Jessamine: A Novel

CHAPTER IX.

And you have really been to Dundee!" Jessie was saying, unconscious that she was clinging to Mr. Wyllys' arm—very slightly, but perceptibly to him, with the glad hold of one to whom something dear and rare has been restored. "Was this a part of the original plan of your journeyings?"

"No,—but my business led me within sight of Old Windbeam—('a frosty pow' his is, just now!)—and it acted upon me as did the Iron Mountain of the Arabian Nights upon the hapless ships that approached it. It drew out the nails of doubt as to the best course for me to pursue; the screws of resolution not to be turned aside by memories of the Past and the allurements of the Present. To be brief—I collapsed utterly! took the afternoon train to Dundee, and passed, in that retreat from briefs and busybodies, the happiest Sabbath I have known since last August."

"Euna wrote to me about it—the lovely, precise old darling! She never indulges in extravagances upon any subject, but her concise sentences mean much, and these said how she enjoyed the day—and your music. I was envious of her, when I read of it—just for a moment, of course. I have seen so much of you this winter it seemed mean and selfish in me to grudge her one day of like pleasure."

"Envy so groundless could not but be evanescent," said Orrin, with admirable gravity. "But tell me about yourself. What have you been doing while I was away?"

"Cultivating envy, as I said—and, I am not positive, but wrath and all uncharitableness, as well. Who is it that confesses to an instant uprising of all that is wicked in his nature at the approach of trouble, while visible blessing always moves him to thankful piety? I am afraid I am similarly constituted. I have been dull and 'dumpish' for a week and more; choosing to quarrel with the three peas under the fourteen feather-beds, rather than enjoy the good that is certainly mine. You see I also am versed in fairy-lore."

"I remember that the disguised princess, at being asked why she was haggard in the morning after the night spent in the forester's cabin, betrayed her gentle breeding by complaining of the lumps in her mountainous couch. Fourteen feather-beds! Think of it! To sleep amid the waves of one of the Dutch abominations is enough to engender dyspepsia, apoplexy, and spleen. But what were the three peas in your bed of roses?"

"It has rained four days out of eight, my Germany letter was behind time—and I missed my brother-cousin at every turn," responded Jessie bravely, vexed that anything in the enumeration should make her cheek put on the sudden flame of poppies.

"Two valid and sufficient reasons for ennui! As for the third, and notably the least of all, I thank you for the welcome implied by it. I have missed you, Jessie!"

"But not as I have you!" was the ingenuous response. "I have been homesick, dismal, disagreeable,—horrid generally. But I spare you the recapitulation. I am very, very happy that you are back again in health, and,"—faltering a little,—"in better spirits, than when you left us."

"Mr. Wyllys!" interrupted a consequential personage—a young-old bachelor. "Excuse me, Miss Kirke, but this is business of importance!"

He spoke a sentence aside to Orrin, who replied briefly in the same tone.

"Mr. Hurst is acting as master of ceremonies to-night, comme à l'ordinaire," observed Wyllys, moving on with his companion. "How will Hamilton parties get on after he dies—or marries—I wonder? There has been an addition to the ranks of fashion during my absence, I find. I had hardly finished my bow to Mrs. and Miss Provost, when Warren Provost presented me forcibly to Miss Sanford. I learned, before I went three steps farther, that this party is given to Miss Sanford, and now Mr. Hurst tells me that I am expected, presently, to dance with Miss Sanford. Who is Miss Sanford?"

Jessie comprehending, at once, that he shunned further reference to the state of his spirits at their parting, followed his lead away from the subject, with alacrity.

"Miss Sanford is the daughter of Judge Provost's sister, and such an heiress! An American Miss Burdett Coutts, if half the stories in circulation about her be true. She is the only child of a five-millionaire, and has, besides, a million in her own right, inherited from her mother. Poor thing! what a nuisance it must be to be so horribly rich!" commented the country girl who thought herself wealthy with her mother's wedding-portion of ten thousand dollars, carefully husbanded by her father against her majority or marriage.

"If another woman than Jessie Kirke had said that, I should have supposed she was in jest," said Orrin. "I believe you mean what you say. But why? Many and sweet are the uses of money."

"Why do I regard it as a misfortune for a woman to be immensely rich? Because she can never be sure of true friend or lover. Because she seldom escapes one of two evils, dupedom or misanthropy. It must be almost an impracticable task for a great heiress to satisfy herself that she is not wooed pour les beaux yeux de ses écus."

"But if there are no other beaux yeux in the case—her own being, we will say, leaden—should she not congratulate herself that she has one talisman that will win attention and regard?"

"Regard!" echoed Jessie, incredulously.

"And why not? She typifies bank stock, real estate, ready money, to the adorer of these. He worships them, it is true, but through her, as discriminating Romanists try to make us believe that they adore the Virgin Mary by the help of her images."

"And as Dr. Baxter told me, the other day, Aaron and his crew of apostate ingrates bowed down to the molten calf—as the representative of the Egyptian Apis," put in Jessie, sarcastically. "If a woman can content herself with that sort of worship, put herself on a par with the goose that laid the golden egg, she wants neither affection nor pity."

"Yet I'll warrant that the famous goose preened herself alongside of the most gorgeous peacock in the barnyard; accounted herself the equal of the stateliest swans. There are as many purse-proud women as men. Millionnaires of both sexes do not scorn the court paid to their money through themselves. On the contrary, they would be piqued and offended if their dollars were not duly appreciated. Novels and sentimentalists tell us that the unhappy possessors of princely fortunes desire to be loved and sought for their intrinsic virtues, whereas the great mass—especially of women—who are wedded for their riches, are quite alive to the truth that this is so, and are far from being wounded thereby. They are neither dupes nor misanthropes, but sensible practical bodies who regard their property as a part of themselves—soul of their soul—and unhesitatingly appropriate all the advantages it buys, pluming themselves, as a rule, upon their ability to command service and fidelity. You shake your head? Let me illustrate from real life. I was talking, some time ago, with a married lady whom nobody had ever, in my hearing, called weak-minded, even behind her back. I had known her for many years, and she opened up her mind to me freely, with regard to her courtship by, and marriage to, the man of her choice. 'I feared, at one time, that I had lost him forever,' she said. 'He was, quite assiduous in his attention to another young lady who was pretty, elegant, and accomplished. I was very unhappy, for he had never declared his intentions to me. But she had not money enough to suit his notions of the fitness of things,'—I quote literally. 'So he came back to me. Wasn't I thankful then that my dear father had provided for me handsomely and thus secured my happiness for life?'"

"A clever anecdote—considering it is impromptu!" said wilful Jessie, with an air of superb disbelief. "If I could credit it, and you—"

"You would cease to commiserate heiresses!" finished Wyllys. "For myself, I have an antipathy to the whole class. All whom I have had the misery of knowing were sordid, self-conceited, and rapacious of admiration to a degree that passed understanding and disgust."

He dropped his voice, for the crowd immediately about them had grown still and attentive.

Miss Sanford was going to sing. Jessie and her escort chanced to be near the piano, and had a fine view of her as she was led to the instrument by an ambitious senior, whom she loaded down with her bouquet, gloves, fan, handkerchief, and gold vinaigrette. She was probably about twenty-five years of age, but this was a difficult point to determine from her appearance; her hair, eyebrows, and complexion being so light, that, as Jessie afterwards said to Mrs. Baxter, she looked as if she might have lain for forty-eight hours in a bath of caustic soda and water—the preliminary process in the preparation of the phantom bouquets the President's lady was skilled in arranging. Miss Sanford was thin and bony. "Scraggy," one would have termed her, had she belonged to the so-called inferior animals. Her eyes were a pale, fixed blue, like those of a china doll; her lips met scantily over teeth that were unpleasantly prominent; she had a receding chin, a sharp nose, and a low forehead. A homely, shrewish-looking girl to the uninstructed eye. Yet her air showed that she was accustomed to receive court from the sophisticated multitude, the many who were awake to the fact that she was the undoubted mistress of charms not to be adequately expressed by less than seven figures. Her dress was a walking advertisement of her pretensions to this intelligent homage, being mauve satin, flounced with point lace. It was cut too low upon the flat chest and prominent shoulder-blades, but the region thus left bare was made interesting to feminine eyes by a magnificent diamond necklace. Bracelets to match loaded her meagre wrists, and were pushed up ostentatiously before she put her fingers upon the key-board, with a coquettish grimace at her cavalier.

"I don't sing ballads," Jessie and Orrin heard her say, tossing her head one-sidedly—a frequent trick with her, since it set her ear-rings to dancing until the precious stones seemed to emit sparks of real fire. "Ballad music is considered so low in refined circles. I have never cultivated any but the classical style—operas, you know, bravuras and arias, and all that, you know. Let me treat you to my favorite—just the sweetest thing you ever heard, from La Traviata. I perfectly dote upon it!"

She played a thumping prelude and accompaniment in villainous time; her voice was shallow and shrill; she made audacious dashes at trills and cadenzas, her feeble pipe breaking down upon the ascending, and breaking up upon the descending scale. A more lamentable and witless travestie of operatic execution could hardly have been conceived of. The Italian words were made a thing of no account whatever.

"Her resources are wonderful," said Orrin, under cover of the buzz of compliments and thanks that succeeded the song. "When she forgot what came next she substituted something of her own composition—in the Kaffir dialect, I think—with a readiness and coolness truly astounding. Honor bright, now," laughing down mischievously into his companion's eyes—"what has this little scene reminded you of—something you have hitherto viewed as a caricature?"

"I won't tell you!"

But Jessie's face was alive with fun. It might not be—it certainly was not altogether kind or well-bred in her to join in ridiculing the host's niece, but it was "only Orrin," and so long as his comments were for her ear alone, no harm was done.

"You need not! Miss Swartz has arisen above such 'low style' as 'Blue-eyed Mary' and 'That Air from the Cabinet,' but she can still 'sing Fluvy du Tajy if she had the words.' Indeed, being bent upon fascination, she sings it, words or no."

He had found Jessie and Mrs. Baxter deep in "Vanity Fair" one evening, had taken the book and read aloud several chapters, including "The quarrel about an heiress."

"Yet you will not let me say, 'Poor Miss Swartz!'" said Jessie.

"Certainly not. She is in Paradise. Reserve your pity for me, who am doomed to ask her to waltz so soon as this part of the exhibition is over. Hark! another sweet selection! This time from Der Freischütz—Agatha's prayer, done into boarding-school German patois, varied by the amazing improvisations aforesaid. For Heaven's sake! come away into the conservatory. Even 'when music, heavenly maid, was very young,' a baby in the cradle, she never squalled like that!"

Jessie could not help laughing at his whimsical impatience. Mirth came easily to-night. The surprise and joy of her friend's return had exhilarated her. The very freedom of his comments upon others made her feel the entireness of their mutual confidence. His talking to her in this strain was a direct compliment to her discretion. It was delightful to see him gay once more—to believe that his light rattle was the overflow of a heart as full and happy as her own.

He lingered with her in the conservatory until the indefatigable Mr. Hurst came to hunt him up.

"You will let me take you in to supper?" said Wyllys, pulling himself up with graceful unwillingness from the fantastic root seat beside the fountain. "Where shall I find you, if I survive the next half hour?"

"Here!" glancing up brightly. "It is cool and quiet, and my feet ache with standing. Don't send anybody to me, please! I shall sit here, and rest and think—ponder seriously upon the miseries of the rich, the compensations of the poor."

Orrin had chosen their resting-place in the leafy boudoir with his habitual sagacity, having an eye both to ease and the semi-privacy which confidential friends find so enjoyable in the neighborhood of a crowd. An osier frame overrun with ivy, screened Jessie on the left from any save very prying eyes; a barricade of lemon and orange trees towered at the back; in front, the fountain, showering from peak and sides of a rock-work pyramid, cast a shimmering veil between her and the archway, closing up a vista of vines and shrubs, through which issued music and the hum of many voices with the rhythmical beat of feet. Jessie listened to the merry din, the nearer dash of the glittering drops into the basin at her feet; and inhaling the perfume of the exotics behind her, smiled a happy little smile in remembrance of her scornful weariness in predicting the flirtations among the oleanders and lemon-trees. She had no pre-vision then that she should sit here with one chosen companion, talking freely and gladly of all that was in her heart; none of the gentle and lovely reverie to which he had left her.

From a great globe of ground glass overhead, effulgence like that of a midsummer moon streamed down upon the falling water; the trailing grasses and clinging mosses upon the stones were threaded with tiny brilliants; the broad wet leaves of the aquatic plants overhanging and growing within the marble reservoir were washed with silver. A single lily arose, pure and proud, from a clump of luxuriant flags. Tall ferns standing motionless on the thither margin, made a miniature brake of an alley that stretched away into cool green dimness. A bed of musk-plant yielded up languorous sighs to the warmed air. All that was sensuous in temperament and artistic in taste made response to the influence of the place and hour. Jessie gave herself up to it without resistance, laid her head against the tortuous scroll-work of the high back of the settee, and dreamed. The evening had been triumphant, intoxicating to her. The evening she would have preferred to spend with dolorous Mariana!

She whispered the familiar lines to herself:

But that was nothing! I dare say the Grange was a commodious, respectable family mansion; that it would have been as beautiful as the Alhambra to the poor girl, had the faithless lover kept his tryst. '"He cometh not," she said!' That was the key to the desolation without and within. I had not believed that I could be so glad to see any one except Roy, as I am to meet Orrin again. He has a look like his cousin sometimes. I never noticed it before as I have to-night;—a look that gives me a sense of safety and companionship when with him, which makes sadness and home-sickness impossibilities. It is good to have a friend upon whom I can lean my whole weight without fear of causing weariness—in whose society I can be frankly, fearlessly, joyously, myself!"

There were but two or three couples in the conservatory besides herself, and they, too, seemed to be lulled into silent musing by the subdued lights and odorous airs of the fairy-like haunt. Perhaps some of the dancers found fault with the draught from the archway, for Jessie saw Warren Provost and Mr. Hurst let down the damask curtains which had been looped back from it. She drew a deeper breath of content in the feeling of increased seclusion. Now that the music, the babble of human tongues, and the tramp of a hundred waltzers were muffled, a mocking-bird from his concealed cage in an acacia tree began to sing. First came a chirp of alarm as if he had just awakened from dreams of tropical skies and magnolia groves—then a trial trill, a gush of liquid melody, clear and soft as the ripple of a mountain rivulet. Next, he whistled, still softly, but with marvellous correctness and sweetness, a flute waltz Jessie had heard Orrin Wyllys play last summer. She smiled and murmured in her trance,—

"Everything associated with him is pure pleasure!"

Nobody could be moody or dull when he chose to please and interest. To her, his coming was like the spreading of the sun rays down the mountain sides and through the valley on summer mornings, steeping the commonplace in beauty; making of native loveliness a witching miracle. Dear, dear Roy! She owed this great happiness also to him. He had reckoned wisely and lovingly in committing her to the care of this guardian.

The band struck up a march. The blare of the instruments burst unwelcomely upon her rosy dreams. She aroused herself with a start to see the curtains pulled back. The mocking-bird ceased his song abruptly. The waltzers, panting and flushed, thronged the narrow aisles of the conservatory; chattered and flitted among the foliage like bright-plumaged, loud-voiced parrots. Miss Sanford was conspicuous among them, leaning palpably upon her escort's arm. Her affected laugh grated unpleasantly upon Jessie's ears, every few seconds. She was in exuberant spirits; in high good-humor with herself, and, presumably, with her partner.

"Oh! that darling beauty of a lily!" she cried, pushing roughly past the ivied screen, to get a closer view of the proud, pale princess of the fountain. "I wanted you should see it! Fanny Provost, my cousin, goes just crazy over it. It was brought to her all the way from the Nile, or the Ganges, or the Amazon, or some other of those stupid rivers in Europe, whose names I always forget—by her beau. You know she is engaged to Lieutenant Averill of the Navy? Everybody who is anybody announces engagements nowadays, as soon as the matter is settled by what my uncle, Judge Provost, calls the high contracting parties. It is a nice fashion. Don't you think so? I do think an engagement must be just the cunningest, sweetest thing in the world!"

"That depends, in a great measure, upon who the high contracting parties are, I suppose," replied Orrin, with the slightest imaginable glance in the direction of the concealed spectator, but one in which she read a drollery of appeal that wrought irresistibly upon her risibles.

Miss Sanford tittered. "I declare I am afraid of you, Mr. Wyllys! You are so sarcastic! Of course, that was what I meant. One takes that for granted always. But it must be just too sweet for two people who are devoted to one another, and who are of suitable ages and prospects, and all that, you know, to promise that they will just perfectly adore one another, till death, you know. At least, that is the way I look at it. I am so womanly, Mr. Wyllys! I often tremble at the thought of buffeting the world. Everybody is so absorbed in their own selfish interests. My cousin, Mrs. Morris—the ex-Chancellor's lady, you know—says I am a sensitive plant, not fit to meet the rough winds of life."

With the ventriloquial knack that belongs to the genuine slayer of hearts, Orrin made his reply inaudible to any one but the woman at his side, who flushed up eagerly, and fanned herself in naïve agitation.

"I wish I could think so, Mr. Wyllys! It is ever so kind in you to wish it, I am sure. But men—and I am ashamed to say it—women, too, are such awful flatterers! And appearances are so deceitful! Nobody would believe, for instance, that I, with everything—comparatively speaking you know—to make me happy, should pine for a kindred heart—one that would beat responsive to mine. True, one person cannot have everything, you know—There! I've torn my lace flounce upon that ugly cactus! Just see, Mrs. Saville!"—to a lady who was passing, revealing the extent of the rent. "The first time I have ever worn it, too! I don't know what my careful papa will say. It was a present from him. But, la! who cares? If he scolds, I'll punish him by paying for it myself. That will just break his heart. Nothing puts him out so much as for me to remind him that I can be independent of him if I choose. That is the way with all you gentlemen—isn't it, Mr. Wyllys?" staring boldly—she fancied engagingly—up at him. "You would have us owe everything to you. Bless me! can that be supper? And just as we are having such a sweet, romantic time! Isn't this just the most delicious bower in Christendom? I tease my cousin Fanny by insisting that Lieutenant Averill couldn't help proposing when once she had got him in here. Not that it can compare in size with our conservatory. Ours is connected, too, with the graperies, which makes it perfectly immense. Where can Mr. Romondt be? He saw me come in here, I am certain, for we passed him in the door. He was to take me in to supper, but I am not in the habit of waiting for my escorts. It would be just too funny if I—of all the women here—should be thrown upon your protection in the character of the deserted maiden—wouldn't it?"

"The bliss of succoring you is not to be mine, at present, it seems," said Orrin, with an adroit, backward bow, as Mr. Romondt hurried upon the scene, full of apologies, to claim his convoy.

A new caprice seized the belle.

"I protest he ought to be the deserted one, in punishment for his tardiness!" regaining her hold of Mr. Wyllys' elbow, and making a resentful moue at the derelict gallant. "I have half a mind to go off with you and leave him to solitary regrets. Suppose, if I trust myself to him, my barque should be shipwrecked on the journey?"

It was an awkward moment. The heiress' look and action plainly testified that hers was no "half mind" to commit herself to the pilotage of the man who had not invited such a display of confidence. Wyllys extricated himself promptly and creditably, and as if her proposal were entirely decorous and ladylike. He had too much sense and tact ever to patronize one of his own sex, and owed much of his popularity to the air of respectful bonhommie with which he now turned to the perspiring and rebuked Romondt.

"Do not try fallible humanity beyond endurance, Miss Sanford! It is hard to be just and magnanimous in the face of such a temptation, but right is right. Mr. Romondt! grant me the honor of becoming your security for the safe and pleasant transfer of la reine du bal to the supper-room.

Jessie was quivering with merriment in her sheltered nook.

"I have been in mortal terror lest I should not be launched at all, but be left high and hungry upon the stocks!" she cried gayly, at her attendant's approach. "And supper is one of the substantial blessings of life, when one has a good appetite."

Orrin feigned to wipe the dews of exhaustion from his brow with a despairing flourish of his handkerchief.

"At last I am at your service. You must stay me with flagons (of champagne), and comfort me with (pine) apples;" he said, profanely enough, "for I am sick of heiresses!"

CHAPTER X.

Judge Provost, whose wife and daughters were the leaders of fashion in Hamilton, was himself a social Greatheart. Having brought to bear upon various vexed domestic problems the force of his astute mind and enlightened Christianity, he had arrived at a series of conclusions equally creditable to both. The pertinence of his deductions was so obvious to the impartial reasoner as to excite his surprise, that the great body of good and sensible men and women did not adopt and practise them. For example, he maintained first, that the best way to keep men out of jails, was to provide them with abodes so comfortable that they would prefer these to stone cells and prison fare: secondly, as a modification of the same principle, that, since amusements are necessary to the happiness of the young, they should be provided with lawful diversions in their own homes, lest they should seek unlawful abroad; thirdly, in unconscious plagiarism of the wise and genial author of "Annals of a Country Neighborhood," he held and believed for certain, that the surest way to make an indifferent thing bad, was for good people to hold themselves aloof from doing it.

Acting upon these principles, the eminent jurist built a bowling-alley at the back of his garden; caused his eight children to be instructed in music and dancing, and encouraged them to pursue these recreations in his parlors,—where, also, lay backgammon and chess board in full sight. Finally, he crowned their gratification while he drew upon himself the reprobation of the zealots and puritans among his neighbors, by throwing a wing out from his already spacious residence, expressly for a billiard-room. It was a pretty place, and a cheerful, with its green carpets and lounges, tinted walls, and long French windows, and was, as may be supposed, a popular resort with those of the college students who had the entrée, as well as with the young Provosts and their friends of both sexes in the town. A happy, hospitable set were the young Provosts—the four sisters and four brothers—affectionate to one another, dutiful and loving to the parents to whose judicious affection they owed their sunny childhood and youth. Jessie liked them better than she did any other family in Hamilton, while Fanny, the second daughter, had taken a fancy to her at first sight, which was ripening into a cordial friendship.

The billiard-room was very bright with afternoon sunshine, and merry with the chatter of gay voices, one day late in February, when a party of six or eight girls was collected about the table—four playing, the others looking on and talking, sometimes of the game in progress, sometimes upon other subjects—all in a familiar yet ladylike way.

"Somebody mark for me, please!" said a ruddy-cheeked damsel who had never, by any chance, won a game, and whose principal points were the point she made of missing every shot. "If I should hit anything it would be a pity not to get credit for it. Now—all of you look and learn!"

She poised the cue with a superabundance of caution, pursing up her lips into an O, as she took aim; dashed at the white ball nearest her, which flew frantically from side to side of the board, rebounding twice from the cushion, and, at last, popping into a distant pocket, having dodged every other ball with a malicious ingenuity eminently illustrative of the proverbial perversity of inanimate things.

"Better luck next time!" said the player, invincibly good-humored, resigning her place. "If there is anything in perseverance and hope, I shall do it yet, some day, and astonish you all."

The others laughed—with, rather than at her—and Jessie Kirke took the stand she had vacated. All leaned forward to watch her play, her skill being already an established fact. A touch—not a thrust—to the white ball sent it against a red at such an angle that in the rebound it hit another quite at the other end of the green table, which latter rolled into a pocket. This, to the uninitiated, meaningless process, being repeated by her, with trifling variations, until she had made sixteen points, was considered a feat among the embryo billiardists surrounding her.

"So much for a true eye and a sure touch!" said Fanny Provost. "You shame us all, Jessie dear."

"So much for having a good teacher!" said another, less complimentary. "If Mr. Wyllys would bestow as much care upon our tuition as he has upon hers, we might be adepts, too."

"She has practised ten times as much with me as she has with him," answered Fanny, pleasantly. "So, I am entitled to the larger share of the praise for her proficiency. I will not be cheated of my laurels."

"Is Mr. Wyllys, then, your best player?"

The querist was Miss Sanford, who "did not care about billiards," and had even remonstrated, at the beginning of her visit with her cousin Fanny, with regard to her liking for the game—"such a queer one for ladies! She would be afraid to touch a cue for fear she might be called strong-minded." She had discovered, furthermore, that her wrists were not stout enough to bear the weight of a cue steadily, and took pleasure in publishing their genteel fragility. Only that afternoon she had called attention to this by an exclamation addressed to Jessie, as she drew up her cuffs in order to be ready for her turn.

"Dear me! Miss Kirke! what wouldn't I give to be as robust as you are! Look at her arms! They would make six of mine. What do you do to develop your muscles so?"

Jessie smiled in quiet satisfaction with her own beautifully moulded wrists.

"I am healthy, and I lead an active life," she said, laconically, but politely.

Miss Sanford was not pleased either with smile or words, but there was apparently nothing to resent, and she returned to her sofa. She had attended a party the evening before, and was to-day "utterly worn out." While the game went on, she toyed with her rings, slipped her bracelets of dead gold and pearls up and down her thin arms, and now and then yawned behind her hand. Mr. Wyllys' name awoke her from the apathetic droning.

"Decidedly!" replied a looker-on, Selina Bradley by name—a kind-hearted, talkative, and indiscreet girl whom everybody liked, yet of whose tripping tongue many were afraid. "Decidedly the best in town. Don't you think so, Fan?"

"There are not many who can equal him among our finest billiard players," said Fanny. "I do not believe he has lost a game since Mr. Fordham went away. He played splendidly! His nerves were steady and his judgment nice."

"Fordham!" repeated the heiress, quickly. "What was his first name? Who is he?"

"Roy—and he is a professor in our college. He is now in Heidelberg, Germany. Do you know him?" said Fanny, in surprise. "You must have heard us speak of him before."

"Never! I used to know him," rejoined Miss Sanford, tossing her head. "He was engaged to a very dear friend of mine. No! I didn't know he was in Germany. I am glad of it!"

Selina, breathless with excitement, did not catch the meaning of the latter sentences.

"Engaged! I thought he was love-proof! Fanny! Nettie! Sue! do you hear this? Who do you guess is engaged to be married? No less a personage than our invulnerable Professor Fordham!"

The girls crowded about Miss Sanford, forgetting the game in the superior attractions of a love-story.

"To whom?"

"Who told you?"

"I don't believe it!" were the divers comments upon the intelligence.

Jessie remained alone at the table, tapping the cushion opposite her with her cue, her face flaming with indignant confusion. Taken utterly by surprise, she could not at once rally to reply to the false statement she had heard, or govern her countenance well enough to seem indifferent.

The heiress bridled at the last remark, setting back her head in a fashion she conceived was regal, whereas it was merely ungracefully scornful.

"You are not asked to believe it, Miss Barnes! I said distinctly that the gentleman was formerly betrothed to my friend. I am happy, on her account, to be able to state that the (to her) unfortunate engagement was broken almost a year since."

"What do you mean? How did it happen? And to think we never heard a breath of it! Go on! there's a darling! and tell us all about it!" entreated Selina, sinking to the carpet at the feet of the in nowise reluctant newsmonger.

"Perhaps you had rather not, Hester," suggested gentle Fanny to her cousin. "Such stories are painful to those interested in either of the parties to the engagement, and the telling does no good to any one. The fewer people that hear of them the better, it seems to me."

"Oh! I don't mind it in the least now!" Hester hastened to re-assure her. She settled the voluminous skirt of her purple cashmere peignoir about her; disposed her rings upon her fingers, and her fingers upon her lap to her liking; sighed profoundly, and looked smirkingly sentimental. "There was a time when I could not allude to it, or even think of it, without tears. My disposition is so sympathetic! But time deadens all griefs, and my poor friend acknowledges herself that it was best the affair should have terminated as it did. She met Mr. Fordham at the seashore summer before last—was with him there for a week or so. It was long enough for him to fall violently in love with her. He couldn't help being taken by her appearance, for she is just perfectly lovely! a blonde, with blue eyes, and a red rose-bud of a mouth, and golden hair, and the sweetest smile!"

"She must be a real beauty!" sighed Selina, in an ecstasy of admiration.

"She is. People pretend to see a resemblance between us. I have actually been mistaken for her more than once—but that is all nonsense," said Hester, modestly. "I should be just too happy if I were half as handsome as Maria. But I love her too dearly to be envious. We are like twin sisters in heart. I dare say that is the reason we are called so much alike. We go out so much together, you see, that the sight of one reminds people of the other, you know. But as I was saying, this Mr. Fordham pretended to be smitten with her, and, early in the winter, visited her at her own home. Her parents liked him exceedingly. He is rather an imposing man, you know, and has some reputation as a scholar. So, when he paid a second visit at Christmas, and offered himself, there was no objection raised to the match. Poor, dear, deluded Maria! how happy she was! All went swimmingly for about six weeks, when, without warning, he broke the engagement. And why, do you suppose? He had heard that one of her sisters had died of consumption several years before he knew her, and he 'could not be hampered by a sickly wife!'"

She waited until the chorus of reprobation subsided, then resumed:

"He wrote to her. Iron man as he was, he was afraid to trust himself in her presence. He 'regretted the necessity that forced him to this unpleasant step,' he said, 'but he owed a duty to himself which was not to be lightly put aside. He should always remain her friend,' and all that sort of rubbish, you know. The broken-hearted creature stooped to argue with him. She loved him devotedly, and she had had no other love. If I had been in her place, I would have died sooner than let him know how I suffered; but she was such a lamb-like, gentle creature! and her spirit was utterly crushed. She wrote to him, imploring him not to leave her, representing that there was not a sign of hereditary consumption in the family; that her parents were living, and that her grand-parents on both sides had all died from other diseases. But he was obstinate. He 'would never,' he replied, 'in any circumstances, marry a woman who was not, in his opinion, perfectly sound in mind and body, or who had any predisposition to scrofula, consumption, or insanity.' He pretended to believe still that she had the seeds of a fatal malady in her system, and went so far as to allude to her beautiful color—just the sweetest pink and white you ever saw!—as a hectic flush. That's the history of Mr. Roy Fordham's love-scrape!"

"And did she break a blood-vessel, or go into a decline?" asked Sue Barnes, her round face ludicrously elongated, while her eyelids twinkled away a sympathizing tear.

"Well—no!" Miss Sanford hesitated, then made the admission unwillingly, evidently appreciating the damage her mournful recital must sustain through the want of this orthodox sequel. "But she was in a sad way for awhile. Her family kept the miserable affair as quiet as possible for her sake. The truth was communicated to nobody except a few very intimate and dearest friends. But you can't wonder that I have hated the sound of Professor Fordham's name ever since."

"Very natural, I am sure!" murmured the plastic Sue.

Hester made a parade of wiping her eyes with a lace handkerchief.

"Not that I ever liked him. Poor Maria brought him around to our house, one evening, on purpose to have me see him. And the next morning she was in, bright and early, to ask what I thought of him. 'I don't fancy him in the least, my dear child,' I said to her, candidly. 'He has a cold, severe eye, and a stubborn mouth. He is quiet in manner because he is unfeeling. If you marry him, he will rule you with a rod of steel, and make your life a burden.' It was a trial to say it, but I knew it was my duty, and I didn't turn back, you know. She cried her eyes out over what she said was my unkindness, and left me in a tremendous huff. She would neither speak to me, nor hear my name mentioned in her presence, until the rupture came. Then she sent right away for me, and fell upon my neck, begging my pardon. 'If I had been as clear-sighted as you, Hester, what wretchedness I would have been spared!' she sobbed. I am very acute in my perception of character. My grandmother, Mrs. General Deane—my mother's mother—said to her dying day that my skill in seeing through people—especially sheep in wolves' clothing—I mean wolves in sheep's clothing—was—well! the most astonishing thing she had ever seen."

Jessie was knocking the balls to and fro, in reckless disregard of the laws controlling the game, but the sharp click of the ivory spheres did not distract general attention from Miss Sanford.

"I never was more amazed in all my born days!" said Selina, conscientiously reserved with respect to her pre-natal experience. "Mr. Fordham is so pleasant, yet so dignified, and ranks so high in the Faculty and the church, and has so much influence among the students! Who could ever have thought of his behaving in such an inhuman and ungentlemanly manner?"

"Why, people in Hamilton—everybody—out of the college as well as in, consider him a piece of perfection!" added Sue.

"He is a detestable snake in the grass, then!" Hester said, vehemently, her energy so disproportionate to the occasion, that doubts would have arisen, in an unbiassed mind, of her own belief in the affecting narration she had glibly poured forth.

"Take care, dear!" cautioned Fanny. "There may be extenuating circumstances of which we are ignorant. Mr. Fordham's character as a gentleman and a Christian is not to be lightly disputed. Every question has two sides, papa says, and those are wisest who suspend judgment until both are heard. I am morally certain there is some mistake about all this, which Mr. Fordham could clear up, if he were here."

The heiress sniffed haughtily, and her light skin was dappled with fiery red spots to the roots of her hair; her faint eyebrows met in a viragoish frown.

"I thank you for the inference, Miss Provost! Would I repeat a story unless I was sure—'morally certain,' as you say, that it was true in every particular? If you question my veracity, you can ask dozens of her acquaintances in her native place, who will confirm my statement. And you may be thankful if you don't, at the same time, hear some other ugly facts about your Christian gentleman, that I have chosen to omit. If I have a fault, it is that I am too charitable in my judgment of human nature. I am perpetually being imposed upon."

The cue that had been stationary while Fanny put in her plea for mercy to the absent perjurer, was restless again, red balls and white chasing one another aimlessly across the green cloth.

"To tell the truth," said Nettie Fry, another of the listening group, propitiatory of the mistress of a million in her own right,—"I never admired Mr. Fordham so much as many pretend to do. He was always so cool and lofty—so unapproachable and unlike other young men of his age. And as Miss Sanford says, he looked as if he might, when married, grow into a kind of Bluebeard."

"For my part, I thought him grand and good," confessed Selina. "And I liked him a hundred times better than I did the modern young gentleman, with his flattering speeches and unmeaning attentions. I didn't think he could trifle with a woman's affections. I am dreadfully disappointed! I wonder if Mr. Wyllys knows anything about this shocking business!"

"Of course he doesn't! How should he?" retorted Hester, tartly. "There are not three people besides myself, even in our city, who ever heard of it."

"You said 'dozens,' just now, Hester!" ventured merciful Fanny, in gentle rebuke.

Selina averted the burst of anger portended by the darkening visage of the moneyed belle.

"I thought Mr. Wyllys would be more likely to hear Mr. Fordham's side of the story than anybody else," she said, timidly. "You know they are own cousins."

"You don't say so!" ejaculated Hester, horrified; and by a simultaneous conviction of their indiscretion, the entire party was moved to glance at Jessie.

She appreciated the extreme awkwardness of the pause; felt that their eyes were directed, like so many burning-glasses, to a focus that was herself, and mechanically went on playing with her cue and balls. Only Fanny Provost was in a position from which she could see that while her features were steady, and her eyes seemed to follow the red and white spheroids in their windings and doublings, one swollen vein in her throat was beating like a clock, and the nails were bloodless where they pressed upon the cue.

"Come! we must finish our game!" said the young hostess, going back to the table. "Jessie has been perfecting her skill by a bit of private practice, while we were making havoc of our neighbors' characters."

At heart she was exceedingly displeased with the tale-bearer, but the courtesy of hospitality forbade her more emphatic expression of disapproval.

Jessie threw down the slender rod, and tried, very unsuccessfully, to laugh,

"I have done nothing except spoil your game for you. I thought you had found an occupation so far preferable that you would not care to go on with this. I give up my cue and my place. You must choose other partners and commence anew. I have forgotten how the balls were set up when we stopped to listen to Miss Sanford's thrilling romance. I must go now, Fanny. My time is up!"

Bowing a general "Good afternoon," she made her way to the library where she had left her hat and cloak. Fanny accompanied her.

"You will join us again this evening, I hope," she said, kindly. "Mr. Wyllys is to give us some music. Hester has never heard him sing. By a somewhat strange series of mischances, she has never happened to be present when he gave the rest of us this pleasure. She cannot endure contradiction, as you see; so when she insisted I should ask him for to-night, I complied, I am often thankful, Jessie, that I am not an only child, when I see how restless and irritable so much notice and petting has made her. It is a downright misfortune to be so wealthy as she is. Everything and everybody conspires to spoil her. She is more to be pitied than blamed, poor girl!"

Jessie said nothing in rejoinder to this ingenious apology for her cousin's ill-natured tattling, and Fanny was obliged to proceed directly to the point.

"I am sorry if you are leaving thus early on account of anything Hester has said," she continued, genuine concern depicted in her countenance—"sorry if the slur cast by the idle talk of a party of thoughtless girls upon the character of your—of our friend, Mr. Wyllys' cousin—has wounded or displeased you. Hester does not mean to exaggerate or misrepresent, but she has a wild, careless fashion of talking sometimes. I am convinced that there is some great mistake in the story we have heard. In details and in general bearing, it is not in keeping with Mr. Fordham's well-established character. If you knew him, you would agree with me in discrediting it, in toto."

"I do know him, and I quite agree with you!"

Jessie was tying on her hat, and the action might have caused the slight quaver and weakness in her voice. It was firmer when she spoke again. Fanny, in consternation at the unexpected disclosure, and the manner which said that more was behind the mere statement, could not summon words for reply.

"Mr. Wyllys' cousin"—with unconscious emphasis, Fanny imagined was disdainful—"is not a stranger to me. I have known him a long time. But say nothing to your friends about the acquaintanceship. They might fear they had offended me by their strictures. I will—I may tell you more some other time. You will comprehend then why certain things which were said just now, have excited me more than I care to show. You are always just and tender-hearted, and I thank you for speaking when I could not. Good-by!"

Her lips were set and hard to Fanny's soft kiss, and her eyes glowed dangerously as the latter attended her to the front door. The peace-maker, noting this, refrained from further endeavors to heal the breach between her relative and her new friend. Hester had been shockingly, shamefully imprudent, even if what she stated were true. Jessie was hurt and angry, and she had a right to be. Yet she, Fanny, dared not advance another step without a more distinct understanding of the case. For the present it was beyond her art. She tried to content herself by a cordial invitation to "run in to-morrow forenoon for a quiet billiard-practice—only you and myself—if you do not think better of your refusal to come to-night," and let her visitor go.

CHAPTER XI.

Greatly perturbed, Fanny returned to the circle of gossips. They had not recommenced their game, but were standing about, and leaning upon the billiard-table, busily rehearsing the late scene, accentuating their animated periods by tapping the floor with the cues, and rapping the board with the ivory balls. All except Hester, who sat still upon her lounge, twirled her rings, and looked sulky.

Selina was foremost and loudest in apologetic exclamations—being as candid in regret as she had been in censure.

"Do you know I never thought of his being a relation of Mr. Wyllys until just as I spoke of it? That is like my blundering tongue! There is no half-way house of meditation between the brain and it. We are ruined! you and I especially, Nettie, and Sue is almost as badly off. Jessie will tell Mr. Wyllys, and he will report us all to his cousin, and won't there be a row?"

"Why should you care?" said Hester, sharply. "If the man is away off in Germany, he can't quarrel with you."

"But he is coming back next Fall! I should sink into the earth if he were to ask me any questions about what I have said. He has always been so gentle and pleasant with me! I felt quite proud of his good opinion."

"You had very little to be proud of, I should say!" retorted Miss Sanford, losing command of her tongue and temper entirely, as the discussion proceeded. "Thank Heaven! I am not dependent upon such contemptible trifles for my peace of mind! I wouldn't recognize Roy Fordham on the street, or anywhere else; would cut him dead were he to enter this room at this very minute. As for Miss Kirke, I care less than nothing for her, or her opinion. If she chooses to play the spy upon a confidential conversation between ladies, and carry tales to gentlemen, she may, and welcome. I never could abide her from the first instant I ever saw her. I do hate tattlers and backbiters! But let her do her worst! I flatter myself that I, at least, am above her reach!"

"I should be very uneasy and unhappy, if I believed that the substance of our conversation would ever reach Mr. Fordham's ears," rejoined Fanny, very gravely. "But Mr. Wyllys is no mischief-maker. Nor, for that matter, is Jessie Kirke. My principal regret is that we have wounded her; for I do not think a reputation so nobly earned as Mr. Fordham's has been, will suffer from our idle chatter. It is founded upon a rock. As to Jessie's playing the spy, Hester, she had no reason to believe the communication you made was confidential."

"She never opened her lips while I was talking! just stood off there, pretending to be busy with the billiard balls, and listened," said Hester, hotly, "If that wasn't mean and dishonorable, I don't know what is!"

"I am inclined to think it would have been well had the rest of us done likewise!" smiled Fanny, willing to give a jocose turn to the circumstance. "Since we cannot help our blunder, we will try to forget it."

But Hester had a troublesome bee in her bonnet. She looked more and more discomposed.

"What makes you all think that this Kirke girl will blab to Mr. Wyllys? What has she to do with him, more than any of you here?"

"What's he to Hecuba, or Hecuba to him!" quoted Fanny, theatrically, bent upon covering her cousin's coarseness of speech and manner. "They are old friends, and he is intimate at Dr. Baxter's, where she is staying. As I said, however, the least of my apprehensions is that she will stir up strife between us and Mr. Fordham."

She chalked her cue carefully, as if it were her chief concern at present.

"Is he addressing her?" demanded Hester, with increasing interest.

"I don't know. Selina! will you play on my side?"

"In a minute!" The volatile Bradley was off at a tangent. "I don't begin to believe that he means to offer himself to her, whatever wiseacres may say. It is well known that he is not a marrying man. He brings out girls that have the making of belles in them. It is a sort of hobby with him—a mission he has. This done, he stands back serenely, and lets other men marry them. He is a universal lover of the sex, and upon occasions like those I have named—a benefactor. Some of our most elegant matrons and handsomest young ladies were his protégées. His sanction of their charms made them the fashion. It is odd, but true."

Hester smiled, laid her head on her left shoulder, and peeped at an opposite mirror.

"It would be a sin were you Hamilton girls to let him marry this girl. You don't half appreciate him. I have met so many distinguished and gallant men, that I call myself a tolerable judge of true breeding and polished manners. And I can inform you that in a large, gay city such as that I live in, he would be a star! might have almost any girl he wanted. The idea of his throwing himself away upon a poor minister's daughter is just perfectly nonsensical. I have too good an opinion of his common-sense and his taste, to believe it for a second. He can't but know that he could look ever so much higher. What there is about this Miss Kirke that you all admire, I can't see, for the life of me. She couldn't carry it, in our place, with such a bold hand, as she does here. She would be put down at once and forever!"

"Jessie Kirke is my friend, Hester, and was but just now my guest," said Fanny, firmly. "Excuse me for saying that I cannot hear her spoken of unkindly in this house. She is a lady—born and bred. Papa says her family were people of rank in this country, before ours was ever heard of. I am not an aristocrat, but if I were I should rather belong to what Dr. Holmes calls the 'Brahmin caste', in America, than to any other. Jessie Kirke comes of an educated race, and the refinement of educated generations shows itself in every motion and word. I do not affirm that she will—that she would, if he offered himself, marry Mr. Wyllys. I do say that he would do well to win her for his wife. And I suspect he does not need to be told this."

The sun was an hour high as Jessie descended the granite steps of Judge Provost's mansion. The college buildings lay to her right, upon rising ground, separated by a shallow valley from the hill crowned by the Provost house and grounds. Instead of taking the street that would conduct her to Dr. Baxter's door, she turned sharply to the left, and began another and steeper ascent. There were few residences in this quarter of the town, and these were gentlemen's villas, separated by large gardens. She did not look up at the windows of the scattered dwellings in passing, although more than one acquaintance watched, from one and another of these, the straight, slender figure that held on its rapid course without sway or falter. In the plainest garb, she was conspicuous for her carriage and peculiar style of beauty. This afternoon she looked like a young forest princess in her dark green dress, and tunic trimmed with fur, the black velvet cap and sweeping green feather. She had thought of Hester Sanford's colorless countenance and Parisian costumes as she made ready for the call upon Fanny, laughed to herself at the image that smiled back upon her from the mirror, knowing how far handsomer, even more "stylish" (Hester's pet word!) she was in her simple robes. She thought more of such things now than ever before. Her enjoyment in general company was no longer the gratification of a young girl's frank vanity—often as guileless and freely uttered as a child's. The desire to be at her best looks, to attract and to hold the admiration of those whom she met abroad, had ceased to be simple and positive. There was in it the baser element of competition. She would be beautiful and brilliant because others—Hester Sanford in particular—were homely and silly. The feeling had grown upon her insidiously—so stealthily she could not tell when she forbore to laugh, good-naturedly, at the heiress' absurdities; to declare openly to Mr. Baxter and Orrin that she had conceived an antipathy to her before she had known her three hours, or three minutes,—that association with her invariably provoked her into an indescribable but intolerable state of discomfort, analogous to that a cat is supposed to feel when her fur is turned the wrong way. But she disliked the woman intensely now when she hardly ever named her to others.

There were many reasons for this. As proud in her way as Hester was vain-glorious in hers, it galled her continually that she must appear—even for Fanny's and decency's sake—to submit to the insufferable impertinence of one who was her peer in nothing save the accident of riches. She would give her no apparent advantage; would not put it into her power to boast that she had driven her out of the arena where she—Hester—believed that she reigned queen of Fashion, if not of Love and Beauty,—or she would have avoided her whenever she could. It seemed to her that the more dignified course was to overlook her—her spiteful innuendoes, her pompous condescensions, and brainless boastings—with the sublime indifference of one whose thoughts were set upon worthier and more comely objects; to mete out to the heiress scrupulously such show of regard as she would vouchsafe a peevish, painted gad-fly hissing about her ears and eyes.

The gad-fly had stung her out of her seeming of haughty carelessness, and since she could not crush or even touch it, she was fleeing before it, as for her life. The figure occurred to her as she climbed a third hill—one she had never crossed before without pausing on the summit to look back over the town—a view Roy had commended to her admiration in one of his letters. She did not stop now, or turn her head, but almost ran down the other side, her teeth clinched, and a dry aching in the throat that ought to have been relieved by tears, yet was not to be. She met no one in her walk. The day was still, and very cold; the hills beyond the ice-bound river were strongly defined against a pale orange sky into which the color seemed to be frozen, so unvarying was it, as the sun rolled horizonward. She had passed the region of paved sidewalks, but the ground rang like stone under her tread; her breath was frosty vapor as soon as it left her lips. She did not think how much colder it would be in the open country road on the other side of the bridge. She would not feel it when she got there. Two wood wagons, each with a team of four horses, were coming across the bridge, abreast, and she stepped aside to let them pass. The drivers were walking behind their loads, swinging their arms and stamping to keep up the circulation of the congealing blood in their limbs. The roadsters tramped in a cloud of steam from their nostrils, about which fine icicles clung to their shaggy hair. They had thick woollen shields over their breasts, fur collars upon their shoulders.

"Men are tender in their mercies to the brute creation!" thought the young lady at whom the men looked with respectful but evident approbation, in going by. "When it comes to women, their pity fails them!"

She was doing more than escaping the malignant tongue that had blackened the fair fame of her betrothed. She despised Hester Sanford's intellect and inventive talents so heartily that she should have laughed to scorn the tale to which she had hearkened; dissected the ill-formed mass of contradictions, and boldly refuted her statements by a comparison of their incongruities. Three months earlier she would have covered the traducer with confusion, and rightly punished her gloating audience by standing forth as the defender of Roy's honor and truth, and proudly announcing the nature of the bond between them. She was incapable of such an attempt now. Like a cowed hound, she had crouched in a corner and suffered the outrage to him who was her other self—the gallant gentleman, whose name she was to bear some day—lifted neither tongue nor finger to save that name from obloquy. Not even to amiable Fanny (how much braver than her craven self!) had she been able to say—"This man is to be my husband! Who strikes him, wounds and makes an enemy of me!"

Why was this?

She stopped midway across the bridge; leaned over the parapet with locked hands and rigid features; stared down upon the shining black ice—still not feeling the cold—and tried to answer the question thrust upon her.

Why had she made no fight to save the character of him for whom she had once declared herself willing to die?

"How dared they?" she had muttered between her teeth, in leaving Judge Provost's portico. On the bridge she spoke again—a hoarse whisper it hurt her throat to sibillate.

"If this be true!" she said, letting her clasped hands fall upon the stone wall.

There was a livid bruise on both, when she removed her gloves that evening, but she had not felt it when it was dealt.

Had then her belief in her lover's integrity succumbed to the weight of the first doubt cast upon it, in her presence? Were her faith and her love made of such flimsy stuff as to be torn into wretched rags by a single gale? If these were ever well-founded, must not the inroads of distrust have been gradual in order to be effectual? Had suspicion and forebodings visited her before to-day? been harbored, but not recognized? If so, what were the grounds for doubts and fears?

"If it be true—" she repeated, with a desolate moan—"there is no help for me in earth or in heaven! I can never trust or love again!"

Some one was coming on behind her with quick steps, which echoed loudly on the icy planks, and she walked on hastily. Her first unwise impulse was to increase her speed in the hope of getting away from the intruder, whoever he might be. But finding, on reaching the opposite shore, that he gained on her, she slackened her pace to let him pass. She would be the sooner alone and unobserved if she allowed him to go on. It was only a chance wayfarer, of course, but she would shun all eyes, idle or searching, while her brain was in such a whirl, her heart rent and quaking. She detected nothing familiar in the footfall, but she did remark, with a sense of irritation, that it was more deliberate in nearing her. Did the unseen pursuer mean to dog her?

Annoyance was exchanged momentarily for active alarm; the angry blood welled to her face and head in one mighty throb, as a hand touched her elbow, before her persecutor had breath to accost her.

It was Orrin Wyllys' voice that said, laughingly, "Is it Atalanta, or swift Camilla scouring the plain, whom I have chased for the last ten minutes? What are you running away from?"

"The Furies!"