The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Carcellini Emerald with Other Tales, by Mrs. Burton Harrison

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The
Carcellini Emerald
With Other Tales

“MAID? NEVER HAD SUCH A THING IN MY LIFE,” LAUGHED
CECILY; “AND WHAT WOULD HA’ BEEN THE USE, WHEN MR.
LENVALE WOULD INSIST ON ESCORTING ME.”

The

Carcellini Emerald

With Other Tales

BY

MRS. BURTON HARRISON

HERBERT S. STONE AND COMPANY
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
MDCCCXCIX

COPYRIGHT 1899 BY
HERBERT S. STONE & CO.

THE PUBLISHERS ACKNOWLEDGE THE COURTESY OF
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY (THE SATURDAY
EVENING POST), MAST, CROWELL AND KIRKPATRICK
(THE WOMAN’S HOME COMPANION), AND HARPER AND
BROTHERS, IN ALLOWING THE USE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE CARCELLINI EMERALD

THE CARCELLINI EMERALD

I

How did Ashton Carmichael come by his aristocratic and decidedly individual place as a dictator in New York’s smart society? Nobody knew; nobody really cared. In his set it was sufficient for one sheep to jump, and all the rest would follow. He was as much a power as was Beau Brummell over modish London in the days of the Regency. Asked everywhere, deferred to with bated breath by new aspirants, he was seen only at the houses of authenticated fashion. In the clubs to which he belonged—and the list of them was long, following his name in the Social Register—some men affected to pooh-pooh his right to membership; but rarely was there a member of a committee on admissions found to vote against him on the score of fitness. Good-looking, gentlemanlike, amusing when it suited him to be so, sarcastic—and, on occasion, offensively snobbish—his uncertainties of mood lent zest to pursuit by his admirers. He had no known income beyond that derived from a nebulous business in real estate in which he was alleged to hold a partnership. His place of residence was in a couple of cheapish rooms in an out-of-the-way neighborhood. But all the good things of life seemed to fall easily to his share; and winter and summer, on land, at sea, he was heard of, in ripe enjoyment of luxuries earned or inherited by other people.

As a matter of fact, while the general public languished in ignorance of Carmichael’s antecedents, there were two or three individuals in New York who could have told his story from A to Z, but preferred for various reasons to keep their mouths shut. One of these was Tom Oliver, Carmichael’s chum at college and his sponsor in the initiatory steps of worldly progress. Another was Tom’s sister Eunice, now pretty Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who, in days of lang syne, had been engaged to her brother’s handsome friend.

The third was a brave, hard-working young woman journalist on the staff of a great city newspaper; a girl who never troubled Carmichael with her presence, although she bore his name, and had given all her little patrimony to help her only brother through the university and provide him a start in life.

It was at the beginning of senior year, when Tom Oliver came back to college to surprise his friends by the announcement of his rich father’s insolvency. Up to that time Tom had been regarded as a prince of generosity and good-fellowship. His liberal allowance was lavished upon college subscriptions and other fellows’ debts as soon as it came into his hands. Before the end of the month he was as impecunious as the rest of them. The blow of his sudden change of prospects did not, therefore, afflict him as much as might have been expected. As for the democratic, happy-go-lucky band who for three years had made him their hero, it seemed, if anything, to bring him nearer to their level. As a rule, the chaps of their brotherhood were the sons of toilers, accustomed to scant means and modest ways of life, who looked forward to opening the world’s oyster with their own swords, or nobody’s. The man who appeared most to feel the hero’s altered circumstances was his room-mate, known as Ash Carmichael, a fellow the crowd had taken in among them through a not unnatural delusion that his being so intimate with Tom made him of Tom’s sort. Oliver and he had drifted together in freshman year, and Ash was indebted to Tom for a long list of solid benefits bestowed with the same recklessness of consequences and loyalty of affection that had marked every kind action of the young man’s life.

On all occasions when it was possible Tom had taken Ashton home to New York with him for the holidays and flying visits. The latter had spent two months of the summer preceding senior year at the Olivers’ house at Newport, where he had made acquaintance with some of the people who were afterward to be his sponsors in fashionable life. The stress he laid upon these individuals, their homes and habits, had elicited from his chum a great deal of good-natured fun at Carmichael’s expense. But as that was the only thing he ever enjoyed at the expense of that individual, Tom was entitled to make the most of it.

For Tom himself the smart people who forever dined and drove and yachted and gave incessant dinners had no attraction. Mrs. Oliver, a devotee of the gay world, and Charlotte, her older daughter, who followed in the mother’s footsteps, had ceased chiding their recreant brother, and were rather inclined to hustle him out of the observation of their all-important circle. Eunice, the younger girl, who adored Tom, used often to fall behind in the fashionable procession for the pleasure of sharing her brother’s pastimes. In athletics Tom had trained her well, and here Ash Carmichael had first elicited her girlish admiration, for he was an adept in all sports requiring grace and activity.

But then even Mrs. Oliver told her son that his chum was the only “possible” college-mate he had ever brought under the patrimonial roof-tree!

When the crash of Tom’s prospects came as to finances Carmichael was disagreeably taken by surprise. The manifestation to his friend of the exact condition of his feelings on this subject was, on the whole, more trying to Tom than the original blow.

The first public move in the disintegration of their friendship was Tom’s withdrawal from the expensive rooms they had occupied together since freshman year into much cheaper lodgings.

Ash promptly installed in his place a wealthy and inane classmate whom the “crowd” had antecedently styled “Miss Willie.” There was a groan of derision among the fellows for this substitute for Tom; and at an impromptu meeting of leading spirits in Tom’s new rooms, in an old and shabby quarter, it was voted to give Carmichael henceforth what they called the “icy nod.”

After the Christmas holidays, which Ash spent with “Miss Willie’s” family, something occurred to bring upon Tom’s former chum a ban more serious than what had preceded it. The offense, the discovery of it, the discussion, and the verdict were known to only a few of Tom Oliver’s most devoted henchmen. Outsiders, aware of some dark mystery in process of solution, talked of it—speculated curiously—but got no farther. That Carmichael had done something awfully shady was generally believed. What that something was nobody could find out. But during the whole time of the agitation Tom went about black as a thunder-cloud and silent as the grave.

If the Faculty knew anything of these proceedings it was based upon vague rumor only, or came by intuition. They had nothing to take hold of, on which to condemn Carmichael. It was generally believed, among them and the undergraduates, that a few men under Oliver’s leadership had rectified whatever wrong was done; had saved Carmichael from disgrace and exposure; and had then agreed to hush the matter up.

Before graduating, Carmichael took a prize for an uncommonly clever essay, which he delivered with ease and distinction before an audience of whom the strangers applauded him to the echo. When he took his degree, and the class was about to scatter, he was so much alone that nobody thought of asking what he meant to do in the future. When next heard from by his late associates Mr. Carmichael had set out on a journey to Europe to end in the circuit of the globe, as the companion of “Miss Willie,” whose family defrayed all expenses.

About this time Tom Oliver, in a suit of greasy overalls, was beginning his labors in the repair-shops of a great railway in a little Pennsylvania town, to obtain intimate personal knowledge of all parts of the mighty motor that was henceforward to control his destiny. For, at the advice of a friend of his father, he had determined to work up from the bottom of the railroad business to as near the top as ambition and energy might ultimately carry him. Tom had need of all his pluck during the summer of this first apprenticeship to toil. His father, overworried and outworn, was stricken with apoplexy in New York, and suddenly passed away. Simply because he could not tell what better to do for them, Tom transferred his mother and sisters to live in a cottage in the suburbs of the town where he was employed.

Oh, the tragedy of life when small souls meet larger ones in everyday friction! Mrs. Oliver and Charlotte, banded against Tom and Eunice, made those summer days in the hot little house twice their ordinary length. And Tom saw, in spite of her persistent effort to make the best of things, that little Eunice was carrying a burden more heavy for her shoulders than the loss of a great house, a troop of friends, servants, and finery. Nor was it her mourning for the father she had loved tenderly that oppressed her. Of him she and Tom talked together frequently, and with honest feeling. But there was something else—something she hugged to her heart in silence, that grew worse as the summer waned.

Just when matters were at their worst with the little household—when petty domestic trials beat like billows over poor Tom’s head—when Eunice began to look like an image of hope deferred—a visitor arrived. Tom heartily welcomed Arden Farnsworth, a man much older than himself, who in years past had been often at their home. A dim idea that Farnsworth had come after Chatty penetrated the brother’s head. It occurred to him that among his mother’s abundant lamentations for lost joys she had mentioned the fact that last winter she had been almost sure Farnsworth would propose for Chatty, but that he had gone abroad and made no sign. And Farnsworth, as everybody knew, would be a husband in a hundred—well born, well placed, of such character, means, and position as would anchor the whole Oliver family away from the quick-sands of their present uncertainties.

Then it came out it was Eunice, not Charlotte, whom Farnsworth wanted for a wife—whom he had loved for a year past, and left because he feared she would laugh at the disparity between their ages—nineteen and thirty-five—whom he had now come back to America resolved to secure, if earnest pleading would avail.

But Eunice, urged to the front by her mother, who philosophically made up her mind that one, if not the one she had counted upon of her daughters, should recoup their lost fortune and position, disappointed all the family hopes. She told Arden Farnsworth that it was impossible for her to marry him, and sent him away pierced with sorrow at his failure. His generous nature longed for an opportunity to place the dainty little beauty back in the niche where she belonged. For her sake he was prepared to make any provision for Mrs. Oliver and Chatty, short of offering them the hospitality of his houses and yacht and other such covetable spots where the Farnsworth Penates were enshrined.

In the tempest that broke over Eunice after Farnsworth’s departure, Tom learned his sister’s secret. She came to him, trembling and tearful, nestled in his breast, and told him that for a year she had considered herself engaged to Ashton Carmichael.

“What!” shouted Tom, loosening his hold of her, his eyes darting angry lightning. “That ——! Why, Eunice, it is impossible! You cannot have met him since I broke with him last autumn a year ago.”

“Oh, Tom! How dreadful you look! Of course I knew you were no longer friends. It was just after poor papa’s troubles began when Ashton wrote to me that you had separated, and that pride would not allow him to correspond with me after what had taken place between you. Then once, during the Christmas holidays, I met him in the street, and we took a walk together, and he begged me to be true to him and all would come out right. But still we did not write, until—”

“Don’t tell me he dared approach you after February!” exclaimed Tom, white to the lips with anger.

“Yes. He said there had been such a bad quarrel between you he feared it could not be made up; but he asked me to meet him in town—in a picture-gallery—and I did. Don’t be angry, Tom. He wanted to let me off from our engagement; indeed he did; but I saw he was in great trouble, and so told him I would never give him up so long as my love was worth anything to him; that he needn’t write—I should understand. After this he began coming down to town to walk with me, which took place several times—I couldn’t refuse him that comfort, Tom.”

“Comfort! He was laughing in his sleeve, the infernal scoundrel, that he was so outwitting me! And I at that very time was holding him up like a rock, to save him from utter ruin before the world! But go on; for Heaven’s sake, tell me all!”

“That is all, Tom. He sent me a clipping about his essay, and I was proud. Then he came once again, in June, to tell me he was going to sail with Billy Innis around the world—and from that day to this I have never heard from him.” Her head dropped forward forlornly upon her breast. Large tears flooded her blue eyes and streamed down her childish face. Tom’s tender heart smote him for having so increased her grief.

“My dear,” he said, gently, “I would give anything on earth if you had confided in me before. In my desire to shelter a false and contemptible fellow I have let you run into a trouble that makes my blood boil to think of it. Now listen, Eunice, and believe I speak plain truth. Not only did Ash Carmichael throw me overboard the minute our father lost his money, but last February he was guilty of a transaction involving me that might have landed him in state’s prison if I had not consented to hush it up. Judge, then, if he is likely to present himself before you again. No, Eunice, he will never come back. He was a coward, a cad, a sneak, to gratify himself at your expense in that way; and my heart aches for you, dear. But now that you know him as he is you will never care for him again. Think how much worse suffering was his sister’s, to whom he wrote confessing all, when he was in abject fear that I’d expose him. He had the cunning to make her come East to beg for him. For, at the first sight of that brave, tortured girl I was disarmed of my thoughts of punishment for him. For her sake, not his, I and two or three other men he had involved in the affair resolved to let him go and never to speak of it. Except to you, now, the matter has not passed my lips. And you best know why I have broken our vow of secrecy.”

Again Eunice hung her head. The crimson of deep shame deepened upon her face. For a time her voice was stifled by the sobs that shook her frame.

“Don’t cry, little sister,” Tom went on, distressfully. “You make me feel like an ogre or an executioner. But in this case there was no such thing as being merciful; I had to tell you to cure you, Eunice. Heaven knows the task was not to my taste. Some day, if the opportunity ever comes in your way, I should like you to say a kind word or do a kind act to that girl. She is a perfect heroine; and, if she did not fancy herself under such tremendous obligations to me already, I’d like to look Alice Carmichael up and try to help her.”

“You are bigger and more generous than I am, Tom,” cried Eunice, between gasps of pain. “As I feel now, I pray God never to let me look upon one of their blood again!”

Four or five years later saw Mr. Ashton Carmichael a conqueror in the lists of New York’s smart society. Among all the portals that flew open at his magic touch there was one that remained obstinately closed. This was the very fine front door belonging to the new mansion up town in which Arden Farnsworth had, two years after her refusal to marry him, installed his bride, recently Miss Eunice Oliver.

For Eunice, expanding into rare beauty during her exile from the gay world, had come back to take her place as a power in its councils, with a new understanding of people and things. Her grave husband was valued for his truth and loyalty and virile force, immeasurably beyond what her earlier love had been for his youthful graces of exterior. With all her heart she loved and was grateful to Farnsworth for “waiting till she came to her senses,” as she often laughingly told him. Long, long ago the sting of Carmichael’s treatment had ceased to pain her. Her fancy for him, in truth, expired that day when poor, blundering Tom had revealed her lover’s treachery.

With the marriage of Eunice the pressure of adverse circumstances had been lifted from the Olivers. A former admirer of Miss Chatty’s, a Mr. Ringstead, first discouraged by her mamma because she did not want her daughter to remove to Philadelphia, had gallantly come forward and offered himself anew. Mrs. Oliver, clearing her throat, suavely remarked to Chatty that she had always considered Ringstead a most excellent young man. To which Chatty pertly replied that his excellence was secondary to the fact that he was going to take her out of that hole of a provincial town where Tom had buried them alive. Mrs. Oliver, after the second nuptials in her family, gave it out that she meant to divide her time between her two married daughters and “dear Tom,” whenever he could be persuaded to settle in a decent place; and a short time after went abroad, to the relief of all concerned.

Tom, during most of these early years a bird of passage between different headquarters of the railway that had annexed his services, was rarely in New York. When occasionally he had fallen in with some of his old college-mates they had dined and talked together till well into next morning, and word was passed along the line of alumni of their year to this effect: “Tom is all there, every inch of him”; “The same glorious old fellow”; “True as steel”; “Deserves his luck in business”; and the like.

But except for these banquets of good-fellowship, Tom had almost dropped out of conventional society, until Eunice Farnsworth at last coaxed him to make her a little visit and take a peep into the world that he had eschewed. It would do him good, she urged, to see some of the pretty girls and lively matrons who would be present at, for instance, a dinner to be given by Mr. Farnsworth’s cousin, Mrs. Ellison, in honor of her daughter’s coming out. Mrs. Ellison, rather a foolish woman Eunice must admit, would be charmed to extend an invitation to him at their request. It was to be a large affair of thirty guests, and Eunice wanted people to see her big handsome brother. “For you are the pride of my heart, Tom; and I don’t care who knows it,” she added, so genuinely that Tom was brought into prompt submission to her will, and promised coöperation in her schemes.

“Young lady from the Epoch waiting to see you, sir,” said the servant at Carmichael’s lodgings, encountering him in the hallway of that domicile, as he let himself in by a pass-key late one afternoon after a round of calls.

Carmichael was the picture of self-satisfied complacency. In attire, in bearing, he knew himself to be above criticism by the well informed; and yet his vanity did not disdain the looks of heartfelt admiration cast upon him by the hand-maidens to whom his landlady paid small wages for the promiscuous service of her house.

“Another reporter!” he exclaimed, petulantly. “Did I not tell you never to let them wait for me?”

“She’s in there, sir, not in your sittin’-room,” went on the girl, pointing to the closed door of the boarding-house parlor. “She said it was very important, Mr. Carmichael.”

Smiling at the awe-struck expression of the domestic, whose class can never rid itself of respect for private individuals “wanted” by the press, he opened the door of a long, narrow apartment with abundant cheap draperies, spindle-work furniture, and artificial palms, to find himself confronted by an unwelcome apparition.

“You!” he said, in a tone from which all self-complacency had fled.

“Yes, I. I was assigned to you, and I had to come. Until now I have been fortunate in avoiding such a contingency.”

“I did not know you were in New York,” he stammered, to gain time.

“I got this appointment on the Epoch last season, through a friend. But I came here first in summer, when you were cruising on Mr. Compton’s yacht. You see it is not difficult for me to keep account of your movements, you are such a great man now; and besides, the others tell me you are very good in giving them items about your plans.”

Carmichael colored. He could not believe that the cool, satiric, self-reliant speaker was the orphaned sister who for years had made him the god of her idolatry.

“You are looking well,” he said; “your profession seems to agree with you. I hope you have comfortable quarters. And if there is anything I can do for you now, perhaps you will tell me as soon as may be, since I am engaged for dinner and have some letters to write before dressing.”

“They sent me to ask you the correct date of the Bachelor’s Ball, and any items about the affair you may wish to publish,” she answered, fixing upon his evasive eyes a pair of clear, bright orbs.

“That is easily done,” he replied, with an air of relief. “Or stop; leave me your address, and I will send you the full data to-morrow after the committee meets.”

“Send it to me at the office, please. But now that our business is so satisfactorily disposed of there is another little matter about which I should like to speak to you in a more private place.”

“But I am pressed for time, I tell you!” he exclaimed, uneasily.

“It is something in the nature of a warning,” she said, with a mocking intonation. “But just as you choose, of course.”

“Come to my sitting-room on the floor above, then,” he responded, ungraciously, leading the way up the stairs.

The room into which he ushered her was a curious combination of elemental homeliness and the little belongings of advanced luxury, which littered it from wall to wall. Alice Carmichael’s quick eye did not fail to discern this discrepancy, which she set down at once to her brother’s habitual unwillingness to enjoy anything that was not a gift from some one who could afford to pay the piper. But despite her calm bearing, her heart was torn at sight of him. A thousand recollections, tender and poignant, arose to overwhelm her. To Ashton’s infinite relief, however, she continued to sit as unbending as marble upon the edge of the cane-bottomed chair he had offered her. He knew well enough that after the first drop into sentiment she would soon be herself again.

“I have always regarded it as a particular piece of good fortune,” she began, presently, “that so far as I have followed your fashionable career fate has not brought you into contact with any of the Olivers. When Mrs. Farnsworth returned here to live it must have been a considerable embarrassment to you to know how to avoid meeting her. But that, I suppose, might have been left to her woman’s tact to dispose of. I am quite sure that neither she nor any one of her family would ever voluntarily come to look you in the face.”

Her victim winced, and she saw that he felt the sting implied.

“Just now, with the omniscience of my fraternity, I am in a position to know the list of guests expected at Mrs. Ellison’s dinner for her débutante daughter to-night. Not only are Mr. and Mrs. Arden Farnsworth to be there, but Mr. Thomas Oliver himself, who is in town stopping with his sister for a few days.”

“The devil he is!” cried Carmichael, much perturbed.

“You can hardly have expected to go on forever escaping the sword of Damocles. Though, as you know, you are perfectly safe from Mr. Oliver and the Farnsworths, too; indeed, I don’t believe they would turn on their heels to look a second time if they saw you lying in the gutter. But I have a feeling for them—a feeling that I can’t ask you to understand—which makes me wish to spare them the annoyance of your presence. It will be the first time in years that Mr. Oliver has appeared in the society of his old friends. He has had a life of work and care beyond his deserts. I should like to think that this one evening’s enjoyment is not to be spoiled for him.”

“I believe you are in love with that—— monolith!” said her brother, with an oath.

Miss Carmichael looked at him with undisturbed equanimity.

“What Mr. Oliver did for me in my hour of greatest need would entitle him to the best my heart could give. But you forget, I think, that this and other experiences have made of me a machine, not a woman. No need, however, to tell you what he did for me, or what I am. Will you stay away from the Ellisons’ dinner, or will you not?”

“I shall go,” said Carmichael, stubbornly. “I am to take in Miss Ellison, and to lead their cotillon afterward. I could not be guilty of such a departure from good form as to throw over the Ellisons because this assorted lot of paragons of yours are going to be there. Among thirty people it is hardly likely I shall run counter to them. And should I do so, I fancy my position is assured beyond any attempt at a slight they could put upon me. My dear girl, your attitude in all this is in the last degree strained and goody-goody. Leave me to paddle my own canoe, as I have left you. We shall continue to do without each other, I do not doubt. No man alive could endure to have a Lady Macbeth kind of female arise and stalk about him indulging in remorseful soliloquies about his past. I am sorry that the only visit you have done me the honor to make me should have been devoted to such a ridiculous and futile enterprise. And you will permit me to suggest once more that I am really very much afraid you are indulging in a schoolgirl passion for your hero, the doughty and horny-handed Tom.”

“Good evening,” said the reporter, briskly. “You won’t forget to send that stuff about ‘The Bachelor’s’ to me not later than to-morrow?”

She was up and off before he could intercept her. The little servant-maid in the pink cotton frock, with cap askew, was hovering outside his door as Miss Carmichael went out of it.

“Ain’t he beautiful?” she said, with frank pride. “I s’pose you’ll put another one o’ them pieces a-praisin’ him into your paper? There’s lots of the newspaper folks come here to see him; and no wonder—an’ him keepin’ company with all the high ’ristocrats o’ the city.”

A moment more and Alice was upon the street mingling with the throng of workers like herself. Although well in check about matters of mere sentiment, for which there was no longer time in her hurried existence, her thoughts had filled with a vision of two children at their mother’s knee, who shared everything in common until time and the mother’s death and subsequent hard circumstances had forced them apart forever. Ah, well! she did not begrudge Ashton anything she had done for him. But she was glad their mother had not lived.

II

“It was so good of you to come early,” murmured Carmichael’s hostess to him, when her guests for the dinner were beginning to drop in. “Now that you are here I feel a great weight off my mind. This kind of thing is rather a tax when there is no man at the head of the house, don’t you think so? Please manage to slip off and look into the dining-room to see if the lights and ventilation are all right. I arranged the cards myself, so I know that is as it should be. You take in Gertrude, and on your other side I have put the very prettiest young matron of my acquaintance—Mrs. Arden Farnsworth, who married my cousin, don’t you know? I knew your fastidious taste would be pleased by her, and it would be a sort of reward for your leading our cotillon afterward. Here comes another raft of people. Do look at the table, won’t you, and tell my butler if you want any changes made?”

Carmichael was accustomed to be deputy sovereign in many fine houses. But he had never felt as grateful for the privilege as now. His plan was executed quickly. So eager was he to effect a transfer of the cards of Eunice and her companion away over to the other side of the broad oval of damask bedecked with pallid orchids in silver vases, silver flagons, and platters of hothouse grapes, he did not think to notice for whom was reserved the place next Miss Ellison, whom he was to take in.

“What an escape!” he murmured inwardly, when Mrs. Farnsworth’s cards were safely exchanged for two others, taken at hazard from the opposite side. “Our good hostess will think it was her own carelessness, but I am safe. I wish I had dared face the music, and sit next to my late betrothed. There isn’t a woman of the year that compares with her, and I’d like to force her to notice me again. However, all comes to him who knows how to wait, and Eunice may once again be made to thrill at my words of—”

He started guiltily; but it was only Mrs. Ellison’s sleek butler asking at his elbow if all was to the dictator’s fancy.

“Very good, Masters, though I see you have taken on a little red-headed cub of a waiter who spilled champagne down my neck at the last Assembly supper. If I were you I wouldn’t have the little brute at any price.”

“Beg pardon, Mr. Carmichael, the man shall not be engaged here again,” said Masters, in deep humility. And Ashton, having partially settled his score with a poor menial who had had the temerity to smile when he was laying down the law about the terrapin at a subscription ball, returned to the drawing-room.

It was quite filled up now with guests who had come in—the women complacent in gorgeous gowns, the men lagging, beginning to be bored, eager for food, and inclined to take pessimistic views of life by and large. They were waiting for some one, it appeared; and presently, as the door was thrown open, “Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth and Mr. Oliver” were heralded.

Eunice, hurrying forward to explain to the hostess that one of their horses had slipped and fallen upon the asphalt, was royal in her young beauty. In her robes of shimmering rose color, her head, neck, and bodice coruscating with jewels, she stirred Carmichael’s selfish heart as nothing in woman’s shape had done before. He had to turn away to avoid showing his emotion.

“Don’t stare after Mrs. Farnsworth and forget you’ve got to take me in,” said, in his ear, the piqued voice of Miss Gertrude Ellison. “I declare, she has just bewitched all the men. I wish mamma hadn’t thought it necessary to put her next to you. At this rate I shan’t get the least notice taken of me. Luckily, I’ve got on my other hand her brother, Tom Oliver, who is as much a beauty as she is, in his way.”

Carmichael could not repress a movement of tremor. At that moment he saw going in ahead of them Oliver, who had been his dearest friend, his most loyal benefactor, whom he had betrayed. And for an hour and a half he was to sit so near him that their glances could not fail to meet. He wished now he had taken the advice of his sister, and stayed at home.

“Dear me!” exclaimed little Miss Ellison, coming to a halt behind their places. “It’s Mrs. Dick Anstey who’s next to you, after all. I suppose mamma changed her mind about Mrs. Farnsworth.”

“I suppose so,” said Carmichael, stooping mechanically to tuck in a corner of Mrs. Anstey’s apple-green velvet skirt, as that lady took her chair, having permitted a servant to advance it toward her and the table. “That gown of yours should be treasured, Mrs. Anstey,” he added. “It is the most charming you have worn this season, and that is saying much.”

Mrs. Anstey, who lived to dress, fluttered with excitement at this compliment. It was unlooked for from Carmichael, who, until now, had snubbed her unmercifully wherever they had met. He followed it up by devoting himself to her so exclusively that three courses of the dinner had passed before he gave heed to the heroine of the feast.

“You are civil,” said Gertrude, finally. “I don’t care, though; I have been well taken care of. Do you know Mr. Carmichael, Mr. Oliver?” she went on, with a coquettish glance back at her right-hand neighbor, to include the two.

“I know Mr. Carmichael,” was the answer. Full upon his false friend’s countenance flashed Tom’s gaze of scorn. Little Miss Ellison, whose attention was distracted by some one opposite, did not observe this by-play. Carmichael was enraged at himself for dropping his eyes upon his plate. When he gained courage to lift them, Tom had entered into close conversation with Miss Cowper, who for some moments had been awaiting attention on his other side.

“What’s the matter with you? You look quite pale and rattled,” went on Miss Ellison, who had a talent for attack. “One would think you had seen a ghost. See, there is Mrs. Farnsworth looking this way, to make sure I am taking good care of her big brother, I suppose. Let us both nod to her and she’ll know—Goodness! What has she got against you, Mr. Carmichael? I never in all my days saw such a full-fledged specimen of the cut direct!”

Nor had Carmichael, in a much wider experience. His ears tingled, his heart beat with angry resentment. By not the quiver of an eyelash had Eunice betrayed emotion at sight of him, face to face. If he had been the footman, just then engaged in projecting a silver dish between her arm and her neighbor’s, she could not more utterly have ignored his claim to her acquaintance.

“Evidently it’s just as well Mrs. Farnsworth did not sit next to you,” pursued Gertrude, at an age to look for little beyond externals. “I did not expect ever to see the great Mr. Carmichael come such a nasty cropper. She must be the only one of the ‘crowned heads’ who doesn’t smile on you. But I must say she’s the freshest and prettiest of the lot. When I get to be as old as some women I know, I’m going to stop playing kitten and settle down to be plain cat. Eunice Farnsworth’s jewels are simply wonderful. Not as showy as some, but very fine. Mamma says our Cousin Arden has always had the most perfect taste in precious stones. The only time mamma ever got ahead of him in a purchase was in the Carcellini emerald, a relic from an old cardinal’s sale, I think. It was offered in Paris when papa and mamma were there—oh, long ago, when I was a little kid. Cousin Arden’s order by cable, to buy it, came to the dealer just after papa had drawn a check in payment. Don’t know the Carcellini emerald? Why, it’s famous everywhere. The only thing approaching it in beauty and value belongs to one of the Russian Grand Duchesses. Mamma generally wears it at dinner, and I dare say she has it on now. If you have really never seen it, I’ll ask her to send the ring down for us to look at.”

“Do you think she will trust us?” asked Mrs. Anstey, who had turned to catch the latter part of Gertrude’s chatter. “I have always been dying to have a good look at the Carcellini emerald.”

“Trust us? Of course. She often sends it around the table for her friends to handle. Now watch me telegraph her, and see if she doesn’t understand.”

Leaning forward, the young lady managed to convey to her mother the request. Shaking her finger at the suppliant, yet amiably acquiescent, Mrs. Ellison drew from her left hand an object, which, amid flattering enthusiasm from her guests, began its journey around the table. Little cries of delight from the women, more restrained expressions of admiration from the men, followed the beautiful well of green fire in its progress.

“Now look!” said Mrs. Anstey, when it came to her. Slipping the ring upon her hand—a pretty hand, we may be sure—where it sent into prompt eclipse all the rest of her outfit of jewels, she held it up for Carmichael to view. “Did you ever see such a beauty?” she exclaimed. “I declare I shall go home and never sleep a wink to-night for coveting it! Such color, such luster, and such size! It ought to be on the turban of a Grand Mogul.”

Carmichael said nothing, but he stirred uneasily upon his chair. The childish raptures of the speaker seemed to him like the crackling of thorns under the pot.

“There, Gertrude, take the tempter!” concluded Mrs. Anstey, plucking the ring from her hand and extending it with affected resignation.

“I tell mamma I will accept nothing less than this for my wedding present,” answered Gertrude, receiving it in her outstretched palm. “But so far I can’t get her to promise it to me. She says it must go by will to my eldest brother, a boy at school, who doesn’t know the difference between an emerald and a bit of glass, the wretch! Look, Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Oliver; I will show you something nobody else at the table has seen. The prettiest thing about the Carcellini is the way it answers to a shaft of light. It leaps up like a fountain and fairly bubbles radiance. See! I will lean over and hold it between my thumb and finger sidewise under this candle nearest us, and you can get the effect.”

As she did so Carmichael’s eyes glittered and his breath came quick. A moment later a shiver of alarm and excitement ran around their quarter of the table. In inclining her head to catch the best light from the candle Gertrude Ellison had set fire to the fanciful aigrette of twisted tulle that soared high from her hair behind. The young men on either side of her sprang upon their feet. It was Oliver who, seizing the now blazing ornament, plucked it easily from the girl’s mass of fluffy hair and crushed out the flames between his strong brown fingers.

“It is all over; I was not even singed, mamma, thanks to Mr. Oliver,” called out Gertrude to her mother, who had just perceived the commotion. At once the inexorable law of conventional society closed upon the little incident. People resumed their interrupted chat, the servants circled the board as before, everybody had some anecdote to relate about a narrow escape from burning that had come under his experience.

And then, amid the murmur of voices, the tinkle of glasses, the strains from an orchestra that had begun to play a waltz upon the upper landing of the stairs, Gertrude Ellison turned upon Carmichael a perfectly blanched face.

“Don’t give any sign,” she whispered, “but tell me what I am to do. I have lost the Carcellini emerald.”

Carmichael darted one swift glance toward Tom Oliver, like the tongue of a toad flashing out to catch a fly and withdrawing with its morsel.

“He knows nothing,” she went on, petulantly. “He has been listening all this time to an interminable story Annie Cowper has been telling him. Who cares about her great-grandaunt’s feathers catching fire from the chandelier at a Colonial ball? I suppose the ring slipped off down the satin of my skirt, and has rolled under the table. I can’t make a fuss now, but I won’t leave this spot while another person remains in the room after me.”

“You are quite right to keep the thing quiet,” he said, with consoling deliberation. “In a little while your mother will be leaving the table. You and I can hang back and intercept her after every one has gone, unless you prefer to look first and tell her afterward.”

“Oh, no; I dare not! I must tell her at once!”

“Very well, then; I will help you. If I stay behind while the other men go up to the smoking-room it will be thought I have matters to discuss with Mrs. Ellison about the cotillon.”

As the company arose from table, catching the eye of Masters, the butler, he bade the men remain behind their chairs, and let no one approach the spot. He and Gertrude then hastened to intercept Mrs. Ellison at the end of the long procession, and make known to her the loss.

“I always told you, child, what would happen if you persisted in putting on a ring too large for you,” she said, agitated, but (to do her justice) courageous in calamity. “In that flurry about the fire you must have let it slip to the floor, and being unused to wearing it you didn’t at first notice its absence. Let this be a lesson to you, Gertrude, though I am sure you will find the ring, with Mr. Carmichael’s kind aid. I will make excuses for you. People will understand your wanting to rearrange your hair. Mr. Carmichael, I trust everything to you; and I shall go on and receive the people who have already begun to come for the cotillon. Tell Masters to shut all the doors, and let not a soul cross the threshold of the dining-room until you give him leave.”

There are heroines in all walks of life, and Mrs. Ellison, going forth to receive a set of gay people, consumed by gnawing anxiety to see the Carcellini emerald safely upon her finger, must be numbered high up among them.

“My dear Arden,” she said later on, capturing her cousin as he appeared in the doorway, coming down from the smoking-room, “I am so thankful you have come. Your wife has gone home. She bade me tell you she did not feel equal to the cotillon, but that she wanted you to stop and help me out. Her brother took her home. How nice to see you, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Your daughters are looking charming; I hope they both have partners for the cotillon. Gertrude will be in directly. You know they are joking her about having set her aigrette afire at dinner, but it might have been something worse. Arden, I really can’t endure this another minute. For goodness sake, go into the dining-room and see if Gertrude and Mr. Carmichael have found the Carcellini emerald!”

“The Carcellini emerald!” repeated Farnsworth, who, between vexation at his wife’s unaccountable departure and stupefaction at his cousin’s speech, did not know where to find himself. “Is it possible you intrusted it to Gertrude?”

“Their delay distracts me. If it had been underneath the table, at Gertrude’s feet, where it might naturally have slipped down her satin skirt, they would have returned by now.”

“What’s Carmichael got to do with it?” asked Farnsworth, wrathfully. He, better than any other, appreciated the enormous loss of the splendid gem. “If I were you, Elizabeth, I would not intrust the duties of a host to a pretentious nobody like that fellow. Of course I’ll go. I never heard of such a thing in all my life.”

He found the dining-room shut, every door barricaded by Carmichael’s orders. Servants and waiters were gathered curiously outside. At the sound of Farnsworth’s voice demanding admittance, Gertrude threw open the door and ran to meet him, ghostly pale and trembling in every limb. Behind her, candles in hand, with which they had been going over the floor, already lighted in every part by the full power of electricity, stood Masters and Carmichael, both anxious and perturbed.

“Oh, Cousin Arden, I’m almost crazy!” cried the girl. “I can find no trace of it.”

In broken words she narrated the circumstances of the ring’s disappearance.

“I was kept in here during the search by no wish of mine, Mr. Farnsworth,” said the butler, respectfully but firmly, when his young lady had ceased speaking. “It’s a hard thing on a man that has to live on the character he gets in a place to be mixed up in an affair like this. And when you are convinced, as I am sir, that the ring is not to be found about this room, I should take it very kind of you if you’d go upstairs with me and make a search of my clothes without letting me out of your sight.”

“Absurd, Masters,” put in Carmichael, sharply. “Why, any one, to look at you, man, can see you’re as much bothered as any one of us. He has been invaluable, Mr. Farnsworth; no one could have done more in our thorough search.”

“You must excuse me for not inviting your opinion, sir,” said Farnsworth, stiffly, confronting the last speaker. “I think the man is quite right in his request. Stay where you are, Masters, and when I have been over the ground here, and have satisfied myself the ring is missing, I will go with you to your room. Gertrude, my dear, do you, too, go upstairs and search every portion of your clothes. Don’t call a maid; we need take nobody more than is necessary into our confidence. I’m inclined, as it is, to think the matter might better have been kept exclusively between the members of the family.”

“I beg to be excused, Miss Ellison,” said Carmichael, hotly. “Perhaps you will ask Mrs. Ellison to tell Mr. Farnsworth that I remained here at her particular request, to assist you in your search. The whole matter is abhorrent to me; but I think no gentleman could have refused to be of service to his hostess under the circumstances. And if Mr. Farnsworth has at any time any other remarks to make to me upon this subject I am quite at his disposition.”

But Mr. Farnsworth had apparently no desire to hold further conversation of any kind with his cousin’s guest. Gertrude, much overcome, thanked Carmichael, and ran away to her own room. There was nothing for Carmichael to do but to withdraw likewise; but he did not leave the house, remaining to perform his usual functions as a cotillon leader, with “distinguished success,” as the newspapers said next day.

By the time the guests crowded again into the Ellison dining-room that night for a buffet supper, the strange tale of the loss of the famous ring was upon everybody’s lips. How it leaked out no one knew. When Carmichael was consulted, he announced himself to be in the confidence of the family, and therefore preferred not to speak. No one felt like alluding to it before the hostess or her daughter, who were observed to “keep up” with conspicuous courage.

When the last carriage had driven away, the two ladies went with Mr. Farnsworth and a quiet, gentlemanlike-looking man in morning dress, who appeared from the regions of the men’s dressing-rooms upstairs, into close council in Mrs. Ellison’s boudoir.

“Try to remember,” said Mr. Farnsworth, kindly, to Gertrude, who had begun to look drawn and haggard at the end of a lengthy discussion among the four, “upon which finger of which hand you had put the ring when you began to show the emerald to those gentlemen.”

“Why,” said the girl, suddenly, “I had never put it on at all! I was holding it—so—between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, turned sidewise to catch the light, when I felt the blazing up of my aigrette. Then Mr. Oliver jumped up and snatched the burning thing out of my hair, and scorched his own hand in doing it. It was all over very quickly. But I was so startled, I did not think of the ring for some minutes; and when I did, to my horror it was gone.”

“Were there any servants behind or near you at the time, Miss Ellison?” said the quiet man in morning clothes.

“I think some of them may have run up to offer help, but I am not sure,” said Gertrude, tears of nervous distress filling her eyes.

“But you are sure about the position of the ring as you leaned forward beneath the candle?” went on the same unemotional voice.

“Perfectly,” said Gertrude, with emphasis. “In that I cannot be mistaken.”

There was silence for a few moments in the little room with its pale brocades and Dresden figurines and gilded furniture. Then the quiet man spoke deliberately, drumming with a pencil upon the edge of Mrs. Ellison’s dainty blotting-book.

“I have no sort of doubt, madam, that your emerald was stolen. Who took it, and who has it—whether we shall ever get it back—are questions to which I propose to devote my best abilities. If it was one of your own servants or employés from outside, the appearance and character of the jewel will soon put us on the track of it. But if—” He paused, and cleared his throat significantly.

“I had rather lose it,” interrupted Mrs. Ellison, tearfully, “than suspect one of my guests.”

“But you will surely not refuse to oblige me, madam,” said the detective, with a deprecating smile, “with the name and address of the gentleman who sat on the left hand of the young lady at the time?”

This was too much for the overwrought mistress of the house, who broke down in a fit of hysterics that necessitated her prompt removal to bed and the summons of a doctor, who for some days kept her in the seclusion of her room, then sent her with her daughter out of town.

Although a nine-days’ wonder in the conversations of society, the story of the Carcellini emerald had not, by a wonder, reached the public prints. The absolute refusal of Mrs. Ellison to proceed in the investigation, as far as her own friends were concerned, blocked effectually the roll of the wheels of justice in the direction of finding a possible thief. The other servants of her house, and the hired waiters present on the occasion, had, to all appearance, come out unscathed from the ordeal of suspicion, as well as had honest Masters. The whole affair seemed likely to remain among mysteries unsolved.

About a fortnight after the disappearance of the jewel, a newspaper not averse to the elaboration of savory personalities concerning the wealthy leisure class published a carefully veiled discussion of the affair at Mrs. Ellison’s. No names were given, but hints were made of suspicion attached in a certain high quarter, involving a family of character and antecedents hitherto beyond reproach. There was a light touch suggesting that gallantry in the service of the fair may sometimes be made to reap rich reward. And the article, worded to excite curiosity without conveying facts, ended by forecasting a new chapter, at an early date, about the lost gem that would surpass in excitement anything so far derived from its adventures.

III

At this crisis of the matter of the Carcellini emerald Eunice Farnsworth, who had seen her lord depart for a banquet of public men, from which even her claims could not appropriately detain him, sat, one evening, quite alone. She had eaten a ridiculous little dinner of the kind affected by women deserted on like occasions, had retired to her morning-room upstairs, and was now sitting buried in the depths of an easy-chair, with an open letter upon her knee.

For the first time in her married life Eunice was unhappy. She had received that day, inclosed by her friend Mrs. Ellison, a copy of the mysterious newspaper article hinting darkly that the suspicions of those who knew were now turned upon a guest at the famous dinner where the jewel had disappeared. Read by a casual person the paragraphs were void of specific application; to the initiated there could be but one interpretation, and that connected with a most odious act Mrs. Farnsworth’s own dear brother, Tom!

“I am still far too wretched and broken up to think of coming back to town,” said her correspondent, who wrote from a Southern health resort; “and Gertrude is just getting back her nerve and tone. But rather than let such an insinuation pass unchallenged we would do anything, make any exertion. Of course, there are only a few people who could understand the detestable suggestion; but the hint that more is to follow fills me with dismay. Why can’t they let the whole affair alone? It is my loss, my misfortune. I have accepted it, and that ought to be the end. I have definitely withdrawn the case from the hands of the detectives, feeling assured that I could never take my place at the head of my own table again if I pushed the misery of suspicion into an innocent person’s life—and that person my friend and chosen guest. Arden may say, and probably does, to you, ‘Elizabeth was always obstinate.’ Perhaps I am; but in this case I have already had more than my share of distress and annoyance from outside comment. They will be having it next that my own Gertrude took the wretched emerald. I wish my poor husband had never spent a fortune in buying it for me. But this much is certain: if it is necessary for me to come back to town in order to refute the abominable insinuation against your brother, I will do so—at any sacrifice. The only thing that occurs to me is that Arden may be able to choke off any further mention of the affair in the newspaper that has done us this injury.”

“I could tell her,” thought Eunice, bitterly, “that Arden has already been in treaty with the editor to that effect, and that he could get no satisfaction, the man declaring that if the ‘gentleman’ alluded to was guilty of the theft, his high place in society makes it a public duty to expose him, especially since the owner of the lost jewel has so weakly backed out of her responsibility to justice.”

It was not a pleasant theme for thought. Eunice longed for the bright, strong presence of her brother to dissipate the clouds that seemed to close her in. But Tom was away in the West for an indefinite period. He had left town the morning after Mrs. Ellison’s unlucky dinner, from which he and his sister had withdrawn simply because it was impossible for them, in self-respect, to remain for a dance of which Carmichael was the leader. Carmichael no doubt had recognized their motive in quitting the house. For this offense against his vanity, and the refusal to know him that had preceded it, was it possible that he—

Eunice sprang upon her feet. She had solved the motive of the attack upon her brother. It was Carmichael they had to thank for the foul imputation. And upon this poor, lying, truckling creature, living upon his wits and the patronage of wealthy friends, she had once lavished the treasure of her young, impulsive love! A flood of shame and disgust ran over her. Then anger filled up the measure of her emotions. If she could only meet him—crush him with her disdain—make him confess the new offense he had committed against his former benefactor!

For Eunice, despite her marriage and the dignity that fact gave her, despite her husband’s wise control, was still a very young, impulsive woman, and in that moment felt strong enough for any deed of righteous wrath.

A servant, coming noiselessly into the room, presented at her side a little tray containing a card.

“But I told you I am not receiving, Jasper,” she said, without offering to take up the card.

“The gentleman said it is about a matter of business, madam, and that he will detain you a few moments only.”

She glanced at the name, and felt a throb of the heart that almost choked her utterance, for it was the card of Ashton Carmichael!

Here, in her house! He had ventured to cross her threshold! It must indeed be a matter of importance that had nerved him to come here!

“Say I shall be down at once, Jasper.”

Her spirit rose as she went down the broad stairway of her husband’s home. She was on her own ground, safely intrenched; he was the intruder whom a word could thrust from her door.

Something of this was apparent in her beautiful face, in her erect head, her eyes sparkling with indignation.

Carmichael, who had not sat down in the formal room of state into which they had ushered him, felt it, and winced. He had come there relying upon his unconquerable audacity, and to be so soon put at a disadvantage he resented bitterly. But he did not mean to let her speak first.

“I know what you would say,” he began, with an assumption of humility. “I am a pretender, a man who pushes himself where he is not bidden; a villain, if you like. But I have some feeling left, and I mean to prove it to you.”

She inclined her head with cold disdain, still standing before him.

“I put out of the question everything that relates to our own two selves—though if you knew all the story of that year—”

“You asked to see me on business, I understood,” she interrupted, as if he had come to peddle his wares in her drawing-room.

Carmichael blushed crimson. The sting of her manner was intolerable.

“I came, if you will have it outright, to offer to save you and your brother Tom from the scandals that are already attacking his good name,” he exclaimed, angrily. “For the sake of old times I can forgive your inhospitality, and even the insulting rudeness of your, and his, and your husband’s manner to me at the Ellisons’ dinner. I suppose you did not dream that entertainment was to terminate so unfortunately for you. The mischief this article in the —— has done him is, in point of fact, incredible. I happen to have some control over the situation—”

“Then it is your work! I thought so,” she said, cutting him short. “May I ask why you presume to come to me?”

“You are determined to think the worst of me,” he answered, growing white where he had been red. “I repeat that I came in friendship. I can be of service to you, and I offer to do my best. I can, in two words, get the forthcoming article suppressed, and will do so upon condition that you withdraw your enmity to me before the world; that you acknowledge and receive me in your house, and consent to overlook the past; that you induce your husband to treat me with common civility. This is not so much for me to ask from you—Eunice—the only woman I ever loved, who has gone from me forever.”

For one moment her eyes met his, and she saw that he spoke the truth in what he had said last—that in all his poor, mean, warped life his feeling for her had been the best he had known. But even this feeling he would now make the vehicle of his selfish schemes. Eunice tried to compass, but could not, the infinite pettiness of the bargain he strove to make with her. Her brain, confused and shocked, refused to see, what came to her afterward, that he could not, at this crisis, afford to meet the open suspicion and hostility of a man of Arden Farnsworth’s importance.

“I do not see—I cannot believe—that we should owe this to you,” she replied, more softly. “I can speak certainly for Tom, that he would resent your interference in any affair of his. If I have done you injustice in supposing you are responsible for our annoyance, I am willing to ask your pardon. But I am sure—quite, quite sure—we can none of us ever believe in you again.”

“You are indeed implacable,” he muttered.

That she did not ask him to be seated cut him to the quick. He lingered uncertainly for a few moments, then bowing to her, took his leave. The footman, standing in the hall outside, opened the door for him, then was summoned back by Mrs. Farnsworth.

“You will remember, Jasper, and tell the others to remember, that I am never at home to Mr. Ashton Carmichael again.”

The man, who, like the rest of his fraternity, knew all the figure-heads of polite society, went below and told his mates that there was “one house, anyhow, that cheeky young feller Carmichael was not to boss,” and he was glad to see him made to eat a little humble pie. More than ever her servants admired their fair young mistress, whose wit and spirit and beauty, joined to her friendly consideration for their feelings, had elicited their unanimous and not-to-be-despised applause.

“You are very brave and sagacious, my little wife,” said her husband, when she told him later on of her interview; “but you are playing an unequal game. That fellow, if my instinct is not at fault, will stop at nothing. And the key to the present overture to you, my dear, is that he’s afraid of me!”

“What can you have done to him, Arden, dear, besides scowling most unbecomingly whenever he has been near?”

“I stand, in a way, behind Elizabeth Ellison, who, if she changes her mind—and women have been known to do so—and takes my advice, will run a very good chance of recovering the Carcellini emerald.”

“Arden! What do you mean? It isn’t possible you think—”

“Never mind what I think. Even to you, dearest, I am not prepared to say it in plain words. But this visit of his to-night, and his proposition to put us under obligation through this matter of Tom’s, is the most impudent bluff I ever heard of. To-morrow I wire for Tom. He will reach here in the course of the week, probably; and we shall go together to that newspaper office and force a withdrawal of their threatened revelation. Depend on it, the matter of Mr. Ashton Carmichael will not rest upon this evening’s work. The Carcellini emerald scandal is about to assume a new and interesting phase.”

At the clubs that night, and in many homes next day, it seemed that people had, simultaneously and without apparent new provocation, adopted Mr. Farnsworth’s view of the late excitement. Flaring up from the coals, the gossip about it began to burn with tenfold vigor. Some oracles went so far as to declare that Mrs. Ellison had recovered her jewel, had forgiven the thief (who had gone to reside on a ranch in New Mexico), and in token of gratitude for her signal mercy was about to present the Carcellini emerald to the Metropolitan Museum in Central Park. The hint given by the offending newspaper had not so far, prompted the general public to bring Tom Oliver’s name into the affair. He was too little known to the makers of paragraphs and the purveyors of contemporaneous news items to tempt the fate adumbrated for him by Ashton Carmichael to his sister. But any number of wild, vague, irrelevant stories were started, and left to drift down the tide of idle talk.

When Oliver, much disgusted on arrival in New York by the revelations of his brother-in-law, was about to set forth with that gentleman upon the disagreeable mission of stirring up the erring newspaper office with a very long pole, Mr. Farnsworth, in leaving his front door, was intercepted by a visitor—a young woman, closely veiled, and wet by a driving rain, holding an open umbrella in her hand.

“Eh? Very sorry, but—private business, you say?—and I am not to speak for publication? My dear lady, if you could oblige me with the least idea of what you intend to say I could better—”

They were standing in the open door, Tom a little in the rear of Farnsworth. Both men were surprised at her sudden, impetuous gesture in throwing back her veil, and revealing a strong, excited face.

“Mr. Oliver! I must speak to you, too. Don’t you remember Alice Carmichael?”

“This lady is entitled to the best respect any man has to give her, Farnsworth,” said Tom, offering her his hand. “It is a long time since we have met, but I should have known you anywhere. Farnsworth, mayn’t we step back into your little study, to the fire, and let Miss Carmichael tell us what is on her mind?”

“It seems that I am always doomed to come to you, Mr. Oliver, under stress of circumstance. This time, however, my errand shall be of the briefest. I meant only to give this”—and she held out a large brown envelope—“to Mr. Farnsworth for you. It contains, as you will find, the original of an article that was to go to press to-night. It was surrendered to me of his own free will by the author, who happens to consider himself under some obligations to me for past services. And it will not in any shape be duplicated or repeated. The greatest favor you can do me in return is to ask me no questions concerning it.”

“Do you debar me from telling you that I am everlastingly obliged to you?” cried Oliver. “You can imagine what it was, Miss Carmichael, to be summoned back to New York by my good brother here, to find a mine of malice and filthy lies ready to explode under my feet. I can’t tell you yet what the whole confounded business means. Indeed, I should be tempted to doubt the existence of this rot”—he gave the envelope a scornful shake—“unless you and Farnsworth vouched for it.”

“If you don’t mind I will look over the contents, to satisfy myself they are what we desired to get hold of,” said Farnsworth, withdrawing with the parcel to his desk.

“Do, please,” said Oliver, with a shrug. “I certainly shall not glance at them. Pray sit down by the fire, Miss Carmichael. I am sure your feet are wet, and you seem to be shivering. Let me ask my sister to come—”

“No, no!” she exclaimed, woefully, compressing her lips to keep back the tears evoked by his apparition. “This is a moment snatched from business hours. I must be off. I am not cold; it is nervousness, I suppose. Oh, think when and how I saw you last, and you will not wonder! And I have lately had much care. Please forgive me, Mr. Oliver; I shall be all right soon.”

Many and varied had been the experiences of other people’s griefs falling to Alice’s lot in her professional career. For so long she had been in the habit of putting a lock upon her own feelings, while absorbing those of her studies for the press, she could hardly believe she was giving way to emotion on her own account.

She had spent the previous evening on duty in the Tombs prison, gathering for publication the last utterances of a wretched woman about to be consigned for her crimes to life imprisonment. From here she was going on to the tenement-house district to write up the case of a starving family for whom a newspaper fund was to be created. Later that day she was due at a crush reception, where there were dresses to describe. Everywhere and every day of her busy, lonely life, she was the human atom last to be considered.

“I suppose you think I am rather a lunatic,” she went on, with an attempt at sprightliness, seeing the deep concern in Oliver’s face. “But you must not mind my giving way to this weakness. It is a relief to think that anybody cares. Now I shall go, please—not to keep you and Mr. Farnsworth longer.”

Farnsworth, a sheaf of typed sheets in his hand, came forward to join them upon the hearth-rug.

“This is the most diabolically ingenious effort of imagination I ever saw!” he exclaimed, impulsively. “What would be a fair punishment for such a tissue of insinuations that can be read in two ways, yet would succeed effectually in damning the person they are aimed at, I cannot think.”

The young journalist crimsoned to the roots of her hair.

“I have not read it,” she said, in a faltering tone. “I only—became aware—that it was in existence—and I was anxious to save it getting into print.”

“You have placed us under an obligation no money could discharge,” went on Farnsworth, kindly; “but—er—it would give me genuine pleasure to express our gratitude in some substantial way.”

“No, no; do not speak of it!” she cried. “Your wife will tell you, Mr. Farnsworth, if this gentleman does not, what a debt I am trying to repay.”

Before they could interpose she had left the room. Tom, overtaking her in the hall, urged upon her to accept his escort, or his assistance in some way; but with a melancholy smile she waved him off, and taking up her wet umbrella from the servant’s hands went out alone into the rain.

“You don’t mean to tell me that fine, frank womanly creature is the sneak’s own sister?” enquired Farnsworth, when Tom, looking and feeling crestfallen, went back into the study to explain her identity. “It seems incredible! I think her shyness with us is because she knows Ashton inspired every word of this offending article, that she, by good luck, has been able to abstract from the writer’s clutches. Probably some poor devil of a reporter she’s come across and befriended. Jove! that girl was made for better things than a life like hers. I must set Eunice to work to get her out of it.”

“You will not succeed,” replied Tom. “She is fine and self-helpful and proud to a degree, as her brother is the reverse. There is only one scheme that suggests itself to me,” he added, after a pause. “Somebody should marry her.”

“It will be a very brave body who will saddle himself with such a brother-in-law,” said Farnsworth, meaningly. “Don’t let your chivalrous sentiment run away with you, my friend. Unless I am greatly mistaken, Ashton Carmichael has in his possession the Carcellini emerald, and will ultimately come to grief. What’s more, I believe she thinks so, and that that accounts for her nervousness with us. If I knew more about him in the past I could better tell. I wish, in the interests of justice, Tom, you would answer me one question. Was the affair she alluded to of a nature to justify us in suspecting him of an act of criminal intent?”

“I cannot answer you,” replied the young man, bluntly. “For years what I know of it has never passed my lips; and I shall never again tell that story.”

IV

The morning’s drizzle had settled into a steady downpour when, after concluding her notes upon the fashionable world as seen at Mrs. Hathaway’s reception, Miss Carmichael, of the Epoch, put on her rubber overshoes, extinguished her smartest gown under a waterproof cloak, and unfurling her faithful umbrella, slipped down the steps and under the awning at the front door to take an east-side car for down town.

Her destination was not unfamiliar, for the car stopped at a crossing very near the house in which she previously visited her brother, Ashton. But as she rang the bell of his lodgings and awaited the coming of the maid, Alice’s heart beat with fierce excitement. To do what she now purposed to accomplish would put into requisition her best courage, tact, and persistence.

She had written to her brother asking an interview with him at the moment when her suspicions first fell upon his complicity with the much-talked-of newspaper articles about the loss of the emerald at Mrs. Ellison’s dinner. Upon his churlish refusal to receive her on any terms she had set her wits to trace out and discover the tool whom he had doubtless employed to do his noxious work.

This for a time she could not accomplish. But chance finally threw into her way the knowledge that on some previous occasion Carmichael had had so-called literary dealings with a man named Lance, a hack-writer of ability, whose bad habits were fast bringing his usefulness to an end. Now, indeed, fate played into her hands. The year before she had nursed Lance’s child through an illness ending in the girl’s death in her arms in the boarding-house where they were both living. For Alice, Lance would hazard his last hope of earthly happiness. She was to him a thing sacred and apart from his sordid world. When she sought him out, and asked him point-blank whether he had not been employed by her brother, Ashton Carmichael, to transmit certain information to a certain newspaper, the man was fairly staggered.

“Your brother!” he exclaimed. “That poor sycophant, whose pay even I blush to take? He whom we call among ourselves the ‘Little Brother of the Rich.’ Good Lord! You are as far asunder as the poles.”

So Ashton thought, but with a difference!

When Lance understood the case he hastened with almost pathetic eagerness to bring his finished material and lay it in her hands.

“Is this little all I can do for you?” he asked.

“No, Mr. Lance. You might promise me never to put your hand to such vile stuff again,” she said, looking him fearlessly in the face.

“The wording only is my own. He gave me the ideas. He said it would be a stinger to the man he hated most. As for the morality involved, I am past distinguishing between the grades of principle—since she left me, and I see no more of you!”

“There is something in which you might help me,” she added, after revolving matters in her mind. “I need to see my brother—to talk with him alone. He has positively refused to receive me in his rooms. I cannot push my way there in the face of servants. Could you bring us together, do you think?”

Lance brightened.

“Why not? I have an appointment to wait for him at six on Friday. The people of the house are used to seeing me come and go, sometimes with a stenographer. I don’t know if you are aware that he does a steady business contributing ‘society personals’ to our paper and to others. His terms are high, but they like to have him, because he’s a sure thing. Will you prefer to go with me or to meet me there?”

“I shall be there at a quarter before six,” Alice had said, drawing a long breath.

She found Lance sitting in the hall.

“This is the lady I told you was coming to take my place, Bridget,” said Lance to the servant, pleasantly. Despite his shabby looks the maids of the boarding-house liked him, whom they called “Mr. Carmichael’s clerk.” The woman answered him in a jovial tone:

“All right, Mr. Lance. The young lady can go on up and sit in the sittin’-room.” As Lance said good evening and went out she added, sociably: “You run right up, miss. Second story front. But, laws, I remember you was here before! Our Mr. Carmichael do be mightily run after by the newspaper folks. He’s such a high-flyer in society. But he ain’t well, I’m thinking; he looks like a sheet o’ paper nowadays.”

The winter’s day had closed in as Alice entered her brother’s room, and sat down by the window, listening to the drip, drip of the rain upon the sills. She wanted time to think before he should come in.

He would resent her intrusion angrily, of course; but that would be nothing in comparison with his wrath when he should know for what she came.

For days she had carried fear around with her, and slept with it at night. Putting together one thing and another that had come to her about the unlucky dinner at Mrs. Ellison’s, she had conceived the horrible suspicion that her brother was the thief of the ring. Since convicting him as the source of the slanderous article inculpating Tom, this suspicion had been growing into assurance. Until that morning her chief yearning desire had been to put Lance’s article safely into Mr. Farnsworth’s hands. That accomplished, she had for a moment breathed freer. Then the blacker weight had settled down again. A desperate resolve possessed her. She must recover the ring from Ashton, and restore it to its owner!

Did she not accomplish this, how could she answer to her dead mother, who with her last breath had prayed Alice to watch over the weakling of her fold, and to forgive him until seventy times seven?

Behind Alice was a line of Puritan ancestors who had lived and died strong in the faith and fear of a just God. Surely He would not permit her to fail now upon the threshold of such an endeavor. But how could she set about it? How induce Ashton to confess his crime unless he were sure he was found out?

As the moments elapsed that were to bring the sound of his foot upon the stair the ticking of his costly traveling clock over the mantel beat louder and louder on her ear. Her brow and hands were bathed in sweat, yet she was clammy cold.

Six o’clock! He could not be long now.

Oh! she could never bring him to own the truth. At the first hint of her mission he would not hesitate to turn her with ignominy from the house—to brand her as an impudent interloper.

If the ring were here on the table before her she would even dare to take it, and escape, flying till she had laid it in the right hands, risking anything to save her brother from the consequences of his sin and crime.

A single jet of gas burned low under a shade of crimson silk above the writing-table, littered with fantastic trifles in gold and silver, spoils of his cotillons, gifts of his admirers. With fervid fingers she turned on the full light, drew down the window-shades and looked about her. There was no desk, casket, or piece of furniture that seemed a likely hiding place for so rare a treasure. He would never dare to carry it about his person. Nor, so long as the clamor concerning it lasted, would he venture to dispose of the Carcellini emerald!

Her face burning with another’s shame, Alice went into the smaller hall-room, where his bed was and his dressing things were kept. Still the same commonplace furnishings, with a litter of clothes and boots and trinkets of the toilet. Here, too, she turned up the gas and lit it, terrified lest interruption should find her without excuse.

“For her sake,” she repeated, to give herself courage in the search. Nothing was locked; all was at the mercy of the maid who arranged and dusted Ashton’s rooms. With her old instinct of making his belongings tidy, as she had been used to do when they lived together, Alice began straightening the ties, laying the handkerchiefs in piles, and putting the gloves in pairs.

Forgetting her real intent, she smiled as of old to find behind a lot of other things a box filled with a hodgepodge of buttons, sleeve-links, cigar-cutters, scarf-pins, tangled with shoe-strings, rubber bands, and other flotsam of a crowded chest of drawers. This was Ashton all over, careless fellow! For the hundredth time his loving sister would extract the rubbish from things of value, and set the whole to rights.

Out of the confusion of this receptacle she rolled a quaint curio in the shape of a thimble-case made from a carved Indian nut, with silver frame and settings tarnished for a long want of cleaning. The trifle was too old and shabby now to tempt anybody’s cupidity, but it aroused in Alice Carmichael a swelling tide of sentiment that overflowed her eyes and softened her heart to childlike tenderness. For it had been a gift to their mother long ago; had lain in her work-basket, and was once scrambled for by her children with eagerness proportioned to her withdrawal of it from their grasp. Later on it had been given to Ashton, because he had first discovered the trick of opening it by pressing a hidden spring. By some freak of chance it had knocked about among his belongings ever since.

Alice took the poor little blackened relic in her hand and went back with it into the sitting-room, where she dropped upon a chair, abandoning herself to retrospect. Away flew the hideous nightmare of her present quest. Ashton and she were children together, she loving him, sheltering him, proud of his beauty and accomplishments, following his lead with blind idolatry.

With this amulet in her grasp she longed to clasp him again in her arms, to talk with him of their mother, their old home; to laugh and chaff with him about the things of every day.

Mechanically her fingers fumbled with the thimble-case, turning it over and over to feel for the point of the carving that concealed its mystery. Smiling, she discovered at last the spring—touched it—the nut flew open—something dropped into her lap that she reached down to regain. She was astounded to find her fingers close upon a gem that at the gleam of gas-light falling full upon its lustrous surface sent up a bubbling, dazzling fount of greenish flame! She started with a convulsive movement of dismay. There could be no doubt that she held in her hand the Carcellini emerald!

Then flowed upon her soul a torrent of deepest misery. Once before her brother had been guilty of a theft—of moneys laid to Tom Oliver’s account as treasurer of a college fund. But she had paid that out of her poor earnings, and Tom, for her sake, had offered to hush the matter up, and give Ashton “another chance.”

And thus he had used his chance! The flaring radiance of the jewel seemed to taunt her anguish.

What should she do? Whither should she turn to save him once again? Rising, her feet refused to sustain her. As she stood dizzy, trembling, aghast, holding the precious jewel as she looked at it, the door opened and her brother came into the room. His eyes flashed anger at sight of her, but something more devilish inspired him when he saw what she had in her hand.

In two bounds he was across the room and had seized her. She shut her eyes, and uttered a prayer to God for strength. She was wiry and vigorous, and did not mean to let Ashton take the emerald from her if she could help it. At all costs she would save him from himself. He said not a word, nor did she. Each was fiercely determined to conquer in the struggle. Too well he knew that if he could regain his stolen prize, and turn her from his room, her lips would be sealed as before.

But he was not prepared for her physical resistance. At his approach she had slipped the gem into hiding in her dress, keeping her right hand clenched as if she still held it in her grasp.

Without mercy he bent her arm back and forth, hurting her cruelly, and at last, forcing her bruised fingers apart, saw that she held nothing between them. Then with a savage oath he struck her full across the face!

Alice staggered back, stunned and dismayed. But she did not waver in her intention to get by him to the door, and thence make her escape into the street. Once free of Ashton she would carry the jewel to Mr. Farnsworth or Tom Oliver if she could not reach its owner.

Ashton divined her scheme. His only hope lay in keeping her prisoner till he could force her to give up the gem. With more brutal words he started to cut off her retreat by putting his back against the door. His whole appearance was transformed by furious passion.

At that moment help came to her from a quarter on which she had not counted. She saw her brother shiver all over, and grow deadly pale. His left hand made a clutching movement toward his heart; he staggered forward, and fell—into her arms.

Alice had seen this once before—an occasion never to be forgotten. She knew the terror-stricken eyes, the awful, helpless appeal for relief from sudden oppression. His livid features brought back to her with agonizing force the face of their dying mother under like conditions. Exerting all her powers she dragged him to a sofa, laid him down, and flew to ring the bell, peal upon peal.

The maid who ran up to answer it gave one frightened glance into the room and rushed back to the landing to summon help from any one who might be passing on the stairs. Her call brought among others a gentleman just admitted into the hall below. In the maze of her feelings Alice hardly felt surprised to see Tom Oliver entering her brother’s room. She begged him, pathetically, to explain to the proprietors of the house her right to be there, then went on her knees again beside the prostrate form upon the lounge. In a very few moments a physician came, and Alice, giving place to him, let Tom lead her over to a window, where he left her looking out into the night.

Returning presently he told her that all was over. Ashton had died without coming back to consciousness.

“You will let me take charge of everything,” he added, with deep feeling in his voice. “When I stood with the doctor looking down at him I forgot what I came here to say—everything, in fact, but that I once loved him like a brother.”

“I think I know what you came for,” she answered, wistfully. “You meant to silence him for the future, and now death has done it—oh, how awfully!”

She shuddered. The pain of her body was beginning to make itself severely felt. It recalled to her the prize for which she had risked so much, that lay close to the tumultuous beatings of her heart. Above all things she longed for advice from Tom concerning it, but could not bring herself to speak the words that would incriminate the dead.