,’ and so forth. Now, how shall I fill the blank?”

Rossie thought a moment, and then replied:

“Will it make any difference who writes the receipt?”

“Not at all; the signature is what gives it its value.”

“Then will you please give me a form,—a true one, you know,—which I can copy and send, and ought I not to register the letter to make it safe?”

She was quite a little business woman, and the old lawyer looked at her admiringly as he gave her the necessary directions, suggesting that a draft or post-office order would be better than to send the money. But Rossie did not care for so much publicity as she fancied drafts and post-office orders would involve. She preferred to send the bills, a fifty, a twenty, and a five, directly to Joe, and she did so that very afternoon, for, as good luck would have it, Beatrice asked her to drive to an adjoining town, where she registered and posted her letter, and felt as if a weight were lifted from her mind. She had no suspicion of Joe’s playing her false. He would, of course, return the receipt, and Mr. Everard would be free, and her heart was almost as light as her head when she returned home and went to Everard’s room. That poor shorn head, how it stared at her in the glass, and how she tried to brush up the short, wavy hair, and make the most of it. But do the best she could, she presented rather a forlorn appearance when she went in to Everard, and asked him how he was.

He had missed her very much that day, and greeted her with a bright smile, so much like himself, that she exclaimed, joyfully:

“Oh, Mr. Everard, you are better; you are almost well!”

He was better, but his mind was still unsettled, and running upon the scrape from which Rossie was to extricate him, and he said to her:

“Have you fixed it yet? Is it all right?”

“Yes, all right,” she answered; and he continued:

“Every single bit right? Am I cut loose from the whole thing?”

She thought he was, and soothed him into quiet until he suddenly noticed her head, and exclaimed:

“Halloa, what have you been doing? Where’s your hair? Have you taken it off and laid it in the drawer as mother used to do? I thought yours was a different sort from that; not store hair, but genuine. I say, Rossie, you look like a guy.”

She knew he was not responsible for what he said, but it hurt her all the same, and tears sprang to her eyes as she answered him:

“My hair was very heavy and very warm this hot, sultry weather. I am sorry you do not like my looks. It will grow again in time.”

That was Rossie’s one comfort. Her hair would grow again, and she met bravely the exclamations of her girl friends and of the servants, who asked her numberless questions. But she kept her own counsel, and waited impatiently for the assurance that the money had gone in safety to Holburton. It came at last, on the very day when Everard began to seem like himself, and spoke to those about him rationally and naturally. His reason had returned, and his first question to Rossie was to ask if any letters had come to him during his illness, and his second, to interrogate her with regard to her hair, and why she had cut it off. She told him the old story of its being heavy and warm, and then hastened to bring his letters, of which she had taken charge. She was certain that some of them were from Joe Fleming, though the handwriting was much finer than that which had come to her in that morning’s mail. Joe had sent back the receipt without a word of comment, but Rossie did not care for that; she only felt that Everard was free, and she had the receipt in her pocket, and her face was almost pretty in her bright eagerness and gladness as she came to his bedside and handed him his letters. Three were from college chums, and three from Josephine. These he opened first, beginning with the one bearing the oldest date. She had not then heard of his mother’s death, and she wrote for more money,—twenty-five dollars more, which were absolutely needed. Seventy-five in all it was now, and the perspiration started from every pore and stood thickly on Everard’s forehead and about his lips, as, with an involuntary moan, he dropped the letter from his nerveless hand and turned his eyes toward Rossie, not with a thought that she could help him, only with a feeling that he would tell her, and ask her what to do, and if it were not better to leave college at once, acknowledge his marriage, and hire out as a day laborer, if nothing better offered.

She saw the hunted, hopeless expression in his eyes, and guessed the cause of it. In hers there was a great gladness shining, as she said:

“I am almost certain that letter is from Mr. Joe Fleming, and I have one from him, too, or rather, a receipt in full for the gambling debt!” and taking the receipt from her pocket, she handed it to Everard, and watched him while he read it.

There it was in black and white, an acknowledgment of seventy-five dollars, and a receipt in full of all Everard Forrest’s indebtedness to Joe Fleming up to that date. What did it mean? What could it mean? Everard asked, while through his mind there flitted a vague remembrance of something about Joe, and money, and the scrape from which Rossie was to extricate him.

“Rossie, tell me, what do you know of Joe? What does it mean?” he asked, and then Rossie told him how he had raved about a Joe, to whom he said he owed money, and how once, when he seemed a little rational, she had questioned him, and found out that the man was Joe Fleming, who lived in Holburton, and to whom he owed fifty dollars which he could not pay.

“You had your best clothes in your valise on the bed, and were going to sell them to get it,” Rossie said, “and I felt so sorry for you that I wrote to Mr. Fleming myself, and told him what I thought about such debts, and how sick and crazy you were, and your mother just dead, and you no way to pay, and asked him to give up the debt.”

“Yes, yes,” Everard gasped, while his face grew white as ashes; and still he could not forbear a smile at the mistake with regard to Joe’s sex, a mistake of which he was very glad, however. “Yes,” he continued, “you wrote all this, and what was the reply?”

“Just what you might expect from the bad, unprincipled, grasping man,” Rossie said, energetically, shaking her shorn head. “I told him it was wrong to gamble and tempt you to play, and told him how sick you were, and how angry your father would be, and added that, if after all this, he still insisted upon the money, he was not to trouble you, but write directly to me, and he was mean enough to do it. He said he was sorry you were sick, but he must have the money, and that you owed him seventy-five, and you would tell me he had a right to ask it.”

“Yes,” Everard said again, but the yes was like a groan, and every muscle of his face twitched painfully, “yes. He wrote this to you, and you raised the money; but how?”

Rosamond hesitated a moment, and then replied:

“Do you remember I told you that Miss Belknap once offered to buy my hair?”

“Oh, Rossie!” Everard exclaimed, as the truth flashed upon him, making the plain face of that heroic little girl seem like the face of an angel,—“oh, Rossie, you sold your beautiful hair for me, a scamp, a sneak, a coward! Oh, why did you humiliate me so, and make me hate and loathe myself?” and in his great weakness and utter shame Everard covered his face with his hands and sobbed like a child.

Rosamond was crying, too,—was shedding bitter tears of disappointment that she had made the great sacrifice for nothing except to displease Mr. Everard.

“Forgive me,” she said at last, “I thought you would like it. I did not want you to sell your clothes,—did not want your father to know. I meant to do right. I am sorry you are angry.”

“Angry!” and in the eyes which looked at Rossie there was anything but anger. “I am not angry except with myself; only I am so mortified, so ashamed. I think you the dearest, most unselfish person in the world. Who else would have done what you have?”

“Oh, ever so many,” Rossie said, “if they were sorry for you and loved you; for, Mr. Everard, I am so sorry, and I love you a heap, and then,—and then, I did it some because I thought your mother would like it if she knew.”

Rosamond’s lip quivered as she said this, and there was such a pitiful look in her soft eyes that Everard raised himself in bed, and drawing her toward him, took the thin little face between his hands and kissed it tenderly, while his tears flowed afresh at the mention of his dead mother, who had been so much to him.

“Rossie,” he said, “what can I ever do to show you how much I appreciate all you have done for, and all you are to me?”

The girl hesitated a moment, and then said:

“If you will promise never to have anything to do with Joe Fleming, I shall be so happy, for I am sure he is a bad man, and leads you into mischief. Will you promise not to go near Joe Fleming again?”

Everard groaned as he answered her:

“You do not know what you ask. I cannot break with Joe Fleming. I,—oh, Rossie, I am a coward, a fool, and I wish I were dead,—I do, upon my word! But there is one thing I can promise you, and I will. I pledge myself solemnly, from this day forth, never to touch a card of any kind in the way of gambling, never to touch a drop of spirits, or a cigar, or a fast horse, or to bet, or do anything of which you would not approve.”

“I am so glad,” Rossie said, “and to make it quite sure, suppose you sign something just as they do the pledge to keep from drinking.”

He did not quite know what she meant, but he answered, unhesitatingly:

“I’ll sign anything you choose to bring me.”

“I’m going to write it now,” Rossie said, and the next moment she left the room, and Everard was free to finish his letters alone.

Taking the second one from Josephine, he read that she was sorry to hear of his affliction, and wished she could comfort him, and that it must be a consolation for him to know that his mother was in heaven, where he would one day meet her if he was a good man.

This attempt at piety disgusted Everard, who knew how little Josephine cared for anything sacred, and how prone she was to ridicule what she called pious people.

Immediately following this mention of his mother, she said she was missing and longing for him so much, and hoped he would write at once, and send her the money for which she was obliged to ask him. Then she added the following:

“I find myself in rather a peculiar position. So long as I am known as Miss Fleming, I shall of course be subject to the attentions of gentlemen, and what am I to do? Shall I go on as usual,—discreetly, of course,—and receive whatever attentions are paid to me, never allowing any one to get so far as an offer? I ask you this because I wish to please you, and because, since my marriage, it seems as if so many men were inclined to be polite to me. Even old Captain Sparks, the millionaire, has asked me to ride after his fast horses; and as there was no reason which I could give him why I should not, I went, and he acted as silly as an old fool well can act. Tell me your wishes in the matter, and they shall be to me commands.”

For an instant Everard felt indignant at Captain Sparks for presuming to ride with and say silly things to Josephine, but when he reflected a moment he knew that to the captain there was no reason why he should not do so. Josephine was to him a young, marriageable maiden, and rumor said that the old man was looking for a fourth wife, and as he would, of course, look only at the young girls, it was natural for him to single out Josephine as an object of favor.

“Josey must, of course, hold her place as an unmarried person,” he thought, “but oh! the horror of this deception. I’d give worlds to undo the work of that night.”

He thought so more than ever when he read the third and last letter, in which, after expressing her sorrow and concern for his sickness, she told him of her correspondence with Rosamond, and which, as it gives a still clearer insight into the young lady’s character, we give, in part, to the reader:

“Dear Everard:—What do you suppose has happened? Why, I laughed until I nearly split my sides, and I almost scream every time I think of the funny letter I got from Rosamond Hastings, the little girl who lives with you, and who actually thinks I am a man, a bad, good for nothing, gambling, swearing man, who leads you into all sorts of scrapes, and to whom you owe money. It seems she gathered this when you were crazy, and took it upon herself to write to Mr. Joe Fleming;—that’s what she called me,—and lecture him soundly on his badness. You ought to hear her once; but I’ll keep the letter and show you. She wished me to give up the debt, which she took for granted was a gambling one, but said if I would not I must write to her and not trouble you. Now, I suppose it would have been generous and nice in me to say I did not care for the money, but you see I did; I must have it to pay my bills; and so I wrote to her and said you would tell her my claim was a just one, if she asked you about it. In due time she sent me seventy-five dollars, though how she raised it I am sure I cannot guess, unless she coaxed it from your father, and I hardly think she did that, as she seemed in great fear lest he should know that you owed Joe Fleming! She is a good business woman,—for, accompanying the money was a receipt, correctly drawn up, and declaring you discharged in full from all indebtedness to me. I wonder what the child would have done if I had not returned it, and just for the mischief of it I thought once I wouldn’t, for a while at least, and see what she would do. But Agnes made such a fuss that I thought better of it, and shall send the receipt in the same mail which takes this to you. By the way, you’ve no idea how much Agnes has you and your interests at heart. I believe, upon my word, she thinks you did a dreadful thing to marry me as you did, and she says her prayers in your behalf, to my certain knowledge, three or four times a day. Verily, it ought to make your calling and election sure.

“Dr. Matthewson was in town yesterday, and inquired particularly for you. I told him of your mother’s death, and that I had written to Clarence as he bade me do, and made inquiries about him, and had not received a very good report of his character as a clergyman. He took it good-humoredly, and said that the Gospel didn’t agree with him very well. I like the doctor immensely, he is so amusing and friendly. I hope you will not care because I told him of Rosamond’s mistake, and showed him her letter. How he did roar! Why, he actually laid down on the grass, and rolled and kicked, and would not believe me till I showed him the letter. He left town this morning, saying he should be here again in the fall, and would like to board with mother.

“How I hate this life,—planning how to get your bread and butter,—and how glad I shall be when I am out of it; but I mean to be patient and bear it, knowing what happiness there is in the future for me. When shall I see you, I wonder? Will you not come as soon as you are able to travel and spend the remainder of your vacation with me? You will at least stop here on the way to Amherst, and for that time I live.

“Lovingly yours, Joe.”

It would be impossible to describe the nature of Everard’s feelings as he read this letter, which seemed to him coarse, and selfish, and heartless in the extreme. Couldn’t Josephine, understand such a character as Rossie’s, or appreciate the noble thing she had done? Could she only see in it a pretext for laughing till “she split her sides,” and was it a nice thing in her to tell Dr. Matthewson of the letter, and even show it to him, making him roll on the grass, and roar and kick in her presence? Had she no delicacy or refinement, to allow such a thing? Would any man dare do that with Bee or even Rossie, child though she was? Was Josey devoid of that womanly dignity which puts a man always on his best behavior? He feared she was, he said sadly to himself, as he recalled the free and easy manner he had always assumed with her. How many times had he sat with his feet higher than his head, and smoked directly in her face, or stretching himself full length upon the grass while she sat beside him, laid his head in her lap and talked such slang as he would blush to have Rossie hear; and she had laughed, and jested, and allowed it all, or at the most reproved him by asking if he were not ashamed of himself. Josey was not modest and womanly, like his mother, and Bee, and Rosamond. She was not like them at all, and for a moment there swept over the young man such a feeling of revulsion and disgust that his whole being rose up against the position in which he was placed, and from his inmost soul he cried out, “I cannot have it so!”

He had sown the wind, and he was beginning to reap the whirlwind; and it was a very nervous, feverish patient which Rossie found when she came back to him, bringing the paper he was to sign, and which was to keep him straight. She called it a pledge, and it read:

“I hereby solemnly promise never to drink a drop of liquor, never to smoke a pipe or cigar, never to race with fast horses, never to play cards or any other game for money, never to bet, and to have just as little to do with Joe Fleming as I possibly can.

“Signed by me, at the Forrest House, this —— day of August, 18—.”

“There!” Rossie said, as she read it to him, and offered him the pen; “you’ll sign that and then be very safe.”

“Rossie,” he said vehemently, “I wish to Heaven I could honorably subscribe to the whole of it, but I cannot. I must erase the part about Joe Fleming. I cannot explain to you why, but I must keep my acquaintance with Joe, but I’ll promise not to be influenced in that direction any more. Will that do?”

“Yes, but I did so hope you would break with him entirely. I know he makes you bad. You told me when you came home you had no debts, and I believed you, and yet you owed this man seventy-five dollars, and I was so sorry to find you did not tell me true.”

Rossie’s eyes were full of tears as she said this, for losing faith in Everard had hurt her sorely, but he hastened to reassure her.

“Rossie,” he said, “I did not know of this debt then. It has come up since. What I told you was told in good faith. Bad as I am, I would not tell a deliberate lie, and you must believe me.”

She did believe him, and watched him as he put his pen through the sentence, “have just as little to do with Joe Fleming as I possibly can,” and then signed his name to the paper.

“There!” he said, as he handed it to her with a sickly effort to smile. “Keep it, Rossie, and if I break that pledge, may I never succeed in anything I undertake so long as I live; and now bathe my head with the coldest ice-water in the house, for it feels as if there was a bass drum in it.”

He was very restless and nervous, and did not improve as fast as the doctor had said he would, if once his reason returned. Indeed, for a few days he did not seem to improve at all, and Beatrice and Rosamond both nursed him tenderly, and pitied him so much when they saw him lying so weak and still, with his eyes shut, and the great tears rolling down his face.

“It’s for his mother,” Rossie whispered to her companion, and her own tears gathered as she remembered the sweet woman whose grave was so fresh in the church-yard.

But it was not altogether for the dead mother that Everard’s tears were shed. It was rather from remorse and sorrow for the deed he would have given so much to undo; for he was conscious of an intense desire to be free from the chain which bound him. Not free from Josephine, he tried to make himself believe, for if that were so he would indeed be the most wretched of men, but free from his marriage vow, made so rashly. How was it that he was tempted to do it? he asked himself, as he went over in his mind with the events of that night. He was always more or less intoxicated with Josephine’s beauty when he was with her, and he remembered how she had bewitched and bewildered him with the touch of her soft hands, and sight of her bare arms and neck. She had challenged him to the act, and Dr. Matthewson had given him the wine, which he knew now must have clouded his reason and judgment, and so he was left to his fate. And a terrible one it seemed, as, in his weakness and languor, he looked at it in all its aspects, and saw no brightness in it. Even Josephine’s beauty seemed fading into nothing, though he tried so hard to keep his hold on that, for he must hold to something,—must retain his love for her or go mad. But she was so unlike Beatrice, so unlike Rosamond, so unlike what his mother had been, and they were his standards for all that was noble, and pure, and sweet in womankind. Josey was selfish and unrefined; he could not put it in any milder form when he remembered the past as connected with her, and remembered how she had ridiculed little Rossie Hastings, whose letter she had shown to Dr. Matthewson. How plainly he could see that scene, when the doctor rolled upon the grass and roared and kicked, and Josephine laughed with him at the generous, unselfish child who, to save him, had sacrificed her only beauty. And Josephine was his wife, and he must not cease to respect her one iota, for that was his only chance for happiness, and he struggled so hard to keep her in his heart and love that it is not strange the great drops of sweat stood thickly on his brow, or that the hot tears at intervals rolled down his cheeks.

It was Rossie who brushed them away, Rossie who wiped the sweat from his face, and whispered to him once:

“Don’t cry, Mr. Everard. Your mother is so happy where she has gone, and I don’t believe she has lost all care for you either, she loved you so much when she was here.”

Then Everard broke down entirely, and holding Rossie’s little, brown, tanned hands in his, said to her:

“It isn’t that, though Heaven knows how much I loved my mother, and how sorry I am she is dead; but there are troubles worse than death, and I am in one now, and the future looks so dark and the burden so heavy to carry.”

“Can I help you bear it?” Rossie asked, softly, with a great pity in her heart for this young man who had given way like a child.

“No, Rossie, nobody can help me,—nobody,” he said; and after a moment Rossie asked timidly: “Is it Joe Fleming again?”

“Yes, Rossie, Joe Fleming again;” and Everard could scarcely restrain a smile, even in his grief, at this queer mistake of Rossie’s.

In her mind Joe Fleming was a dreadful man, through whom Mr. Everard had come to grief, and she ventured at last to speak of him to Beatrice as somebody of whom Everard had talked when he was crazy, and who had led him into a great trouble of some kind.

“And that’s what ails him now, and keeps him so weak and low, and makes him cry like a girl,” she said.

And then Beatrice resolved to help the sick youth, if possible, and that afternoon when she sat alone with him for a few moments, she said to him:

“Everard, I am quite sure that something is troubling you, something which retards your recovery. I do not ask to know what it is, but if money can lighten it let me help you, please. I have so much more than I know what to do with. Let me lend you some, do.”

“Oh, Bee,” Everard cried, “don’t talk to me that way; you will kill me, you and Rossie together; and you can’t help me. Nobody can. It is past all help.”

She did not at all know what he meant, but with her knowledge of what money could do, she felt sure it could help, and so she said:

“Not so bad as that, I am sure. You have probably been led astray by some designing person, but there is always a backward path, you know, and you will take it sure; and if you should want money, as you may, will you ask me for it, Everard? Will you let me give it to you, as if I were your sister?”

He did not know; he could not tell what he might do in sore need, for he felt intuitively that the call on him for money, commenced so soon, would increase with every year; so he thanked her for her kind offer, which, he said, he would consider, should the time ever come when he wanted help.

For ten days more Everard kept his room, and then arose suddenly one morning and said that he was able to go back to college, where he ought to have been two weeks ago, for he was getting far behind his class, and would have to study hard to overtake and keep up with it as he meant to do. Nothing could restrain him; go he must, and go he did, early one morning in September, before the people of Rothsay were astir. He had held a short conference with Rosamond, and bidden her tell the postmaster to forward to Amherst any letters which might come to him, and on no account let them go to the Forrest House. And Rossie had promised to comply with all his wishes, and pressed upon him a twenty-dollar bill which she made him take, because, as she said, she did not need it a bit, and should just squander it for peanuts, and worsteds, and things which would do her no good. It was a part of her quarterly interest, and she could do what she liked with it, and so Everard took it, and felt humiliated, and hated himself, especially as he knew just where the money would go. A letter from Josephine had come to him, asking for more funds, with which to replenish her wardrobe for the autumn. They had no boarders now except Dr. Matthewson, who was occasionally in town for a day or two and stopped with them, and Mrs. Fleming did not get as much sewing as usual, and so Josey was compelled to come to her husband for money, though sorely against her will, for she feared she must seem mercenary to him, and she hoped he would forgive her and love her just the same.

It was this letter which had determined him to return to Amherst without delay. On his way thither, he should stop in Holburton over a train, and tell Josephine how impossible it was for him to supply her demands until in a position to help himself.

“If father would only give me something more than my actual needs,” he thought; and, strangely enough, his father did.

Possibly the memory of the dead mother pleaded for her boy, and prompted the judge to give his son at parting a fifty-dollar bill over and above what he knew was needed for board and tuition.

“Make it go as far as you can; it ought to last you the whole year,” he said, and Everard’s spirits sank like lead as he foresaw the increasing drain there would be on him, and felt how impossible it would be to ask his father for more.

There was still his best suit of clothes; and a little diamond pin and a ring Rossie had given him, and his books, which he could sell, and perhaps he could find something to do after study hours which would bring him money. He might write for the magazines or illustrate stories; he had a natural taste for drawing, and could dash off a sketch from nature in a very few minutes. He could do something, he assured himself, and his heart was a little lighter, when he at last said good-by to Rossie and his father, and started northward for college and Josephine.

CHAPTER X.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.

He had sent no word of his coming, for he did not know just when he should reach Holburton. His strength might fail him, and he be obliged to stop for the night on the road. But he kept up wonderfully, and arrived at Holburton on the same train which had taken him there from Ellicottville on that memorable day which he would gladly have stricken out. There was no one at the little station except the ticket agent, who, being new to the place, scarcely noticed him as he crossed the platform and passed down the street toward the brown house on the common. There had been a storm of wind and rain the previous day, and the hop vine, which in the summer grew over the door, was torn down and lay upon the ground. A part of the fence, too, was nearly down, and a shutter hung by one hinge and swayed to and fro in the autumn wind. Taken as a whole, the house presented rather a forlorn appearance, and he found himself wondering how he had ever thought it so attractive. And still he felt his blood stir quickly at the thought of meeting Josephine again, and he half looked to see her come flying out to meet him as she had sometimes done. But only the cat, who was chasing a grasshopper through the uncut grass, came to welcome him by purring and rubbing herself against his legs as he went up the walk.

Agnes let him in,—the same sun-bonnet on her head he had seen so many times, her sleeves rolled up, and her wide apron smelling of the suds she had come from.

At sight of him she uttered an exclamation of surprise, and for a moment her tired face lighted up with something like pleasure; then that expression faded and was succeeded by an anxious, startled look, as she glanced nervously down the road as if expecting some one to whom she would give warning. Mrs. Fleming was in Boston, seeing to some mortgage on the house, and Josey had gone to ride, she said, as she led the way into the little parlor, which, even to Everard’s not very critical eye, presented an appearance of neglect unusual in Mrs. Fleming’s household. Evidently it had not been cared for that day, for the chairs were moved from their places, two standing close together, just where their last occupants had left them. There were crumbs of cake on the carpet, and two empty wineglasses on the table, with a fly or two crawling lazily on the inside and sipping the few red drops left there.

As Agnes opened the window and brushed up the crumbs, she said she was intending to right up the room before Josephine came home, then, bidding Everard make himself as comfortable as possible, she left him alone, and went back to her work in the kitchen.

Taking a chair near the window, where he could command a view of the street, the young man sat waiting for Josephine, until he heard at last a loud, long laugh, which was almost a shriek, and, looking through the shutters of the open window, he saw first a cloud of dust, and then a low buggy coming rapidly across the common, in the direction of the house. In the buggy sat Captain Sparks, the millionaire, whose penchant for young and pretty girls was well known throughout the entire county. Short, fat and grizzly, he sat with folded arms, smiling complacently upon the fair blonde, who, in her brown silk dress of two shades, with a long white lace scarf twisted round her hat and flying far behind, held the reins of the high-mettled horse, and was driving furiously. In his surprise and indignation, Everard failed to note how beautiful she was, with the flush of excitement on her cheeks and the sparkle in her eye; he only thought she was his wife, and that Captain Sparks lifted her very tenderly to the ground, and held her by the shoulders a moment, while he said something which made her turn her head coquettishly on one side, as she drew back from him, and said:

“You mean old thing! You ought to be ashamed!”

Everard had heard this form of expression many times. Indeed, it was her favorite method of reproof for liberties of speech or manner, and meant nothing at all. Everard knew it did not, and Captain Sparks knew it did not, and held her hand the tighter; but she drew it away at last, and ran gayly up the walk, throwing him a kiss from the tips of her daintily-gloved hand. Then she entered the side door, and Everard heard her say to Agnes, who was hurrying to meet her and announce his arrival:

“Upon my word, if you are not in that old wash-dud yet! I’ll bet you haven’t touched the parlor, and the captain is coming at eight o’clock. Wha-a-t?” and her voice fell suddenly, as Agnes said something to her in a tone too low for Everard to hear.

That it concerned him and his presence there he was sure, and he was not greatly surprised when the next instant the door opened swiftly, and Josephine rushed headlong into his arms. He opened them involuntarily to withstand the shock, rather than to receive her; but the result was the same,—she laid her golden head on his bosom and sobbed like a child. Josey could feign a cry admirably when she chose to do so, and now she trembled and shook, and made it seem so real that Everard forgot everything except that she was very fair and undeniably glad to see him. Very gently he soothed her, and made her lift her head, that he might look into her face, and hated himself for thinking that for such a thunder-gust as she had treated him to her eyes were not very red, nor her cheeks very wet. But she was so happy, and so glad he had come, and so sorry she was not there to receive him.

“That old fool, Captain Sparks, had recently taken to haunting her with attentions, and as the easiest way to be rid of him, she had consented for once to ride with him, and had taken the occasion to tell him it could not be repeated. But then it was rare fun to drive his fast horse,—she was so fond of driving, and Blucher was so fleet and spirited, and had brought them up to the house in such style. Did Everard see them,—and what did he think?”

“Yes, I saw you, and thought you were enjoying it hugely,” Everard said; and Josey detected something in his tone which made her suspect that he did not quite like the captain’s manner of lifting her from the carriage. But she was equal to the emergency, and made fun of the old man, and called him a love-sick muff, and took him off to the life, and then, in a grieved, martyred kind of way, said, “it was rather hard for her to know just what to do, situated as she was, married, and yet not married, in fact. She would not for the world do anything to displease Everard, but must she decline all attention and make a nun of herself, and how soon could she let her marriage be known?”

“Not yet, Josey,” Everard said, explaining to her rapidly how much worse the matter was for them now his mother was dead.

She might, and would, have helped them when the crisis came, but now there was no one to stand between him and his father, who was sure to take some desperate step if he knew of the rash marriage before his son was through college.

“We must wait, Josey, two years, sure,” he said; and, because she could not help herself, Josephine assented, very sweetly, though with something of an injured air, and managed next to speak of money, and asked if he hated her for being such a leech.

“You mustn’t, for I couldn’t help it,” she said, and she leaned on his arm, and buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, and caressed him generally, as she continued: “Maybe you didn’t know how poor the bride was, or you would not have taken her. Mother is in Boston now about some mortgage on the house, and it takes so much to live decently, and my lessons cost frightfully; but you are glad to have me improve, dearest?”

Of course he was glad, he said, but he had no means of getting money except from his father, and if she knew to what humiliation he was subjected when he asked for funds, she would spare him all she could. By and by, when he had money of his own, there should be no stint, but now she must be economical, he told her; and then she spoke of Rosamond, and asked who and what that queer little old-fashioned thing could be.

“Such a lecture as she gave Mr. Joe Fleming for gambling, and leading you wrong generally. Why, I laugh till I cry every time I think of it,” Josey said, proving the truth of what she asserted by laughing heartily.

But the laugh grated on Everard, as in some way an affront to Rossie, and he shrank from saying much of her, except to tell who she was, and how she came to be living at the Forrest House.

“And was it her own money she sent me, or where did she get it? Has she the open sesame to your father’s purse? If so, you had better apply to her, when in need,” Josey said; and in a sudden spasm of fear lest in some way Rossie should become a victim of the greed he was beginning dimly to comprehend, he told the story of the hair, but withheld the name of Beatrice, from a feeling that he would rather Josephine should not know of his acquaintance with her.

“What do you think of a girl who could do so generous a thing as that for a great lout like me?” he asked, and Josephine replied, “I think she was a little goose! Catch me parting with my hair; though I am glad she did it, as it relieved you, and was of great benefit to Joe Fleming!”

She laughed lightly, but Everard was disgusted and indignant at her utter want of appreciation of the sacrifice which few girls would have made. She saw the shadow on his face, and, suspecting the cause, changed her tactics, and became greatly interested in Rosamond, and said that she must be a generous, self-denying little thing, and she wished Everard would allow her to write to her in her own proper character as his wife. But to this he would not consent. He was not deceived by this change in her manner. He knew Josey had expressed her real sentiments at first, and there was in his heart a constantly increasing sense of disappointment and loss of something, he scarcely knew what. Nor could all Josephine’s wiles and witcheries lift the shadows from his face, and make him feel just as he used to do when he sat alone in the little parlor with her at his side. She was very charming in her brown silk, which fitted her admirably, and Beatrice herself could not have been softer, and sweeter, and gentler than she tried to be; but there was something lacking, and though Everard put his arm around her slender waist, and her golden head was pillowed on his shoulder, his heart beat with heavy throbs of pain as he spoke of her last letter to him, in which she had asked for more money. It had been his intention to give her all he had, and bid her make it last the year, but he changed his mind suddenly, and handed her only twenty dollars, and told her it was by mere chance that he was fortunate enough to have so much to give her, and that he hoped she would do the best she could with it; for, though he would gladly give her ten times the amount, if he could, the thing was impossible.

She thanked him graciously, and said she meant to be very economical, only things did cost so much, and as Mrs. Forrest, she felt that she must dress better than Josephine Fleming had done. If he said so she would take in sewing, or even washing, if he liked,—anything to show him she really meant to please him. He vetoed the washing and the sewing, of course, and then, as he heard the rattling of dishes in the adjoining room, he hastened to say that he was to leave on the half-past seven train, so as to reach Amherst that night. There was a passionate protest, and a pretty, pouting declaration that he did not care for her any more, and then she allowed herself to be comforted, and felt really relieved when she remembered Captain Sparks and his engagement for eight o’clock. There were waffles for supper,—Everard’s favorites,—and Josephine sat by him and buttered them for him, and made his tea, and helped him to peaches and cream, and between times studied the face which baffled and puzzled her so, with its new expression, born of remorse and harrowing unrest. She had married a boy whom she thought to mold so easily, but she found him now a man, for whom she felt a little awe and fear, and there was something of real timidity and shyness in her manner when at last she said good-by to him, and watched him through the darkness as he went rapidly from her to the train which was to take him on his way to Amherst.

CHAPTER XI.
AFTER TWO YEARS.

It is not my intention to linger over the incidents of the next two years, or more than glance at the Forrest House, where Rosamond Hastings laughed, and played, and romped, gaining each day health, and strength, and girlish beauty, but retaining always the same straightforward, generous, self-denying, truthful character which made her a favorite with every one. To Everard she was literally a good angel, and never was a son watched more carefully by an anxious mother than she watched and guarded him. She wrote him letters of advice and sage counsel such as a grandmother of seventy might have written, and which frequently had in them some word of warning against bad associates in general, and Joe Fleming in particular. She knew he had not broken with Joe altogether, for he told her so, and more than once in his sore need he had taken the money she never failed to send him when her quarterly allowance was paid. But for the rest, he was manfully keeping to the pledge which she had drawn for him to sign. Only once in all the two years had he ventured to ask his father for more money than that close-dealing man chose to give him, and the storm of anger which that request had evoked determined him never to repeat the act. He sent his father’s letter to Josephine, that she, too, might understand how difficult it was for him to supply her constantly increasing wants, and for a time the effect was good; but an inordinate fondness for dress was one of Josey’s weaknesses, and having once indulged it to a certain extent she could not readily deny herself, especially as she felt she had a right to a part, at least, of the Forrest money. So she wrote to Everard again and again, sometimes for five dollars, sometimes for ten, or twenty, and when she found that sooner or later it came she ventured to ask for more, and at last demanded fifty dollars, which she needed for furs, as her old ones were worn-out. Then Everard sold the little diamond pin his mother had given him, and parted with it almost without a pang, he was getting so accustomed to these things. He had long before parted with his best suit of clothes, and from the most exquisitely dressed young man in college he was fast becoming the plainest, and was getting the reputation of penuriousness in everything. His first-class boarding-house was exchanged for a third-rate club, where the poorest young men lived; he wrote articles for the magazines and sold them for whatever he could get, and once, when the janitor was sick for a week, he took his place, and earned a few dollars with which to swell the amount he found it necessary to keep on hand for the woman who sported a handsomer wardrobe than the greatest lady in Holburton.

Of course the world must have some explanation for this, or the girl’s reputation be ruined forever. And Josey made the explanation, and said a distant relative of her father’s had died in Ireland, and left her a few pounds to do with as she liked. And in this story there was a semblance of truth, for a maiden aunt, who for years had lived in Portrush, on the northern coast of Ireland, and taken lodgers during the summer season, did die and leave to her grand-nieces in America the sum of fifty pounds, which was ostensibly divided between Agnes and Josephine, though the latter had the greater share, and immediately appeared on the street in an expensive velvet sack, which attracted much attention and elicited a great many remarks from those who were watching the career of the young girl. She was not popular, for with her fine dress she had also put on all sorts of airs, and her manner was haughty and offensive in the extreme, while her flirtations with gentlemen were so marked as to make her notorious as a heartless and unprincipled coquette. Captain Sparks had laid himself and his immense fortune at her feet, only, of course, to be refused; but she had told him no so sweetly, with tears in her liquid blue eyes, that he was not more than half convinced that she meant it, and dangled still in her train of hangers-on. Dr. Matthewson, too, was there frequently, and people had good reasons for thinking him the favored one, judging from the familiar relations in which they seemed to stand to each other. Once in a great while Everard himself went over to Holburton, but he never stopped more than a few hours at the most, and was seldom seen in the street with Josephine, who was supposed to have lost her hold on him,—and so in fact she had; all his fancied love for her was dead, and her beauty never moved him now, or made his pulses quicken one whit faster than their wont. She was his wife, and he accepted the fact, and resolved to make the best of it, but the future held nothing bright in store for him. On the contrary, he shrank from it with a kind of nervous terror, and felt no throb of joy when his college days drew near their close, and he knew that he stood first in his class, and should graduate with every possible honor. He had worked hard for that, but it was more to please Beatrice and Rosamond than for any good to himself that he had studied early and late, and made himself what he was. They were coming on from Rothsay with his father, to see him graduated, and hear his valedictory, for that honor was awarded him, and he had engaged rooms for them at a private house where he knew they would be more comfortable than at the hotel. Rossie was all eagerness and excitement, and wrote frequently to Everard, telling him once that if Joe Fleming was there not to let him know who she was, but to be sure to point him out to her, as she had a great desire to see a real gambler and blackleg. She had recently applied this last term to Joe Fleming, and Everard smiled when he read the letter, but felt a great pang of fear lest Josephine should thrust herself upon the notice of his father and Beatrice. He had given her no hint that her presence would be agreeable to him, but he knew she did not need it, and was not at all disappointed when he received a note from her saying that she was coming down to see him graduate, but should not trouble him more than she could help, as a friend who lived about a mile from town had asked her to spend a few days with her, and be present at the exercises. She should, of course, expect him to call and pay her any little attention which he consistently could.

It was long since Josephine had attempted anything like love-making with Everard, for she felt that he understood her perfectly now, and had no respect whatever for her. He had found her a sham, just as Rossie had said she was, and had accepted his fate with a bitterness and remorse such as few men of his age had ever experienced. He did not believe in her at all, and whenever he was with her, and met the soft, pleading glance of the eyes which had once so fascinated and bewitched him, he only felt indignant and disgusted, for he knew how false it all was, and that the eyes which looked so beseechingly up to him would the next hour rest as lovingly upon Dr. Matthewson, or Captain Sparks, or any other man whom she deemed worthy of her notice. Once, when he was in Holburton, he accidentally discovered that the washing and ironing, with which Agnes seemed always busy, were done to pay the music bills and sundry other expenses, for which he had sent the money, and in his surprise he asked a few leading questions and learned more than he had dreamed of. As the worm will turn when trodden upon, so Agnes, who chanced to be smarting under some fresh indignity imposed upon her, turned upon her tyrant and told many things which, for Everard’s peace of mind, would have been better unsaid, for she dwelt mostly upon Josey’s free-and-easy manner with the gentlemen who came to the house to call, or chanced to be boarding there.

“I don’t mean she does anything bad,” she said, “anything you could sue for if you wanted to, but she just makes eyes at them, and leads them on, and gets them all dangling on her string, and wants to be their sister, and all that sort of stuff, and when the fools offer themselves, as some of them do, she rises up on her tiptoes and wonders how they could presume to do such a thing, as she had never meant to encourage them,—she was simply their friend; and, if you’ll believe it, they mostly stick to her just the same, and the sister business goes on, and she a married woman! I’m sorry for you, Mr. Forrest!”

And oh, how sorry he was for himself, and how after this revelation he shrank from the gay butterfly which flitted around him so gracefully, and treated him to the eyes of which Agnes had spoken so significantly. And still there was no open rupture between the two, no words of recrimination or reproach on either side. He was always courteous and polite, though cold as the polar sea; while she was sweetness itself, and only the expression of her face told occasionally that she fully realized the situation, and knew just how she stood with him. But he was her husband, and as such would one day be known to the world, and she was far prouder of him now in his character as a man than she had been when she took him, a boy; and she meant to see him on the stage in Amherst, and compel him to pay her some attention which should mark her as an object of preference. She knew he did not wish to have her there, but she did not care for that, and wrote to him her intention to be present at the Commencement, and her wish that he should pay her some attention.

The old, weary, hopeless look, which had become habitual to his face, deepened in intensity as Everard read the note, and then began to calculate the chances of a meeting between his friends and Josey. He was very morbid about this secret, which he had kept so long that it seemed to him now that he never could divulge it, even if sure that his father’s bitter anger would not follow. And he did not wish Beatrice and Rossie to see his wife, if he could help it, and perhaps he could. There would be a great crowd in the church; they could not see her there; and, as Mrs. Everts lived more than a mile from town, they might not meet her at all, unless at the reception given by the president, and to this Josey would hardly be invited. So he breathed a little more freely, and completed his arrangements for his family, and wrote a line to Josey, saying he would call upon her at Mrs. Everts’ when she came, but should be so very busy that he could not be with her a great deal.

To Rosamond he wrote quite differently, and told her how glad he was that she was coming, and how much he hoped she would enjoy the trip, and that there was the coziest, prettiest room imaginable waiting for her in one of the pleasantest houses in town. And Rossie was crazy with delight and anticipation, and scarcely slept a wink the night before they started. And still she was very bright, and fresh, and pretty, in her suit of Holland linen, and never was journey more enjoyed than she enjoyed hers, seeing everything, and appreciating everything, and declaring that she was not a whit tired when at last they reached Amherst, and found Everard waiting for them.

CHAPTER XII.
COMMENCEMENT

It was nearly a year since they had seen Everard, and Bee and Rossie were struck at once with the great change in his personal appearance, while even the judge noticed how thin and pale he was, but attributed it naturally to hard study. Fresh air and exercise at home would soon make that all right, he thought, and so dismissed it from his mind. But Beatrice and Rosamond both saw more than the thin face, which had grown so pale and troubled. They saw that Everard’s hat was the same worn the year before when he was at home; saw that his pants were shining about the knees, and his coat shining and worn about the sleeves, while his boots were carefully patched. Once he had been the best and most fashionably-dressed young man in college, but he was far from that now, though he was scrupulously neat and clean, and looked every whit a gentleman as he walked with the young ladies down the shaded street, and tried to seem natural, and answer gayly to Beatrice’s light badinage and Rossie’s quaint remarks. But it was uphill business, for how could he be happy when he knew that Josey would soon be watching for him, and expecting him to pass a part of the evening, at least, with her? What if she should take it into her head to come to town and hunt him up, and find him there with his friends? What could he say or do, and what would they think of her? It made him faint and sick just to imagine Beatrice weighing Josephine as she would weigh her, and discovering more than the enormity of cotton lace and dollar jewelry, while Rossie,—he could not define to himself why he shrank so nervously from having her clear, honest eyes scan Josephine Fleming, as he knew they would do.

After tea was over, Everard took his father through the town and introduced him to some of the professors, and then, as the twilight began to fall, asked to be excused a short time, as he had an engagement to call upon a friend; so his father returned alone to his lodgings, and Everard started on a rapid walk toward Mrs. Everts’. He did not know the lady personally, but he knew where she lived, and was soon at her gate, where he paused a moment in some surprise at the sounds of talking and laughter which greeted his ears. The parlor was lighted up, and through the open windows he caught a glimpse of Josephine, fair and lovely, in pure white, with only a bit of honeysuckle at her throat and in her hair, which fell like a golden shower upon her neck, and gave her a very youthful appearance. Gathered around her were four young men, juniors and sophomores, each striving for the preference, and each saying some soft thing to her, at which she laughed so prettily and coquettishly that their zeal and admiration were increased tenfold.

“How did these puppies know her?” Everard asked himself, as he leaned against the gate; then he remembered having heard that one of them had spent a little time in Holburton, and probably he was in the habit of going there occasionally, and had taken the others with him.

At all events she seemed to know them well, and they were in the full tide of flattery and mirth when his ring broke the spell, and he was ushered into the parlor.

“Oh, I am so glad to see you!” Josey exclaimed, coming gracefully forward, and giving him both her hands, an act which was noted by the juniors and sophomores, and mentally resented.

What business had that grave, dignified Forrest there, and why should Miss Fleming greet him so cordially, and where did she know him anyway? They had heard he was very wealthy, and that he once was very fast and wild, but something had changed him entirely, and transformed him into a sober, reticent, and, as they believed, very proud and stingy young man, whose perfectly correct behavior was a living rebuke to themselves. He was not popular with their set, and they showed it in their faces, and pulled at their cravats, and fingered the bouquets in their button-holes, and stood round awkwardly, while he talked with Josey, and asked her of her journey, and her mother and Agnes, and answered her questions about the exercises the next day, and the best place for her to sit.

“Oh, we will arrange that; we will see that you have a good seat,” the juniors and sophomores echoed in chorus; and with a slight sneer, perceptible to Josey, on his face, Everard said to her: “I do not see that there is any chance for me to offer you any attention, you seem so well provided for.”

Josey bit her lip with vexation, for though she was delighted to have so many admirers at her side, she would far rather have been cared for particularly by this husband, of whom she was beginning to be a good deal afraid. He was so greatly changed that she could not understand him at all, or guess what was passing in his mind, and when at last he rose to go she said to him almost beseechingly:

“I hope I shall see you to-morrow.”

“Possibly, though I shall be very busy,” was his reply; and just then one of the juniors said to him:

“By the way, Forrest, who is that fine-looking, elderly gentleman I saw with you this evening? Your father?”

“Yes, my father,” Everard replied, feeling a desire to throttle the young man, and glancing involuntarily at Josephine, over whom a curious change had come.

The was a blood-red spot on her cheeks, and an unnatural glitter in her eyes, as she said to the quartette around her:

“Excuse me a moment. I have just thought of something which I particularly wish to say to Mr. Forrest.”

The next moment she stood in the hall with him, and was saying to him rapidly and excitedly: “Your father is here, and you did not tell me. I don’t like it. I wish to see him,—wish him to see me, and you must introduce me at the reception. I intend to be there.”

“Very well,” was all Everard said, but he felt as if a band of iron was drawn around his heart as he went back to Beatrice and Rossie, who were waiting for him, and who noticed at once the worried look upon his face, and wondered a little at it.

Had anything happened to disquiet him, that he should seem so absent-minded and disturbed? Rossie was the first to reach a solution of the mystery, and when at his request Beatrice seated herself at the piano and began to play, she stole up to him, and whispered very low, “Have you seen Joe Fleming to-night?”

“Yes,” was his reply, and Rossie’s wise little nod said plainly, “I guessed as much.”

In her mind every trouble or perplexity which came to Everard had something to do with the mysterious Joe Fleming, though in what way she could not guess. She only knew that it was so, and she felt an increased desire to see this bete noir of Mr. Everard’s.

“And perhaps I shall have a chance to-morrow night at the reception. It will be just like his impudence to be there,” she thought, when at last she laid her tired head upon her pillow.

Rossie was very pale and haggard when she came down to breakfast the next morning. She was accustomed to the headache, and knew that one was coming on, but she fought the pain back bravely, for she could not miss the valedictory.

It was comparatively early when she and Beatrice entered the church, which, even at that hour, was densely packed. But good seats were found for them, and Rossie sat all through the exercises and listened breathlessly to Mr. Everard’s oration, and threw him a bouquet, and wondered who the beautiful lady was who stood up on tiptoe to cheer him, and who seemed so desirous that her bouquet of pansies and rose geraniums should reach him in safety. Beatrice did not see the lady, but she saw the bouquet of pansies which fell at Everard’s feet, where he seemed disposed to let it lie, until a boy picked it up and handed it to him. It was very pretty, and the pansies showed well against the background of green, but Beatrice little guessed how faint and sick the young man felt as he held them with the flowers Rossie had thrown. These he had picked up himself, and smiled pleasantly upon the young girl, whose pride and satisfaction shone in her brilliant eyes, and whose face was almost as white as the dress she wore. For Rossie was growing sick very fast, and when the exercises were over she could not even wait to speak to Everard, but hurried with Beatrice to her room, where she went directly to bed.

The reception was given up, but Rossie saw Everard a moment and told him how proud she was of him, and how fine she thought his valedictory.

Everard’s spirits were much lighter now than they had been in the morning, but when he remembered what had lightened them, he felt himself a very brute and monster, for it was nothing less than the sight of Rossie’s pale, sick face, and the knowing that she would not attend the reception, or Beatrice either, for the latter insisted upon staying with the little girl, and said she was only too glad to do so, for she did not care for the people she should meet, and would much rather remain at home with Rossie.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE RECEPTION.

It was a rather stupid affair, with a great many more gentlemen than ladies. Indeed, there were but very few of the latter present, and these mostly the wives and daughters of the professors, with any guests who chanced to be visiting them, so that when Josephine entered the room in her flowing robes of white, with her beautiful hair falling down her back, she created a great sensation. How she obtained an invitation to the reception it would be difficult to tell, but obtained it she had, and had spent hours over her dress, which was a master-piece of grace and girlish simplicity. It was white tarlatan, which fitted her perfectly, and left bare just enough of her neck and arms to be becoming. Clusters of pansies looped up the overdress, and formed her shoulder-knots, while a bunch of the same flowers, mingled with sweet mignonette, was fastened at her throat, and around her neck was a delicate chain of gold from which was suspended a turquoise locket, set with a few small pearls. Everything about her, though not costly, was in perfect taste, and she looked so charming, so fresh and lovely, when she entered the hot parlor, accompanied by one of the seniors, who was her escort, that the guests held their breath for a moment to look at her; then the gentlemen who knew her,—and there were a dozen or more of them,—pressed eagerly forward, each ambitious to pay her some attention.

Everard was standing by his father and the president when she came in, and at sight of her, smiling sweetly and bearing herself so royally, he felt for an instant a thrill of something like pride in her. But when he remembered that this beauty, and grace, and sweetness was all there was of the woman; that her manner was studied, even to the smile on her lips and the expression of her eyes, he turned from her with a feeling of disgust, but glanced nervously at his father to see what effect she would have upon him. Judge Forrest saw her, and stopped a moment in the midst of something he was saying to the president to look at her; then, moved by one of those unaccountable prejudices which one sometimes takes against a stranger without knowing why, he turned his back and resumed his interrupted conversation, and so he did not see young Allen, her attendant, when he presented her to Everard as one whom she had never met.

There was a comical gleam in Josey’s eyes, and Everard’s face was scarlet as he said,

“I have the pleasure of knowing Miss Fleming, I believe.”

Seeing an opening in the crowd, Allen tried to pass on; but Josey had no intention of leaving that locality, and, as soon as she could, she disengaged herself from him, and standing close to Everard, said, in a low tone:

“Present me to your father.”

He had no alternative but to obey, and in a few moments Josey’s great blue eyes were looking up coyly and deferentially at the stern old judge, and, a few moments later, her arm was linked in his, and he was leading her toward an open window, where it was cooler, and the crowd was not so great. She had complained that it was warm and close, and asked the judge if he would mind taking her near the conservatory, where it must be more comfortable.

And so the judge gave her his arm and piloted her to the window, where she got between him and the people and compelled him to stand and listen, while she talked in her most flattering strain, telling him how glad she was to meet him, she had heard so much of him from his son, who sometimes visited at her mother’s, and how much he was like what she had fancied him to be from Everard’s description, only so much more youthful looking.

If there was anything the judge detested it was for an old man to look younger than his years. It was in some sense a living lie, he thought, and he abominated anything like deception. So when Josephine spoke of his youthful appearance, he answered gruffly, “I am sixty, and look every day of it. If I thought I didn’t, I’d proclaim it aloud, for I hate deception of every kind.”

“Yes, I should know you did, and there we agree perfectly,” Josephine replied, and she leaned a little more heavily upon his arm and made what Agnes called her eyes at him, and asked him to hold her fan while she buttoned her glove, and asked him about Charleston as it was before the war, and wished that she could have seen it in its glory.

“Do you know,” and she spoke very low and looked straight up into his face, “it is very naughty in me, I admit, but at heart I believe I’m a bit of a rebel, and though, of course, I was very young when the war broke out, and didn’t quite know what it was about, I secretly sympathized with you Southerners, and held a little jubilee by myself when I heard of a Southern victory. Do you think me a traitor?” and she smiled sweetly into the face which never relaxed a muscle, but was cold and frigid as ice.

Judge Forrest was, to his heart’s core, a Southerner, and had sympathized with his people during the rebellion, because they were his people; but had he been born North he would have been just as strong a Federal as he was a Confederate, so, instead of thinking more highly of Miss Josey for her rebel sentiments, he thought the less of her, and answered rebukingly, “Young woman, I do not quite believe you know all the word traitor implies; if you did, you wouldn’t voluntarily apply it to yourself.”

“No, perhaps not. I’m a foolish, silly girl, I know,” Josey answered him humbly, while great tears swam in her blue eyes, but produced no effect upon the judge.

Indeed, he scarcely saw them, he was so intent upon ridding himself of this piece of affectation and vulgarity, as he mentally pronounced her, and it was all in vain that she practiced upon him the little coquetries which she was wont to play off on other men with more or less success. He did not care for her innocence, nor her pretty pretense of ignorance of the world, nor timidity nor shyness, nor love of books and poetry, nor admiration of himself, for she tried all these, one after another, and felt herself growing angry with this man who stood so unmoved before her and seemed only anxious to get away. She had made no impression on him whatever, at least no good impression, and she knew it, and resolved upon one final effort. He might be reached through his son, and so she mentioned Everard, and complimented his oration, and told how high he stood in the estimation of the professors, and what an exemplary young man he was, and ended by saying, “You must be very proud of him, are you not?”

Here was a direct question, but the judge did not answer it. There was beginning to dawn upon him a suspicion that this girl, whose flippant manner he so much disliked, was more interested in his son than in himself, and if so, possibly, his son was interested in her. At all events he meant to know the extent of their acquaintance, and instead of answering her question, he asked:

“Have you known my son long?”

Josey thought the truth would answer better than equivocation, and she told him that Everard had boarded with her mother a few weeks three years ago.

“You remember,” she said, “he spent his long vacation East, and a part of it in Holburton, where we live. Perhaps you may have heard him speak of my mother. She knew your wife well, and was at your wedding, though you would not remember her, of course, among so many strangers.”

The judge did not remember her, nor could he recall the name as one which he had ever heard, but he did not think of doubting Josey’s word, and never suspected that, though her mother had been present at his bridal, it was as a former servant in the Bigelow family; he only knew that if she had been the most intimate friend of his wife, he did not like her daughter, and he greeted with rapture the young man who at last appeared and took her off his hands. Her attempt at familiarity with him had failed, and she felt intensely chagrined, and mortified, and disappointed, for she began to understand how difficult it would be for Everard to confess his marriage, and to fear the consequences if he did. A tolerably skillful reader of human nature, she saw what kind of man Judge Forrest was, and felt that Everard had not misrepresented him. She saw, too, that he had conceived a dislike to herself, and for the first time began to dread the result should he know that she was his daughter-in-law. Disinheritance of Everard might follow, and then farewell to her dream of wealth, and luxury, and position. It is true the latter would be hers to a certain extent, for the wife of Everard Forrest would always take precedence of Josephine Fleming, but Josey liked what money would bring her better than position, and perhaps it would be well to keep quiet a while longer, provided her rapidly increasing wants were supplied. In this conclusion she was greatly strengthened when, the morning following the reception, Everard came for a few moments to see her and escort her to the train, for she was to leave that morning for home.

Between Everard and his father there had been a little conversation concerning Miss Josey, and not very complimentary to her either.

“Who was that bold, brazen-faced girl you introduced to me?” the judge had asked, and Everard replied:

“Do you mean that blonde in white? That is Miss Fleming from Holburton. She is called very beautiful.”

“Umph! looks well enough, for that matter, but I do not like her. She is quite too forward, and familiar, and affected. There’s nothing real about her, but her brass and vulgarity. And you boarded there, it seems, and knew her well?” the judge said, testily, and Everard stammered out that he did board with Mrs. Fleming, and had found Josephine a very agreeable young lady.

He must say so much in defense of the girl who was his wife, but it seemed to vex his father, who began to lose his temper, and said he should think very little of a young man who could find anything agreeable in that girl!

“Why, she’s no modesty or womanly delicacy at all, or she would not try to attract as she does with her eyes, and her hands, and her fan, and her naked arms, and the Lord only knows what. You are no son of mine if you can find pleasure in the society of such women as she represents. Why, she is as unlike Beatrice and Rossie as darkness is unlike daylight.”

This was the judge’s verdict, and Everard felt his chain cutting deeper and deeper as he thought how impossible it was for him to acknowledge the marriage now. He did not sleep at all that night, and the morning found him pale, and haggard, and spiritless, as he walked down the road in the direction of Mrs. Everts’. Josey was waiting for him and ready for the train. She had not told any of her numerous admirers that she expected to leave that morning, as she wished to see Everard alone. She was neither pale, nor fagged, nor tired-looking, though she, too, had passed a sleepless night, but her complexion was just as soft, and creamy, and smooth, and her eyes just as bright and melting as she welcomed her husband, and laying her hand on his, said to him: “You are going with your father, I suppose. How long before I can come too?”

There was a sudden lifting of his hand to his head as if he had been struck, and Everard staggered a little back from her, as he replied:

“Come to Forrest House? I don’t know. I am afraid that will never be while father lives.”

“Yes, I saw he took a great dislike to me, and probably he has been airing his opinion of me to you,” she said, tartly; then, as Everard did not speak, she continued: “Tell me what he said of me.”

“Why should he say anything of you to me? He knows nothing,” Everard asked, and Josephine replied:

“I don’t know why. I only know he has; so, out with it. I insist upon knowing the worst. What did he say?”

There was a hard ring in her voice, which Agnes knew well, but which Everard had never heard before, and a look in her eyes before which he quailed; and after a moment, during which she twice repeated:

“Tell me what he said,” he answered her:

“I would rather not, for I have no wish to wound you unnecessarily, and what father said was not complimentary.”

“I know that. I knew he hated me, but I insist upon knowing just what he said and all he said,” Josie cried passionately, for she, who seldom lost her temper except with Agnes, was beginning to lose it now.

“If you will insist I must tell you, I suppose,” Everard said, “but remember that father’s prejudices are sometimes unfounded.”

He meant to soften it to her as much as possible, but he told her the truth, and Josie was conscious of a keener pang of mortification than she had ever felt before. She had meant to win the judge, just as she won all men when she tried, but she had failed utterly. He disliked and despised her, and if he knew she was his son’s wife he might go to any length to be rid of her, even to the attempting a divorce. Once, when sorely pressed, Agnes had suggested that idea as something which might occur to Everard, and said:

“You know that under the circumstances he could get one easily.”

Josephine knew that he could, too, but she had faith in Everard. He would not bring this publicity upon himself and her; but his father was quite another sort of person. She was afraid of him, and of what he might do if roused to action as a knowledge of the marriage would rouse him. He must not know of it at present, and though she had intended to make Everard acknowledge her as soon as he was graduated and settled at home she changed her mind suddenly, and was almost as anxious to keep the secret as Everard himself.

“I am greatly obliged to your father for his opinion of me,” she said, when she could command herself to speak. “He is the first man I ever failed to please when I really tried to do so, and I did try hard to make an impression, but it was all a waste of words; he is drier and stiffer than an old powder-horn. I don’t like your father, Everard, and I am free to say so, though, of course, I mean no blame to you. I am glad I have met him, for I understand the situation perfectly, and know just how you shrink from letting him know our secret. I hoped that you would take me home as soon as you were settled at your law studies in your father’s office, but I am convinced that to announce your marriage with me at present would be disastrous to your future; so we must wait still longer, hoping that something will turn up.”

She spoke very cheerfully, and her hand was on Everard’s, and her eyes were wearing their sweetest expression as she added:

“But you will write to me often, won’t you, and try to love me again as you did before that night, which I wish had never been for your sake, because I know you are sorry.”

He did not say he was not; he did not say anything, but the shadow lifted from his face, and his heart gave a great bound when he heard from her own lips that she should not urge her claim upon him at once. He had feared this with such fear as a freed slave has of a return to his chains, and now that he was to have a little longer respite, he felt so happy and grateful withal that when she said to him:

“I wish you’d kiss me once for the sake of the old time;” he stooped and kissed her twice, and let her golden head rest against his bosom, where she laid it for a moment, but he felt no throb of love for this woman who was his wife. That was dead, and he could not rekindle it, but he could be kind to her, and do his duty to her, and he talked with her of his future, and said he meant to go to work at something at once, and hoped to become a regular contributor to a magazine which paid well, and he seemed so bright and cheerful that Josey flattered herself that she had touched him again. Nothing could have been farther from the truth, though he was very polite to her and went with her to the station, where she was immediately surrounded by a bevy of students who were there also to take the train, and who, in their eagerness to serve her, left Everard far in the background.

The fact that young Forrest, who, from the fastest, wildest young man in college had become the soberest, most reserved, and, as they fancied, most aristocratic member of his class, had attended Miss Fleming to the train, did not in the least lessen her in the estimation of the students who gathered round her so thickly. Indeed, it increased her importance, and she knew it, and felt a great pride in the tall, handsome, dignified man who stood and saw one take her satchel, another her shawl, and another her umbrella, while he who alone had a right to render her these attentions looked on silently. Whatever he thought he gave no sign, and his face was just as grave as ever when at last he said good-by, and walked away.

“Did you come up here to see that girl off?” was said close to his ear, in a voice and tone he knew so well, just as he left the depot, and turning suddenly, he saw his father, with an unmistakable look of displeasure on his face.

The judge was taking his morning stroll, and had sauntered to the station just in time to see the long curls he remembered so well float out of the car window, and to see the fluttering of the handkerchief Josephine was waving at his son.

“Yes, father, I came to see her off. There was no one else to do it, and I know her so well; her mother was very kind to me.”

“Umph! I’ve no doubt of it. Such people always are kind to young men like you,” the judge said, contemptuously; “but I won’t have it; I tell you, I won’t! That girl is just as full of tricks as she can hold, and is never so happy as when she has twenty or more fools dangling after her. She will marry the one with the most money, of course, but it must not be you; remember that. I believe I’d turn you out of doors.”

Just then they met one of the professors, and that changed the conversation, which did not particularly tend to raise Everard’s spirits, as he went to the house where Beatrice and Rosamond were stopping. Still, he felt a great burden gone when he remembered that of her own free will Josephine had decided that their secret must be kept for a while longer, and something of his own self came back to him as he thought of months, if not a whole year of freedom, with Beatrice and Rossie, at the old home in Rothsay.

CHAPTER XIV.
TWO MONTHS.

Of the every-day lives of the three young people, Beatrice, Everard, and Rosamond, I wish to say a few words before hurrying on to the tragedy which cast so dark a shadow over them all. But there was no sign of the storm now in the rose-tinted sky, and Everard never forgot that bright summer and autumn which followed his return from college,—when he was so happy in the society of Beatrice and Rossie. It is true he never forgot that he was bound fast, with no hope of ever being free, but here in Rothsay, miles and miles away from the chain which bound him, it did not hurt so much or seem quite so hard to bear.

Josephine was not very troublesome; in fact, she had only written to him twice, and then she did not ask for money, and seemed quite as anxious as himself that their secret should be kept from his father until some way was found to reconcile him to it. Possibly her reticence on the subject of money arose from the fact that he sent her fifty dollars in his first letter written after his return to Rothsay. This large sum he had got together by the most rigid economy in his own expenses, and by the interest on a few shares of railroad stock which a relative had left to him as her godson. This stock for a time had been good for nothing, but recently it had risen in value, so that a dividend had been declared, and Everard had sent the first proceeds to Josephine; but his boyish love was dead, and he did not try to resuscitate it, or build another love where that had been; he was content with the present as it was. His father, who was very kind to him, and seemed trying to make amends for his former severity and harshness, had said he was not to enter the office to study until October. Looking in his boy’s face, he had seen something which he mistook for weariness, and too close application to books, and he said, “You do not seem quite well. Your mother’s family were not strong; so rest till October. Have a good time with Rossie and Bee, and you will be better fitted to bone down to work when the time for it comes.”

This was a great deal for Judge Forrest to say, but he felt very indulgent toward his son, who had graduated with so much honor, and who seemed to be wholly upright and steady; and in a fit of wonderful generosity he went so far as to present him with a fine mustang, as a fitting match to Beatrice’s fleet riding-horse. This was just what Everard wanted, and he and Miss Belknap rode miles and miles together over the fine roads and through the beautiful country in the vicinity of Rothsay. Rosamond sometimes accompanied them, but she was not fond of riding, and old Bobtail, the gray mare, sent her up so high, and seemed so out of place beside Bee’s shining black pony, and Everard’s white-faced mustang, that she preferred remaining at home; and so the two were left to themselves, and people talked knowingly of what was sure to be, and hinted it to Rosamond, who never contradicted them, but by her manner gave credence to the story. She believed implicitly that Beatrice was coming to be mistress of the Forrest House, and was very happy in the prospect, for next to Mr. Everard she liked Bee Belknap better than any person in the world. Many were the castles she built of the time when Everard should bring his bride home. Since Mrs. Forrest’s death so many rooms had been shut up, and the house had seemed so lonely and almost dreary, especially in the winter, but with Bee there all would be changed, and Rossie even indulged in the hope that possibly the furniture in her own little room might be replaced by better, or at least added to. The judge, too, watched matters with an immense amount of satisfaction. Years ago he had settled it that Everard would marry Bee, and he was sure of it now. That girl with the yellow hair, as he always called Josephine to himself, was not anything to his son, as he had once feared she might be. Everard could never stoop to her; Everard would marry Bee, and it might as well take place at once; there was no need to wait, and just as soon as his son was established in the office he meant to speak to him, and if it were not already settled it should be, and Christmas was the time fixed in his own mind as a fitting season for the bridal festivities. He would fill the house with guests all through the holidays, and when they were gone the young couple might journey as far as Washington, or even Florida, if they liked. Then in the spring Bee could fit up the south side of the house as expensively as she chose, and Rossie should have the large corner room next his own on the north side, thus leaving the newly-married pair as much to themselves as possible.

And so the wires were being laid, and Everard stepped over and around them all unconsciously, and took the goods the gods provided for him, whether in the shape of Beatrice, or Rosamond, or his father’s uniform kindness toward him; and the September days went by, and October came, and found him a student at last in his father’s office, where he bent every energy to mastering the law and gaining his profession. There were no more long rides with Beatrice, and his mustang chafed and fretted and grew unmanageable for want of exercise. There were no more strolls in the leafy woods with Rossie, who gathered the nuts, and ferns and grasses alone, and rarely had Everard’s society except at meal-time, when she managed to post him with regard to all the details of her quiet, every-day life. She was reading Chateaubriand’s “Atala” in French, and found it rather stupid; or she was learning a new piece of music she knew he would like; or old Blue had six new kittens in his trunk up in the garret, and she wished him to go and see them.

Everard was always interested in what interested Rosamond, and on no one did his glance rest so kindly as on this little old-fashioned girl, in whom there seemed to be no guile; but he had no leisure time to give her. It was his plan to get his profession as soon as possible, and then, taking Josephine, go to some new place in the far West, where he could grow up with the town, and perhaps be comparatively independent and happy. But his future had been ordered otherwise, and suddenly, without a note of warning, his house of cards came down, and buried him in its ruins.

CHAPTER XV.
THE HOUSE OF CARDS BEGINS TO FALL.

Everard had been in his father’s office five weeks or more, when, on a rainy morning early in November, just as he was settling himself to his books, and congratulating himself upon the luxury of a quiet day, his father came in, and after looking over the paper, and poking the fire vigorously, seated himself opposite his son, and began:

“Everard, put down your book; I want to talk with you.”

“Yes, sir,” Everard replied, closing the book and facing his father with an unaccountable dread that something unpleasant was coming.

“It’s never my way to beat round the bush,” the judge began; “I come to the point at once, and so I want to know if you and Bee have settled it yet?”

“Settled what?” Everard asked; and his father replied:

“Don’t be a fool and put on girlish airs. Marrying is as much a matter of business as anything else, and we may discuss it just the same. You don’t suppose me in my dotage, that I have not seen what is in everybody’s mouth,—your devotion to Beatrice and her readiness to receive it; wait till I’m through,” he continued, authoritatively, as he saw Everard about to speak. “I like the girl; have always liked her, though she is a wild, saucy thing, but that will correct itself in time. Your mother believed in her fully, and she knew what was in women. She hoped you would marry Bee some day, and what I wish to say is this: you may think you must wait till you get your profession, but there is no need of that at all. You are twenty-two. You have matured wonderfully the last two years, and I may say improved, too; time was when I could hardly speak peaceably of you for the scrapes you were eternally getting into, but you dropped all that after your poor mother died. I was proud of you at Commencement. I am proud of you now, and I want you to marry at once. The house needs a mistress, and I have fixed upon Christmas as the proper time for the wedding, so if you have not settled it with Bee, do so at once.”

“But, father,” Everard gasped, with a face as white as snow, “it is impossible that I should marry Beatrice. I have never for a moment considered such a thing.”

“The deuce you haven’t,” the judge exclaimed, beginning to get angry. “Pray, let me ask you why you have been racing and chasing after her ever since you came home, if you never considered the thing, as you say? Others have considered it, if you have not. Everybody thinks you are to marry her, and, by George, I won’t have her compromised. No, I won’t! She could sue you for breach of promise, and recover, too, with all this dancing, and prancing, and scurripping round the country. If you have not thought of it, you must think of it now. You surely like the girl.”

He stopped to take breath, and Everard answered him:

“Yes, father, I like her very much, but not in that way,—not as a wife, and I never can. It is impossible.”

“Why impossible? What do you mean?” the judge said, loudly and angrily. “Is there somebody else? Is it that yellow-haired hussy who made those eyes at me, because, if it is, by Jove, you are no son of mine, and you may as well understand it first as last. I’ll never sanction that, never! Why don’t you answer me, and not stare at me so like an idiot? Do you like that white-livered woman better than Beatrice? Do you think her a fitter wife for you and companion for Rosamond?”

Everard had opened his lips to tell the truth, but what his father said of Josephine sealed them tight; but he answered his father’s last questions, and said:

“No, I do not think her a fitter companion for Rossie than Beatrice, and I do not like her better.”

“Then what in thunder is in the way?” the judge asked, slightly appeased. “Have you any fears of Bee’s saying no? I can assure you there. I know she won’t. I am as certain of it as that I am living now.”

Suddenly there shot across Everard’s mind a way of escape from the difficulty, a chance for a longer respite, and he said:

“If I were to ask Bee to marry me and she refused would you be satisfied?”

“With you? Yes, but, I tell you she won’t refuse. And don’t you ask her unless you intend to stick to it like a man,” the judge replied, as he rose to end the conference.

“I shall ask her, and to-night,” was Everard’s low-spoken answer, which reached his father’s ears, and sent him home in a better frame of mind.

He was very gracious to Everard at dinner, and paid him the compliment of consulting him on some business matter, but Everard was too much pre-occupied to heed what he was saying, and declining the dessert excused himself from the table, and went to his own room.

Never since his ill-starred marriage had he felt so troubled and perplexed as now, when the fruit of his wrong-doing was staring him so broadly in the face. That his father would never leave him in peace until he proposed to Beatrice, he knew, and unless he confessed everything and threw himself upon his mercy, there was but one course left him to pursue,—tell Beatrice the whole story, without the slightest prevarication, and then go through the farce of offering himself to her, who must, of course, refuse. This refusal he could report to his father, who would not blame him, and so a longer probation would come to himself.

In his excitement he did not stop to consider what a cowardly thing it was to throw the responsibility upon a girl, and make her bear the burden for him. To do him justice, however, he did not for a moment suppose Beatrice cared for him as his father believed she did, or he would never have gone to insult her with an offer she could not accept.

He knew she was beautiful and sweet, and all that was lovely and desirable in womanhood, but she was not for him. She, nor any one like her, could ever be his wife. He had made that impossible; had by his own act put such as she far out of his reach. But when he reached Elm Park and saw her, so graceful and lady-like, and heard the well-bred tones of her voice, and remembered how pure and good she was, there did come to him the thought that if there was no Josephine in the way, he might in time have come to say in earnest to this true, spotless girl what now was but a cruel jest, if she cared for him,—which she did not in the way his father believed she did;—he was her friend, her brother. The Feejee missionary, whose name she saw so often in the papers, and who had recently been removed to a more eligible field, had never been quite forgotten, though there was nothing left to her now of him except a faded pond-lily, given the day she told him no, and with his kiss, the first and last, upon her forehead, sent him away to the girl among the Vermont hills, with the glasses and the brown alpaca dress. She had no suspicion of the nature of his errand, and was surprised when, as if anxious to have it off his mind, he began, impulsively:

“Beatrice, I have come to say something serious to you to-night, and I want you to stop jesting and be as much in earnest as I am, for I,—I am terribly in earnest for once in my life. Bee,—I,—I feel as if I were going to be hung and do the deed myself.”

But his face was white as marble, and his voice shook as he continued:

“I am going to tell you something,—going to ask you something,—going to ask you to be my wife, but you must refuse.”

It was an odd way of putting it, and not at all what Everard had intended to do. He meant to tell her first and offer himself afterward as a mere form, but in his agitation and excitement he had just reversed it,—had told her he was there to ask her to marry him, and she must tell him no! and a look of scorn sprang to her eyes as she drew back from him and said, “You presume much on my good nature, when you tell me in one instant that you propose asking me to be your wife, and next that I must refuse you if you do. What reason have you to think I would accept you, pray?”

He knew she was indignant, and justly so, and he answered her with such a pleading pathos in his voice as disarmed her at once of her wrath.

“Don’t be angry with me, Bee. I have commenced all wrong. I believe my mind is not quite straight. I did not come to insult you. I came because I must come. I want you for a friend, such as I have not in all the world. I want your advice and sympathy. I want,—oh, I am the most wretched person living!”

And he seated himself upon the sofa, and sat with his face buried in his hands, while Beatrice stood looking at him a moment; then, going forward she laid her hand softly on his head, and said, “What is it, Everard? What is it you wish to tell me?”

Without looking up he answered her:

“Oh, Bee, I wish I were dead! Sit down beside me and listen to all I have to tell.”

She sat down beside him, and listened intently to the story Everard told her in full, concealing nothing where he was concerned, but shielding Josephine as far as was possible. Rosamond’s noble sacrifice of her hair was explained, and her mistake about Joe Fleming, who in her imagination still existed somewhere in whiskers and tall boots, and was the evil genius of Everard’s life. Here Beatrice laughed merrily once, then questioned Everard rapidly with regard to every particular of his marriage, and the family, and the girl. Where was she now and what was she like?

“You have seen the picture, Bee,” he said. “I showed it to you that day I broke my head, two years ago, and you said she looked as if she might wear cotton lace, while mother, to whom I showed it, too, hinted at dollar jewelry, and Rossie said she looked as if she were a sham.”

Here Everard laughed himself, but there was more of bitterness than mirth in it, and Beatrice laughed, too, as she said:

“That was rather hard;—cotton lace, dollar jewelry, and a sham, though, after all, Rossie’s criticism was really of the most consequence, if true; perhaps it is not. Have you her picture now?”

He passed it to her, and with a shrewd woman’s intuition, quickened by actual knowledge, Beatrice felt that it was true, and her first womanly instinct was to help and comfort this man who had brought his secret to her.

“Ned,” she said to him, and the name, now so seldom used, took her back to the days when she first came from France and played and quarreled with him. It made her altogether his sister, and as such she spoke. “Ned, I am so sorry for you; sorrier than I can express, and I want to help you some way, and I think it must be through Josephine. She is your wife, and by your own showing you were quite as much in fault as she.”

“Yes, quite,” and Everard shivered a little, for he guessed what was coming.

“Well, then,” Beatrice went on, “ought you not to make the best of it? You took her for better or worse, knowing what you were doing. You loved her then. Can you not do so again? Is it not your duty to try?”

“Oh, Bee, you do not know, you do not understand. She is not like you, nor Rossie, nor mother.”

“Well, try to make her like us, then,” Beatrice replied. “If her surroundings are not such as please you, remove her from them at once. Recognize her as your wife. Bring her home to Forrest House and I will stand her friend to the death.”

Everard knew that Bee meant what she said, and that her influence was worth more than that of the whole town, and if he could have felt any love or even desire for Josephine, it would have seemed easy to acknowledge his marriage, with Bee’s hopeful words in his ear and Bee’s strong nature to back him, but he did not. He had no love, no desire for her; he was happier away from her, happier to live his present life with Beatrice and Rossie; and, besides that, he could not bring her home; his father would never permit it, and would probably turn him from the door if he knew of the alliance. This Bee did not know, but he told her of the great aversion his father had conceived for the girl whom he stigmatized as the yellow-haired hussy from Massachusetts, “and after that, do you think I can tell him?” he asked.

“It will be hard, I know,” Beatrice replied, “but it seems your only course, if he insists upon your marrying me.”

“But if I tell him you refused me, it may make a difference, and things can go on as they are until I get my profession,” Everard pleaded, with a shrinking which he knew was cowardly from all which the telling his father might involve.

“Even then you are but putting off the evil day, and a thing concealed grows worse as time goes on,” Bee said. “You must confess it some time, and why not do it now. At the most your father can but turn you from his door, and if he does that take your wife and go somewhere else. You are young, and the world is all before you, and if there is any true womanhood in Josephine, it will assert itself when she knows all you have lost for her. She will grow to your standard. She has a sweet, childish face, and must have a loving, affectionate nature. Give her a chance, Everard, to show what she is.”

This giving her a chance was just what Everard dreaded the most. So long as his life with Josephine was in the future, he could be tolerably content, and even happy, but when it looked him square in the face, as something which must be met, he shrank from meeting it.

“Oh, I cannot do that, at least, not yet,” he said. “It will hamper me so in my studies. I cannot tell father, and bear the storm sure to follow. Josephine must stay where she is till I see what I can do.”

“But is that best for her?” Beatrice asked. “What sort of a woman is her mother? She may be a lady, and still be very poor. What is she, Everard?”

He had refrained from speaking of Josephine’s antecedents to Beatrice. He would rather she should not know all he knew of the family. It would be kinder to Josephine to spare her so much; but when Beatrice appealed to him with regard to the mother, he told just who Mrs. Fleming was.

Bee Belknap was a born aristocrat, and some of the bluest blood of Boston was in her veins. Indeed, she traced her pedigree back to Miles Standish on her father’s side, while her mother came straight down from a Scottish earl, who married the rector’s daughter. She was proud of her birth, and the training she had received at home and abroad had tended to increase this pride, and it was hard for her to understand just how people like Roxie Fleming could stand on the same social platform with herself. She knew they did, but she rebelled against it, and for a moment Josephine’s cause was in danger of being lost so far as she was concerned. She had thought of her as probably the daughter of some poor, but highly respectable farmer, or mechanic, whose mother took boarders, as many women do to make a little money, and whose daughters, perhaps, stitched shoes or made bonnets, as New England girls often do, but now that she knew the truth she stood for a moment aghast, and then, her strong, sensible nature asserted itself and whispered to her, “a man’s a man for a’ that.” Josephine was no more to blame for the accident of her birth than was she, Beatrice Belknap, to be praised for hers. “I’ll stand by her all the same,” she said to herself, but she did not urge quite so strenuously upon Everard the necessity of telling his father at once, for she felt sure the irascible judge would leave no stone unturned to ascertain who his daughter-in-law was, and that the ascertaining would result even worse than Everard feared.

“It may be better to keep silent a little longer,” she said, and meanwhile she’d turn the matter over in her own mind and see what she could do to help him.

“But in order to have any peace at home I must tell father that you refused me,” Everard said, “and I have not yet gone through the farce of offering myself, or you of refusing the offer.”

Then, with the ghost of a smile on his face he arose, and standing before Beatrice, continued: “Bee, will you marry me?”

“No, Everard, I will not,” was Bee’s reply, as she, too, rose, and looked at him, with eyes in which the hot tears gathered swiftly, while there came to her suddenly a feeling that she had lost something which had been very dear to her, and that her intercourse with Everard could never again be just what it had been. It is true, she had never seriously thought of him as her future husband, but she knew that others had thought it, and with his words, “Bee, will you marry me?” it came to her with a great shock that possibly, under other circumstances, she might have answered yes. But all that was over now. He had put a bar between them, and by neither word nor look must she tempt him to cross it; so, brushing her tears away with a quick, impatient gesture, and forcing a merry laugh, which sounded not unlike a hysterical sob, she said, “What children we are, Everard.”

Yes, they were children in one sense, and in another the man and woman was strong within them, and Everard saw something in the girl’s eyes which startled him, and made his heart throb quickly as he, too, thought “it might have been.” But with the instincts of a noble, true man he forced the new-born feeling down, and taking both her hands in his held them while he said:

“You must forgive me, Bee, for seeming to insult you with words which were a mere farce. You have been my friend,—the best I ever had,—and your friendship and society are very dear to me, who never knew a sister’s love. Can I keep them still after showing you just the craven coward and sneak I am?”

“Yes, Everard, you may trust me. I will always be your friend, and your wife’s friend as well,” Beatrice replied, and then Everard went away, and she was left alone to think of the story she had heard, and to realize more and more all she had lost in losing Everard. The boy, whom she had teased, and ridiculed, and tormented, and who had likened her to his grandmother, had become so necessary to her in his fresh young manhood, that it was hard to give him up; but Bee was equal to the emergency, and with a little laugh she said:

“On the whole I am glad there is one man whom I cannot get upon my string, as Aunt Rachel would say; but that this man should be the boy who I once vowed should offer himself to me and be refused, or I would build a church in Omaha, is mortifying to my pride. He has offered and been refused, and so the church obligation is null and void. But I must do something as a memorial of this foolishness, which I never dreamed of until to-night. I wonder if Sister Rhoda Baker don’t want something for her church by this time. I’ll go and see to-morrow, and take her mother to ride. It’s an age since I gave her an airing, and my purple velvet will contrast beautifully with her quilted hood and black shawl.”

Bee Belknap was a queer compound, and when, next morning, the distant relative who lived with her as chaperon, and whom she called Aunt Rachel, said to her: “What was that Forrest here for so late? I thought he’d never go,” she answered, readily:

“He was here to ask me to marry him, and I refused him flat.”

“You refused him! Are you crazy, Beatrice?” Aunt Rachel exclaimed, putting down her coffee-cup and staring blankly at the young girl, who replied:

“Yes. Have you any objections?”

“Objections! Beatrice Belknap! I thought this was sure. See if you don’t go through the woods and take up with a crooked stick at last. Do you know how old you are?”

“Yes, auntie. I am twenty-three; just eleven months and fifteen days older than Everard, and in seven years more I shall be thirty, and an old maid. After that, tortures cannot wring my age from me. Honestly, though, Everard was not badly hurt. He will recover in time, and maybe marry,—well, marry Rossie; who knows?”

“Marry Rossie! That child,—homely as a hedge fence!” was the indignant reply of Aunt Rachel, who was not always choice in her selection of language.

“Rosamond is fifteen, and growing pretty every day,” Beatrice retorted, always ready to defend her pet. “She has magnificent eyes and hair, and the sweetest voice I ever heard. Her complexion is clearing up, her face and figure rounding out, and she will yet be a beauty, and cast me in the shade, with my crows-feet and wrinkles; see if she does not; but I cannot afford to quarrel any longer; I am going to take Widow Ricketts out to ride, so good-by, auntie, and don’t be sorry that I am not to leave you yet. You and I will have many years together, I hope.”

She kissed her aunt, and went gayly from the room, singing as she went. An hour later and she was whirling along the smooth river road, with the quilted hood and black shawl of Widow Ricketts, who, unused to such fast driving, held on to the side of the little phaeton, sweating like rain with fear, and feeling very glad when at last she was set down safe and sound at her daughter’s door without a broken neck.

Rhoda’s church was wanting a new furnace, and Bee’s check for fifty dollars made the heart of the good Nazarite woman very warm and tender toward the girl who had once pretended to have the “power,” just for the fun of the thing! On reaching home Bee found a note from Everard, which had been left by a boy from the village, during her absence, and which ran as follows:

“Dear Bee:—After leaving you last night, I went to father, who was waiting for me, and goaded me into telling him everything there was to tell of Josephine. Of course, he turned me out of doors immediately, and said I was no longer his son. I might sleep in my room during the night, but in the morning I must be off. But I did not sleep there. I couldn’t, with his dreadful language in my ears. If I had been guilty of murder, he could not have talked worse to me than he did, or called me viler names. So I packed a few things in my valise, and staid in the carriage-house till it was light. Now, I am writing this to you, and shall have some boy to deliver it, as I take the first train South. I have given up law, and shall find something in Cincinnati or Louisville which will bring me ready money. If you should wish to communicate with me, direct to the Spencer House. I shall get my mail there a while, as I know the clerk. Don’t tell Rossie of Josephine. I’d rather she should not know. God bless her and you, my best friends in all the world. And so, good-by. I’ve sown the wind, and am reaping the whirlwind with a vengeance.

J. E. Forrest.”

CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOUSE OF CARDS GOES DOWN.

It was past eleven when Everard left Elm Park after his interview with Beatrice, and nearly half-past when he reached home, expecting to find the house dark, and the family in bed. But as he walked slowly up the avenue, he saw a light in his father’s room, and the figure of a man walking back and forth, as if impatient of something.

“Can it be he is waiting for me?” he thought, and a sigh escaped him as he felt how unequal he was to a conflict with his father that night.

Entering the hall as noiselessly as possible he groped his way up stairs to the broad landing, when the darkness was suddenly broken by a flood of light which poured from Rossie’s room, and Rossie herself appeared in the door, holding her gray flannel dressing-gown together with one hand, and with the other shedding her hair back from her face, which looked tired and sleepy, as she said: “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come. Your father wants to see you, and asked me to sit up and tell you when you came. Good-night!” and she stepped back into her room, while he passed slowly down the hall, and she saw him knock at his father’s room at the far end of the passage.

“Well, my son, so you’ve come at last,” the judge said to him, but there was no anger in his voice, only a slight tone of irritation that he had been kept up so late. “You have been to see Bee, I take it, and, from the length of time you staid, conclude that you settled the little matter we were talking about this morning.”

“Yes, father, we settled it,” Everard said, but his voice was not the voice of a hopeful, happy lover, and his father looked suspiciously at him as he continued:

“With what result?”

“Beatrice refused me;” and Everard’s voice was still lower and more hopeless.

“Refused you! ’Tis false! You never asked her!” the judge exclaimed, growing angry at once.

“Father!” and now Everard looked straight in his sire’s face, “do you mean to say I lie, and I your son and mother’s?”

The judge knew that in times past Everard had been guilty of almost everything a fast young man ever is guilty of, but he had never detected him in a falsehood, and he was obliged to answer him now:

“No, not exactly lie, though I don’t understand why she should refuse you. If I know anything about girls she is not averse to you, and here you come and tell me that she refused you flat. There’s some trick somewhere; something I do not understand. Beatrice likes you well enough to marry you, and you know it. Why then did she refuse you, unless you made a bungle of the whole thing, and showed her you were not more than half in earnest, as upon my soul I believe you are not; but you shall be. I’ve had my mind on that marriage for years, and I will not easily give it up. Do you hear or care for what I am saying?” he asked, in a voice growing each instant louder and more excited.

“Yes, father,” Everard answered wearily, with the air of one who did not really comprehend. “I hear,—I care,—but I am so tired to-night. Let me off, won’t you, till another time, when I can talk with you better and tell you all I feel.”

“No, I won’t let you off,” the judge replied. “I intend to know why you are so indifferent to Bee. Is it, as I have suspected, that yellow-haired woman? Because if it is, by the lord Harry, you will be sorry! She shall never come here; never! The bold-faced, vulgar thing!”

“Father!” and Everard roused himself at last, “you must not speak so of Josephine. I will not listen to it.”

That was the speech which fired the train, and the judge grew purple with rage as he demanded by what right his son forbade him to speak as he pleased of Josephine.

“What is she to you?” he asked, and with white, quivering lips Everard answered back:

“She is my wife!”

The words were spoken almost in a whisper, but they echoed like thunder through the room, and seemed to repeat themselves over and over again during the moment of utter silence which ensued. Everard had told his secret, and felt better already, as if the worst was over; while his father stood motionless and dumb, glaring upon him with a baleful light in his eyes, which boded no good to the sorely-pressed young man, who was the first to speak.

“Let me tell you all about it,” he said, “and then you may kill me if you choose; it does not matter much.”

“Yes, tell me;” his father said, hoarsely; and without lifting up his bowed head, or raising his voice, which was strangely sad and low, Everard told his story,—every word of it, even to Josephine’s parentage and Rossie’s generous conduct in his behalf.

Of Josephine herself he said as little as possible, and did not by the slightest word hint at his growing aversion for her. That would not help matters now. She was his wife, and he called her so two or three times, and did not see how at the mention of that name his father ground his teeth together and clutched at his cravat as if to tear it off, and give himself more room to breathe.

“I have told you everything now, father,” Everard said in conclusion, “everything there is to tell, except that since that night I have not committed a single act of which I am not willing you should know. I have tried to do my best, as I promised mother I would the last time I talked with her. She believed in me then; she would forgive me if she were here, and for her sake I ask you to forgive me too. I am so sorry,—sorrier than you can possibly be. Will you forgive me for mother’s sake?”

He had made his plea and waited for the answer. He knew how ungovernable his father’s temper was at times, but it was so long since he had met it in its worst form that he was wholly unprepared for the terrible burst of passion to which his father gave vent. He had listened quietly to his son’s story, without comment or interruption, but his anger had grown stronger and fiercer with each detail, so that even the mention of his dead wife had no power to move him now. On the contrary, it exasperated him the more, and, at Everard’s appeal for pardon, the storm burst and he began in a voice of such withering scorn and contempt that Everard looked wonderingly at the old man, who shook with rage and whose face was livid in spots. There was nothing to be hoped for from him, and Everard bowed his head again, while the tempest raged on.

“Forgive you for your mother’s sake! Dastard! How dare you cringe and creep behind her name, when you have disgraced her in her coffin? Forgive you? Never! So long as I have sense and reason left!”

This was the preface to what followed, for, taking up the case as a lawyer takes up the case of the criminal whom it is his duty to prosecute, the judge went through it step by step, speaking first of the puling weakness which would allow one to fall into the damnable trap set for him by a crafty, designing woman, then of the base hypocrisy, the living lie of years, the systematic deception, the mean cowardice, the sneaking, contemptible spirit which would even take money from a child to squander on that yellow-haired Jezebel, the insult to Beatrice, asking her to marry him just for a farce, and lastly, the audacity in thinking such enormities could be forgiven.

Everard did not think they could by the time his case was summed up. He did not think of much of anything, he was so benumbed and bewildered, and his father’s voice sounded like some great roaring river very far away.

“Forgive you!” it said again, with all the concentrated bitterness of hatred. “Forgive you! Never, so long as I live, will I forgive or own you for my son, or in any way recognize that jade as your wife. From this time on you are none of mine. I disown you. I cast you off, forever. You may sleep here to-night, but in the morning you leave, and go back to your darling and her high-born family, but you’ll never cross my threshold again while I am living. Do you hear, or are you a stone, a clod, that you sit there so quietly?”

His son’s demeanor exasperated him, and he would have been better pleased had Everard fought him inch by inch, and given him back scorn for scorn. But this Everard could not do; he was too completely crushed to offer a word in his own defense. Only at the last, when he heard himself disowned, he roused and said, “Do you mean it, father? Mean to turn me from your house?”

“Mean it? Yes; don’t you understand plain language when you hear it?” thundered the judge.

“Yes, father, I understand, and I will go,” Everard said, rising slowly, as if it were painful to move; then, half staggering to the door, he stopped a moment and added, “I deserve a great deal, father, but not all you have given me. You have been too hard with me, and you will be sorry for it some day. Good-by; I am going.”

“Go, then, and never come back,” came like a savage growl from the infuriated man, and those were the last words which, ever passed between the father and the son.

“Good-by, father, I am going.”

“Go, then, and never come back.”

They sounded through the stillness of the night, and Everard shivered, as he went through the long, dark hall and up the stairs, where the old clock was striking one, and where the light from Rossie’s door again shone into the gloom, and Rossie’s face looked out, pale and scared this time, for she had heard the judge’s angry voice, and knew a dreadful battle was in progress. So she wrapped a shawl about her and waited till it was over, and she heard Everard coming up the stairs. Then she went to him, for something told the motherly child that he was in need of comfort and sympathy, and such crumbs as she could give she would. But she was not prepared for the cowed, humiliated look of utter hopelessness, and not knowing what she was doing, she drew him into her room, and making him sit down, she took his icy hands and rubbed and chafed them, while she said, “What is it, Mr. Everard? Tell me all about it. I heard your father’s voice so loud and angry that it frightened me, and I sat up to wait for you and tell you how sorry I am. What is it?”

Her sympathy was very sweet to Everard, and touched him so closely that for a moment he was unable to speak; then he said:

“I cannot tell you, Rossie, what it is; only that it is something which dates far back, before mother died, and father has just found it out, and has turned me from his door.”

“Oh, Mr. Everard, you must have misunderstood him; he did not mean that. You are mistaken,” Rossie cried, in great distress; and Everard replied:

“When a man calls his son a sneak, a coward, a clod, a villain, a scoundrel, a scamp, a hypocrite, a liar, there can be no misunderstanding the language, or what it means; and father called me all these names, and more, and said things I never can forget. I deserve a great deal, but not all this. Oh, if I had died years and years ago!”

His chin quivered and his voice trembled as he talked, while Rossie’s tears flowed like rain as she stood, not holding his hands now, but gently stroking the hair of the head bowed down so low with its load of grief and shame.

“Mr. Everard,” she said at last, “has this trouble anything to do with Joe Fleming?”

“Yes, everything!” Everard answered, bitterly; and Rossie continued:

“Oh, I am so sorry! I hoped you had broken with him forever. You have been so good and nice, and kept that pledge so beautifully! How could you have anything to do with Joe?”

“I tell you it dates far back,—a hundred years ago, it seems to me. I got into an awful scrape, from which I cannot extricate myself,” Everard said, and Rossie continued:

“I see, you did something which Joe knows about, and so has you in his power, and you have just told your father.”

“Yes, that is it, very nearly,” Everard replied.

“I wish you’d tell me what it is. I ’most know I could help you; at all events, I could speak to your father; he is always kind to me, and will listen to reason, I think,” Rossie said; and then Everard looked up quickly, and spoke decidedly:

“Rossie, you must not speak to father for me. I will not have it. He has taunted me enough with ‘hanging on to the apron-strings of a little girl;’ that’s what he said, referring to my having taken money from you; for you see I told him everything, even to the hair you sold, and I think that made him more furious than all the rest. It was a dastardly thing in me, and there must be no repetition. You must not interfere by so much as a word; remember that when I am gone, for I am going to Cincinnati first, and if I find nothing to do there, I shall go on to Louisville, and possibly farther South. I shall write to you as soon as I know what I am going to do,—perhaps before; and, Rossie, among all the pleasant memories of my old home, the very sweetest will be the memory of the little girl who always in my sorest need lightened, if she could not remove, the burden. Hush, Rossie; don’t cry so for me. I am not worth it,” he said, as she burst into a passionate fit of weeping.

He had risen now and was bending over her and holding her hands in his, and when he saw her sobbing thus he wound his arm around her, and drawing her close to him, tried to quiet and comfort her.

“Don’t, Rossie, don’t; you unman me entirely, to see you give way so; I’d rather remember you as the brave little woman who always controlled herself.”

Down over Rossie’s shoulders her unbound hair was falling, and lifting up one of the wavy tresses, Everard continued, “I shall be gone in the morning, Rossie, and I want to take with me a lock of this hair. It will be a constant reminder of the sacrifice you once made for me, and keep me from temptation. May I have it, Rossie?”

She would have given him her head had he asked for it, and the lock was soon severed from the rest and laid in his hand. Holding it to the light he said, “Look how long, and bright, and even it is. You have beautiful hair, Rossie.”

He meant to divert her mind, but her heart was very sore, and her face tear-stained and wet as she tied the hair with a bit of ribbon, and placing it in a paper, handed it to him.

“Thank you, Rossie,” he said; “no man ever had a dearer sister than I, and if I am ever anything, it will be wholly owing to your influence and Bee’s.”

At the mention of Bee’s name Rossie looked quickly up, struck with a sudden idea.

“Oh, Mr. Everard,” she said, “how can you go away and leave Miss Beatrice? and I thought you and she would some time be married, and we should all be so happy.”

“That can never be,” Everard replied; “Beatrice will not have me; I cannot have her. We settled that to-night, but are the best of friends, and I esteem her as one of the noblest girls I ever knew. You may tell her so if she ever speaks of me after I am gone; tell her that with you she represents to me all that is purest and sweetest in womanhood; and now, Rossie, I must say good-by. It is almost two o’clock.”

He took her upturned face between both his hands and held it a moment, while he looked earnestly into the clear, bright eyes which met his without a shadow of consciousness, except the consciousness that he was going away, and this was his farewell. Then he stooped and kissed her forehead and said, “God bless you, Rosamond; be a daughter to my father. You are all the child he has now.”

An hour later and Rosamond had cried herself to sleep, and did not hear Everard’s cautious footsteps, as, with his satchel in his hand, he stole down the stairs and out to the carriage-house, where he passed the few remaining hours of the November night, feeling that he was indeed an outcast and a wanderer.

CHAPTER XVII.
THE NEXT DAY.

How much or how soundly the judge slept after that stormy interview with his son, or whether there came to him any twinges of regret for all the bitter things he had said, none ever knew. He prided himself upon seldom changing his mind, when once it was made up; and so, perhaps, his temper was still at a boiling pitch when promptly at his usual hour he descended to the breakfast-room, and bade John bring in the coffee and eggs. His face was very red, and his eyes were blood-shot and watery, and his hands, which held the morning paper, trembled so, that John glanced curiously at him as he brought in the breakfast and arranged it upon the table.

“Where’s Miss Rosamond and my son? Are they not ready?” the judge asked a little irritably, for he required every one to be prompt where he was concerned.

His questions were partly answered by the appearance of Rosamond, who looked as fresh and bright as usual, as she took her seat at the table and began to pour the coffee. She had slept soundly, and did not feel the effects of last night’s excitement, except in a little tremor of fear and anxiety with regard to Everard. Whatever happened, she was not to interfere or plead for him. He had said so expressly, and she must obey, and as she looked furtively at the inflamed face opposite her, she felt for the first time in her life a great fear of the man, who, as Everard did not appear, said angrily, “Go to my son’s room and see what is keeping him; and tell him I sent you,” he added, as if that message would necessarily hasten the laggard young man.

Then Rossie dropped her spoon and sat shaking in her chair until the servant came swiftly back, with wonder and alarm upon his face, saying that his young master was not there and his bed had not been slept in.

“Not there! and his bed not slept in! What does it mean? Where is he, then?” the judge asked, in a voice that made Rossie tremble even more than the announcement that Everard was gone.

“I dunno, mass’r, where he can be. I know he’s not thar, an’ I disremember seen’ him since he went out last night after dinner. Maybe he didn’t come back.”

“Blockhead, he did come back, and he’s here now, most likely. I’ll see for myself,” said the judge, as he started for his son’s room, followed by Rossie and John, the latter of whom said:

“Very well, mass’r, you see for yourself; he gone sure, an’ left the bed as Axie fix it for him, an’ lemme see, yes, shoo nuff, his big satchel gone wid him, and his odder suit. I shouldn’t wonder if he’s gone away,” the loquacious negro continued, as he investigated the closet and room.

“You black hound,” roared the infuriated judge, “why should he run away? What had he to run from? Leave the chamber instantly, before I kick you down stairs, for giving your opinion.”

“Yes, mass’r, I’s gwine,” was John’s reply as he disappeared from the scene, leaving the judge and Rossie alone.

The latter was white as a sheet, and leaned against the mantel, for she knew now that Everard was really gone. Her paleness and agitation escaped the judge’s attention, for just then he picked up from the dressing-table the few lines that Everard had left for him, and which read as follows:

“Father:—You have always said your yea was yea, and your nay nay, and I know you meant it when you bade me leave your house and never come back again; so I have taken you at your word, and when you read this I shall be many miles away from Rothsay. After what you said to me I cannot even pass the night under this roof, and shall stay in the carriage-house until time to take the train. I am sorry for all that has passed, very sorry, and wish I could undo my part of it, but cannot, and so it is better for me to go. Good-by, father.

Your son, Everard.”

Notwithstanding the judge’s favorite assertion that his yea was yea, and his nay nay, it is very possible that if Everard had not taken him so promptly at his word,—if he had staid and gone to breakfast as usual and about his daily avocations, his father would have cooled down gradually, and come in time to look the matter over soberly and make the best of it. But Everard had gone, and the irascible old man broke forth afresh into invectives against him, denouncing him as a dog, to sleep in carriage-houses, and then run away as if there was anything to run from.

“I’ll never forgive him,” he said to Rossie, who had stood silently by, appalled at the storm of passion such as she had never seen before, until at last, forgetful of Everard’s charge not to interfere, she roused in his defense.

“Yes, you will forgive him,” she said. “You must. He is your son, and though I don’t know what he has done to make you so angry, I am sure it is not sufficient for you to treat him so, and you will send for him to come back. I know where he’s gone. He came and told me he was going, though I did not think it would be till this morning, when I hoped you might make it up.”

“And so he asked you to intercede for him as you have been in the habit of doing, and maybe told you the nice thing he had done?” the judge said, forgetting her assertion that she did not know.

“No, sir. Oh, no,” Rossie cried. “He did not ask me to intercede; he said, on the contrary, that I was on no account to mention him, and he did not tell me what it was about, except that it happened long ago; and he is so sorry and has tried to be good since. You know he was trying, Judge Forrest, and you will forgive him, won’t you?”

“By the lord Harry, no! and you would not ask it if you knew the disgrace he has brought upon me. I’ll fix him!” was the judge’s angry reply, as he broke away from her, and striding down the stairs took his hat from the hall-stand, and hurried to his office.

Great was the consternation among the servants in the Forrest household when it was known that Mr. Everard had left the house, and gone no one knew whither, and many were the whispered surmises as to the cause of his going.

“Some row between him and old mass’r,” John said, and his solution of the mystery was taken as the correct one, the negroes all siding with Mr. Everard, who was very popular with them.

Old Axie, the cook, ventured to question Rosamond a little; but Rossie kept her own counsel, and, returning to her room, was crying herself sick, when a message came that Beatrice was asking for her. Immediately after reading Everard’s note, Beatrice had driven over to the Forrest House, where she was admitted at once to Rossie’s room, and heard all that Rossie knew of the events of the previous night.

“Oh, Miss Beatrice,” Rossie said, “why did you refuse him? He told me about it, and I ’most know if you had said yes it would all have been so different.”

Bee’s face was scarlet as she replied:

“He told you that, and nothing more?”

“Yes, he said something about wouldn’t and couldn’t,—I don’t know what, for it is all confused to me. I thought you liked him and he liked you. He said he did, and he bade me tell you that you were the purest and sweetest woman in the world, and the best, or something like that, and I think you ought to marry him, I do,” and Rossie looked reproachfully at poor Bee, who was very pale, and whose voice was sad and low as she said:

“Rossie, I could not marry Everard if I wished to. There is an insuperable barrier, and if he did not explain, I must not. Did he give you any hint as to the cause of his quarrel with his father?”

“No,” Rossie replied, “only that it dated far back, and had something to do with Joe Fleming. I wish Joe was in Guinea; he is always doing harm to Mr. Everard.”

Beatrice could not forbear a smile at this ludicrous mistake of sex, and for a moment was tempted to tell the girl the truth; but remembering that Everard had said Rossie was not to know, she held her peace, and Rossie was left in ignorance of Joe’s real identity.

After leaving the Forrest House Beatrice drove past the judge’s office, with a faint hope that she might see him, and perhaps be of some service to Everard by speaking for him, should the opportunity occur. It was years since the judge, who once stood high in his profession, had done much business, and his office was occupied by Mr. Russell, his legal adviser; but he was frequently there, and as Bee drove down the street she saw him standing outside the door, glancing up and down as if looking for some one. Something in his attitude or manner induced her to rein her ponies up to the curbstone, where she could speak to him.

“Good morning, Judge Forrest,” she said, as naturally as if in her heart she did not think him a monster of cruelty. “Were you waiting for me?”

“No, not exactly,” and a faint smile appeared on the dark face. “I was looking for Parker, but maybe you’ll do as well if you choose to step in and witness my will.”

“Your will!” Bee replied, and all the blood in her body seemed surging into her face as she felt intuitively that a will made just now would be disastrous to Everard. “Have you never made your will before?” she asked, and he replied:

“Never; but it’s high time I did. Yes, high time!” and he shook his head defiantly at something invisible. “Can you go in as well as not?” he continued; and, summoning all her courage for the conflict, Beatrice said to him:

“I am willing to go in, but not to witness any will which is in any way adverse to Everard.”

“Who said it was adverse to him, the dog? Do you know how he has disgraced me? but yes, you do; he said he told you all, and insulted you with an offer, and now he has run away as a crowning feat. If you can forgive him, I can’t;” and the judge trembled from head to foot as he talked of his son to Beatrice, who came bravely to the rescue, and standing nobly for Everard, tried to bring his father to reason, and make him say he would forgive his son and endure the wife because she was his wife.

But she might as well have given her words to the winds, for any effect they had. The judge was past all reason, and only grew more and more angry as he talked of the disgrace which Everard’s marriage had brought upon his name. Finding that what she said was of no avail in the judge’s present mood, Beatrice bade him good morning and drove away, resolving to see him again as soon as his temper had cooled, and try what she could do by way of a reconciliation.

The next morning breakfast was much later than usual at Elm Park, for Beatrice had slept but little, and she was still in bed when her maid brought a message to her from Rosamond to the effect that she must come at once to the Forrest House, as the judge had been smitten suddenly with apoplexy, and was lying in a half unconscious condition, nearly resembling death. Terrified beyond measure, Beatrice dressed herself hurriedly, and was soon on her way to the house, where she found matters even worse than she feared.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

Breakfast at the Forrest House had been late that morning, for the judge, who was usually so prompt, did not make his appearance, and Rosamond waited for him until the clock struck eight. Then, as the minute-hand crept on and he still did not come down, she went to the door of his room and knocked, but there came no answer, though she thought she heard a faint sound like the moan of some one in pain. Knocking still louder, with her ear to the keyhole, she called, “Judge Forrest, are you awake? Do you hear me? Do you know how late it is?”

This time there was an effort to reply, and without waiting for anything further, Rosamond went unhesitatingly into the room. The shutters were closed and the heavy curtains drawn, but even in the darkness Rossie could discern the white, unnatural face upon the pillow, and the eyes which met hers so appealingly as the judge tried in vain to speak, for the blue lips gave forth only an unmeaning sound, which might have meant anything. There was a loud call for help, and in a moment the room was full of the terrified servants, who ran over and against each other in their frantic haste to execute Miss Rossie’s orders, given so rapidly.

“Open the shutters and windows wide and let in the air, and bring some camphor, and hartshorn, and ice-water, quick, and somebody go for the doctor and Miss Belknap as soon as they can, and don’t make such a noise with your crying, it’s only a,—a,—a fit of some kind; he will soon be better,” Rossie said, with a forced calmness, as she bent over the helpless man and rubbed and chafed the hands which, the moment she let go of them, fell with a thud upon the bed-clothes, where they lay helpless, nerveless, dead, as it were, to all action or feeling; and while she rubbed and worked over him and asked him questions he could not answer, his eyes followed her constantly, as if with some wish the dumb lips could not express.

The doctor was soon there, but a glance at his patient convinced him that his services were of no avail, except to make the sufferer a little more comfortable. It was partly apoplexy, partly paralysis, induced by some great excitement or over-work, he said to Rosamond, whom he questioned closely as to the judge’s appearance the previous night. He had come home about four o’clock, Rosamond said, and eaten a very hearty dinner, and drank more wine than usual. She noticed, too, that his face was very red, and that he smoked a long time after dinner before he came into the parlor where she was getting her lessons. He had asked her to play some old-fashioned tunes, which he liked best, he said, because they took him back to the time when he was a boy at home in Carolina. Then he told her of his home and his mother, and talked of his dead wife, and said he hoped Forrest House would one day have a mistress as sweet and good as she was. When at last he said good-night, he kissed her forehead and said, “My child; you are all I have left me now. Heaven bless you!” then he went up stairs, and Rossie knew nothing more till she found him in the morning.

There was no hope; it was merely a matter of a few days at most, the doctor said; and then he asked where Everard was, saying, he ought to be sent for. This was to Beatrice and Rossie both, after the former had arrived and before she had seen the judge. The two girls exchanged glances, and Beatrice was the first to speak.

“Everard left home for Cincinnati early yesterday morning,” she said, “but I know his address, and will telegraph at once.”

“Very well,” the doctor replied, looking curiously at her, for he had heard a flying rumor of something wrong at the Forrest House, which had driven the heir away.

Accordingly, a telegram was sent to the Spencer House, Cincinnati, to the effect that Judge Forrest was dangerously ill, and Everard must come immediately.

“Not here, and has not been here,” was the answer telegraphed back; and then a message went to the Galt House, in Louisville, where Everard always stopped, but that too elicited the answer “Not here.”

Where was he, then,—the outcast son,—when his father lay dying, with that white, scared, troubled look upon his face, and that vain effort to speak and let his wishes be known. Dead his body was already, so far as power to move was concerned, but the mind was apparently unimpaired, and expressed itself in the agonized expression of his face, and the entreating, beseeching, pleading look of the dim eyes which followed Rosamond so constantly and seemed trying to communicate with her.

“There is something he wants,” Rossie said to Beatrice, who shared her vigils, “and if I could only guess what it was;” then, suddenly starting up, she hurried to his side, and taking the poor, palsied hand in hers rubbed and caressed it pityingly, and smoothing his thin hair, said to him, “Judge Forrest, you want something, and I can’t guess what it is, unless,—unless—;” she hesitated a moment, for as yet Everard’s name had not been mentioned in his hearing, and she did not know what the effect might be; but the eyes, fastened so eagerly upon her, seemed challenging her to go on, and at last she said,—“unless it is Mr. Everard. Has it anything to do with him?”

Oh, how hard the lips tried to articulate, but they only quivered convulsively and gave forth a little moaning sound, but in the lighting up of the eager eyes, which grew larger and brighter, Rossie thought she read the answer, and emboldened by it went on to say that they had telegraphed to Cincinnati and Louisville both, and had that morning dispatched a message to Memphis and New Orleans.

“We shall surely find him somewhere,” she continued, “and he will come at once. I do not think he was angry with you when he went away, he spoke so kindly of you.”

Again the lips tried to speak, but could not; only the eyes fastened themselves wistfully upon Rosamond, following her wherever she went, and as if by some subtle magnetism bringing her back to the bedside, where she stayed almost constantly. How those wide-open, never-sleeping eyes haunted and troubled her and made her at last almost afraid to stay alone with them, and meet their constant gaze! Beatrice had been taken sick, and was unable to come to the Forrest House, and the judge seemed so much more quiet when Rossie was sitting where he could look her straight in the face, that the man hired to nurse him staid mostly in the adjoining room, and Rossie kept her vigils alone, wearying herself with the constantly recurring question as to what it was the sick man wished to tell her. Something, sure, and something important, too,—for as the days went on, and there came no tidings of his son, the eyes grew larger, and seemed at times about to leap from their sockets, to escape the horror and remorse so plainly written in them. What was it he wished to say? What was it troubling the old man so, and forcing out the great drops of sweat about his lips and forehead, and making his face a wonder to look upon? Rosamond felt sometimes as if she should go mad herself sitting by him, with those wild eyes watching her so intently that if she moved away for a moment they called her back by their strange power, and compelled her not only to sit down again by them, but to look straight into their depths, where the unspeakable trouble lay struggling to free itself.

“Judge Forrest,” Rossie said to him the fifth day after his attack, “you wish to tell me something and you cannot, but perhaps I can guess by mentioning ever so many things. I’ll try, and if you mean no look straight at me as you are looking now; if you mean yes, turn your eyes to the window, or shut them, as you choose. Do you understand me?”

There was the shadow of a smile on the wan face, and the heavy eyelids closed, in token that he did comprehend. Rossie knew the judge was dying, that at the most only a few days more were his, and ought not some one to tell him? Was it right to let that fierce, turbulent spirit launch out upon the great sea of eternity unwarned?

“Oh, if I was only good, I might help him, perhaps,” she thought; “at any rate he ought to know, and maybe it would make him kinder toward Everard,” for it was of him she meant to speak, through this novel channel of communication between herself and the sick man.

She must have the father’s forgiveness with which to comfort the son, and with death staring him in the face he would not withhold it; so she said to him:

“You are very sick, Judge Forrest; you know that, don’t you?”

The eyes went slowly to the window and back again, while she continued in her plain, outspoken way:

“Do you think I ought to tell you if you are going to die?”

There was a momentary spasm of terror on the face, a look such as a child has when shrinking from the rod, and then the eyes went to the window and back to Rossie, who said:

“We hope for the best, but the case is very bad, and if you do not see Mr. Everard again shall I tell him you forgive him, and were sorry?”

Quick as lightning the affirmative answer agreed upon between them was given, and in great delight Rossie exclaimed, “I am so glad, for that is what you have tried so hard to tell me. You wish me to say this to Mr. Everard, and I will. Is that all?”

This time the eyes did not move, but looked into hers with such an earnest, beseeching expression, that she knew there was more to come. Question after question followed, but the eyes never left her face, and she could see the pupils dilate and the color deepen in them, as they seemed burning themselves into hers.

“What is it? What can it be?” she asked, despairingly. “Does it concern Mr. Everard in any way?”

“Yes,” was the eye answer quickly given, and then Rosamond guessed everything she could think of, the possible and impossible, but the bright eyes kept their steady gaze upon her until, thinking of Joe Fleming, she asked, “Is somebody else concerned in it?”

“Yes,” was the response, and not willing to introduce Joe too soon, Rossie said: “Is it the servants?”

“No.”

“Is it Beatrice?”

“No.”

“Is it I?”

She had no thought it was, and was astonished when the eyes went over to the window in token that it was.

“Is it something that I can do?” she asked, and the eyes seemed to leap from her face to the window.

“And shall I some time know what it is?”

Again the emphatic “yes,” while the sweat ran like rain down his face.

“Then, Judge Forrest,” and Rossie put on her wisest, oldest air, “you may be certain I’ll do it, for I promise you solemnly that if anything comes to light which you left undone, and which I can do, I’ll do it, sure.”

The eyes fairly danced now, and there was no mistaking the joy shining in them, while the lips moved as if in blessing upon the girl, who took the helpless hand and found there was a slight pressure of the limp, lifeless fingers which clung to hers.

“Is that all? have you made me understand?” she asked, and he answered yes, and this time his eyes did not come back to her face, but closed wearily, and in a few moments he was sleeping quietly, as he had not done before since his illness.

The sleep did him good, and he was far less restless after he awoke, and there was a more natural look in his face, but nothing could prolong his life, which hung upon a thread, and might go out at any time. There was no more following Rossie with his eyes, though he wanted her with him constantly, and seemed happier when she was sitting by him and ministering to his comfort. Sometimes he seemed to be in a deep reverie, with his eyes fixed on vacancy, and the great sweat-drops standing thickly on his face from the intensity of his thought. Of what was he thinking as he lay there so helpless? of the wasted years which he could not now reclaim? of sins committed and unforgiven in the days which lay behind him? of the wife who had died in that room and on that very bed? of the son to whom he had been so harsh and unforgiving, and who was not there now to cheer the dreary sick room? And did the unknown future loom up darkly before him and fill his soul with horror and dread of the world so near to him that he could almost see the boundary line which divides it from us?

Once, when Rossie said to him, “Shall I read you something from the Bible?” he answered her with the affirmative sign, and taking her own little Bible, which her mother once used, she opened it at the first chapter of Isaiah, and her eyes chancing to fall upon the 18th verse, she commenced reading in a clear, sweet voice, which seemed to linger over the words, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” There were spasms of pain distorting the pinched features on the pillow, as the judge listened to those blessed words of promise and hope for even the worst of sinners. Scarlet sins and crimson sins all to be forgiven, and what were his but these?

“I do believe he’s concerned in his mind,” Rossie thought, as she looked at him; and bending close to him she whispered, amid her own tears, “Shall I say the Lord’s Prayer now?”

She knew he meant yes, and kneeling by his bedside, with her face on his hands, she said the prayer he could not join in audibly, though she was sure he prayed in his heart; and she wished so much for some one older, and wiser, and better than herself, to see and talk to him.

“Shall I send for the minister or for Mrs. Baker?” she asked, feeling in that hour that there was something in the Nazarite woman, fanatical though she might be, which would answer to the sore need.

But the judge wished neither the clergyman nor Mrs. Baker, then; he would rather that pure young girl should read to and pray with him, and he made her understand it, and every day from that time on until the end came, she sat by him and read, and said the simple prayers of her childhood, and his as well,—prayers which took him back to his boyhood and his mother’s knee, and made him sob sometimes like a little child, as he tried so often to repeat the one word “forgive.” Gradually there came a more peaceful expression upon his face; his eyes lost that look of terror and dread, and the muscles about his mouth ceased to twitch so painfully, but of the change within,—if real change there had been,—he could not speak; that power was gone forever, and he lay, dead in limb as a stone, waiting for the end.

Once Rossie said to him, “Do you feel better, Judge Forrest, about dying. I mean, are you afraid now?”

He looked her steadily in the face and she was sure his quivering lips said no to her last question. That was the day he died, and the day when news was received from Everard. He had returned to Louisville from a journey to Alabama, had found the telegrams, and was hastening home as fast as possible. Beatrice was better, and able to be again at the Forrest House, but it was Rossie who took to the dying man the message from his son. He was lying perfectly quiet, every limb and muscle composed, and a look of calm restfulness on his face, which lighted suddenly when Rossie said to him, “We have heard from Mr. Everard; he is on his way home; he will be here to-night. You are very glad,” she continued, as she saw the unmistakable joy in his face. “Maybe you will be able to make him understand what it was you wished to have done, but if you cannot and I ever find it out, depend upon it I will do it, sure. You can trust me.”

She looked like one to be trusted, the brave, unselfish little girl, on whom the dying eyes were fixed, so that Rossie’s was the last face they ever saw before they closed forever on the things of this world, and entered upon the realities of the next. Everard was not there, for the train was behind time, and when at last the Forrest House carriage came rapidly up the avenue, bringing the son who ten days ago had been cast out from his home and bidden never to enter it again, there were knots of crape upon the bell-knobs, and in the chamber above a sheeted figure lay, scarcely more quiet and still than when bound in the relentless bands of paralysis, but with death upon the white face, which in its last sleep looked so calm and peaceful.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE JUDGE’S WILL.

It was Rosamond who met Everard as he came into the house, and taking his hands in hers, held them in token of sympathy, but said no word by way of condolence, or of the dead father either. She merely asked him of his journey and the delay of the train, and if he was not cold and hungry, and saw that his supper was served him by a bright, cheerful fire, and made him in all respects as comfortable as she could, while the servants vied with each other in their attentions to him, for was he not now their master, the rightful heir of all the Forrest property. Whether Everard experienced any sense of freedom and heirship, or not, I cannot tell, or what he felt when at last he stood by his dead father, and looked upon the face which, when he saw it last, had been distorted with passion and hatred of himself. How placid and even sweet it was in its expression now,—so sweet that Everard stooped down, kissing the cold forehead, and whispered softly: “I am so sorry, father, that I ever made you angry with me;” then, he replaced the covering and went out from the silent room. In the hall he met Rossie, who, seeing the trace of weeping on his face, thought to comfort him by repeating the message left him by his father.

“Would you mind my telling you all about his sickness; can you bear to hear it?” she asked, and he replied:

“Yes, tell me about it,—from the very first.”

So they sat down together, and in her quaint, straightforward way Rossie told the story of the last ten days, softening as much as possible the judge’s anger when he found his son had taken him at his word and gone, and dwelling the most upon the change which came over him while lying so helpless and weak. She told of the method of communication she managed to establish, and which had been suggested to her by reading Monte Cristo, and then continued:

“He seemed so glad when I told him we had sent for you, and so sorry that we could not find you, and his eyes kept following me all the time as if there was something he wanted to say and couldn’t, and at last I found out what it was. If he never saw you again, he wished me to tell you that he forgave you everything; that was it, I know, and he was so happy and quiet after it, though he wanted you to come so much.”

Here Rossie paused, and thought of that mysterious thing which had seemed to trouble him the most, and which she was pledged to do when she found out what it was.

“I wonder if I ought to tell him that now,” she thought, and finally concluded that she would not until something definite came to her knowledge of which she could speak.

The next morning Beatrice came over, with a great pity in her heart for Everard, and a great fear as well, when she remembered the angry man who had asked her to witness his will. Had he carried out his purpose and left behind him a paper which would work mischief to his son, or had he thought better of it, and destroyed it, perhaps, or left it unwitnessed? She could not guess. She could only hope for the best, so far as the will was concerned; but there was a heavier trouble in store for the young man than loss of property,—the acknowledging his marriage and bringing home his wife, for he would do that now, of course. There was no other way, and Beatrice resolved at once to stand bravely by Mrs. J. E. Forrest when she should arrive.

Then came the funeral,—a grand affair, with a score of carriages, a multitude of friends, and crowds of people, who came to go over the house and through the grounds more than for any respect they had for the man who lay in his costly coffin, unmindful of the curious ones who looked at him and speculated upon the nature of the trouble which had driven his only son from home. Everybody knew there had been trouble, and each one put his or her construction on it, and all exonerated Everard from more blame than naturally would attach to the acts of a young man like him, as opposed to the ideas of a man like his father.

Beatrice went with Everard and Rossie to the grave, and then back to the house, which in their absence had been cleansed from the atmosphere of death. The windows and doors had been opened to admit the fresh, pure air blowing up from the river; then they were closed again and wood fires kindled on the hearth, and the table arranged in the dining-room, and one of Aunt Axie’s best dinners was waiting for such of the friends as chose to stay.

Between Beatrice and Lawyer Russell there had been a private talk concerning the will which so much troubled Bee, and the lawyer had inclined to the belief that there was none of recent date, or he should have known it. He would look, however, he said, as he had a key to the judge’s private desk in the office. He had looked, and to his surprise had found a will, which must have been made the very day before the judge’s sickness, and during his own absence from the office. This he communicated to Beatrice, and with her remained at the Forrest House to dinner for the purpose of making the fact known to Everard as soon as possible. As for Everard, he had not thought of a will, or indeed of anything, except in a confused, general kind of way, that he was, of course, his father’s natural heir, and that now Josephine must come there as his wife, and from that he shrank with a feeling amounting to actual pain; and he was not a little surprised when, after dinner was over, and they had returned to the long parlor, Lawyer Russell, as the old and particular friend of the family, said to him, “I found in looking over your father’s papers a will, and as it was inclosed in an envelope directed to me, I took charge of it, and have it with me now. Shall I read it aloud, or give it to you?”

“A will!” Everard said, and a deep flush spread itself over his face as if he dimly felt the coming blow which was to strike him with such force. “Did father leave a will? I never supposed he made one. Read it aloud, of course. These are all my friends,” and he glanced at the clergyman and his wife, and Beatrice and Rossie, the only people present.

The two girls were sitting side by side on a low sofa, and opposite them was Everard, looking very pale and nervous as he bent forward a little to listen to the will. It was made the day before the judge’s illness, and was duly drawn up and witnessed by Parker and Merritt, the two students in the office, and after mentioning a few thousands which were to be given to different individuals and charities, the judge went on: “the remainder of my estate, both real and personal, I give, bequeath, and devise to the girl, Rosamond Hastings, and——”

Lawyer Russell got no further, for there was a low cry from Rossie as she sprang to her feet, and crossed swiftly to Everard’s side. He, too, had risen, and with clasped hands was gazing fixedly at the lawyer, like one listening to his death-warrant.

“What did he say, Mr. Everard, about me? What does it mean?” Rossie asked, laying both hands on Everard’s arm, and drawing his attention to herself.

“It means that my father disinherited me, and made you his heir,” Everard answered her, a little bitterly, while she continued:

“It is not so. It does not read that way. There is some mistake;” and before the lawyer was aware of her intention she snatched the paper from him, and ran her eye with lightning rapidity over what was written on it, comprehending as she read that what she had heard was true.

Everard was disinherited, and she was the heiress of all the Forrest estate. Her first impulse was to tear the paper in pieces, but Everard caught her hands as she was in the act of rending it asunder, and said:

“Rossie, you must not do that. The will will stand just as my father meant it should.”

Rossie’s face was a study as she lifted it toward Everard, pale as death, with a firm, set look about the mouth, and an expression in her large black eyes such as the Cenci’s might have worn when upon the rack.

“Oh, Mr. Everard,” she said, “you must always hate me, though I’ll never let it stand. I did not know it. I never dreamed of such a thing. I shall never touch it, never. Don’t hate me, Mr. Everard. Oh, Beatrice, help me,—somebody help me. I believe I am going to die.”

But she was only fainting, and Everard took her in his arms and carried her to an open window in the adjoining room, and giving her to the care of Beatrice, waited to see the color come back to her face and motion to her eyelids; then he returned to the parlor, where Lawyer Russell was examining the document which had done so much harm and made the memory of the dead man odious.

“Everard, this is a very strange affair; a most inexplicable thing,” the lawyer said. “I cannot understand it, or believe he really meant it. I do not wish to pry into your affairs, but as an old friend of the family, may I ask if you know of any reason, however slight, why he should do this?”

“Yes,” Everard answered promptly, “there is a reason; a good one, many would say; and that I was rightly punished. The will is just; I have no fault to find with it. I shall not try to dispute it. The will must stand.”

He spoke proudly and decidedly, with the air of one whose mind was made up, and who did not wish to continue the conversation, and who would not be made an object of pity or sympathy by any one. But when Lawyer Russell was gone, and Beatrice came to him as he sat alone by the dying fire, and putting her hand on his bowed head, said to him:

“I am so sorry, and wish I could help you some way,” he broke down a little, and his voice shook as he replied:

“Thank you, Bee. I know you do, and your friendship and sympathy are very dear to me now, for you know everything, and I can talk to you as to no one else. Father must have been very angry, and his anger reaches up out of his grave and holds me with a savage grip, but I do not blame him much, and, Bee, don’t think there is no sweet with the bitter, for that is not so. It is true I like money as well as any one, and I do not say that I had not to some degree anticipated what it would bring me, but, Bee, with that feeling was another, a shrinking from what would be my plain duty, if I were master here. You know what I mean.”

“You would bring your wife home,” Bee answered, and he continued:

“Yes, that would have to be done, and,—Heaven forgive me if I am wrong,—but I almost believe I would rather be poor and work for her,—she living in Holburton,—than be rich and live with her here. And then, if I must be supplanted, I am so glad it is by Rossie. She takes it hard, poor child; how was she when you left her?”

“Over the faint, but crying bitterly, and she bade me tell you to come to her,” Beatrice replied, and Everard went to Rossie’s room, where she was lying on the couch, her eyes swollen with weeping, and her face very pale.

She was taking it hard,—her sudden accession to riches, and when she saw Everard she began sobbing afresh as if her heart would break.

“Please go away,” she said to Beatrice, “I want to see him alone.”

Beatrice complied, and the moment she was gone Rosamond began to tell Everard how impossible it was that she should ever touch the money left her in a fit of anger.

“It is not mine,” she said. “I have no shadow of right to it, and you must take it just the same as if that will had never been. Say you will, or I believe I shall go mad.”

But Everard was as immovable as a rock, and answered her:

“Do you for a moment think my pride, if nothing else, would allow me to touch what was willed away from me? Never, Rossie. I would rather starve; but I shall not do that. I am young and strong, and the world is before me, and I am willing to work at whatever I find to do, and shall do so, too, and make far more of a man, I dare say, than if I had all this money. I am naturally indolent and extravagant, and very likely should fall into my old expensive habits, and I don’t want to do that. I am so glad you are the heiress; so glad to have you mistress here in the old home. You will make a dear little lady of Forrest House.”

He spoke almost playfully, hoping thus to soothe and quiet her, for she was violently agitated, and shook like a leaf; but nothing he said had any effect upon her. Only one thing could help her now. She felt that she had unwittingly been the means of wronging Everard, and she never could rest until the wrong was righted, and his own given back to him.

“I’ll never be the lady of Forrest House,” she said, energetically. “I shall give it back to you, whether you will take it or not. It is not mine.”

“Yes, Rossie, it is yours. He knew what he was doing; he meant you to have it,” Everard said; and starting suddenly, as the remembrance of something flashed upon her, Rossie shed back her hair from her spotted, tear-stained face, and exclaimed, with a ring of joy in her voice:

“He might have meant it at first, when he was very angry, but he repented of it and tried to make amends. I see it now. I know what he meant,—the something which concerned you, and which I was to do. I promised solemnly I would,—it will be a dreadful lie if I don’t; but you will let me when you hear,—when you know how he took it back.”

She was very much excited, and her eyes shone like stars as she stood before Everard, who looked at her curiously, with a thought that her mind might really be unsettled.

“Sit down, Rossie, and compose yourself,” he said, trying to draw her back to the couch; but she would not sit down, and she went on rapidly:

“I told you how I managed to talk with your father, and to find out that he wanted to forgive you, but I did not tell you the rest. I thought I’d wait till it came to me what I was to do, and it has come. I know now just what he meant. He was not quiet after the forgiveness, as I thought he’d be, but his eyes followed me everywhere, and said as plain as eyes could say, ‘There is something more;’ so I began to question him again, and found it was about you and another person. That person was myself, and I was to do something when I found out what it was. I said, ‘Is it something I am to do for Mr. Everard?’ and his eyes went to the window; then I asked, ‘Shall I some day know what it is?’ and he answered ‘Yes.’ Then I said, ‘I’ll surely, surely do it,’ and the poor, helpless face laughed up at me, he was so pleased and happy. After that he was very quiet. So you know he meant me to give the money back, and you will not refuse me now?”

For a moment Everard could not speak. As Rossie talked, the great tears had gathered slowly and dropped upon his face. He could see so vividly the scene which she described,—the dim, eager eyes of his dead father trying to communicate with the anxious, excited little girl, who had, perhaps, interpreted their meaning aright. There could be but little doubt that his father, when his passion cooled down, was sorry for the rash act, and Everard was deeply moved by it, and for a little space of time felt uncertain how to act, but when he remembered who must share his fortune with him, and all his father had said of her, he grew hard and decided again, and said to Rosamond:

“I am glad you told me this, Rossie. It makes it easier to bear, feeling that possibly father was sorry, and wished to make reparation, but that does not change the facts, nor the will. He gave everything to you, and you cannot give it to me now, if you would. You are not of age, you see.”

“Do you mean,” Rosamond asked, “that even if you would take the money, I cannot give it back till I am twenty-one?”

“Not lawfully, no,” Everard replied; and Rossie exclaimed, almost angrily:

“I can; I will. I know there is some way, and I’ll find it out. I will not have it so, and I think you are mean to be so proud and stiff.”

She was losing all patience with Everard for what she deemed his obduracy; her head was aching dreadfully, and after this outburst she sank down again upon the couch, and burying her face in the pillow told him to go away and not come again till he could do as she wished him to do. It was not often that Rosamond was thus moved, and Everard smiled in spite of himself at her wrath, but went out and left her alone as she desired.

CHAPTER XX.
THE HEIRESS.

She looked like anything but an heiress the next morning when she came down to breakfast, with her swollen face and red eyes, which had scarcely been for a moment closed in sleep. Everard was far brighter and fresher. He had accepted the situation, and was resolved to make the best of it, and though the memory of his father’s bitter anger rested heavily on his heart, it was softened materially by what Rosamond had told him, and, contrary to his expectations, he had slept soundly and quietly, and though very pale and worn, seemed much like himself when he met Rossie in the breakfast-room. Not a word was said on the subject uppermost in both their minds; he carved, sitting in his father’s old place, and she poured the coffee with a shaking hand, and Bee did most of the talking, and was so bright and merry that when at last she said good-by and went to her own home, Rossie’s face was not half so sorry-looking, or her heart so heavy and sad, though she was just as decided with regard to the money.

She had not yet talked with Lawyer Russell, in whom she had the utmost confidence. He surely would know some way out of the trouble,—some way by which she could give Everard his own; and she sent for him to come to the house, as she would not for the world appear in the streets with this disgrace upon her,—for Rossie felt it a disgrace,—of having supplanted Everard; and she told the lawyer so when he came, and assuring him of her unalterable determination never to touch a dollar of the Forrest money, asked if there was not some way by which she could rid herself of the burden and give it back to Everard. She told him what had occurred between herself and the judge, and asked if he did not think it had reference to the will. The lawyer was certain it had, and asked if Everard knew this fact. Yes, Rossie had told him, and though he seemed glad in one way to know his father had any regrets for the rash act, he still adhered to his resolve to abide by the will.

“But he cannot; he shall not; he must take the money. I give it to him; it is not mine, and I will not have it,” she said, impetuously, demanding that he should fix it some way.

Mr. Russell had seen Everard for a few moments that morning, and heard from him of his firm resolve not to enter into any arrangement whereby he could be benefited by his father’s fortune.

“Father cast me off,” he said, “and no arguments can shake my purpose. Rossie is the heiress, and she must take what is thrust upon her; but make it as easy as you can for the child; let her choose her own guardian, and I trust she will choose you. I know you will be trustworthy.”

All this the lawyer repeated to Rossie, and then, as she still persisted in giving back, as she expressed it, he explained to her how impossible it was for her to do it until she reached her majority, even if Everard would take it.

“You are a minor yet,” he said; “are what we call an infant. You must have a guardian, and I propose that you take Everard, and he may also be appointed administrator of the estate; he will then be entitled to a certain amount of money as his legitimate fees, and so get some of it.”

Exactly what the office of guardian and administrator was, Rosamond did not know, but she grasped one idea, and said:

“You mean that whoever is administrator will be paid, and if Mr. Everard is that he will get some money which belongs to him already; that is it, is it not? Now, I want him to have it all; if I cannot give it to him till I am twenty-one, I shall do it then, so sure as I live to see that day, and, meanwhile, you must contrive some way for him to use it just the same. You can, I know. I am quite resolved.”

She had risen as she talked and stood before him, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unnaturally bright, and her head thrown back, so that she seemed taller than she really was. Lawyer Russell had always liked Rossie very much, and since that little business matter touching the receipt, he had felt increased respect and admiration for her, for he was certain she had helped Everard out of some one of the many scrapes he used in those days to be in. Looking at her now he thought what a fine-looking girl she was growing to be, and started suddenly as he saw a way out of the difficulty, but such a way that he hesitated a moment before suggesting it. Taking off his glasses, and wiping them with his handkerchief, he coughed two or three times and then said:

“How old are you, Rossie?”

“Fifteen last June,” was her reply, and he continued:

“Then you are almost fifteen and a half, and pretty well grown. Yes, it might do; there have been queerer things than that.”

“Queerer things than what?” Rossie asked, and he replied:

“Than what I am going to suggest. There is a way by which Everard can use that money if he will.”

“What is it? Tell me,” she exclaimed, her face all aglow with excitement.

“He could marry you, and then what was yours might be his.”

The lawyer had thrown the bombshell and waited for the explosion, but there was none. Rossie’s face was just as bright and eager, and showed not the slightest consciousness or shrinking back from a proposition which would have covered some girls with blushes and confusion. But Rossie was a simple-hearted girl, who, never having associated much with companions of her own age, had never had her mind filled with lovers and matrimony, and when the lawyer proposed her marrying Everard she looked upon it purely as a business transaction,—a means of giving him his own; love had nothing to do with it, nor did it for a moment occur to her that there would be anything out of the way in such an act. She should not live with him, of course; that would be impossible. She should simply marry him, and then leave him to the enjoyment of her fortune, and her first question to the lawyer was:

“Do you think he would have me?”

The old man took his glasses off again and looked at her, wondering much what stuff she was made of. Whatever it was he was sure she was as modest, and pure, and innocent as a new-born child, and he answered her:

“I’ve no doubt of it. I would if I were in his place.”

“And if he does, he can live right along here as if there had been no will?” was her next question; and the lawyer replied:

“Yes, just as if there had been no will;” then, remembering he had an engagement with a client and that it was already past the hour, he arose to go, and Rosamond was left alone.

It was not her nature to put off anything she had to do, and feeling that she should never rest until something definite was settled, she inquired at once where Everard was, and finding that he was in his father’s room, started thither immediately. He was sitting in his father’s chair by the table, arranging and sorting some papers and letters, but he arose when she came in and asked what he could do for her.

“I have been talking with Lawyer Russell,” she said, “trying to fix it some way, and he says I cannot give it to you till I am twenty-one; then I can do as I please, but it is so long to wait,—five years and a-half. I am most fifteen and a-half now. (This in parenthesis, as if to convince him of her mature age, preparatory to what was to follow.) I want you to have the money so much, for it is yours, no matter what the law may say. I do not like the law, and there is but one way out of it,—the trouble, I mean. Lawyer Russell says if you marry me, you can use the money just the same. Will you, Mr. Everard? I am fifteen and a-half.”

This she reiterated to strengthen her cause, looking him straight in the face all the time, without the slightest change of color or sign of self-consciousness.

Had she proposed in serious earnestness to murder him Everard could not have been more startled, or stared at her more fixedly than he did, as if to see what manner of girl this was, asking him to marry her as coolly and in as matter-of-fact a way as she would have asked the most ordinary favor. Was she crazy? Had the trouble about the will actually affected her brain! He thought so, and said to her very gently, as he would have spoken to a child or a lunatic:

“You are talking wildly, Rossie. You do not understand what you are saying. You are tired and excited. You must rest, and never on any account let any one know what you have said to me.”

“I do know what I am saying, and I am neither tired nor excited,” Rossie answered. “Lawyer Russell said that was the only way you could use the money before I was twenty-one.”

“And did he send you here to say that to me?” Everard asked, and she replied:

“No, he only suggested it as a means, because I would have him think of something. I came myself.”

He saw she was in earnest; saw, too, that she did not at all comprehend what she was doing, or the position in which she was placing herself if it should be known. In her utter simplicity and lack of worldly wisdom, she might talk of this thing to others and put herself in a wrong light before the world, and however painful the task, he must enlighten her.

“Rossie,” he began, “you do not at all know what you have done, or how the act might be construed, by women, especially, if they knew it. Girls do not usually ask men to marry them; they wait to be asked.”

Slowly, as the shadow of some gigantic mountain creeps across the valley, there was dawning on Rossie’s mind a perception of the construction which might be put upon her words, and the blood-red flame suffused her face and neck, and spread to her finger-tips, as she said, vehemently: “You mistake me, Mr. Everard, I did not mean it as you might marry Miss Beatrice, or somebody you loved. I did not mean anything except a way out. I was not going to live here at all; only marry you so you could have the money, and then I go away and do for myself. That’s what I meant. You know I do not love you in a marrying way, and that I’m not the brazen-faced thing to tell you so if I did. If I thought you could believe that of me, I should drop dead at your feet, and I almost wish that I could now, for very shame of what I have done.”

As she talked there had come to Rossie more and more the great impropriety and seeming immodesty of what, in all innocence of purpose she had done, and the knowledge almost crushed her to the earth, making her cover her burning face with her hands, and transforming her at once from a child into a woman, with all a sensitive woman’s power to feel and suffer. She did not wait for him to speak, but went on rapidly:

“You cannot despise me more than I despise myself, for I see it now just as you do, and I must have been an idiot, or crazy. You will loathe me always, of course, and I cannot blame you; but remember. I did not mean it for love, or think to stay with you. I do not love you that way; such a thing would be impossible, and I would not marry you now for a thousand times the money.”

She had used her last and heaviest weapon, and without a glance at him turned to go from the room, but he would not suffer her to leave him thus. Over him, too, as she talked, a curious change had come, for he saw the transformation taking place and knew he was losing the sweet, old-fashioned, guileless-child, who had been so dear to him. She was leaving him, forever, and in her place there stood a full-fledged woman, rife with a woman’s instincts, quivering with passion, and burning with resentment and anger, that he had not at once understood her meaning just as she understood it. How her words,—“I do not love you that way; such a thing is impossible; and I would not marry you now for a thousand times the money,” rang through his ears, and burned themselves into his memory to be recalled afterward, with such bitter pain as he had never known. He did not quite like this impetuous assertion of the impossibility of loving him. It grated upon him with a sense of something lost. He must stand well with Rossie, though her love that way, as she expressed it, was something he had never dreamed of as possible.

“Rossie,” be said, putting out his arm to detain her, “you must not go from me feeling as you do now. You have done nothing for which you need to blush, because you had no bad intent, and the motive is what exalts or condemns the act. Sit here by me. I wish to talk with you.”

He made her sit down beside him upon the sofa, and tried to take her hand, but she drew it swiftly away, with a quick, imperative gesture. He would never hold her hand again, just as he had held the little brown, sunburned hands so many times. She was a woman now, with all her woman’s armor bristling about her, and as such he must treat with her. It was a novel situation in which he found himself, trying to choose words with which to address little Rossie Hastings, and for a moment he hesitated how to begin. Of her strange offer to himself he did not mean to speak, for there had been enough said on that subject. It is true he had neither accepted nor refused, but that was not necessary, for she had withdrawn her proposition with such fiery energy as would have made an allusion to it impossible, if he had been free and not averse to the plan. He was not free, and as for the plan, it struck him as both laughable and ridiculous, but he would not for the world wound the sensitive girl beside him more than she had wounded herself, and so when at last he began to talk with her it was simply to go again over the whole ground, and show her how impossible it was for him to take the money or for her to give it to him. He appreciated her kind intentions; they were just like her, and he held her as the dearest sister a brother ever had; but she must keep what was her own, and he should make his fortune as many a man had done before him, and probably rise higher eventually than if he had money to help him rise. He had not yet quite decided what he should do, but that he should leave Rothsay was probable. He should, however, stay long enough to see that her affairs were in a way to be smoothly managed, and to see her fairly installed in the Forrest House with some respectable elderly lady as her companion and protector. Lawyer Russell would, of course, be her guardian, and the administrator of the estate. She could not be in better hands; and however far away he might be, he should never lose his interest in her or cease to be her friend.

“Meanwhile,” he said, with an effort to smile, “I shall be glad if you will allow me to make your house my home until my arrangements are completed. I am not so proud that I will not accept that hospitality at your hands.”

I do not think that Rosamond quite comprehended his last words. She only knew that he would not hurry away from the Forrest House, and she looked up eagerly, and said:

“I am so glad, and I hope you will not hate me, or ever believe I meant the foolish thing I said,—in that way.”

“No, Rossie,” he answered her, “I am far from hating you, and how can I think you meant that way when you have repeatedly declared that you would not marry me now for a thousand times the money?”

“No, now nor ever!” Rosamond exclaimed, energetically; and he replied:

“Yes, I know; men generally understand when a girl tells them she has no love or liking for them.”

There was something peculiar in his voice, as if what she said hurt him a little, and Rossie detected it, and in her eagerness to set him right involuntarily laid her hand on his arm, and flashing upon him her brilliant, beautiful eyes, in which the tears were shining, said to him:

“Oh, Mr. Everard, you must not mistake what I mean. I do like you, and shall for ever and ever; but not in a marrying way, and I am so sorry I have come between you and your inheritance. You have made me see that I cannot now help myself, but when I am twenty-one, if I live so long, so help me Heaven, I’ll give you back every dollar. You will remember that, and knowing it may help you to bear the years of poverty which must intervene.”

Again the long, silken lashes were lifted, and the dark, bright eyes looked into his with a look which sent a strange, sweet thrill through every nerve of the young man’s body. Rosamond had come up before him in an entirely new character, and he was vaguely conscious of a different interest in her now from what he had felt before. It was not love; it was not a desire of possession. He did not know what it was; he only knew that his future life suddenly looked drearier than ever to him if it must be lived away from her and her influence. She had risen to her feet as she was speaking, and he rose also, and went with her to the door, and let her out, and watched her as she disappeared down the stairs, and then went back to his task of sorting papers, with the germ of a new feeling stirring ever so lightly in his heart,—a sense of something which might have made life very sweet, and a sense as well of bitter loss.

Full of shame and mortification at what she had done, Rossie resolved to go at once to Elm Park and confess the whole to Beatrice, whom she found at home. She was thinking of the Forrest House and the confusion caused by the foolish will of an angry old man, when Rossie was announced, and, sitting down at her feet, plunged into the very midst of her trouble by saying:

“Oh, Miss Beatrice, I have come to tell you something which makes me wish I was dead. What do you suppose I have done?”

“I am sure I cannot guess,” Beatrice replied, and Rossie continued, “I asked Mr. Everard to marry me,—actually to marry me!”

“Wha-at!” and Beatrice was more astonished than she had ever been in her life. “Asked Everard Forrest to marry you! Are you crazy, or a——”

She did not finish the sentence, for Rossie did it for her, and said,

“Yes, both crazy and a fool, I verily believe!”

“But how did it happen? What put such an idea into your head?”

Briefly and rapidly Rosamond repeated what had passed between herself and Lawyer Russell, who had asked how old she was, and on learning her age had suggested her marrying the young man and thus giving him back the inheritance.

“And you went and did it, you little goose,” Beatrice said, laughing until the tears ran down her cheeks; but when she saw how distressed Rosamond was she controlled her merriment, and listened while Rossie went on:

“Yes, I was a simpleton not to know any better, but I never meant him to marry me as he would marry you or some one he loved; that had nothing to do with it at all. And I was going right away from Forrest House to take care of myself. I knew I could find something to do, as nurse, or waitress, or ladies’ maid, if nothing more; and I meant to go just as soon as the ceremony was over and leave him all the money, and never, never come back to be in the way.”

“And you told him this, and what did he say?” Beatrice asked, her mirth all swept away before the great unselfishness of this simple-hearted girl, who went on: