Doctor Hathern's daughters

“Nothing?”

“No, never.”

“Do you mean he never speaks my name?” and there were red spots in Fanny’s eyes and redder ones on her cheeks.

“No, he never speaks your name,” was Annie’s reply; and Fanny continued, “And the house on The Plateau,—built for me. What has he done with that?”

“Kept it,” Annie replied, while the red spots left Fanny’s eyes and cheeks and there was an exultant ring in her voice as she said, “Then he has not forgotten me. Oh, Annie, it has always been a comfort to believe that, bad as I am, Jack still loved me. It has kept me from many things I might have done. Col. Errington does not know how much of my loyalty to him he owes to my faith in Jack. But for that I might have defied him and been the veriest flirt in Europe. There were chances enough. I had only to look at a man to bring him to me. But I seldom looked,—partly to keep at peace with my husband, but more for Jack. Do you think he will come to-morrow?”

Annie hardly thought he would, or she should have heard from him to that effect.

“I feel that he will,” Fanny said with conviction. “I hope he will. To see him again,—to hear his voice, and know he didn’t hate me would send me back a better and happier woman to my cage, every bar of which is golden, but they hurt me just the same when I beat my wings against them.”

Annie did not reply. She couldn’t say that she hoped Jack would come. She had hoped so when the day loomed before her long and lonely, but now it was different, and the sight of Fanny might bring back the olden love and leave her stranded just as the goal she longed for was within her grasp.

It was late that night before the sisters went to their rooms, and later still before Annie could sleep. Fanny slept soundly,—“like a top,” she said next morning, when she went down to the tempting breakfast Phyllis had prepared.

“You looks pearter and more like Miss Fanny,” the old negress said, as she bustled around the table, while Annie, too, noticed the change.

There was color in Fanny’s cheeks and her eyes shone like stars, as she went around the house, changing things a little, and wherever she went leaving a more artistic finish than she found. Annie questioned her with regard to Paul and Carl, and then spoke of the French woman, asking if Fanny saw her.

“I saw her in London two years ago,—not in Paris,” Fanny said. “She was in Passy with her husband, but I heard of her from Paul and Sam. By the way, Carl never did a better thing than when he took that Yankee with him. He’s a curiosity to the foreigners, but faithful as the sun. He doesn’t like Madame Felix. He says she’s a sham and neglects her husband shamefully,—that the old man is dying, and that if he does she’ll ‘set her cap for Carl.’ That was the way he put it. But she’ll not succeed. She is not a lady, and though Carl may like to talk with her, as he does with every handsome woman, he’ll never go further than that.”

“Is she so very pretty?” Annie asked, and Fanny replied,

“Pretty is not the term to apply to her, any more than petite. She is stout,—weighing at least a hundred and seventy; but her figure and dress are so perfect that you forget her size. She has large black eyes and yellowish hair,—a peculiar combination, but Frenchy,—fine teeth, high color, which she owes as much to powder and paint as to nature, but it’s well put on, and deceives the men. There is something about her which attracts them, too. She even won upon George,—or tried to. Me she ignored and avoided. She reminded me of somebody, I could not tell whom, and Sam said the same. He will keep watch of her, and Katy will be in the field by and by. From her pure lovely face Carl could never look the second time at Madame.”

Then they talked of Katy and Miss Errington, neither of whom Fanny saw in Europe,—and of the people in Lovering,—and the morning passed and the two o’clock dinner was served, and Jack did not come, and Fanny’s spirits began to fall a little. When dinner was over she said to Annie, “You told me you had the key to the house. Give it to me, please. I am going there.”

Annie gave it to her and she was soon on her way to The Plateau, taking a circuitous path through the woods so as to avoid the villagers. It was dark when she came back, and the lamp was lighted in the dining-room, where Annie was sitting with the tea-table beside her. Fanny’s eyes were very red as she knelt before the fire and held her cold hands to the blaze.

“I have cried at last,” she said, with quivering lips and choking voice, and that was all the reference she made then to that visit to the house where God alone saw the anguish of her soul as she went through the silent rooms, with a feeling that it was her own grave over which she was walking.

It was in the upper room she lingered longest,—“Our Room;”—Annie’s description had been concise and she knew the chair where Jack had sat when he read her letter, and she saw him there in fancy and heard his pitiful cry, “Fanny isn’t married;—my Fanny! No-o, Annie, no-o.”

She went to the bay window and sat down by the table where she was to have waited and watched for Jack as he came up the hill, while from every part of the room came the wailing cry, “No-o, Annie, no-o.”

The windows,—the doors,—the ceiling,—the walls,—all; caught it up and sent it back to her, until it seemed as if her brain were on fire.

“I must cry or die,” she said, stretching out her hands and fanning herself with them for more air.

Then rising up she threw herself upon what was to have been her bridal bed and lay there a crushed, remorseful woman, hiding her face among the pillows whose softness had a kind of healing in their touch, bringing tears at last,—blessed tears,—which fell like rivers and cooled her burning fever. She had wanted a thunder-storm, and she had it. The tear cistern, empty so long, was filled and refilled as often as it overflowed. The dainty pillow-shams with her initial upon them were crumpled and soiled and lay at last in a heap under her head, while the little girl in the medallion looked smilingly down upon her, mocking her misery. When her tears were spent and the choking in her throat was gone she rose up, and laying her hands caressingly upon every article in the room, as if in farewell, went down stairs and out into the darkness, locking the door behind her and saying as she did so, “Good-bye, home which was to have been mine. I was not worthy of you. Good-bye.”

Then she went swiftly through the woods, reaching home just as Annie was beginning to feel anxious about her.

“I have been through purgatory and feel all scorched and blackened with its flames, but purified and better somehow,” she said, as she rose from her kneeling posture before the fire and, taking her seat by the tea-table, she began to talk and laugh as merrily as if she had really been through purgatory and was entering Paradise.

Some comment which she made about the knife she held reminded Annie of the wedding present Carl had sent to her two years before. She had written Fanny about it, asking if she should send it to Washington, and Fanny had replied, “Keep it until I come home.” Bidding Phyllis bring the boxes Annie opened them, disclosing the contents to her sister, whose surprise and delight were unbounded.

“They are exquisite,” she said, “but our house in Washington is full of silver and china. These were meant for Fanny Fullerton, not for Fanny Errington. The silver is marked “H.” Keep them for yourself when you marry, if you ever do.”

The spot upon her forehead which Jack had kissed burned so at the mention of her marrying that Annie felt as if her sister must see it, and she put up her hand to cover the place. All day she had half expected Jack and hoped he would come. Better that he should see Fanny and know that he is cured before he commits himself again, she thought, as she watched her sister with a feeling that if she had lost some of her girlish beauty and vivacity, she had gained in grace and an indescribable something which would distinguish her from hundreds of women.

But Jack did not come, and Fanny left the next morning without seeing him. Annie urged her to stay longer, but she replied, “I promised and must keep my word like that old chap Romulus, or Remus or Regulus, which was it, who went back to Carthage and was rolled in a barrel full of spikes. I shan’t be rolled in a barrel. On the contrary, George will be glad to see me. I’m nice to him most of the time. He says I bandage his foot better than Clary,—that’s his man,—and I read to him by the hour, and brush his hair, and am really quite a pattern wife. When I can’t stand it any longer and he swears awfully,—not at me,—he never does that,—but at Clary and his foot, I go off by myself and say some big words and make faces and look at my diamonds and read some slips cut from papers about the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Errington, and feel better.”

She talked as if she were wholly heartless, but Annie knew her gayety was feigned and pitied her intensely.

“When George is better I mean to have you come to Washington and see how grand I am,” Fanny said, when dressing for her journey. “I knew a good many people there as Miss Hathern, and as Mrs. Errington I shall know more, and can introduce you to the best society. So when I send for you, come.”

She was very bright and cheerful at breakfast, which was eaten by lamplight, for in order to connect with the Washington train she must leave Lovering at an early hour and then wait in Richmond until nine o’clock or later.

“I don’t mind it at all,” she said, when Annie expressed her regret at the delay, and as she tied on her bonnet she began to hum a strain of an opera, keeping time to it with her head.

Was she then so glad to go back, Annie wondered. The truth came out at last.

“I have a presentiment that I shall see Jack in Richmond while I am waiting. I am almost sure of it. Oh, Annie, you don’t know what it will be to me just to hear his voice once more,” she said, and then with a good-bye kiss she was gone and Annie was alone again.

Jack had hoped to spend Thanksgiving with Annie, but had been detained a day longer than he anticipated, and did not reach Richmond until Thanksgiving night. He had come from the west and stopped in Washington the very day that Fanny left for Lovering. He did not know that she had returned from Europe until he overheard two men in the office of the hotel speaking of the Colonel, who, they said, was in a very critical condition, as there was danger at any moment that his rheumatism might attack his heart.

“He will leave a handsome young widow behind him,” one said, while the other nodded and replied, “She’ll console herself readily enough with the lover she jilted. You knew about that, didn’t you?”

The man questioned didn’t know, and his friend began at once to tell the story. But Jack didn’t wait to hear it, and leaving the hotel he walked rapidly through street after street, excited and angry that Fanny’s name should be thus bandied about in public. His love for her was gone, but he could not forget what she had been to him, and it was dreadful to hear her spoken of in that way. As he walked there came over him a desire to see where she lived. It did not take long to find the place, and standing on the opposite side of the street he looked curiously at the great silent house, in which no light was shining except in the hall and from the upper windows of a corner room where the Colonel sat groaning with pain and cursing himself for an idiot that he had let Fanny go even for a day. No one cared for him as she did, and he missed her more than he had thought it possible.

“I’ve been a brute a good many times, but I mean to do better when she comes back. I don’t suppose, though; I can ever make her love me. Confound that Fullerton; I wonder where he is,” he was thinking, just as the electric bell pealed through the house and kept on ringing, as they sometimes do, until the housemaid, who hurried to the door, stopped it.

“Who the devil is that greenhorn ringing like that?” the Colonel said, as every whiz of the bell rasped his nerves afresh.

It was Jack. From seeing the house there had come to him a desire to see Fanny.

“Nothing can better assure her that I am all over it than calling upon her,” he thought, as he crossed the street and touched the electric button.

Mrs. Errington was not at home the maid said, and with a half feeling of relief that she was not, Jack gave the girl his card and left.

“Who was it?” the Colonel asked from the open door of his room.

The maid brought him the card.

“John D. Fullerton, Lovering, Va.,” the Colonel read, consigning Jack at once to the lower regions, together with his aching foot which, at the sight of his rival’s name, he had lifted high in the air, with the result of a sharper twinge than any he had experienced. “What brought him here, I wonder?” he thought, feeling glad that Fanny was not at home and gladder still that she probably would not see Jack at Lovering.

Meanwhile Jack went to his hotel and the next day parted for Richmond, reaching it too late for the train to Lovering. Once he thought to telegraph Annie; then decided to surprise her on Friday. It was necessary to see his employers, whose office on the third floor commanded a view in the distance of the plain across which, about half-past nine on Friday morning, the Washington train was speeding on its way with Fanny in it. While waiting at the station she had looked into the gentlemen’s room and walked through several streets, hoping that chance might throw Jack in her way if he were in the city, and feeling greatly disappointed that she did not find him. Returning to the station she finally took her seat in the car which was to carry her to her husband, a happier woman than when she left him,—happier because she believed, after what Annie had told her, that Jack loved her still, and this lightened every dark spot in her life. She might have changed her mind could she have read his thoughts as he sat awaiting the arrival of one of the firm and watching her train as it disappeared from view. He had no suspicion that she was in it, but he was thinking of her and his call at her house, and was glad that with his thoughts of her now there was neither bitterness nor regret for the past. Once she had filled his heart so completely that he would have given his life for her, but she had gone from it, leaving it empty and ready for another occupant. Just when it came to him that Annie was the sweetest and dearest and loveliest little woman in all the world he could not tell. But it had come, and it seemed to him that he had always loved her,—not as he did Fanny, but that she had always been necessary to him,—that when Fanny’s beauty and teasing coquetry were stirring him to the very depths, Annie’s gentleness had acted as a counter irritant, soothing and quieting him and bringing out the best there was in him. It was weeks since he had seen her, but he had carried her image with him as she was that night he parted from her and kissed her on the forehead. Something in her eyes had made him think that he was more to her, perhaps, than the brother he had called himself, and all through his travels in Colorado and Utah and Texas he had been revolving in his mind the expediency of asking her to be his wife, and had built many castles for the future which began to look fair and bright to him again, with Annie as his guiding-star.

“I shall see her to-night and settle it,” he thought, while he watched Fanny’s train until the last wreath of smoke disappeared in the distant woods.

He could better afford to marry now than he could two years ago, when nearly everything he had was expended upon his house, which he had finally decided to sell. His business over he started for Lovering, which he reached at the same hour Fanny had on the day of her arrival. His first thought was to go at once to The Elms. Then he concluded to wait until later when Annie was sure to be alone. Something, he scarcely knew what, prompted him to take The Plateau on his way. Possibly it was to see if there still lingered in his heart any feeling of regret that the hopes which once clustered around the spot had been so cruelly blighted. He reached it about dark and as he walked around it, it seemed to him more than ever like a tomb in which a part of his life was buried. He always kept one key with him, while Annie had the other. Entering the house at last he went through the rooms one after another until he came to the bridal chamber. Even here there was no longing in his heart for the woman who had so cruelly betrayed him. It was there his love for her had received its death blow, and he looked around him as we look at the grave of a friend years after the friend was buried there. Suddenly he started as his eyes became accustomed to the dim light. The bed was tumbled,—the pillows were displaced,—the shams were crumpled. Somebody had lain there,—not quietly, but restlessly, as if in pain, or great excitement. Who was it, and how did they get in? He examined every door and window below. Everything was secure, and in some perplexity he left the place and walked rapidly to The Elms. Again there was a bright fire on the hearth in the dining-room, with the round tea-table before it, and again Annie was sitting beside it, very pretty in her brown dress, the shade of her eyes and hair. Rachel had brought her a half-opened rose, which had grown on a bush Phyllis had been tending in her kitchen, and Annie had fastened it on her bosom, thereby adding to the brightness of her appearance. She had spent a lonely day with Fanny gone and no message from Jack, who was probably still far away. Rachel had brought in her supper and she had dismissed the girl, preferring to be alone. She was not hungry, and was sitting with her feet on the fender and her hands clasped behind her head and looking into the fire so intent upon her thoughts that she did not hear the opening or closing of the door, nor the step on the floor as Jack crept up very cautiously until he stood looking down upon her partially upturned face as her head rested on the back of her chair. It was a very fair face,—a pure, honest, innocent face, where nothing unwomanly had ever written a line. It was just the face a good man would like to kiss, and Jack did kiss it, not once but many times, as he stooped over her and put his big warm hands under her chin and drew her nearer to him.

With a cry she bounded to her feet and looked at him with crimson cheeks and a light in her face such as he had never seen in Fanny’s face when she was the kindest to him.

“Oh, Jack, how did you get in and I not hear you?” she said, and then her eyes fell under something she saw in his and understood.

He held her hand and had one arm around her when Rachel came in to clear the table. The girl was young and knew the signs, and hurried out with the tea things, telling Phyllis that “Mas’r Jack had done come and was sparkin’ Miss Annie, who snugged up to him as if she liked it!”

“In course she likes it, and I thanks de good Lord who has brung it to pass on account of my rasslin’ so much in prar that it might come,” Phyllis said, never doubting that she had been instrumental in moving the Almighty to bring about what she so much desired. “Don’t you go anigh, nor make a speck of noise, for dis is a solemn occasion,” she said to Rachel, restraining her in every way and herself walking in her stocking feet lest she should disturb the couple, who would scarcely have heard a cannon had it been fired in the lane.

Leading Annie to the couch where he could hold her in his arms better than if she sat in one chair and he in another, Jack told his love in a straightforward way and asked her to be his wife.

“I cannot offer you the same kind of love I gave to Fanny,” he said. “That began in my boyhood and was like the fruit which ripens early, with a blight upon it. You know how it died, but not how dead it is, or how another more healthful love has sprung up for the dear little girl who was always better suited to me than Fanny. Don’t speak yet,” he continued, as he saw Annie about to protest. “I have had time to think it over among the Rockies;—on the plains and prairies of the west and under the southern skies. The past has always been with me, and I have never for a moment forgotten what Fanny was to have been to me. If I had not lost my faith in God I should have prayed to die, but I had made myself believe that if there were a God He did not care for me, and I was not willing to go unbidden into His presence. Always in my darkest moments I seemed to see you, pitying and comforting me as you did that dreadful night. At first your face was shadowy,—then it began to clear, until now it stands out before me as the dearest, sweetest face in the world. Sweetest because of the truth and goodness showing in every feature, and dearest because it is the face of my wife that is to be.”

He was taking things for granted and kissing the face he thought so sweet, until it was as red as the rose which Annie wore and which became fearfully crumpled as the love-making went on.

“Oh, Jack,” Annie said, when at last she could get a chance, “Oh, Jack, you frighten me so, and Fanny was here yesterday, and left this morning. I don’t quite believe she would like to have you say all this to me. She is happier in knowing that you remember her.”

“I do remember her,” Jack replied. “I think of her every day,—but that has nothing to do with my love for you. She has gone out of my life as completely as if she were dead. Why shouldn’t she? What have I to do with a married woman? You say she has been here? Tell me about it.”

Very briefly Annie told him of Fanny’s visit, saying that she left that morning.

“Then she must have been in the train I watched till it was out of sight. I should like to have seen her. She is a very grand lady by this time, I suppose,” Jack said, and then told of his call at the house in Washington, speaking as indifferently as he would have spoken of an ordinary acquaintance. There could be no more doubt that the old love was dead than that the new was in all its freshness and vigor and would not be denied.

“You have not answered me yet,” Jack said at last. “I want to hear you say you love me, and I shall know it is as true as the everlasting hills.”

“Oh, Jack,” Annie said. “If you are perfectly sure you want me, I will be your wife. I believe I have loved you all my life.”

He had his arms around her again and was showering kisses upon her face, when Rachel, curious to know how matters were progressing, peered cautiously in and then tiptoed back to the kitchen, her eyes like saucers as she said, “He’s gone done it, sho’; he’s squeezin’ her,—oh, my. Lem’ me show you,” and she experimented on Phyllis, who shook her off, saying, “Git ’long wid ye. Dat ar’ no way to do it. When I’se young an’ Josiah came cross de hemp fields courtin’ me, he got on his knees, an’ I done sot in his lap, an’ oh, my Lor’, de good times till he took de cholera an’ died an’ lef’ me a widdy.”

“Oh, dat’s long ’go. We’s more refined sense de wah, and spark different,—more like white uns,” Rachel replied, with the air of one who was skilled in love-making as practiced “sense de wah.”

It was late that night before Jack left The Elms. He had so much to say, and his love kept growing so fast for the quiet little girl, who was content to sit with her head upon his arm and her hand in his and listen while he told her over and over again how dear she was to him, and planned their future. Fortune was favoring him in many ways, and although he might never be rich he should be able to surround her with every comfort and relieve her of all care.

“Would you like to live at The Plateau?” he asked, and Annie answered quickly, “No, no; not there. I might get jealous of Fanny. Let us stay here where I was born, and keep the dear old home for them all to come to, Paul and Katy and Carl. I can’t help thinking he will yet be one of us,—and Fanny, too. Something tells me she’ll come by and by.”

Just what Jack thought of Fanny’s coming he did not say, but he planned with Annie to sell the house on The Plateau with all its belongings to a gentleman from Richmond who had spoken of buying it. He urged a speedy marriage,—the sooner the better,—although it would be hard to tear himself away for the long trips he might have to take at intervals for several months and possibly a year. But Annie said “No; we must wait till you are through traveling. I could not bear to have you leave me alone after I was your wife. And then I want Katy and Paul here when we are married. Let us say next Thanksgiving. I shall not be quite an old maid then. I am only twenty-eight now.”

She laughed merrily as she glanced up at him with a look which reminded him of Fanny, it was so bright and coquettish. Was that why he kissed her so passionately? He didn’t think so. He believed every spark of his old love dead, or he would not have talked of a new. Annie was not as beautiful as Fanny, but she was very lovely in her mature womanhood, and would never fatigue and worry and bewilder him as Fanny had done in her varying moods. He was supremely happy, and when alone that night in his room at the hotel he knelt down for the first time since the morning two years before when he had made so many good resolves, and thanked God in so many words for taking Fanny from him and giving him Annie instead.

Chapter XI.—Author’s Story Continued.
THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.

“Col. Errington died last night. Come at once.

This telegram was brought to Annie one morning just after Jack had left her for Richmond. For a moment everything around her was chaos, as she sat with the message in her hands trying to collect her thoughts, which turned into a strange channel. Col. Errington was dead. Fanny was free, and loved Jack as well, or better, than she ever did. And Jack? What of him? Now that the barrier was removed, would his first great love revive, kindled again into flame by his pity for Fanny, and the wiles she would surely practice upon him, given the chance?

“No, oh no!” Annie said at last. “It is unjust to Jack and a wrong to Fanny.”

Then as she read again the “Come at once,” she began to plan for her journey, the first she had ever taken alone. It was too late to go that day, and she must take the early train the next morning and wait in Richmond as Fanny had done.

“I shall telegraph Jack to meet me there,” she thought, wondering how he would look when she told him Col. Errington was dead.

The little jealous stab would intrude in spite of her, and when, the next morning, summoned by the telegram he had received from her the day before, Jack met her at the station, she told him the news in a breath.

“Oh, Jack, Col. Errington is dead. Fanny is a widow and has sent for me,” she gasped, and then looked up at him, much as a criminal in the dock looks at the judge when receiving sentence.

But what she feared she might see was not there. Jack was startled, but not greatly surprised, as he recalled what he had heard of the Colonel’s condition in Washington. The words “Fanny is a widow” made no other impression than to present her to his mind as sorrowful and alone. He knew nothing of her married life, but supposed she had been comparatively happy, inasmuch as she had her heart’s desire,—money. Naturally, she was very desolate now in the first stages of her grief, and in his great kind heart he was sorry for her, but more sorry for the timid girl clinging so closely to him as she asked many questions about her journey,—must she change cars and did he think they would run off the track, and what should she do when she got there if there was no one to meet her. He told her that she did not change cars,—that the train would not run off the track, and there would be some one to meet her if, as she said, she had telegraphed that she was coming. Then he made her sit down while he went for her ticket, and when he came back to her he held up two, instead of one.

“Jack,” she exclaimed, “are you going with me?”

“Yes, little woman. I thought it would please you,” he replied, taking her arm to lead her to the train.

She was very glad, and still the little stab would intrude, as she wondered how much he was actuated by a wish to see Fanny again, and how much by a desire to please her. The train was a slow one and this day it was unusually slow, so that it was late when it drew into the station in Washington. Half the way at least Jack had sat with his arm partly around her, and once, overcome with fatigue, she had fallen asleep, and when she awoke had found her head lying on his shoulder.

“Oh-h, excuse me. What must the people think?” she said, blushing crimson, as if guilty of an indiscretion. Jack laughed and answered, “They’ll think you are my wife or sweetheart, and who cares if they do? Put your head down again. You look tired.”

But Annie sat bolt upright the rest of the way, and as far from Jack as she could get. When they reached Washington he took her to the waiting-room, while he went to look for the Errington carriage, if it were there. With a little inquiry he found it,—a very grand turnout, with its shining black horses and shining harness and shining driver in livery, who said he was sent for Miss Hathern.

“Come on; it’s all right,” Jack said to Annie, leading her to the carriage and seeing her inside. Then, greatly to her surprise, he put himself half way in and kissed her, saying, “Good-bye, darling. Write me to-morrow, and don’t stay longer than you can help.”

“But, Jack, arn’t you going with me?” Annie cried, and he replied, “Why, no. I only came to see you safely here and shall go back to-night. The train leaves in half an hour. If I could be of any service to Fanny I’d go, of course; but she has plenty to help her. Give her my kind regards, and say I am sorry for her. Good-bye.”

He kissed her again, closed the door, and motioned the coachman to drive on.

“Mrs. Errington wishes me to bring you to her directly,” the maid said to Annie, who, cold and tired and bewildered by the elegance and grandeur which met her eyes on every side, followed on up the wide stairway to the room where Fanny sat, her face very pale and her eyes very large and bright, but with no particular semblance of grief, except the closed shutters and the deep black border on the handkerchief she held in her hand.

“Annie, I am so glad you have come at last. Adam was gone so long I was afraid there might have been an accident, and you all alone and not accustomed to traveling,” she said, holding out her arms and only half rising from her chair.

“The train was late, but I was not alone. Jack came with me,” Annie replied, and instantly Fanny’s whole demeanor changed.

In her own house, and a widow just bereaved, she had not at first seemed just as she did in Lovering with the old familiar objects around her and her head in Annie’s lap. She was a grander, more dignified lady, as befitted her surroundings, and Annie had noticed it and thought it quite appropriate. But at the mention of Jack she was Fanny again, and springing up exclaimed, “Jack came with you! How kind in him. Where is he? Why didn’t he come here at once?”

Annie explained that he only came because she was timid and foolish,—that he was going back that night, and had sent his kind regards to Fanny and said he was sorry for her.

“He is not going back to-night if there is time to reach him. I want to see him. It is perfectly proper for him to come here,—the only male friend I have in the world, and just like a brother,” Fanny said, her hands shaking with excitement as she touched the bell and summoned her maid, Marie.

Adam was ordered to return to the station as fast as possible,—find the gentleman who came with Miss Hathern and bring him to the house.

Meanwhile, Annie had removed her hat and cloak and drawn up to the fire in the grate.

“You are cold,” Fanny said, “and hungry, too. Dinner will be served as soon as Jack gets here, and I shall be so glad to have some one at the table with me. I have scarcely eaten since—George—died.” She hesitated a little and then went on steadily, “It was very sudden at the last and I was sorry when I saw him dead and knew how he wanted to live.” Annie looked at her quickly, and she continued, “I know you think me hard, but there is no need for me to pretend to be heartbroken with you, who know everything. There was no real affection between George and me, although we were getting on better of late, and since my visit to Lovering we have been very friendly and familiar, kissing each other every morning and every night. He was glad to see me when I came home, and only said one mean thing. Jack called,—perhaps you know,—and left his card. George showed it to me and said, ‘I dare say you’d rather have missed your visit home than him.’ I replied, ‘A great deal rather.’ He didn’t swear at me, but he did at his foot and went on to say, ‘You may have a chance soon to get your old lover back, if the doctor is right in his diagnosis. He says there is danger of this confounded rheumatism attacking my heart if I allow myself to get excited as I do at times. I was swearing pretty loud at Clary and my face was purple, I suppose. So the easiest way to get rid of me is to worry and annoy me and rouse me up.’

“I was very angry, but did not say a word. There was something in his face I had not seen there before. A change for the worse and it deepened every day as the disease crept up to the region of his heart. I was as kind to him as I could be, and he wanted me with him all the time. Once after I had read to him an hour and brushed his hair, he put both his poor swollen hands up to my face and said, ‘You are very good to me, Fanny, and I have cared more for you than you thought. I have been hard and mean, but when I get well we will begin again.’

“That touched me more than anything he had ever done, and I said I had been mean, too, and kissed him, and I am so glad to remember it now he is dead. It was awfully sudden at the last. He seemed better and wanted to go down to dinner with me, and asked me to put on one of my pretty dresses from Worth’s and let him see me in it. I did so and walked back and forth in his room, while he commented and admired. Then I went to dinner and was nearly through when Marie came running in and told me he was dying. I reached him in time for just one look from his eyes, and such a look, as if he wanted to tell me something. Then he was gone. I wish it had been different with us and that I could feel as a widow ought to feel. But I can’t. There is a lump in my throat when I think of George, and I have been in and looked at his dead face many times, and staid there once half an hour trying to get up a widow’s feeling. I am sorry that I did not make him happier, but I can’t cry, and don’t want to. I shall enact all the proprieties,—wind myself in crape and wear a widow’s cap, which will be horridly unbecoming, and shall hanker after all my new Paris gowns I was to wear this winter, and which are of no use to me now. Hark! Isn’t that the carriage I heard? I wonder if Jack came.”

She ran to the window to look out. Jack did not come. Adam had reached the station just as the train for Richmond had gone, and, greatly disappointed, Fanny went with Annie to dinner, which was served as Annie had never seen a dinner served before, for Fanny exacted her pound of flesh and never omitted any ceremony, although she dined alone. She had married for money and position and style, and she made the most of them, finding in them some compensation for the emptiness of her domestic life. For the dead man in his costly casket she had no love. He had thwarted her at every point and kept her down, and now that the iron hand was withdrawn she could not help a feeling of relief, although sorry for all that had been unpleasant between them as man and wife. He had been far more in fault than she, but now that he was gone she could recall many a time when she might have done differently and provoked him less. But he was dead, and she was not going to wear her life out with regrets for what could not be helped, she said to Annie, when, after dinner was served, she sat again in her room and talked first of George and then of Jack, and quite as much of the latter as of the former. Twice Annie opened her lips to tell her of her engagement, but each time something Fanny said checked her. “I’ll wait,” she thought, with an uneasy feeling that such news might affect Fanny more than the death of her husband.

The funeral was private, and Fanny, wound in crape, as she said she should be, looked the embodiment of grief, and felt a sharp pang of pain and remorse when her husband was carried from the house he would never enter again. It was hers now with everything pertaining to it, for she was sole heir to all his large fortune. The family lawyer told her this and read her the will when all the paraphernalia of death were removed, the blinds opened, and the wintry sun was shining brightly into the handsome rooms. The will was made while Fanny was in Lovering, and when she heard it and knew that everything was hers unconditionally she covered her face with her hands and cried.

“It was so kind in him,” she said to Annie when they were alone. “I didn’t expect it, and I don’t deserve it.” Then she began to plan what she would do with so much money. Annie was to have some, and Katy and Paul, and Jack, if he would take it. Did Annie think he would? “No, never; don’t insult him that way,” Annie exclaimed so energetically that Fanny looked at her in surprise, but with no suspicion of the truth.

Again and many times thereafter Annie tried to tell her, but as often as she tried something held her back. A little shadow was darkening her horizon, and it increased as the days went on and she gained a clearer insight to Fanny’s real feelings. She was a model widow, doing everything she ought to do, secluding herself from the world, seeing very few who called, wearing her weeds with a tolerably good grace, except the cap, and talking a good deal of George, but far more of Jack. And Annie, listening to her, felt herself grow sick with a morbid fear as she thought “she loves him, and—perhaps—perhaps—now that she is free, his love for her will come again, and I shall be left desolate.”

More than one fierce battle the brave little woman fought with herself when alone in her room. If Jack turned to Fanny could she bear it and make no sign, she asked herself over and over again, while her heart ached as if the thing she so much dreaded had come to pass. In her calmer moments she could remember how wholly Jack seemed to love her now, and that gave her comfort and hope. “But if he is mistaken,—if as time passes and he meets Fanny, as he must, and falls again under the spell of her beauty, I shall know it and give him up,” she thought. “Better so than share a divided heart. That I could not bear. I’ll not tell Fanny of our engagement yet. I’ll give Jack a chance and trust him until I see some sign.”

There was a long letter from Jack the next day, full of love and tenderness, with a kind message for Fanny, who fortunately did not hear the postman and thus knew nothing of the letter which Annie read and hid in her bosom like a guilty thing, blushing when her sister looked at her and turning away as if afraid her treasure might be snatched from her. Fanny had no suspicion. She only thought how pretty Annie was growing in her old age, as she laughingly called their twenty-eight years. Once she led her to the glass and said, “See how much younger you look than I do, especially in this disfiguring cap. I won’t wear it,” and she tossed the offending head-gear upon the bed. Even without it there seemed a disparity of years between them, for over Annie’s face no stormy passions had ever swept like those which had written faint lines about Fanny’s eyes and mouth and frosted some threads of her hair just where it showed the most. Annie’s was soft and brown and glossy as a child’s, and the light in her eyes was steadfast and clear and always the same, except when she thought of losing Jack. Then it grew suddenly misty with the tears she kept forcing back.

Several times as the weeks went by Fanny wondered why Jack didn’t write, and once she suggested writing to him and inviting him to come to Washington and accompany Annie home when she was ready to go. But Annie saw through the ruse and dissuaded her from it, saying she felt quite equal to making the journey alone. She had received several letters from Jack and had always been fortunate enough to take them directly from the postman or Marie, and Fanny, who staid a great deal in her room knew nothing of them. On the whole, Annie’s life in Washington was not very hilarious. She took several drives, visited the Capitol, the Treasury, the Patent Office and Smithsonian, and attended a reception at the White House, and received a few calls. But the ladies who came in velvets and furs and carriages were not like the people of Lovering, who ran in informally morning or evening or at any time. She missed the familiarity and friendliness of her home life, and after staying six weeks with her sister she announced her intention of going back to Lovering.

At first Fanny objected, then suddenly changed her mind and seemed rather to accelerate her sister’s departure than to retard it. Annie had told her of Jack’s intention to sell the house on The Plateau, and that had troubled her.

“Tell him not to do it. Maybe I shall live there yet,” she had said more than once, and on the morning when Annie left her she referred to it again, adding, as she kissed Annie good-bye, “If I find this big house too ghostly I shall come home. You may see me at any time. Give my love to all the people, and—yes,—to Jack, too. Why not? Tell him I think him mean never to have sent me any message, except the one you brought me the night you came. He might at least have sent me a card of sympathy for the sake of Auld Lang Syne.”

She didn’t look as if she needed much sympathy, as she stood in her black gown, tall and graceful, with a healthful light in her eyes, a smile on her lips, and color in her cheeks to which the roses were coming back; and it was this picture of her which Annie carried in her mind as the train moved out of Washington and on into the rather desolate Virginia country through which the road to Richmond passes.

Chapter XII.—Author’s Story Continued.
GOING HOME.

“I don’t want to be a great lady in society. I’d rather live all my life in plain Lovering,” Annie thought as she reviewed the incidents of her visit, and then her mind turned upon Jack, who was getting impatient for her return. She knew he was in Richmond and was wondering if he would meet her, when the cars suddenly stopped. Something was the matter with the engine which could not be remedied at once. They were near Fredericksburg and a few of the passengers walked to that place, but Annie kept her seat, varying the monotony occasionally by short excursions into the woods. It was three hours before they were ready to start and then they moved but slowly. All hope of connecting with the Lovering train was given up, and Annie was beginning to feel very desolate and to wonder what she should do in a strange city and alone, when they stopped again for water. She was cold and hungry, and there were tears in her eyes as she looked out upon the darkening landscape and thought of Jack and wished he was with her. Leaning her elbow on the window stool she was about to indulge in a good cry when somebody came up behind her, put both hands on her shoulders, joined them together under her chin, drew her face upwards and backwards and kissed her!

“I knew you by the little red wing on your brown hat,” the somebody said, and Jack was sitting beside her.

He had a few hours off, he explained, and had come to meet her, knowing that the train stopped for water at this station, where he had waited during what seemed a little eternity.

“I knew you’d be hungry and I foraged round till I found a sandwich, a fried cake and some apples,” he continued, putting a paper parcel in her lap and getting possession of one of her hands.

She was not cold any more, or very hungry either, although she managed to make way with a sandwich and part of a fried cake whose age she could not well guess.

Jack was with her. He had come to meet her. His face was close to hers,—his arm was around her notwithstanding that she told him people were looking on, just as she had told him on their journey up.

“Let them look,” he said, glancing around. “There’s nobody behind us but an old man, and two old women, and a young one who would like to be in your place.”

Then he asked her about her stay in Washington and made some inquiries about Fanny as naturally as if she had been the most ordinary acquaintance. It was eight o’clock when they reached Richmond and Jack took Annie for the night to a friend of his. The next afternoon he accompanied her to Lovering, where Phyllis was ready for her. Jack had telegraphed that Annie was coming, and the old negress stood in the door, a new turban on her head, and her face shining as she welcomed her mistress home.

“Oh, it is so good to be here,” Annie said, as she let Phyllis remove her cloak and hat and then sank into the easy chair before the fire.

The round table was brought out again for supper with the best silver and china, and Phyllis waited and repeated all the gossip of the town, while Annie listened with more interest than she had felt for anything since she left home. Lovering was the place to live in and Fanny was welcome to her grandeur and the society of which she thought so much. By and by Jack came in and then it was heaven with him beside her, talking of their future with almost as much enthusiasm as he had once talked to her of that to-morrow which had never dawned for him. He was going north soon on a tour which might be extended into three or four months. This was to be the last, for when he returned his place was to be filled by another man and he was to become partner in the firm and open a branch of the business in Lovering.

“Then we shall be married. There is no reason why we should wait any longer,” he said, kissing the face resting upon his shoulder as he talked. “I thought I was sure to sell the house on The Plateau, but the man has changed his mind. Someone else, however, will want it,” he said.

Annie was silent for a moment, and then she said, “Fanny bade me tell you not to sell it.”

“Why! What possible interest can she have in it?” Jack asked in some surprise, and Annie replied “She said she might live there yet.”

“Fanny live at The Plateau! Impossible! What does she mean? Didn’t you tell her of our engagement?” Jack said.

“No,” Annie answered falteringly.

“Why not?” Jack demanded in surprise.

Hesitating a little Annie replied, “I hardly know. I tried to tell her two or three times, but something always stopped me, Jack,” and Annie began to finger the buttons on his coat, counting them to herself as she did so, “I do not believe Fanny ever cared very much for her husband.”

“I never supposed she did, but what has that to do with your not telling her?” Jack said, imprisoning the hand fingering his buttons.

Annie had not intended letting him know of the foolish fancy which had possessed her, but she could not very well help it now, and she continued: “She did care for you very much, and you for her, and if you were to see her, now that she is free, you might—perhaps—Oh, Jack,—you might care for her more than for me!”

Annie’s voice was not at all steady, and so low that Jack bent down to listen until his face touched hers. He heard her though and understood her perfectly.

“Annie,” he said, “Is it possible you do not know how dead is my love for Fanny,—dead and buried, and the ground above its grave stamped down so hard that it can never rise again. Don’t let that trouble you. Fanny’s freedom is nothing to me. She is nothing to me except a memory,—and your sister,—my sister, too, by and by. Is my little girl satisfied on that score?”

She was more than satisfied, and the next morning began a letter to Fanny in which she meant to tell of her engagement. Then, moved by some unaccountable impulse, she tore the letter up and wrote another, in which there was no word of Jack. At the end of two weeks Jack left for his last trip. Before going, however, he heard from the real estate agent in Richmond who had charge of his house on The Plateau that some one wished to buy it and had offered more than the price at which it was held. “Will you sell it?” he wrote. Jack’s answer was in the affirmative, and within a few days the house on The Plateau had passed from his possession into that of a Mr. Emery, whose instructions were that the keys should remain where they were, and that Jack should see that the place was properly cared for until such time as the owner came to claim his property. Just when that would be the agent did not know, nor did Jack particularly care. The house was off his hands, and he had in its stead a sum of money much larger than he had ever thought to realize from it. One key was to be left with Annie, as it always had been,—the other Jack kept, and together they went through the house the day before Jack started for the north. If Jack felt any regret for the past he did not manifest it, and stood apparently unmoved in Our Room and looked at the medallion smiling upon him and said how much it was like what Fanny was years ago. And he sat in the bay window where he was to have sat with Fanny and talked of the fine view to be had from it as unconcernedly as if he had not once felt all hope dying out from his future and leaving it black as night. It was very bright now, as with Annie at his side he gave one last look at the house which he had built, and then left it with no wish that things were otherwise.

The next day he went away and Annie was alone, but not lonely. She was too happy for that, and there were too many bright anticipations of the future when Jack should return. There were frequent letters from him full of the tender words a woman likes to hear from the man she loves. There were letters also from Katy and Miss Errington, who were in Egypt when the news of the Colonel’s death reached them. Letters, too, from Paul, who was still in Paris and improving rapidly.

“The poor little old Monsieur is dead,” he wrote. “Had a cancer which made Madame so sick that she staid a heap in Paris at the hotel with us. Sam understands a good deal now, and says she said some of the flattest things to Carl about a lonely life and trist and ah—me, or something. Sam remembers the words and hunts them up in the dictionary, where he cannot always find them on account of the tense, you know. Then he asks somebody what they mean. Carl went to little Monsieur’s funeral. She sent for him, and Sam said, ‘I tell you I’m fachey about it.’ I think he meant mad, and unknown to Carl he went, too, and saw the doings. It was an awful big funeral, and a grand chateau, and Madame was all in black and hystericky and leaned on Carl, who, Sam said, looked as if he wished she wouldn’t. She is here now, and her heart is broken all to pieces with no one in the world to comfort her. Carl tries all he can, and sits with her a good deal, and once they drove out to the Bois and Sam said he should give Carl a piece of his mind. He did give it to him, and asked him what the folks would say if they knew he was flirting with an old French widow. Carl was mad and told Sam he was getting out of his place; but he don’t sit with her now so much, and says he shall leave Paris as soon as it is safe for me to go, and Sam says he is going to ferret out who the woman is, as he don’t believe she’s first class.”

There was also a letter from Sam himself, containing nearly every French word or phrase which he had picked up. There was a good deal about the “widder with yeller hair” who was trying to make a fool of Carl, and Annie was entreated to write him on the subject. But she thought it wiser not to interfere. She had faith in Carl, and did not believe that a woman such as Madame was described to be could hold him long or do him material harm.

Every week there came a deep black-bordered letter from Fanny, who was very lonely, and reviled the practice of shutting one’s self up like a nun because a friend was dead.

“If anybody needs fresh air,” she wrote, “and glimpses of the world and diversion it is the mourner, sitting behind closed doors, when there is so much that is bright and gay outside, and I tell you I shall not stand it much longer, Grundy or no Grundy. I am like a bird shut up in a cage and longing for the green woods it can see but not reach. I will reach them, however. There are times when we should be a law to ourselves, and that is what I am going to do.”

Chapter XIII.—Author’s Story Continued.
A LAW TO HERSELF.

Three weeks after the receipt of this letter Annie had been up to the house on The Plateau, which was still untenanted, nor did anyone know when the new proprietor would take possession. Money had been forwarded with a request that if Mr. Fullerton were not there Miss Hathern would see that the house and grounds were kept in perfect order, as the owner might arrive at any time. Some flowering shrubs and choice plants were also sent, with the message that Annie could arrange them as she liked. Mr. Emery could trust Miss Hathern’s taste from what he had heard of her. No mention had ever been made of Mrs. Emery, who, if she existed, was more of a myth than her husband. In Jack’s absence Annie had attended to everything, and the grounds at The Plateau were very beautiful in the warmth of the May sunshine as she went over them that afternoon, thinking what a lovely spot it was and how happy one might be there. For herself, she preferred her old home at The Elms. That needed painting and renovating, but Jack had said to her when she proposed attacking it, “Wait, and we will fix it together. There are several improvements I have in mind which I know you will like.”

On her return from The Plateau Annie took the path through the woods, coming up to the house from the lane and past the old negro quarters to the dining-room door, where the expressman was unloading four immense trunks,—one a huge Saratoga, the others less pretentious and covered with foreign placards. Her first thought was that Katy had come, but the tall woman in black, with a veil which came nearly to her feet, was not Katy, but Fanny, who was giving directions and making herself quite at home.

“Why Fan,” Annie exclaimed, “where did you come from?”

“Washington. Where do you suppose?” Fanny replied, following her trunks up stairs to the room she had taken for herself.

Removing her bonnet and fanning herself with it, she said, “I’ve come to spend the summer. I hope you are glad to see me.”

“Of course I am,” Annie replied, and she continued, “I staid in that great lonesome house until I couldn’t stand it another minute. You have no idea what it is to be a fashionable widow, hedged round with custom. Can’t go anywhere or do anything without shocking the world. If I were poor with a lot of children and had to work for their living and mine, I should get out among people and see things and forget myself. But I am rich, and must follow the fashion or be talked about as heartless. It is dreadful moping at home until every room seems haunted, and you fancy you hear ghost steps on the stairs and behind you and beside you and everywhere, until you feel it would be a relief to hear George swearing again at Clary, or even at yourself, if he had been in the habit of doing so. I could not endure it, so I packed up and came home, where I can rest and do as I please, and wear what I please. I am so tired of this heavy veil, which pulls my head back, and gives me a feeling as if George were stepping on my gown and tripping me up.”

As she talked she was removing the veil, which she threw upon the bed saying, “There, I am done with that. I can mourn just as well under a short one which does not jerk my head and make it ache. Once I thought I’d bring Marie, then I changed my mind. What do I want of a French maid here? I shall be glad to wait upon myself and you, too. Why, I believe I’d like to go into the kitchen and help Phyllis scrub and wash. It would be a change from having so many servants, with all the show and ceremony I once thought so fine, and which as Mrs. Errington, of Washington, I must keep up. Bah! Husks, the whole of it! I’m like the prodigal son come home again, with this difference, he came empty-handed, while I come rich, with no elder brother to be jealous. And I am so glad to be here,—to be Fan Hathern again. I wish they would call me that. Will the neighbors come to see me, do you think? And where is Jack?”

With that question Fanny sounded the key note of her real reason for coming home. She had been bored to death in Washington and very lonely in the midst of her splendor. She was naturally very social and would have liked her house full of company. To be a widow in deep mourning, just bereaved, with all the restraints it implied, was intolerable, especially as she knew that at heart she was not the mourner she seemed to be. Had it been Jack for whom the crape was worn all the world would have lost its brightness, and her widow’s weeds would have but poorly told of her desolation. But Jack was alive, and she believed cared for her still. She had treated him shamefully, and it was quite en règle that she should make the first advances towards a renewal of their former friendship. She had never cared much for conventionalities. She was a law unto herself, and if she chose to go to Lovering she had a right to do so, and there was no one to object. She meant to be very circumspect and not give the people food for gossip. George had been dead six months;—these would soon stretch into a year, and then——; she did not put into words what then,—but she had no doubt of it, and never had the future looked so bright to her as on her journey to Lovering, during which she was constantly assuring herself that there was no impropriety in what she was doing, and that if by reason of it she saw Jack at intervals and kept herself in his mind it was but the natural sequence of things.

There had been several days of rain and mist, but this had passed and the sun was shining bright and warm, and Fanny had never seen the house and grounds look pleasanter or more attractive than they did that afternoon when she drove down the avenue and began to feel a slight misgiving as to what Annie would say to her coming so unceremoniously and taking possession. Annie’s welcome was reassuring, and Fanny’s spirits expanded wonderfully in the atmosphere and freedom of home, and she felt the burden of society’s restraints slipping away from her. She had hoped that Jack might be in town and that she should see him that night, and in fancy she had gone over many times what she should say to him and what he would say to her. There would naturally be a little constraint on his side at first, but that would soon wear off and he would be the Jack of old in all except loverlike attentions. These she did not expect or desire at once. “I am not entirely lost to all sense of propriety,” she was thinking when Annie came upon her, and for awhile turned her thoughts in another channel.

To her question “Where is Jack?” Annie replied by telling her of his long trip which might last some weeks longer, or might be soon ended. The day was not quite as bright after that and Fanny’s face was clouded a little, but it soon cleared, and the next morning, save for her weeds and the absence of bright color from her face, she was the same light-hearted girl who used to flit about the house, ruling it with her imperious ways, but doing it so prettily that no one cared for the ruling. In less than twenty-four hours she was mistress, and Annie yielded to her and was glad to have her there, and the neighbors called and made much of her and she returned their calls and wore her short veil when she felt like it and when she didn’t she left it off, and was as little like a disconsolate widow as it was possible for one to be. In the house on The Plateau she was greatly interested, asking many questions about Mr. Emery none of which Annie could answer. She did not even know where he lived. She spent the money he sent for improvements to the best of her ability, and Fanny for the most part approved of what she had done. A few changes in some of the shrubbery she would suggest if the place were hers, she said, and as it was not too late to make them they were made, with the result of a better general effect. The Plateau had a great fascination for Fanny, who went there very often, sometimes staying for hours and sometimes just walking up to it for exercise, she said. One day about the last of July she was gone longer than usual and when she came back she seemed in unusually high spirits, and sitting down to the piano which she had not touched before began to sing Bonny Doon, Jack’s favorite, which she was to have played for him in the home she had destroyed.

“Where do you suppose Jack is?” she asked, as she rose from the piano. Then, before Annie could answer, she continued: “I have half a mind to write him and tell him to hurry, as I want to see him. Do you think it would be improper?”

“It would depend upon your motive,” Annie replied very quietly, and Fanny answered quickly, “I don’t know that I have any motive, except an inexpressible longing to see him and to know what he thinks of me. Annie,” and Fanny grew very serious and breathed quickly as she went on: “I love Jack just as well as I ever did, and I want him to know it.”

“Would you write it to him?” Annie asked, with a calmness which surprised herself.

“Why, no,—not exactly that; but something that would give him a suspicion of the truth. You think it unwomanly, I can see by your face,” she continued, and Annie replied, “I would not do it for worlds, and your husband so recently dead.”

“I tell you that does not count. Ours is an exceptional case,” Fanny said, with some asperity in tone and manner; “and how often must I say that I do not care for conventionalities. I am a law to myself.”

“I don’t believe I’d take the law into my hands in that way,” Annie said, resolving now to tell her sister what she wished she had told her before.

A caller interrupted her, and when the lady left Fanny also disappeared and did not return for an hour or more. Then her face had an anxious expression such as it sometimes used to wear during the war when word came to town that a company of soldiers was in the woods, or on the distant plain. Supper was waiting for her, laid on the back piazza where she liked to have it when the evening was warm, as it was now. But she had no appetite. The orange shortcake, with its rich cream, which Phyllis had made expressly for her, was scarcely touched. She was tired and had a headache, she said, and very soon after sunset went to her room. Annie knew, however, that she was not in bed, as she heard her walking back and forth across the floor for a long time, occasionally stopping for a few moments and then beginning again as if too restless to keep still. When at last, at an earlier hour than usual, Annie went to her room, the walking had ceased, but there was a light shining over Fanny’s door showing that she had not retired. It was a glorious night, with the moon at its full and the air sweet with the scent of flowers and the pines from the woods. Throwing on a dressing-gown Annie had just sat down by the window to enjoy the beauty of the scene, when there was a tap on her door and Fanny came in habited for bed, with a shawl thrown around her shoulders and her long hair falling down her back. Annie had extinguished the lamp, but the moon filled the room with light and showed plainly the whiteness of Fanny’s face and the drawn look about her mouth.

“What ails you, Fan? What has happened?” Annie asked.

Bringing a chair close to the window beside her sister, Fanny replied, “This has happened. I am an idiot,—a bold, shameless woman, who in being a law to herself has made a fool of herself. I have written to Jack,—not exactly a love letter, although it meant that, and he will take it as such. What am I to do?”

Annie was too much surprised at first to reply; then she said, “You have—written—a love letter to Jack!”

“Yes, I have,—or equivalent to that. I think it was Satan tempted me, and now he is laughing at me for the scrape he got me into,” Fanny said. “I have been considering it for some time, arguing that there could be no harm in it, and this afternoon I took pen, ink and paper with me to The Plateau and wrote it there, in the window where I was to watch for him. I said more than I meant to when I began,—put it stronger, I mean,—and offered him half or all of my money, if he wanted it. I think the old Harry must have driven me on, I was so anxious to finish it and get it posted. I directed to care of the firm he is with in Richmond. On my way home I dropped it in the letter box, and was so happy that, as you will remember, I sat down and sang Bonny Doon because Jack liked it, and what I had done seemed to bring him nearer to me. Then to see what you would think of me I finessed a little and suggested writing to him. You disapproved and I was angry and thought you a prude, and half suspected you had designs on Jack yourself. That was the meanest part of it. While Mrs. Carter was calling I kept thinking what I had done and it didn’t look to me as it had at first. I saw with your eyes, and something told me Jack might see it that way, too. The fear kept growing until I was nearly wild, and thought Mrs. Carter would never be done telling what good and bright children she had and be gone. I had thought of a way out of my dilemma, if I were not too late and that woman did not stay forever. She did stay and I was too late. I went to the post office and said I’d like to withdraw the letter I posted two hours ago. The mail was gone, the postmaster said, and grinned at me impertinently, I thought, as if he knew what letter I meant and thought it queer that I should write to Jack. I know my face was scarlet and it has burned ever since. Do you think he will despise me?”

Fanny’s voice was choked with tears as she made her confession, and then putting her head in Annie’s lap cried like a child. She had done a foolish thing, driven on to do it by an impulse she did not try to resist and which impelled her to write more than she had at first intended. Jack was told how she had suffered for her treachery to him and how, through all her suffering, it had been a comfort to believe that he still cared for her, and that without such belief she should have died.

“Perhaps it is unwomanly in me to write this,” she said, “but I cannot help it, and I am longing for the time when I shall see you again. I shall know by your face if you still care for me or not. If not, call me ‘Mrs. Errington,’ if you do care, call me ‘Fanny,’ when you first meet me, and I shall understand.”

Then she spoke of her money,—more than she could ever use,—and said nothing would please her better than to give or loan a portion of it to him, if he wished to use it in his business. She closed by signing herself “Yours as always. Fanny.”