Doctor Hathern's daughters

Chapter VII.—Author’s Story Continued.
AT MORLEY’S.

The Colonel had telegraphed for a suite of rooms on the second floor looking out upon the Square, and he found them ready for him. A cheerful fire in the salon, another in the bedroom, with every candle lighted in the chandelier and in the candelabra upon the mantle. Divesting herself quickly of her wet wrappings Fanny took an easy chair before the fire, towards which she held her cold hands, while she said, “This is delightful; the rooms are lovely, and I am so glad to be here.”

For a time she was glad. Jack and the old life had nothing to offer like this luxurious apartment, with the warmth and the light, and a little later on the waiter asking when Madame would have dinner served.

“Now,—at once,” the Colonel answered for her, saying, when the man had gone, “We dine in here. I have no fancy for table d’hôtes with all the canaille and bourgeois round me. One can’t be too careful in Europe as to his acquaintances.”

Fanny, who was very social in her nature and liked to see people, preferred, as a rule, to mingle with them, but to-night she was so tired that she was glad to dine by themselves, and she felt a thrill of satisfaction that she was able to do so without counting the cost. Once, when quite a young girl, she had gone to the Spotswood in Richmond, with her father, who was not feeling well and to whom she had suggested that he have his dinner in his room.

“No, daughter; there would be an extra charge and I cannot afford it,” he had said.

She was very poor then;—she was rich now, and need not mind expense. It was a good thing to be rich, and she felt glad and content as she nestled down in the easy chair and felt its soft folds about her and the glow of the fire on her face and watched the two waiters laying the table for dinner, with cut glass and silver and the finest of linen, and a vase of flowers in the centre.

“If father were only here to share it with me,” she thought, recalling the many straits to which poverty had reduced them. “If he could share it with me,—or Annie,—or Katy,—or—Jack!”

The last name sent her blood rushing so hotly through her veins that she moved away from the fire as if it scorched her. She did not mean to be disloyal to her husband, and it did not occur to her that she was as she began to wonder how she should feel if it were Jack whom she heard stepping around so briskly in the dressing-room, making himself ready for dinner. She could see just how he would look lounging easily up to her with a smile on his face and in his laughing eyes which had never rested upon her except with love and tenderness. It was not Jack, but a tall, stern, dignified man, who emerged from the dressing-room just as the soup was put upon the table, and led her to her seat. The dinner was excellent and well served, and Fanny, who was hungry for the first time since her marriage, enjoyed it with a keen relish of a healthy appetite. She was young and hopeful and elastic in her temperament, and as her spirits rose she laughed and joked until her face, which had lost something of its freshness during her illness, grew bright and sparkling, and her husband thought with pride how beautiful she was and almost forgave her for the eyes which had troubled her so on shipboard. They had gone through all the courses and the black coffee had been brought in. This the Colonel took by the fire, while Fanny still sat at the table sipping hers and occasionally tasting a Hamburg grape. The waiter had just gone out when there was a knock at the door and a servant entered bringing a cablegram upon a silver salver. It came several days ago, he said, and the clerk at the office had forgotten to give it to the gentleman when he registered.

Naturally the Colonel put out his hand to take it when the waiter said quietly, “If you please, it is for the lady.”

“For me!” Fanny exclaimed in surprise. “Who can have telegraphed to me?”

Taking the message in her hand she read the address aloud:—“Mrs. Geo. W. Errington, Morley’s Hotel, London, Eng.”

It was the first time she had seen her new name in writing, and it gave her a peculiar sensation as she studied it for a moment.

“It’s a cablegram from home and may have bad news. Open it,” the Colonel said, and instantly Fanny’s fingers were tearing at the envelope and she was reading the message: “The Elms, Thanksgiving morning. To Mrs. G. W. Errington. Mr. Fullerton is here and very ill with brain fever. Recovery doubtful. C. Errington.”

For a moment everything in the room swam before Fanny’s eyes, but she neither spoke nor stirred until the Colonel, alarmed at the whiteness of her face, came to her side and asked “What is it?” She gave him the cablegram which he read aloud and then said, “That’s bad. A fever is likely to go hard with a man of Mr. Fullerton’s temperament.”

The next moment he repented his words, calling himself a brute, partly for his thoughtlessness and more for the vindictive feeling which had prompted it.

“Oh, Jack! I have killed you,” Fanny cried, stretching out her hands, and then lying back in her chair in a dead faint, the first she had ever had in her life.

It was one thing to give Jack up voluntarily, and know that somewhere in the world he was still alive, remembering and loving her, as she believed he would, and another thing to think of him as dead,—gone out of her life forever,—murdered by her. That was the way she put it, and murderess was the word in her mind when she cried out, “Oh, Jack, I have killed you.” She had no doubt as to the cause of his illness. He had received her letter, enclosed in Annie’s, and been stricken down at once in the old home where he had expected to make her his wife and where both Miss Errington and Katy were now. When Thanksgiving came on the Celtic she was too ill to know or care what day it was, and she had not thought of it since. But she remembered now all the bright anticipations of that day of which both Annie and Jack had written to her,—the dinner they were to have and for which Phyllis was making so great preparations, and after dinner the walk or drive to “Our house on The Plateau.” This last was the burden of Jack’s letter to her, and now she was another man’s wife, and Jack was dying, or dead. All her work, and she was as surely a murderess as if with her hand she had killed him. It takes some time to tell all this, but it scarcely took Fanny a second to think it, so rapid were her thoughts and conclusions before she became unconscious. The Colonel had seen death in many phases on the battlefield, but no face had ever affected him like this, which was so still and white with a grieved expression around the mouth pitiful to see. He was glad he was alone with her, and when he heard the servant coming to clear the table he called to him to wait until he got Madame to her room, as she was ill. Taking her in his arms he carried her to their sleeping-room, loosened her dress, laid her upon the bed, and then applied every restorative which came to his mind, water, cologne, camphor, bay rum and ammonia, with no effect whatever for a time, and he began to wonder if it were possible for her to die upon his hands. At last, however, after what seemed to him an interminable length of time, she recovered and asked in some surprise what had happened, and why her hair and dress were so wet and why she was on the bed.

“You had a cablegram and fainted,” the Colonel explained, and then it came to her.

“Yes, I know,” she said, with a sob. “Jack is dead, and I killed him.”

“Humbug!” the Colonel answered, sternly. “He is not dead. If he were my sister would have cabled again. This message was sent several days ago. Brain fever runs its course quickly. He is better by this time. Don’t make another scene. Restrain yourself. I am not fond of high tragedy, especially when the hero is another man. I have had enough of it.”

Fanny had never heard him speak like this, and her heart stood still a moment and her breath came in short gasps, as she watched him putting the bottles of camphor and cologne and bay rum in their places and saw how pale he was and how his hands trembled. Something like pity for him was in her heart, but a stronger feeling overmastered it. She must know if Jack were living.

“George,” she said, her voice compelling him to go to her against his will. “George,” she continued, looking up at him with eyes which held his, much as he wished to withdraw them, “I am sorry for it all, but I must know if Jack is alive, and you must cable to your sister to-night, if possible,—to-morrow, sure.”

Mentally the Colonel swore he wouldn’t, but Fanny’s face conquered, and the message “How is Jack?” which his sister received was sent by him with Fanny’s name appended. The next two days were not very merry ones to either the Colonel or Fanny. She sat silent and shivered by the fire, counting the hours as they went by, and every time there was a knock at the door starting up in hopes that the word which meant life or death had come. He spent many hours in the smoking and reading room trying to divert his mind from what weighed upon him almost as heavily as it did upon Fanny. Again, he took long walks through the damp and fog, cursing his folly in marrying a girl who loved another as he now knew Fanny loved Jack, and trying to arrange his future. She was his wife. Nothing could undo that, and he did not know that he wanted it undone. He could still be very proud of her, if she would behave herself and not go pining and puling after another man, and this she should do. He was resolved upon that. Whether Jack lived or died she was to seem to forget him and be loyal to himself outwardly, whatever she might feel. She had married him for money. She should have it in full measure, and return to him an equivalent in obedience to his will. No one had ever thwarted that with impunity, and his wife should not be the first to do it. It seemed to him he had walked over nearly half of London when he came to this conclusion and began to feel that he was tired. Hailing a hansom he was driven to the hotel where he found his sister’s second cablegram, which he took at once to his wife. She was sitting just as he had left her hours before, wrapped in a shawl before the fire, with a hopeless look upon her face, which made him angry, and also sorry for her as he handed her the envelope and watched her as she tore it open and read, “He is better.”

He had never dreamed that a face could change as hers did in an instant.

“George, George,” she exclaimed. “He is better; he will live; and I am not a murderess. I am so glad; so glad.”

She was not chilly now. The shawl was thrown aside, and it was her own suggestion that they should dine below with the other guests rather than in their private salon as they had done heretofore.

“Now that I do not feel the mark of Cain on my forehead I want to see people. I have been mewed up here long enough,” she said; and the Colonel assented, although in his present state of mind he cared little where he took his dinner.

He asked for a table apart by himself and to it he conducted his wife, whose grace and beauty could not fail to attract attention, and who talked with him as airily as if there were no sore spot in her heart which would never quite cease to throb with a dull pain when memory’s fingers touched it. At some little distance from them, at a table by themselves, sat the Frenchman and his wife, the little man bowing and throwing out his hand very politely to Fanny, while saying something to the lady whose back was to them, and who never moved from her rather stiff position. She was elaborately and elegantly attired, evidently for the opera. Her dress, V-shaped before and behind, showed a part of her white, plump neck, on which a few short golden curls were falling from the coil arranged above them.

“Look, George; there’s the little old man and his wife; I wonder who they are,” Fanny said, and the Colonel replied, “They are registered ‘Monsieur and Madame Felix, Paris.’ The clerk says they come here often and that he is very rich. I imagine she is a terror, as I overheard her giving him Hail Columbia for something. I couldn’t tell what, but fancied it was about you, and that he either wanted her to call at our door and inquire, or send you some flowers. He remembered seeing you at the station and had taken the great liberty, he called it, to ask for you, and seemed concerned when I told him that you were not well and were keeping your room. She affects a great deal of hauteur and reserve, but is a magnificent looking woman,—very Frenchy, with her dark eyes and yellow hair. I thought at first it might be a wig, but it isn’t; it is all her own, growing on her head. I had a glimpse of her in the hall one day, hurrying to her room, in a crimson silk dressing-gown, with all that hair hanging down her back below her waist. She knew I saw her and actually smiled upon me, showing a set of very white, even teeth and a pair of brilliant eyes.”

Cold and passionless as the Colonel seemed he never saw a beautiful woman that he did not at once take in every point of her beauty from her head to her feet, and as the French lady, who had excited Fanny’s curiosity, was beautiful, or certainly very attractive, he waxed so eloquent over her that some women might have been jealous. But Fanny scarcely heard him. She was thinking of the cablegram which had relieved her anxiety for Jack, and of the long letter she meant to write to Annie that night. The Colonel was going to the opera and had asked her to accompany him, but she did not feel quite strong enough. So he left her alone and she began her letter, telling of her fearful seasickness and homesickness, and her remorse and pain when she received the news that Jack was dangerously ill; struck down, she was sure, by her act.

“If he had died I should never have known another moment’s peace of mind, for I should have known I was the cause of his death,” she wrote. “But, thank God he is better, and there has been a little song of joy in my heart ever since I heard it. The world could never be the same to me with Jack gone from it.”

As she began to feel tired she did not finish the letter, but left it open on the writing desk, intending to finish it in the morning. She did not hear her husband when he came in, nor knew that her letter had caught his eye at once, with Jack’s name occurring so often on the page open in view that he had stopped and unconsciously at first read a few lines. Ordinarily he would have held another’s letter sacred, but now with his anger and jealousy aroused he took up this and read it with wrath and disgust. The next morning when Fanny awoke she found her husband up and dressed and standing by the bedside looking at her. Opening her eyes drowsily, and smiling up at him, she said, “Have I overslept? What time is it, please?”

He did not answer her, but instead held up her letter which he had read again with more bitterness than on the previous night.

“Fanny,” he began, and his voice was full of concentrated anger and determination, “this nonsense must be stopped. I have had enough of it. You are my wife. I cannot control your thoughts, but I can your actions, and I will not have you writing home such sentimental trash as this about seasickness and homesickness, as if you were the most wretched woman in the world. If you were so fond of Jack, why under Heavens did you take me,—and having taken me why do you prove faithless to your marriage vows by clinging so to him. This letter will not go for my sister or your adorable Jack to exult over, saying we are both reaping our just deserts.”

He tore the letter in shreds, which he threw into the fire. For a moment Fanny was speechless, then all her spirit and temper rose and her eyes were like two volcanoes, emitting spits of flame, as she said, “Do you call yourself a gentleman, and is it usual for gentlemen to read their wives’ letters as you have read mine?”

The taunt stung him, but he would not apologize, although he winced under the blaze of her eyes and the lash of her tongue. For a moment he let her have her own way and say what she chose; then buckled on his armor, which she could no more resist than she could strike her head against a wall hoping to move it. The fire in her black eyes was more than matched by the steely hardness of his, as he met her impetuous reproaches with words spoken very slowly and very low, but which left her vanquished and him master of the field and of her. It was a terrible battle, southern fire against northern coolness, and the latter conquered. Henceforth Fanny would go when he told her to go, come when he told her to come, do what he bade her do.

“But thank God I can think what I please and of whom I please, and you cannot help yourself,” was her last defiant fling, as she dressed herself hurriedly and sat down to the breakfast which was served in their parlor and had waited some time while the matrimonial difference was settled.

Hot as was Fanny’s temper there was nothing sullen or vindictive in her nature, while the Colonel prided himself upon never striking a superfluous blow after the nail was driven in. If he was fierce in war he could be generous in peace, and if the waiter who served them that morning had been questioned upon the subject, he would have reported them as examples of conjugal harmony and affection. Madame, he might have said, was rather quiet, with a bright red spot on either cheek, while Milor was very attentive to her, urging her to eat, and planning where he was to take her that day. First, shopping. He had met several friends the night before, both English and American, all of whom were coming to call. He had an invitation to dinner the next day but one at the house of an English lady, who had spent a part of a winter in Washington and been entertained by him and his sister. She had just heard he was in London and hoped he would accept her invitation, if it were rather late to give it. He also had tickets to hear Patti, and was to occupy a box with Lady Hyer, an American, who had married an earl. This necessitated a suitable outfit, and all the morning was spent at Marshall & Snelgrove’s and Peter Robinson’s, deep in the mysteries of silks and velvets and laces, as shown and recommended by the saleswoman and pronounced upon by the Colonel, who proved a connoisseur in matters of dress, and without really seeming to do so decided on every purchased article. Surrounded by so much elegance and receiving so much attention and deference, Fanny’s spirits rose. The scene of the morning, though rankling a little, was partially forgotten in the glamour of the dinner and evening dresses which were finally decided upon and were very becoming to her. The corsage of both was high, notwithstanding that the saleswoman had pleaded for something different.

“Madam’s neck was so white and smooth that it was a pity to cover it even with lace,” she said, while Fanny’s choice was the same as hers, but that did not matter. The Colonel knew her neck was smooth and fair, but it was for him only. No other man should look upon it, and he vetoed the low necks, but yielded to the short sleeves, which would only leave bare her arms, over which the saleswoman went into ecstasies.

All that evening and a part of the next day boxes of dry goods of various kinds kept coming to the Colonel’s apartments, which looked like some gay bazaar with Fanny in the midst, excited and seemingly happy and oblivious of all that had gone before, except occasionally when a sigh, or a sudden pressure of her hand upon her heart told that she remembered and was exercising her right to think her own thoughts untrammeled by anyone. The Colonel was very suave and gracious, enjoying her enthusiasm and smiling upon her as upon a wayward but conquered child. On the night of the dinner party, as she stood before him, radiant and lovely, and asked what he thought of her, he answered, “I think you will be the most beautiful woman there, after I have made a few additions to your toilet. Look here,” and pulling her down beside him, he laid in her lap a pair of exquisite diamond earrings, the stones large and white and clear, and showing their value by their brilliancy and depth. He fastened them in her ears himself, and then clasped around her wrists a pair of superb bracelets, scarcely less expensive than the diamonds.

“Oh, George,” she said, as she stood up and saw in the mirror the flash of the precious stones which enhanced her beauty, “Oh, George, you are kind, and I thank you so much, and I mean to be good.”

The last words were spoken with a half sob as she put her arms around his neck. She didn’t kiss him. The memory of the bitter words he had said to her was too fresh in her mind for that. But she was grateful and pleased, and as the Colonel had predicted, she was by far the most beautiful woman in Mrs. Harcourt’s drawing room and received the most attention. There was nothing like gaucherie in Fanny’s manner. She conformed readily to the atmosphere around her, and the English, usually so critical where Americans are concerned, forgot to criticise and found her wholly charming and let her know they did. Never in her life had she been so flattered and admired, and never had she been more sparkling and said brighter, wittier things in a ladylike way than now. She had found her place in society at last; the one she had dreamed of but never thought to attain, and for the time she was happy, drinking the brimming cup, and the past was blotted out. She had often said to herself, “It is good to be rich and somebody,” and she said it now with great unction as the people crowded around her and vied with each other in paying her homage. Among them was Lady Hyer, who, proud of her countrywoman, invited her with her husband to spend the Christmas holidays at her house in Surrey, where she was to entertain a large party.

“Oh, I should like it so much, if my husband thinks best,” Fanny said, her eyes dancing with delight as she anticipated the pleasures of a visit in an English country house where she knew she would be the queen.

Yes, it was good to be rich and somebody, and as the Colonel, although non-committal on the subject, seemed to favor the plan, she felt sure that she should go, and began to think of other dresses which would be necessary if a week were spent at Grey Gables, Lady Hyer’s country seat. She might perhaps have gone there if it had not been for the undue attentions of Tom Hyer, Lord Hyer’s younger brother, who made no attempt to conceal his admiration, and who, when the gentlemen were left alone with their cigars, urged the Colonel to accept his sister-in-law’s invitation.

“You’ll meet no end of swell people there and in the neighborhood,” he said. “Cream of society, and madame will be in the swim at once, don’t you know: The Prince occasionally visits at some of the houses, and, by Jove, I heard he was coming this winter. If so, Lou, that’s Lady Hyer, will nab him if she can; and let him once see madame, her success is sure, don’t you know.”

“Yes, I know,” the Colonel replied, bowing stiffly and longing to thrash the cad who thought that the notice of the Prince could add to his wife’s reputation.

On the contrary it would detract from it, and he wanted to tell him so. But the shallow young man would not have understood him, if he had. He had finished his cigar and joined the ladies, and when the Colonel returned to the drawing room he found him seated by Fanny and filling her ears with the gay times she would have at Grey Gables, where he hoped to meet her again. But the festivities of Grey Gables and its neighborhood, with the Prince of Wales as a possible central figure, were not for Fanny, and when she asked her husband why he declined the invitation, he answered curtly, “Because I choose to do so.”

Two days after the dinner party Fanny wrote another letter to her sister very different from the first. There was no regret in it for what she had done,—no mention of homesickness, or Jack; nothing, in short, that the most jealous and exacting husband could not read. She offered it to the Colonel when it was finished, but he declined, saying in much the same tone a father might adopt towards a child who had been punished for some misdemeanor, “I think I can trust you now that you know what my wishes are. I will direct it for you, if you like.”

Fanny handed him the envelope, and while he was addressing it added the few words which embodied so much love and longing for news from home and Jack and told Miss Errington that the bending process had begun as she had predicted it would begin. There were one or two more dinners with lunches and calls and drives, and then the Colonel began to talk of the continent and Paris. There he intended finding a maid for Fanny and a valet for himself. Both were necessary adjuncts and would add to his importance, he thought. To Fanny the idea of a maid was very pleasing, but she preferred one who spoke her own language as well as French.

“If I could only find Julina Smith, I should like it,” she said, “and I think she would be glad to see me. I suppose, though, she is married by this time, or is too fine a person to be a maid. But she might know of some one who would be trusty, which is a great thing to be considered. Her aunt, whose name was Du Bois, kept a French pension, and Julina lived with her. Perhaps Madame Felix might know the place, as she lives in Paris. I wish I dared ask her. I know she is here yet, but she avoids me as if I were the plague.”

For answer to this the Colonel laughed derisively at the idea of consulting Madame Felix with regard to a pension. There were ways of finding Du Bois and Julina, too, if necessary, he said, without interviewing Madame, who never heard of either. He, too, knew that she was still in the hotel, although he seldom saw her. The little old man was ill and she took her meals in her room with him. Occasionally, however, the Colonel came upon her walking up and down the hall as if for exercise. At such times she always gave him a nod of recognition, with a lighting up of her eyes which interested him more than he cared to confess. She was very aristocratic in her feelings and very exclusive he was sure, and this did not at all detract from his desire to know her. Meeting her in the hall the day after his conversation with Fanny he lifted his hat a little more deferentially than usual, and begging her pardon for the liberty, ventured to inquire for her husband who he had heard was ill.

Instantly Madame’s fine eyes became humid, and her voice full of pathos, as she replied that Monsieur, although better, was still too ill to continue their journey to Paris where she so desired to be, or rather to Passy, where they had a chateau full of servants waiting impatiently for them.

The Colonel was naturally very much concerned about Monsieur and very sorry for Madame, who was most artistically dressed and looked very handsome as she stood in the shadow with her back to the light. The Colonel knew that she was artificial and Frenchy through and through, but she attracted him as she did every man, and he went on to speak of the weather and Paris, where he was soon going, and then he rather awkwardly dragged in Julina Smith and the Du Bois Pension, which his wife was anxious to find. It was hardly probable, but just possible that Madame, who knew Paris so well, might have heard of the Du Bois Pension and could direct him to it. Not that he expected to stop there, or at any other pension. He was going to the Grand, he hastened to say, as even in the shadow he saw the light kindling in Madame’s eyes and mistook its meaning. His wife was very anxious to get on the track of Julina Smith, who had once lived in her family, and might be of some service to her in selecting a maid.

For an instant Madame Felix was silent; then, with an outward gesture of her hand, as if thrusting from her something obnoxious, she said in a hard, sarcastic tone, “Monsieur the Colonel does me great honor to enquire of me for the Du Bois Pension and Julina Smith, but I know neither one nor the other, I never kept an intelligence office. Good morning, Monsieur.”

With a haughty shrug of her shoulders she swept down the hall, leaving the Colonel discomfitted and abashed, and a good deal ashamed of himself. What should a superb creature like Madame Felix know of Du Bois and Julina Smith, and what a fool he had been to speak of them to her and incur her contempt. He did not tell Fanny of his adventure, which he knew was prompted not so much by a desire to learn of Julina Smith’s whereabouts as to talk with Madame, who had rebuffed him as he deserved. The little old man, as Fanny always called Monsieur, must have recovered strength rapidly, for the next morning, when the Colonel went to the office he found him sitting there wrapped in furs and shawls, waiting for the carriage which was to take him to the Victoria Station. Putting out his wrinkled, withered hand, he bade him good morning cheerily. He was feeling better, he said, and as Madame had suddenly taken it into her head to go home, they were going, as far as Paris at least. He had an incurable and painful disease, and should probably never see England or Monsieur again, he said; but he spoke very cheerfully, as if the next world would be quite as pleasant as he had found this. Then he inquired for Fanny and sent his best compliments to her.

“She has a bonny face, which interests me,” he said. “She has smiled pleasantly upon me. I like her. I thank her. Tell her so. If I live, and you stay long in Paris, come to the Hotel Felix in Passy. Au revoir, Monsieur. Here is Madame.”

She came bustling in, muffled to her chin in her wraps and followed by her maid and her husband’s valet, who took possession of his master and almost carried him to the carriage outside. Madame’s adieus were politely made, but she did not second her husband’s invitation to Passy, or inquire for Fanny. She had not forgiven him for Du Bois and Julina Smith, but her hauteur relaxed a little when he conducted her to the carriage and stood with uncovered head as it drove away. Three days later he followed in the same direction, and for a time fades from our canvas and is lost sight of in the mazes of Continental travel.

Two years had passed since Annie sat with Jack in “our room” at The Plateau and read the letter which came so near wrecking his life, and now it was the day before Thanksgiving and she was alone in the great silent house. Katy, Paul and Jack were all gone, and only the memory of what had been was left to keep her company. It was nearly six months since Katy left for Europe with Miss Errington, who had had the young girl with her much of the time since Fanny’s marriage and had given her the best musical instruction in Washington. Miss Errington, who had no particular prejudice against the stage, and who believed that a pure good woman could be as good and pure there as elsewhere, had not at first discouraged Katy’s leaning towards it. This was before she knew her well and understood how simple-hearted and innocent and trustful she was; believing everyone to be what he seemed, and how she recoiled from every thing like deception or sham or unpleasant familiarity. Such a girl was not fitted for the stage, where she must at times come in contact with much that would shock her refined and sensitive nature. And when Miss Errington came to understand this she changed her tactics and very quietly threw her influence the other way. But the seed had been sown and Katy never listened to a prima donna that she did not feel a desire to stand in her place and see what she could do towards moving the crowd as Nilsson and others moved it. For the theatre and its plays she did not care. The opera was her ambition, and she believed she could fill the largest house in the world and scarcely feel the effort. Several times she had sung at receptions, and once in public with other amateurs for some charitable object, and as she heard the bursts of applause which greeted her, and received the quantities of flowers thrown at her feet, she thought, “If this is what it is to be a public singer it must be delightful.” Then she remembered Carl’s words, “I would rather see you dead than on the stage.”

Fan had said the same, but her saying was not quite like Carl’s. “And yet he is nothing to me that I should care for his opinion,” she thought, knowing the while that she did care, and that the most thunderous applause that ever shook the Grand Opera House in Paris, or Berlin, or Naples, would be nothing to her if Carl’s approval were withheld. She had met him once or twice during her winter in Washington, and his attentions had been so loverlike that Miss Errington had said to her, “Carl Haverleigh will propose to you if he has a chance.”

“I shall not give it to him; for if I did and accepted him he would forget me in a month,” was Katy’s answer.

She still remembered the rambles in the woods and the talks beneath the pines in the hillside cemetery, at home, when he had looked and acted love, if he had not spoken it, and she remembered, too, his words to Annie, accidentally overheard, “If any girl thinks my attentions to her more than those of a friend it is because she does not understand me.”

She did understand him, she thought, and as she had treated him on Thanksgiving day at the Elms, when he had proposed sending for the clergyman and having a wedding after all, so she treated him now,—pleasantly, familiarly, but never giving him an opportunity of being alone with her. He came to New York to see her off, when with Miss Errington and Norah, who accompanied them as maid, she started for Europe. Owing to some misapprehension with regard to the sailing of the steamer he only reached it in time to see her for a few moments, and that with a crowd of people surging around them. Just at the last, when the command for “all ashore who are going ashore” was given, he said, “I hear you are to study music in Berlin, and with Marchesi in Paris. Is that so?”

“Possibly,” she replied, and he continued: “Have you still career on the brain?”

Something in his tone irritated her, and she answered promptly, “Yes.”

“Then, good-bye,” he said, and taking her hand he wrung it hard and left her.

There were hundreds of people upon the wharf and hundreds upon the ship as it moved away, but Carl saw only one,—a tall, slender girl, in a sailor hat with a blue veil twisted around it, who waved to him until the boat swung out into the river and she was lost to view. Annie’s good-bye had been said at home, where she was left alone with Paul and Jack.

Over the latter a change was gradually coming. It is often the case that when God takes one blessing from us he gives us another in its place, and this was verified with Jack. He had lost Fanny, and the loss for a time crushed him bodily and mentally, blotting all the sunshine of his life and leaving him without hope or courage or faith in anything. Then reaction came with renewed health and vigor, and he woke to the fact that God was not the cruel master he had thought him when his hour was at its worst. There was still something left to live for. Old interests began to come back—in the people around him and in his business. The latter was prospering greatly. Stocks in which he had invested were rising in value. Lands which he had thrown upon the market with little hope of sale were in demand, as were also his services as agent for a large commercial house which paid him double the salary he had before received. This necessarily took him a great deal from Lovering, which he still called his home, although he had rooms in Richmond and St. Louis, where a part of his time was spent. The house on The Plateau remained unsold and closed,—not for lack of purchasers, as several offers had been made him for it, but he declined them all. “Some time, perhaps, I shall sell it, but not now. I am not ready to part with it yet,” he would say, and clung to it with a persistency which surprised his friends, and none more so than Annie. To her it seemed like a tomb, with its barred doors and closed shutters and air of loneliness around it. She still kept the keys, and every week or two went up and opened it to let in the air and see that all was safe. Everything was there as it had been two years ago, except the piano, which Miss Errington had insisted upon having returned. The chair in which Fanny was to sit and watch for Jack stood in the bay window with the table and the work-box upon it. The medallion, so like Fanny as a child, still smiled on Annie whenever she entered the room. Every time Jack came to town, whether for a longer or shorter stay, he went to The Plateau, sometimes staying hours and sometimes only minutes, as the fancy took him. What he thought or felt as he sat or walked through the rooms, where so many hopes had been born and died, no one ever knew, for he gave no sign except that his face, when he left the place, was sad, as our faces are when we come from the graves of our dead. But this was wearing away. His step was growing more elastic, his voice more cheery, and his whole manner more like himself. “He is getting over it,” people said, and were glad and rejoiced with him in his recovered spirits and increasing prosperity. His home proper in Lovering was now at the hotel, where his room was fitted up with some of his mother’s furniture, but he spent most of his time at The Elms with Annie. He did not call her Annie-mother now, or often call her anything, or talk as much to her as he used to do. And she was content to sit with him in silence, satisfied to have him with her and glad that he was in a more healthful state of mind. Fanny’s name was never mentioned by him, or to him by any one, and, for all he knew, she might have been dead and buried.

The last Annie heard from her she was in Paris with her husband, who was suffering from rheumatism and malaria, contracted either in Rome or on the Riviera, and which was so severe as to confine him to his room and chair. In her last letter, written in October, Fanny had said, “We are coming home as soon as George can make up his mind to bear the journey from Paris to Havre.” After this Annie knew nothing more of her except the little she heard from Paul, who had been in Paris with Carl three months or more. The physician in Richmond, to whom he had been taken by Annie, had made light of his lameness, saying it would wear off in time. But it did not wear off, and after Katy’s departure it increased so rapidly that Annie felt constrained to write the truth to Carl and ask what she was to do. As if anxious to make amends for any former neglect or forgetfulness, Carl had written very often to Paul since his last visit to The Elms, and had sent him many packages, containing sometimes money, sometimes books and toys, or whatever else he thought would please him. And now, on the receipt of Annie’s letter, he came at once full of concern, which deepened when he saw the child’s worn face and the slight limp he could not conceal. There was a rapid journey to Philadelphia, another to New York, and a third to Boston, with consultations in each city with the best surgeons and with the same verdict,—hip disease in its incipient stage. Each one consulted was sure he could effect a cure, and each also admitted that probably better medical aid could be had in Paris than elsewhere.

“Then to Paris we will go,” Carl said to Annie on his return to The Elms; “and you will go with us.”

But Annie shook her head. She had a mortal terror of the sea which she could not overcome. To save Paul’s life she would cross it, but hardly otherwise. Fanny was in Paris; Katy was somewhere in Europe with Miss Errington and Norah, and would undoubtedly go to Paris if necessary. “With Fanny and Katy both there you will not need me, and somebody must stay and keep the home fire burning for the rest to come back to when they are tired of wandering,” she said, conscious as she said it of another reason of which she could not speak.

Aside from her dread of the long journey and her terror of the sea was a growing feeling that she could not leave Jack. No word of love for her had ever passed his lips, but something told her that over the grave in his heart new hopes were springing, the tendrils of which were reaching towards herself. When he last started on his journey west, which was to last for a longer time than usual, he had thrown his arm across her shoulders as he stood talking to her in the hall before bidding her good-bye. Looking up in his face she had seen something in it she never saw before and which made her drop her eyes and hang her head.

“God bless you, Annie,” he said, putting his hand under her chin and turning her face up to his again, “God bless you for all you were to me in the dark days which are brightening now so fast that I see the past only through a mist, and that is rapidly lifting. Good-bye.”

He stooped and kissed her on her forehead and was gone, but his kiss still burned where he had imprinted it, and she saw the look in his eyes and heard his voice speaking to her as he had never spoken before. So when Carl came and asked her to go to Europe, she shrank from it with a feeling that she could not.

“I know I am selfish,” she said, “and it breaks my heart to have Paul go without me, but indeed I cannot go.”

After this Carl did not urge her, but began to look around for some reliable man with whom he could trust Paul at all times and in all places. This point Paul settled himself. At the time when Sam Slayton had been caring for Jack at The Elms a great friendship had sprung up between the little boy and the man, and this had increased as time wore on. Almost every day found Paul at the corner grocery, where he sometimes waited upon customers, but oftener sat upon the counter talking to Sam, who said of him to his friends that he was “the cutest little cuss he ever saw;” while Paul in turn worshiped him as the best man in the world, excepting Carl and Jack. When Miranda came, as she did in due time, the intimacy was not interrupted, but rather increased; for in her loneliness and longing for the five brothers she had left in Vermont, Miranda took at once to the little boy, whose prattle amused her so much. For a year the visits to Miranda continued, and then one morning there were streamers of crape on the doors of the house and grocery, and Miranda and her own little boy were coffined and ready for the journey back to her grave among her native hills. This happened while Paul was in New York with Carl, and on his return he found his friend alone, and crying like a child as he talked of his dead wife and baby.

“I’m broken all to smash,” he said, “and have got to go away from here, where every pound of sugar and every quart of vinegar reminds me of Miranda and the little shaver I was goin’ to call for you, if Miss Annie was willin’.”

This made Paul feel at once related to the baby which had looked only a few minutes upon the world before it died, and altogether akin to the bereaved man whose rough hand he held between his small white ones, patting and rubbing it in token of sympathy. When told that Paul was going to Europe Sam began to cry again.

“I wish to lan’ I could go, too, and look after you and the Square,” he said. “I’d be as faithful as a dog, an’ I can’t stay here with these things hauntin’ me and makin’ me think of her.”

As a result of this, Sam Slayton was hired by Carl to go with him to Europe and care for Paul.

“Not a high-toned valet,” Carl said to Annie; “but I like the fellow, and can trust him, and he has promised to be a little more choice in his language, and the slang phrases which Paul is apt to adopt.”

Sam rented his corner grocery, bought a new suit of clothes, went to the hills of Vermont and said good-bye to Miranda; and then he joined Carl and Paul in New York, and with them sailed away to Europe, shocking Carl sometimes with his broad Yankee dialect, but proving the most faithful and loyal servant a man ever had, and, when it was necessary, the most efficient of nurses.

With Paul gone and Jack still away, Annie was very lonely. Carl had, in a delicate way, made everything as easy for her as possible, depositing to her account what seemed to her a large sum in a Richmond bank where she kept her small funds. He had also insisted that a young girl should be hired, and as Phyllis approved the plan, a bright mulatto named Rachel was installed in the house as maid, though really she waited upon Phyllis more than upon Annie. But she was young and full of life, and sang as she worked, and often brought Annie bits of gossip from the outside world, which kept her from stagnating. Paul’s letters were a great comfort to her. He had early learned to write a childish irregular hand, and every week there came a letter from him, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but very dear to the Annie-mother, who he wished could be with him and see all he was seeing. He was under treatment, with the prospect that he would be cured in a little while, and this was comforting. He was at the Grand Hotel in Paris, where they talked the queerest talk he ever heard. Even the children spoke French, and he was going to learn it, too,—and Sam, at whom everybody looked so funny, especially the English, who sometimes laughed at him. But Sam didn’t care a su-mar-kee for one of them, and Paul didn’t care a su-mar-kee either. Sam was just as nice as he could be, and had learned every ’bus line in Paris, and knew that couplet did not mean a place, as he had first thought it did, trying in vain to go there, and hunting all over the map of the city to find it. He hadn’t seen Katy, and didn’t know when he should. She had been to the North Pole to see the sun rise,—then to Stockholm and Russia, and was now in Berlin and was going to Egypt in the winter. Fan-er-nan was in Switzerland, but was coming to Paris by and by. All this was in his first letter.

Later on he wrote: “They’ve put me in a plaster jacket and it hurts me some; but I try not to cry, and Sam takes me in a chair along the boulevards and down to the Palais Royal, and everywhere, and yells like a panther at the cabmen when he wants to cross the street and they are aiming at us. ‘Git back, you scallywags, don’t you see the little boy is lame?’ he says, and they git every time. You ought to hear him try to talk French. He can say ‘Ong-tray’ and Com-bee-ang, and Petty garsong,’ and some more words, and screams when he talks to the people, and they scream at him. I am learning French and teaching English to a nice lady, and this is how it happened. I was sitting in my chair in the court with Sam and my French primer, when there came up to me a very handsome lady with great black eyes and yellow hair and rosy cheeks, which Sam said were painted, but I don’t believe it. She put her hand on my head and said something I couldn’t understand. I knew it was French and answered, ‘I nee parl paw French’—I had learned so much from my primer—and was very proud when the lady laughed and said, ‘Tray be-ang;’ she meant very good, or very well. Then she tried Sam, but he shook his head and said, ‘Nix cum arouse,’ at which she stared awfully. She staid until Carl came up. He didn’t know her and she didn’t know him, but she bowed and he bowed, and they talked some, and Carl made her understand what ailed me. She looked real sorry, and put her hand on my head again and kissed me and went away. I saw her at dinner, where she sat near us, dressed oh! so beautiful, and everybody looked at her, and she didn’t care.

“Carl said she was Madame Felix, and the little fussy-looking old gentleman with her was her husband, and was ill; that’s why he looked so yellow and shut his lips so hard as if he didn’t feel well. I like him, and so does Sam. He came to me after dinner and talked English very bad, but I understood him. Madame Julee he calls her, wants me to teach her English words and she will teach me French. Carl is willing, and every morning now she comes to me and tells me French and I tell her English, which she pronounces sometimes real good, as if she knew it before,—then awfully, and I laugh, and she laughs, and Carl laughs. He is always with us, learning French with me and teaching her English, too. Sam sits and listens and catches on, he says. I’ve thought sometimes Carl wanted him to go away, but he won’t. He don’t like Madame. He says she makes eyes at Carl, and once, when he saw her talking and laughing with him, he said, ‘What tarnal fools.’ I told Carl, and he was mad.

“Sam is going to learn French as fast as he can so as to know what Carl and Madame Julee say to each other, but I am not to tell. I said I wouldn’t, though I don’t see why Carl shouldn’t know that Sam can understand. Do you?”

In Paul’s last letter he wrote: “The little old man, Monsieur Felix, has gone to his chateau in Passy. Madame asked Carl and me to go, too, and we wanted to, but Sam looked like a thunder cloud, and had some high words with Carl, and said how was I to be treated in Passy. So we didn’t go, nor Madame either. The little man told her to stay if she wanted to, and she staid. She told Carl it was so lonesome in Passy,—treest, I think she said, and the housekeeper and servants would take good care of Monsieur, and she could not bear to be shut up in a sick-room with camphire and odor-cologne and nerves; it made her head ache. And Carl said he didn’t much blame her and should miss her awful. I am getting to understand pretty well and faster than Sam, and made this out, but didn’t tell him, he hates Madame so.

“My plaster jacket hurts me sometimes and I cry, but Sam is so good, and says if I bear it like a man I will one day be tall and straight like Carl. He is splendid, and I’d bear anything to be like him. We get on beautiful in French, and Madame beautiful in English. Queer, how well she pronounces at times. I told her so, and she said I was not to tell Carl, because he’d think if she pronounced well once she might always, and she is pretty bad when he is with us. Two secrets I have now,—her’s and Sam’s,—and they make my head ache. Madame has taken me to drive two or three times, and once she had a box at the Opera and took Carl and me. Oh, it was beautiful,—the house and everything, except the ballet. I didn’t like that,—the girls’ dresses were so short and thin, and they whirled so fast and threw their feet so high that I didn’t dare look at them much till I heard everybody cheer, Carl and Madame with the rest. Carl looked at them through an opera glass, although he was pretty near the stage. I had heard Fan-er-nan say something about Katy going on the stage, and I whispered to Carl, “Would Katy do like that?”

“‘God forbid!’ he said, and turned white, and I said I’d get right down on the floor and hide if she did.

“Madame laughed,—seems as if she understands all I say. She was splendid that night,—nothing on her neck but diamonds, which glittered so in the light. Ever so many glasses were aimed at her, and she liked it. After the opera we went for supper to Bean-yon’s, an awful dear place. But Carl didn’t mind. He ordered everything Madame wanted and a bottle of wine. But he didn’t drink. He’d promised his sisters not to, he said. Madame shrugged her shoulders and drank to the health of his sisters. I was so tired I fell asleep in my chair, and when they tried to wake me up they couldn’t. So they sent for Sam, who carried me home in his arms. It isn’t far from Bean-yon’s to the hotel. I slept late next morning, and when I woke Sam was cross as a bear,—not to me, but at Carl, who had gone to Passy with Madame to call on Monsieur. Sam slatted things round and said he wished to Cain that Katy or Fan-er-nan would come and stop it. I asked him ‘Stop what?’ and he said, ‘Stop your asking questions.’

“Sam is funny. Carl has come back and Madame hasn’t. I guess the little old man is pretty sick. I miss Madame and so does Carl, but Fan-er-Nan will be here soon.”

In his next letter Paul wrote: “Fan-er-Nan is here, and such a great lady. Not like Madame,—stiller, prouder, whiter,—I can’t tell you what. ‘Big swell, but cold as a snowball. I knew it would be so,’ Sam said; but she isn’t cold to me. She took me in her arms and hugged and kissed me and sobbed like, but didn’t shed any tears. I told her not to feel so bad,—my back was getting well. She hugged me harder, and said, ‘There are worse things than backs.’

“What did she mean? Sam heard her, and after she went out he said, ‘The cuss!’

“He didn’t mean Fan-er-Nan, for I asked him; and he didn’t mean Madame, for she isn’t here. She was away. I tried my hand at a letter, half French, half English, and told her to hurry up and see Fan-er-Nan, and she wrote to Carl she couldn’t come, Monsieur was so ill. Fan-er-Nan has a maid and talks French as well as Madame, but she is so——I don’t know what,—like something bottled up. Sam says she dresses lovely,—not like Madame exactly, plainer, but in a way you know is first class.

“I have seen the Colonel, and oh my, I don’t wonder Fan-er-Nan seems so still. Why, he’s old, and his foot is all swelled up, and lies out on a cushion, and he has a crutch, and scowls when he talks. He was nice to me, but I didn’t stay long and was glad to get out of the room. They are going home before long. I suppose I shall want to go with them. But I must get straight first, and I like Paris and Carl, he is so kind to me, and when I tell him I am a bother, he says, ‘Oh, Paul, you don’t know all you are to me, you and Sam both.’ He calls me his good angel, and Sam his watch-dog. Queer, isn’t it?”

Paul’s letters troubled Annie. Who was this French woman, and why was Carl so interested in her? At last she decided to ask him about her. She was owing him a letter and would write that night, she thought, as she sat waiting for her supper to be served. Since she had been alone she had abandoned the massive mahogany table which Mrs. Hathern had brought from Boston, and taken her meals upon the little round table which had been her mother’s. This now stood by her near the fire, for the day had been cold, and as it drew to a close the wind began to rise, making it colder still. Dark clouds were scudding across the sky, and as the sun went down the rain began to fall, reminding Annie of that day two years ago when she had brought Jack from The Plateau more dead than alive, and Fanny had been on the sea. Where was Jack now, and where was Fanny? and would she come to Lovering after her return? Paul had said she was coming home soon. Perhaps she was there now and had not written.

The train which used to pass through Lovering at four o’clock now came at quarter past five, and Annie heard the whistle and wondered if there would be a letter for her. She would send Rachel after supper to inquire, she thought, just as a rapid step came on to the piazza and some one entered the side hall. The dining-room door was thrown open, and starting to her feet Annie stood face to face with Fanny.

Chapter IX.—Author’s Story Continued.
FANNY.

She had been driven from the station to the head of the avenue where she alighted, telling the driver she would walk to the house. Seeing no light except the one in the dining-room she had entered that way, and in a moment had Annie in her arms crying like a child for joy. Fanny didn’t cry. It was a long time since any tears had come to soften the hardness of her eyes. But there was a choking in her throat as she felt Annie’s arms around her neck and took in all the old familiar objects,—the carpet she remembered so well,—the clock on the mantel,—the wood fire on the hearth,—the tall andirons,—the fender,—the round table with the simple meal upon it,—and Annie herself, grown younger instead of older, and so plump and round and fair that people called her handsome, with her sweet face, her soft brown eyes and hair and the bright color on her cheeks.

“Why, Annie,” Fan said at last, turning her round so that the fire-light fell fully upon her. “How lovely you are, and how young. I might almost pass for your mother, I am so old and have lived so many years since I saw you. I believe that we are both twenty-eight, and that is not so very ancient, but I feel a hundred.”

She was taking off her hat and sealskin sack and gloves, and stood at last revealed to Annie an elegant woman in every respect, with fashion and style and travel and wealth written all over her from the way she spoke and wore her hair to the tip of her French boot which she held up to the fire. Paul had said of her that she was still and white. She was more than that, and seemed to Annie for a time like a marble statue, talking and moving by machinery, with no will of her own. But she began at last to thaw, shaken into something like the Fan of old by Phyllis, who, hearing she was there, came rushing in and taking her in her arms nearly squeezed the life out of her.

“Honey, honey,” she said, while the tears ran down her cheeks, “I thanks my Heavenly Father dat dese ole eyes has lived to see de comin’ of de glory of de Lord. Dat’s de song we sing in meetin’, and you’s de glory, shoo’, so gran’ and fine. Oh, glory, glory, glory, hallelujah, hallelujah, Amen!”

Then Fan’s old laugh rang through the room, as she said, “Don’t have the power, Phyllis, for pity’s sake. It will take more than Annie and me to drag you out. Better bring me some hot coffee and a plate, so I can have my supper with Annie.”

This brought Phyllis from the skies down to the commonplace, and lamenting that she hadn’t known her chile was comin’ so as to have had something fit for her, she bustled in and out, bringing everything eatable there was in the house, and then waiting upon the young ladies. Rachel, she said, was well ’nuff for common, but she reckoned nobody was gwine to wait on Miss Errin’ton but herself.

At the mention of that name Fanny shivered and put down the cup of coffee she was drinking.

“Call me Miss Fanny while I am here as you used to do,” she said, and laying her head back in her chair she closed her eyes, while there passed before her in rapid review all that had happened since she was Miss Fanny and sat with Annie as she was sitting now with Phyllis attending her.

She had neither been beaten nor sworn at, nor had things thrown at her, as she knew some wives had; the Colonel was too much of a gentleman to do that, but she had been moulded and disciplined and thwarted until it seemed to her she had but little will power left. Just how her husband had subjugated her so completely she could not tell, but subjugated she was, doing as a rule only what he bade her do, and going only where he bade her go. For a time after leaving Paris he had been very proud to see her admired and sought after and had taken her everywhere. Thoughts of Jack ceased to trouble him. He supposed Fanny still thought of him, but she was perfectly exemplary as his wife, and seemed to care little for the attention she received, and he was quite content. Then, for no fault of hers, he suddenly conceived a most violent jealousy of every man who looked at her, or rather at whom she looked, and began to curtail her liberty, telling her where she could go and where she couldn’t. At Monte Carlo, where they spent several weeks, he took her with him once into the roulette rooms, which interested her greatly. She had no thought of playing, but she liked to watch the others. As there were some friends with her she did not always keep by her husband, but went from room to room, animated and excited and wholly oblivious to the many who looked admiringly after her, commenting on her beauty and graceful carriage and wondering who she was. But the Colonel saw it all, and for a short time enjoyed it. Then, as he mixed with the crowd, he overheard some one say, “Is it possible that stern, oldish-looking man, with the bald head and scowl between his eyes, is that lovely girl’s husband? I pity her, and him too. She’s a high-stepper.”

“That’s so,” was the reply of a second man, who seemed loaded with information. “They say she had another lover whom she jilted for money and who died. Quite a little romance, which will undoubtedly end in another. Those eyes of hers don’t look at a fellow for nothing. They actually talk. See, they are resting pityingly on that poor devil who is losing his money so fast, and now they are laughing up into the face of that Russian who has spoken to her. Her old cove of a husband needs to watch her.”

The Colonel heard no more. He was boiling with rage, and would have liked to knock down the man who called his wife a high-stepper, and the other one who called him an old cove and predicted a second romance. Evidently he had allowed his high-stepper too much latitude when men commented on her like this, but he’d stop it now. Ten minutes later Fanny was told it was time to leave.

“Oh please, George, not yet,” she said. “I like it here so much, and it is not late.”

For answer he drew her arm in his and walked away, telling her it was no place for her, with her propensity to attract attention. She was too gushing, he said,—too demonstrative, pitying one man and smiling on another and getting herself talked about. Thereafter he wished her to be more quiet and reserved and keep her gush and smiles for him. She did not know what he meant or to what he referred, but she grew quiet and reserved and cold, and people called her proud and haughty, not knowing that her heart was dead within her, and that every natural emotion was kept down, with every semblance of affection for or interest in anything. But if her fetters were strong they were golden. She had all the money she wanted until it palled upon her, and sometimes when driving in her luxurious carriage she envied the peasant woman whom she saw in the street, knowing that she could do as she liked, with no one to question her. After the Colonel’s lameness came on it was better. She had more liberty, because she took it, and went where she pleased. She never tried to deceive him, but told him where she had been, what she had done, and whom she had seen. He knew he could trust her and always believed her. Once she told him of a young Englishman who had only seen him in his chair with her walking beside him, and who asked her when she met him again how her father was. With a savage imprecation against the young man, whom he called a fool, the Colonel cursed the fate which deprived him of the use of his feet and was fast changing his once erect and military figure into that of a bent old man. He would go back to America and hide himself in his own house, he said, and Fanny did not object. Two years of travel and seeing the world had satisfied her, and she was glad when the day of sailing came, although she dreaded the voyage. Fortunately, she was not sick, but the Colonel was and kept his berth most of the time.

Since his marriage nothing had been said of the cottage at Newport, or of Palmetto Villa in Florida, and the grand house which had been planned before they went abroad still remained on paper only. With his jealousy and morbid state of mind the Colonel’s enthusiasm had cooled. It was better to have his Washington house built when he could see to it, he said, and Fanny acquiesced, as she did in everything. So they went back to the old house on Lafayette Square, and as the Colonel took possession again of his rooms, with every comfort and convenience at his command, he seemed happier than he had been since he left them two years before. Fanny was very kind to him, and had been so ever since his first attack of rheumatism which disabled him from walking, and here, in Washington, she was especially attentive, for her heart was expanding with joy as she thought how near she was to the dear old home which she meant to visit, whether he were willing or not.

Much of all this she told to Annie when, after the table was cleared and the lamp put upon it, she sat on a stool with her head lying in her sister’s lap like a tired child which has come to its mother to rest. And Annie listened with the tears sometimes running down her cheeks as she caressed the beautiful head and smoothed the glossy coils of hair, her heart aching as she detected in them more than one thread of silver which was there before its time.

“I believe I told you in my letter that if I were unhappy no one should ever know it,” Fanny said, in conclusion, “but here, alone with you, it came out before I thought. Don’t suppose, though, it has been all bad, for it has not. I have enjoyed the foreign travel, of course, and I have been nice to George and he has been nice to me a good deal of the time. We have had our spats as, I dare say, all married people do. I have always felt like a slave, though, with an exacting master over me, and only liberty to think what I pleased. He couldn’t help that, and I told him so in the hottest battle we ever had. My thoughts are my own, and that is about all of myself I can call mine. The rest of me belongs to him. When I remember how high-tempered and self-willed I used to be, I can’t see how he has done it. But he has. I am like a spirited horse broken to the harness, stopping when its driver says ‘whoa,’ and starting when he says ‘get up.’ It is better now,—a good deal better,—and if I could forget I should really be quite contented. But oh, the forgetting! I didn’t ask him if I could come. I told him I was coming to spend Thanksgiving with you, and when he said ‘Going to see your old lover, Jack, I suppose,’ I answered, ‘I do not know that he is there. If he is, I shall see him; yes.’ Then I came, but can only stay over to-morrow. I must go back next day. I promised I would.”

In all she had told of her married life she had not spoken of Jack until now, and at the mention of his name Annie felt the blood rushing through her veins, and her hands pressed very heavily upon Fanny’s head which moved a little as for an easier position, so that a part of the white face was visible in the fire-light playing over it. For a while there was perfect silence in the room, and then Fanny asked very low, “Where is he?”

Annie told her where he was and how long he had been gone, and that she expected him now at any time, as he had written that he might spend Thanksgiving with her.

“That would be jolly,” Fanny said, sitting up a moment with her hands clasped around her knees and her eyes looking steadily into the fire. “Annie,” she said at last, putting her head again in Annie’s lap, “you never told me how he took it, or what he said. I only know he was very ill, and suppose I made him so. Tell me all about it,—where he heard it, and when, and how he looked. I want to know everything.”

“Oh, Fan,—no, no!” Annie replied. “You couldn’t bear it.”

“Yes I can. I have borne worse things than that. Tell me everything. Maybe it will make me cry. I haven’t cried in more than a year; not since I was ill in Naples and dreamed I was a child again, and Jack came and put his cool hand on my hot forehead and said ‘Poor little Fan, does it hurt very bad?’ just as he did twenty years ago when I fell from the swing in the barn and raised a great lump on my head. I was so glad to see him, and when I woke and found he wasn’t there,—that it was George sitting by the window, and old Marcella trying to coax into a blaze a smoky fire, I cried under the bedclothes till the tear cistern ran dry. There has been nothing in it since, and my eyes feel so hot at times that I’d like a real thunder-storm. Tell me what he said and did.”

Annie told her everything, sparing no detail and dwelling at length upon Jack’s happiness in showing her all he had done for his promised bride and his eager anticipations of the morrow when he expected her. Then she told of the letter,—its effect upon herself and its worse effect on him,—of his anguish as he read it,—his despairing cry which rang through the room in which so many hopes had been centered,—his distraught manner as they drove home through the rain,—his illness,—his loss of faith in God, and his gradual recovery. Fanny’s face was hidden and Annie could not tell whether she cried or not. She only knew that she never stirred, but lay like one asleep or dead, until she repeated Jack’s words which had burned themselves into her memory.

“Say it again, Annie. I didn’t hear you right. There’s a roaring in my ears. Fanny—isn’t—married;—my Fanny,—who was to have this room,—and watch for me. No-o, Annie. No-o.”

Then Fanny shook like a leaf, and one hand slid down at her side into the light in which the costly jewels,—diamonds and rubies and emeralds,—shone like eyes of fire. Then she was still again,—so still that after the story was ended Annie began to wonder at her silence and tried to lift up the face in her lap. It was ghastly white, and the long heavy lashes which lay upon it brought out more clearly the dark circles under the eyes. Fanny had fainted for the second time in her life. It did not take long to restore her to consciousness. With the first dash of water in her face she opened her eyes and gasped; then, realizing what had happened, she shook the drops from her hair and forehead and said with a laugh, “You needn’t drown me. I was a great deal worse than this at the hotel when I thought Jack was going to die.” Then her eyes grew so large and black that Annie looked at her in wonder. “It was terrible,” she said, “and I am not worth all that pain. I could faint, but I can’t cry; I wish I could. Poor Jack. You say he is over it now?”

“I think so,” Annie answered, with a thought of the kiss he had left on her forehead at parting.

“Does he seem as he used to?”

“Very much.”

“Does he go to church?”

“He didn’t for awhile; he does now.”

“What does he say of me?”

“Nothing.”