Jessamine: A Novel

he repeated, mentally, thus salving the smart caused by Roy's thanks. "Jessie and I will be capital friends and neighbors. She will like me none the less because she knows that, had she been possessed of the fair and fond Hester's wealth, her destiny would have been changed. She is too acute of perception not to comprehend that, in that case, my sense of what was due to her and myself would not have let me resign her, even to my honored cousin, here. But what is, is best, I suppose.

"You have never met my Dulcinea, I believe?" he said aloud, both cigar and windpipe being in good working order by the time he reached this consolatory sequel.

"I have not had that pleasure. Jessie gave me a slight sketch of her—a mere outline, which I hope to fill up for myself, shortly, from life."

"Then," meditated the cool and candid bridegroom-elect, "my tow-headed divinity lied egregiously about that old affair! I must cross-examine her in earnest, and if my suspicion is correct, make her retract certain counts in her indictment against Jessie's husband. I owe him that much reparation. Since they are a wedded unit, things should go upon velvet so far as is consistent with the fact of human imperfection. I'll send the lovely Hester to make amends to Mrs. Fordham, some time. If I do not forget it."

He was in one of his gracefully indolent moods to-night, and did not hurry himself in speech.

"She is not handsome. You would not, I fear, consider her even pretty," he resumed, after a few lulling puffs, such as might be necessary to temper loverly exaggeration. "But she is a dear, affectionate, pliant little thing, and will make just the wife a blasé world citizen like myself needs. I hope—I think you will like her. But I don't expect you to see in her the peer of your glorious Jessie, however well she may suit me."

Roy, when left alone again, pondered this speech dissatisfiedly.

"I am not quite content with this match, nor with Orrin's tone. I had not looked for a lover's rhapsodies, knowing his critical taste in these matters, but he ought not to acknowledge or feel the need of apologies for his choice. I am afraid his love does not leave him as little to wish for and to fear, as mine does me."

He looked up at the portrait with a smile.

"But there is only one Jessie in the world, and she will be here to-morrow night."

Still standing before the picture, he made an involuntary gesture, as of folding something in his arms.

"My darling! soon to be my angel in the house! I think it would kill me to lose you now."

His sudden motion had struck a book from the corner of the table, exposing a letter that lay beneath. It was a foreign envelope, and had probably been given to the servant by the postman that afternoon, and placed there by her with the book on the top, for safe-keeping. An enclosure fell out as he opened the cover—a letter that had arrived in Heidelberg after he set out for home, said a line from a fellow-student in the University. The smile lingered lovingly about mouth and eyes, while he tore off the inner wrapper.

The superscription was Jessie's; the note the short and cold farewell she had indited after her parting with Orrin Wyllys, on the 6th of September.

"No harm done!" reiterated the affectionate kinsman, walking slowly along to his lodgings, under the pure moon. "I should have been sorry had she carried her threat into execution; spoiled her own prospects, and made Roy wretched. But I could find it in my heart to regret the witch even now that I am on the eve of beatification. The affair was interesting—most engaging while it lasted—had more cayenne and wine in it than this very lawful and eminently remunerative love-making. My 'lassie wi' the lint-white locks,' says it is 'just the sweetest thing in the world.' Peut être!

'An excellent piece of work, Madame Lady!
Would it were done!'"

CHAPTER XX.

Roy was at the dépôt Wednesday afternoon to meet his wife.

"You are not well, I am afraid!" she said, when they were in the carriage that was to convey them home.

"I am not sick, but I have had much to think of and to do, lately, and I may look somewhat jaded," he answered. "You left Eunice well, you say?"

"Quite well, thank you! You have overworked yourself in getting the house ready for me. You should have left that for me to do."

"It was not necessary. As it is, you will find much room for alteration and improvement, I doubt not. You were fortunate in meeting with a pleasant escort on your journey. Are you much fatigued?"

"No, but my head aches a little," turning her face to the window.

She was disappointed in her reception. The parting from Eunice had been a grievous trial; the journey filled with mournful thoughts of the past that now lay so very far behind her. In turning her back upon her parents' graves and her birthplace, she seemed to have parted company forever with the blithe girl who had been born and had grown up to woman's estate, careless and joyous as the swallows that had for a century built their nests in the belfry of the church-tower. She had almost forgotten how Jessie Kirke felt and acted. Yet she was thankful that in the midst of melancholy and dazement, her appointed way lay clear and open before her; that she had still a sure staff on which to lean,—the hope and resolve that she would do her duty bravely and well in the sphere for which her marriage-vow had set her apart. It was indicative of the generous temper and sound sense that never failed to assert themselves when the momentary tumult of passion had passed, which neither her faults nor the influence of the tempter had warped, that she had never, for one moment, blamed Roy for hurrying forward their marriage. They were "troth-plight," as her Scottish ancestors would have put it. She had said, "If you insist upon the fulfilment of my promise, I will submit to your decision." And she had not said it idly. He had taken her at her word, as he had the right to do, and by that pledge she would abide.

Lonely and tired, the sight of Roy's face in the crowd of strangers upon the platform of the Hamilton station had cheered her heart like a cordial. She forgot that he was her husband; remembered him only as a noble and faithful friend in whose presence she would be no longer solitary and sad. She was even conscious of a proud sense of proprietorship in the fine-looking, dignified man who was the first to enter the car when it stopped,—a consciousness that flushed her cheeks faintly, and quickened her pulses, as she introduced him to the gentleman who had acted as her escort and heard his well-chosen words of acknowledgment for the favor done him. He had not kissed her then—she supposed because there were so many looking on; but after taking his place beside her in the carriage, he might surely tell her that her coming gave him joy; repeat something of the rapturous anticipations that had overflowed his heart in writing his last letter, received by her the night before. His face was very pale, his eyes abstracted, his voice constrained. Anything more unlike the Roy she had known in Dundee could hardly be imagined, without changing the identity of the man. It was not surprising that a qualm of home-sickness weakened her heroic resolutions; put to flight her dreams of forgetting her unhappiness in the sustained effort to be and do all he wished.

Roy saw the struggle and surmised, in part, the cause of it; but what could he say to assuage or encourage? The caresses and fond words with which he had sought to console her in the earlier days of her desolation must, he now saw in the lurid light shed upon his honeymoon by that terrible letter, have aggravated her sufferings.

Professing to be her protector, he had played the part of a brutal ravisher; had torn her,—shrinking and crying out against the loathed union she felt would "be a sin—a fearful sin," from her free, happy girl-life, and bound her, soul and body, in fetters more hateful and enduring than manacles of steel. After the first shock of horror and of grief, he forgot the wrong he had sustained in his overmastering compassion for her. And he could not free her! Loving her better than he did his own happiness and life, he was powerless to ensure her peace of mind by restoring her to liberty. Had he been other than the true Christian and true man he was, the distracting anguish of that conviction would have driven him to madness and to suicide, as a sequel to the fearful vigil that followed the discovery of his real position.

Light came with the morning, and strength for the day. His course was plain—to mitigate the rigors of her fate by such kindly deeds as a brother might perform for the promotion of a sister's welfare; by abstaining from even such manifestations of affection as are a brother's right. There should be no formal explanation until she had recovered from the fatigue of her journey, and begun to feel at home in her new abode. Thus much he could and would do, and await the result.

"What a pretty, pretty house!" exclaimed Jessie, as the carriage drew up at the gate of a cottage on the southern slope of one of the hills on which the handsome town was built.

She had meant to praise his selection of a residence however ordinary its appearance, but her enthusiastic admiration was genuine.

Roy smiled, but not with the glad gleam she looked to see.

"It is good and kind in you to say so! If you can be satisfied here, I ask nothing better or grander."

A tidy girl opened the door, whom Jessie recognized with pleased surprise as a former servant in Dr. Baxter's family.

"Why, Phoebe! This is homelike! How very generous in Cousin Jane to give you up to me!"

"She said you might find me useful, Miss Jessie! I beg your pardon—Mrs. Fordham!" replied the girl, dropping a courtesy.

Jessie colored, Roy thought, painfully, at the as yet unfamiliar name. He interfered to save her further embarrassment, in the shape of congratulations.

"You will show her to her room, if you please, Phoebe. And then let her have a cup of tea. She has a headache. Your trunks will be sent up in the course of half an hour, Jessie, but I would not advise you to wait for them, or take the trouble of changing your travelling-dress. You must begin your life here by doing just as you choose in such matters."

He met her in the hall when she ran down, ten minutes later, fearful lest she had kept him waiting, and led her into the supper room; letting her take her place behind the tea-tray without one of the tenderly gallant speeches with which a bridegroom would naturally install his bride in the chair always appropriated by the mistress of heart and home. He was attentive to her wants, and talked as much as usual—perhaps more—in the endeavor to put her at her ease; telling how the flowers upon the tea-table and in her chamber were sent over at noon from Judge Provost's conservatory; that the silver service was a present from the Baxters, the bronze mantel-clock from Fanny Provost, who was very anxious to see her and resume their old intimacy. Selina Bradley had sent the chased silver butter-bowl, and other Hamilton families had testified their good-will by elegant and suitable gifts.

"I am every day more glad that you spent last winter here," he said. "You do not come as a stranger; have already pleasant associations with our town and its inhabitants, and gained a foothold, I find, in many hearts."

He had unwittingly dealt as direct a blow at the secret panel that hid the skeleton in her heart, as he had at Orrin Wyllys' indurated conscience the previous evening.

Jessie had no words in which to reply; sought to conceal her confusion by steadfastly regarding the pattern on her plate—one of a set of china Roy had purchased in Dresden, she discovered, presently, when she remarked upon its beauty.

"I had no idea you had such exquisite taste!" She made a bold attempt to break through the nameless but powerful constraint that kept down everything like easy or merry converse on her part. "I expect to be in a state of perpetual astonishment on that score for a long time to come. I did not know that learned scholars ever condescended to consider such petty details of domestic life as porcelain and carpets."

He put back his chair without replying directly to the compliment, at which, to her mortification, he looked rather pained than pleased.

"If you have finished your supper, perhaps you would like to go over the house?" he said, politely. "Or, if you are tired, we will postpone it until to-morrow."

"I should greatly prefer going now!" catching at the prospect of some mitigation of the growing stiffness.

The survey was a quiet progress for the most part, certainly not accomplishing the end she had hoped for. Roy said little, and Jessie felt very awkward, as door after door was opened, and she appreciated the thoughtfulness that had ministered to her comfort, from first to last, yet was forbidden by the mysterious spell chaining her tongue, to thank him who had wrought it all. But when they reached the sitting-room, where the flames were crackling and curling among the wood on the hearth, and her chair and fire-screen awaited her, the home-restfulness of the scene broke down the ice wall. The feelings that had gathered to oppression upon her heart, overflowed her eyes and choked her articulation.

"This is too much!" she exclaimed, catching Roy's hand in hers, and gazing tearfully into his face. "Oh! what am I—"

She could say no more.

"The mistress of this room and this house!" responded Roy, in kindly seriousness. "One who has a right to expect every attention I can bestow. This is your sanctum. Nobody shall enter it without your permission."

Jessie tried to smile playfully.

"Excepting yourself!"

"When you want me, I shall come!" was the evasive reply.

"Surely you will not wait—"

The remonstrance was cut short by a tap at the door, signalling Mrs. Baxter's impetuous entrance.

"My dearest lamb!" she cried, with a strangled sob, clasping her cousin in her embrace.

"The doctor would come the instant he had swallowed his tea!" she tried to cover Jessie's emotion and her own by saying, when she could speak clearly. "I told him it was barbarously unfeeling and unromantic; that, according to all rules of etiquette and sentiment, you should pass this evening without the intrusion of company. But he was obstinate. I don't believe you two have the remotest conception of his favoritism of you!"

Meantime, the doctor had, in his odd fashion, slipped his hand under the young wife's chin, and raised to the light a strangely agitated face—eyes swimming in tears, forehead slightly puckered with the effort after self-control, and little eddies of smiles breaking up around the mouth. Roy saw in it the whole history of the shipwreck of her heart and life, and her womanly determination to keep the knowledge of the disaster to herself. Would the physiognomist's keenly solemn gaze detect as much?

Neither of the lately wedded pair was prepared for the remark with which he released the blushing Jessie.

"I wanted to see if the heart of her husband could safely trust in her. My daughter! do you know what a good man you have married?"

"Do not raise her expectations to an unreasonable height, my dear sir!" interposed Roy, in time to forestall her reply. "And let me thank you, in her name and in mine, for the honor you have done us in this early visit."

The doctor accepted the compliment and the chair that the host wheeled forward, in profound silence. The conversation had been carried on by the others for several minutes before he again joined in. He was aroused then by his wife's laudations of Orrin's generosity as displayed in his bridal present.

"I don't see how you can take it so quietly!" she berated the recipient. "One would suppose pianos were given away every day! And you should value the instrument the more highly because it is the gift of your great admirer and true friend, Mr. Wyllys. I assure you, Mr. Fordham, nothing could exceed his care of and devotion to her, for your sake and in your name, of course! while you were over the seas and far away."

"True friend!" echoed the doctor's dryest, most rasping tones. "Humph!"

"Now, my love, I do implore that you will not drag forward that most unjust and unreasonable prejudice in the present company!" cried his wife, in a nervous flutter from her bonnet-crown to her gaiter-tips. "If I have failed to convince you that it is groundless and absurd, oblige me by withholding the expression of it, here and now!"

"My good Jane!" returned the imperturbable spouse—"Where else could the truth be so fitly spoken as in the hearing of judicious friends? I am sorry to say, Mr. Fordham, that my excellent wife and myself do not agree respecting Mr. Wyllys' character and actions."

"Doctor! doctor!" ejaculated the frantic woman, plunging forward, at an angle of forty-five degrees, to pluck his sleeve. "You forget that you are addressing Mr. Wyllys' cousin!"

"A candid man, and a fair judge of human nature and motives, nevertheless," her lord went on to say, with a stiff little bow in the direction of the person named. "The only safe rule among friends is candor. It is seldom I attribute sinister purposes to one whom I do not know certainly to be malevolent or hypocritical, but when I declare it to be my firm conviction that Orrin Wyllys—(of whom the best thing I know is that he has descended physically from the same stock that produced your husband, my child!)"—this to Jessie—"when I affirm that I believe him to be a wolf who ravens safely and reputably under the cowardly cover of sheep's clothing, I am not, as my dear Jane here would persuade herself and you, the victim of causeless prejudice."

"Dearest, I entreat!" broke in the wife, at her last gasp of distress.

His discourse moved on majestically. There were four knots in his handkerchief already.

"From the moment I heard Mr. Wyllys caution Mrs. Baxter not to allude in her letter of invitation to our Jessie, to information he had supplied relative to her person, residence, and education, I distrusted the singleness of his desire for the resumption of Mrs. Baxter's intercourse with the family of her early friend. When the invited guests arrived, and I learned that the terms of their previous intercourse entitled him to become her cavalier on all occasions; her preceptor and referee in doubtful cases of conscience and conduct;—when I compared this circumstance with his careless and apparently accidental mention of her to Mrs. Baxter, and his pretended indifference to her coming, I made up my mind that he was particularly interested in her for some reason he did not care to divulge. I believe still that this was the case. I believe that, knowing her to be betrothed to his cousin, he strove, consciously and systematically, to win her from her allegiance. I thank God that he did not succeed; that she has given herself and her happiness into the keeping of a true and honorable gentleman!"

"I am grateful to you, doctor, for your staunch friendship for myself, and your paternal guardianship of my wife!"

Roy Fordham's full, pleasant tones reached Jessie's ears like an angelic benediction through the seething chaos that was swallowing her up.

"I am glad, moreover, that you have, in the present company, introduced the subject of your misgivings regarding my cousin's behavior while I was away. I appointed him my proxy before I left my betrothed and my native land. The attentions that misled you into doubt of his right dealing were paid in that character. I cannot have you undervalue the 'true and honorable gentleman' I know Orrin Wyllys to be. He is my friend!"

The doctor tugged at his cravat-bow and stared into the chandelier. Mrs. Baxter gulped down all the solicitude she could swallow, and threw all the rest into the deprecating look she cast upon Roy. He stood before his zealous old superior—courteous, kind, but earnest in defence of his absent friend—the model of gallant manliness, thought the abject creature, cowering in the shadow of Mrs. Baxter's chair, half dead with remorse and the dread of additional questioning.

The love of this man she had trodden under foot! forgotten affection and duty to him in the mad, wicked delirium wrought by the wiles of one whom Roy, in the simplicity of his integrity, still accounted honest and faithful. A cheat and a coward Jessie had written Orrin down since that early September day when he confided to her the fact of his engagement, and shrank visibly at the suggestion of Roy's anger at his shameless breach of faith. She stigmatized him now, in the council of her thoughts, as a liar from the beginning. He had manoeuvred, then, to procure Mrs. Baxter's invitation for herself, while he denied to her that she had ever been named between them until after this was sent; had inveigled her away from the shelter of her father's roof and the guard of her sister's care, that he might establish his fell influence over her. Would not Roy, with all his generous trust in his cousin's honor and friendship, compare the doctor's mal-apropos statement with her confession of the change in herself, and arrive at a tolerably correct perception of the truth that would blast her forever in his sight, as not merely weak and fickle, but forward and unmaidenly?

When the throbbing of her heart would let her listen intelligently to what was going on, the doctor had been beguiled into a dissertation upon Druidistic history, by Roy's exhibition of a paper-weight in the form of an altar, encircled by a wreath of mistletoe, graven out of a bit of stone he had picked up at Stonehenge. His considerate spouse carried him off before one-third of the knots in his handkerchief were untied. Her valedictory, like her salutatory, was a diffuse apology for their intrusion upon the sacredness of the installation-eve.

"But the doctor—dear, blundering man! is amenable to no laws of conventionality," she subjoined, with an indulgent shrug and sigh.

It is questionable whether either of the persons addressed regretted the breach of etiquette. The time had gone by more swiftly and comfortably than if they had been left to themselves. As it was, an embarrassing silence followed the visitors' departure. Roy stood on the rug, facing the fire, motionless and thoughtful. Jessie, trembling in a nervous chill that changed her fingers into shaking icicles, durst not attempt to speak.

Fordham finally came out of his reverie with a start, and turned toward her apologetically.

"You are sadly tired! Our good friends were very welcome, but they have kept you up beyond your strength. May I take you to your room?"

She murmured a disclaimer of the imputation of excessive fatigue, but took his proffered arm, and they mounted the stairs together.

A bright fire burned in the large front chamber, flashed gayly back from the gilt fleur-de-lis of the delicately tinted wallpaper and the frames of the few pictures. A cosey armchair stood ready for Jessie, with a foot-cushion below it, and the marble slabs of bureau and mantel bore fragile wealth of Bohemian and frosted glass and Parian ornaments.

"Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?" inquired Roy, not offering to sit down. "Wouldn't a glass of wine do your head good?"

"I think not. I need nothing, thank you!" without raising her eyes from the carpet.

"I hope you will be quite rested by morning," he continued, with the same ceremonious gentleness. "I may as well explain to you that, foreseeing how frequently I shall be obliged to sit up late at my studies, I have had the chamber opposite prepared for myself. So I will bid you good-night now."

He held out his hand. She placed hers within it, silently, eyes still averted.

"Good-night, and pleasant dreams!" he repeated, with a kindly pressure of the chill fingers.

An impulse she could not control or define drew her to her feet. "Won't you kiss me, Roy?" she asked, in sorrowful humility.

She did not see how bloodless were the lips that obeyed. The salute was, to her apprehension, cold and reluctant, and, without another syllable, he passed on to the outer door. There he stopped—hesitated, with a backward glance at the drooping figure, standing where he had left her—and returned.

"I had not intended to say it yet," he said, agitatedly. "There have been times when I questioned the propriety of any attempt at self-justification. But I would not have you think worse of me than I deserve for my selfish recklessness in hurrying on our marriage. I received this letter"—giving it to her—"last night. It furnishes the clue to much that I now see ought to have checked my unseemly impatience to claim the right I believed was still mine. This was the communication to which you referred when you pleaded that the contents of your last letter should have hindered my proposal. I supposed, in the haste and excitement of the moment, that you meant the false rumor of your mother's insanity which had been treated of in a former communication, the receipt of which, let me say here, hastened my return. Not that I dreaded insanity for you, but because I gathered from your letter that you were unhappy and a prey to morbid fancies, and I hoped to be able to do you good by diverting these. If this 'last letter' which you hold had reached me in season, your request should have been granted."

He paused to master his own emotion, or to give her opportunity for reply. He may have hoped yet, in the face of the evidence to the contrary he had had, that she would retract her declaration. "I love you no longer" might represent that she was possessed by "morbid fancies" when it was penned; that under the sharp tutelage of sorrow, her affections had regained their balance.

She only sat still, her face hidden in her hands. There was a crouch in her attitude that suggested an unpleasant idea to the observer. It was that she feared him—his wrath and the results of this explanation. He forgot his sufferings in the desire to remove this apprehension if it existed.

"My only hope now is, that since I know what I should have perceived from the beginning, I may spare you annoyance, if not misery, by consulting your wishes and respecting your repugnances. If I could set you free, I would. My heaviest burden is the consciousness that this is impracticable. But it is my desire that, from this time, you should cease to regard me as your husband, and try to think of me as your friend. For we may still be that to each other—may we not, dear Jessie?"

She was moaning as in mortal pain.

"This kindness kills me! I had rather you should say that you hated me!"

"But that would not be true," said the gentle voice. "And henceforward we will be very frank and just in our dealings with one another. We will try, moreover, to put vain regrets out of sight, and to do the duty of the day; to serve our fellows and honor Him who has some merciful intent in leading us through these dark waters. Now, my child, this subject need never be renewed. Our Father knows our sorrows. To Him we will look for strength. He knows, too, the sincerity of my sad heart when I say how deeply it afflicts me to feel how much more grievous is your trial than mine."

Folding in his the hands she extended in a speechless passion of tears—her lips trying vainly to form a petition for pardon—he prayed the God of all consolation to have her in His holy keeping; to give her joy for weeping, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Then, bidding her again "Be comforted and sleep," he went out.

CHAPTER XXI.

"I knocked at Mr. Fordham's door, ma'am, as you bid, and he said that he wasn't well enough to leave his room, and would you be pleased to eat breakfast without him. And he said, ma'am, that you needn't be uneasy the leastest bit in the world, for it's only a cold and sore throat he's got, and, indeed, if I may make so bold as to say it, he's that hoarse I could scarcely hear him at all."

Phoebe eyed her mistress slyly and keenly when she had delivered her message. Although not particularly given to prying and gossip, her curiosity was excited by certain peculiarities in the home life of Mr. and Mrs. Fordham, for which the supposition that the master of the house had "picked up German ways," while abroad, did not fully account. They had distinctly separate apartments, carrying the rule of division so far that Mr. Fordham never entered his wife's sitting-room without knocking at the door, and if she invaded the library when he was in, she not only asked admittance in the same way, but apologized for interrupting his studies.

"They are too polite by half!" Phoebe estimated, judging them by her not very extensive observation and experience. "There's Mrs. Baxter will make more fuss over her dried-up atomy of a man in one day, than Mrs. Fordham does about her fine figure of a husband in a year."

She had never seen Mr. Fordham kiss or otherwise caress his bride, or indulge in any of the romping fondling which the lately wedded are prone to forget may be less interesting to spectators than to themselves. Yet, she was ready to affirm stoutly that, in her parlance, "they thought the world and all of one another;" that Mr. Fordham studied his wife's inclinations, anticipated her wishes, and ministered to her comfort more than any other gentleman she knew; while "Mr. Fordham likes this," or, "he is not fond of that," were decisive phrases in Jessie's mouth in the conduct of her domestic affairs, and her many devices to make his home-coming at noon and evening, an ever-new pleasure, called forth the continual admiration of the handmaiden.

It was a puzzle past her finding out. But here was a test that could hardly fail. The wife should, according to Phoebe's creed, fly on the wings of love and anxiety to the bedside of her sick lord; become his nurse and servitor until he recovered.

To the girl's grieved disappointment,—for she was sincerely attached to the whilom "Miss Jessie," and wanted to think well of her in all things—Mrs. Fordham said, composedly, if not coolly—"Very well, Phoebe! Bring in breakfast!" and turned again to the window at which she was standing, when the news was brought to her of her husband's sad case.

"I'm right down sorry—that I am!" grumbled the servant over the kitchen range. "I did hope she'd show some feeling for him when he's maybe took for dipthery or quincy or something else awful. And he such a good provider and well-spoken gentleman, and never so much as raising his voice in a temper with her, but treating her like a queen! I've a mind to slip up myself, and ask what he'll have to eat. These are the beautifullest muffins ever I see! She is a master hand at the like. And I know she made these, as she does all sorts of nice things, because he likes 'em. Queer she never lets on but what I get up the dishes he praises. Mistresses mostly is glad enough to pocket the compliments as belongs to their girls. She's a genuwine lady, and no mistake, but it cuts me to see her so cold-hearted to him. I suppose they're what folks call a 'fashionable couple.'"

While this soliloquy was going on, the subject of it stood still at the window, gazing into the street. It was a bleak December day. There had been rain in the night; then the thermometer sank abruptly, and by morning the sidewalks were glazed with ice. The earth was black and grim, the clouds, grayly sullen, seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, and while Jessie looked, it began to snow, gently for a while, then so fast that a wavering sheet soon shut out her view of distant objects. The cottage was on a corner, and this being a side-window, gave upon the college-grounds on one hand, Judge Provost's house, garden, and lawn on the other. By changing her position never so slightly, the lady could have beheld the balconied front and imposing cupola of the Wyllys' residence, of which the happy pair had taken formal possession ten days before, postponing their bridal tour until Spring. "For," as the bride eagerly explained to everybody—"both of us have been everywhere on this side of the water, and winter-travelling is an awful bore. To be sure, we've been abroad, too, and seen everything that is worth seeing. So we are beating our brains to devise something recherché" (pronounced rechurchy) "in the way of a wedding-trip. And it is so sweet and romantic to come to our own home, right away! Indeed, as I told Orrin, it isn't safe to leave such carpets and furniture as ours unprotected."

Jessie had heard all this fanfaronade, and much more from Mrs. Baxter, but she was not thinking of it now. Nor did she move so as to bring the "new and superb mansion of our popular fellow-citizen, Orrin Wyllys, Esq.," within the range of her vision; only seemed to watch the falling snow, and the few passers-by who dotted the whitening streets at this early hour. In reality, she was speculating upon the meaning of the stillness in the chamber overhead. Was Roy, then, too ill to get up? Was his room comfortable? What attention from nurse or physician did he need? How was she to learn and supply his wants? It would be barbarous unkindness, if he were very sick, to stand aloof and leave the charge of him to hirelings. Yet her personal attendance would be awkward for both. She was not sure that he would approve of it, so fastidious had been his care to excuse her from such offices. He had spoken, in an off-hand way, overnight, of feeling chilly, and apologized for not offering to read the new number of a magazine to her by saying that his throat was sore. Without consulting him, she had brewed a pitcher of hot lemonade, and insisted upon his drinking it after he went to his room. He had thanked her with the invariable courtesy that met her every effort to serve him, and "was sure it was all he needed. A most agreeable prescription too!" he added, as he bore off the pitcher. It was a shock, after this pleasant parting, to hear that he was sick in bed. What if he were to be seriously ill? Her heart gave a great bound, then ceased moving for a moment. He was so robust, so full of life and energy, that this could not be.

What if he were to die! She too thought of diphtheria. There had been several fatal cases of it in Hamilton recently. She was pale and faint; her limbs giving way under her as she admitted the frightful supposition. What would she be—what would she do if the strong staff of his protection, the solace of his companionship, were reft from her?

For she knew that, little cause as she had given him in the circumstances attending their marriage, to cherish her as all men should—as some men do the women who love them fervently and constantly, there was hardly a wife in the land who was surrounded by the atmosphere of chivalrous devotion which encompassed her in the secluded life she led as the nominal mistress of Roy Fordham's home. Her deep mourning was a sufficient excuse for declining to enter the gay circle in which Mrs. Wyllys fluttered and her diamonds and husband shone. But Roy saw to it that she was not lonely. The Baxters, Provosts, and others of his friends were often with them during the day, and he spent his evenings, as a rule, at home.

"Will you favor me with your company in the library, or shall I come to your sitting-room?" he would ask, when supper was over.

They wrote and studied together as two friends of the same sex might; talked freely upon all subjects suggested by either—each watchful that no chance touch should wound the other; make him or her swerve quickly aside lest the next step should be upon the fresh grave that lay ever between them. In all their intercourse, Roy's apparent ease far surpassed his wife's. Cheerful, cordial, always kind and more than kind in manner and language, he yet comported himself as if there were nothing abnormal in this sort of association; as if passion and regret were alike things of the Past, to which he had said they need never again recur. No warmer love-name than "Jessie, dear," ever passed his lips, and after the night of the home bringing, he had never offered to kiss or embrace her. A hand-clasp, night and morning; a smiling bow and lively phrase, when he came in to dinner and tea, were the most affectionate courtesies exchanged. But no distraught lover, at the height of his lunacy, ever studied his mistress's fantasies, sought to penetrate and fulfil her will, as did this quiet and courtly husband that of the woman who had confessed that her heart was none of his when he married her. Flowers, fruits, birds, and books were lavished upon her; passed into her hands through other than his, but were always procured by him in response to some expressed liking on her part, or in accordance with what he imagined were her wishes or needs. Nor was his unobtrusive attention to her health less constant. In the same friendly style, he regulated exercise, diet, and work; saw that her habits were not too sedentary, and that she did not expose herself imprudently to cold, damp, or fatigue.

Her review of all this was rapid and circumstantial.

"He deserves all that I can do for him. False delicacy nor pride shall keep me back from ministering to the wants of one who is to me father, brother, friend. I may, at least, wait upon him as a hostess might tend an honored guest—a housekeeper the master of the house!" she had decided by the time Phoebe set coffee, muffins, and steak upon the table.

Then to the serving-girl's increased chagrin, she sat down, with Roy's vacant chair opposite her, and break-fasted alone.

"Not much of a breakfast, to be sure!" said Phoebe, returning at the end of ten minutes, to find the room deserted. "Half a muffin, and a cup of coffee, and she clean forgot to carve the steak! Looks like she was in love—but that can't be!"

"Come in!" said the changed voice that had wrought upon Phoebe's womanly compassion, as Jessie awaited the warrant to enter the sick-room—a faint-hearted lingerer upon the threshold. She buoyed up her courage by remembering that she was the housekeeper who had come for the orders for the day; the diffidence she railed at inwardly, as ridiculous and uncalled for, had no visible effect, except to heighten her color, and make her carry her head a trifle less loftily.

Already Mrs. Wyllys had been heard to say that, "if Mrs. Fordham were worth a million in her own right, she could not look more haughty and indifferent to people who were richer and better bred. When, as everybody knew, she was a poor preacher's daughter with just money enough to buy her wedding-clothes. Though, pity knows, they couldn't have cost much! Was there ever such awful taste, as not to lighten her mourning to suit the circumstances? Who ever heard of a bride's wearing crêpe?"

There were red spots upon Roy's cheeks, when he saw who his visitor was—probably hectic, for his demeanor was natural. With instant thought of her probable embarrassment, he put out his hand, smilingly.

"Ah! Jessie, dear! Good-morning! You are very good to visit a poor fellow in his affliction. For such a throat and head as I have to-day are an affliction. I seldom strike my colors to a common cold."

"This seems to me to be an uncommon one!" Jessie said, feeling his pulse with the practised touch she had learned in her parish-visiting. "You have fever. You ought to have medical advice. Who is your physician?"

"I have never had occasion to call in one since I came to Hamilton. Suppose we 'bide a bit,' as our worthy President says, and if I am not better in the course of an hour or two, we can send for Dr. Bradley. I had a trying day yesterday. Professor Fairchild is sick, and I had some of his classes in addition to my own. It is well this is Saturday. I can lie still, and rest my throat with a clear conscience. Provided"—smiling in her grave face—"provided you do not let me trouble you!"

"Trouble me! you should know better than that! But"—hesitating—"if you will let me say it"—

"Go on! there is nothing you may not say to me," he said encouragingly.

"I do think it would be better to see Dr. Bradley, at once—if only as a precautionary measure."

He started—looked at her intently.

"You are thinking of diphtheria! You ought not to have come in until that point was settled. There may be danger to you. If, through my carelessness—"

He turned his face away, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence.

"I never thought of that!" said Jessie, simply. "If I had, I should have come all the same. Whatever may be the doctor's opinion, I shall stay here, and take care of you. It is my place."

She rang the bell for Phoebe, and in Roy's hearing, ordered her to go for the doctor. She would not have her charge suspect that she was unduly alarmed, or believe there was occasion for a hasty summons. Then, she brought a sunshiny face to the bedside, and put a fresh pillow under the hot, heavy head.

"You don't know what a famous nurse I am," she said, blithely. "My father"—her voice sinking with the sacred word—"used to say that nursing was a talent, and that I was born with it."

She set to work, forthwith, without waiting for permission. Roy, regarding her silently from his bed, heartily endorsed Mr. Kirke's verdict. Not Eunice herself could have moved more soundlessly, wrought more efficiently to alleviate, so far as she could, the pain and discomfort of his situation. The doctor was at home, and obeyed the call promptly. Roy glanced inquiringly at Jessie when he was announced.

"Show him up!" was all she said, and when he followed Phoebe into the chamber, she met him with high-bred ease as the lady of the house; as the patient's wife discussed his symptoms; heard, with marked gratification, that her fears of diphtheria were unfounded, and received his directions gratefully and attentively.

"A fine woman, and a most devoted wife!" pronounced Dr. Bradley, at his luncheon-table, that day. "Let me hear no more gossip about her, girls. Remember!"

"But, Papa, they do say they live queerly!" ventured the irrepressible Selina. "Mrs. Wyllys—"

"Is a fool! see that you don't become another in listening to her twaddle!" was the peremptory reply.

Orrin Wyllys, hearing accidentally of his cousin's indisposition, called at noon, and was conducted by Phoebe, by warrant of the relationship, into Roy's presence. The chamber was heated usually by the furnace register, but Roy lay in bed gazing at the glowing pile of coals in the grate. There was a happy ray in his eyes, spontaneity in the gayety with which he welcomed his guest, that did not accord with the latter's preconceived ideas of the dolor of a sick-room.

"You look like an invalid—don't you?" was Wyllys' second remark. "This is the cheeriest place I have been in to-day. It is what the English call beastly weather, out-of-doors. I don't blame anybody for keeping his bed. I thought you showed me the room across the hall as yours when you took me through the house, that night, 'the last of your quasi widowerhood.'"

"We changed the arrangement afterward," rejoined Roy, carelessly. "But it is a luxury—is'n't it? to lie still on a stormy day, and stare a fire like that out of countenance; especially on a holiday, when there are no phantoms of unsaid lectures to torment one's reveries. I am enjoying it amazingly. I hadn't the remotest conception that being sick was so delightful."

"By Jove! I should think you would luxuriate in it, unless you have less brains than I give you credit for! With an houri for head-nurse, too! I say! get out of that! I can play the sentimental sufferer as well as you, and I have a native bias for lazy luxury, which you haven't. I dare say, you cunning dog! if all were told, there is some dainty mess preparing for you below stairs,—a triumph of conjugal affection and culinary skill, that should be tasted by none but an educated appetite. A Teuton like yourself would be as well suited with bretzels and sauerkraut, washed down by a gallon of lager. I am a devout predestinarian, and here lies the case. I have a canine hunger upon me. I am on my way home to luncheon. Without, 'the day is dark and cold and dreary.' I am led to this corner of cosiness and comfort and fairy fare to dispossess you. Impostor! how dare you lie there, and grin at my emptiness and agony! Confess! what did you have for breakfast? What do you mean to devour for lunch? What do you hope to consume for dinner?"

Roy could never resist the infection of this merry banter, seldom indulged in by Orrin except when with him. It brought back their early days—"when you thrashed the big boys for bullying me"—he liked to remind the other when they slept, played, and studied together. Orrin had his foibles, and a graver fault or so, but he was his friend, as he had told Dr. Baxter, and the boyish love for his gallant senior was still strong upon him. His laugh now was hearty and mischievous.

"Such a breakfast!" he said. "Gotten up in strict conformity with the injunction—'Feed a cold'"—

"And you will have a fever to starve!" interjected Wyllys. "That would be poetical justice! But go on!"

"Imprimis;" resumed Fordham,—"a cup of Turkish coffee,—fragrant and clear. Item, cream toast. Knowest thou the taste thereof? Of real cream toast? light, rich, smooth, that sootheth the inflamed membrane of the throat, and maketh the diaphragm to rejoice exceedingly? Item, broiled chicken—a marvel of juicy tenderness; an omelette aux fines herbes which was an inspiration"—

"For Heaven's sake!" Orrin feigned to tear his hair. "If you don't want to be murdered in your bed, hold your tongue!"

Roy was in a paroxysm of laughter; Wyllys, scowling horribly, had snatched the poker and was making adroit passes at him, like the cunning master of fence he was, when Jessie, ignorant of the liberty Phoebe had taken, and supposing her patient to be alone, entered. She had a waiter in one hand containing a silver pitcher and goblet, and a plate in the other, heaped with hothouse grapes. Transfixed with astonishment at the spectacle within she stopped on the threshold. Her amazement was not lessened when Orrin, replacing his weapon on the hearth, threw himself into a chair and covered his face with his handkerchief.

"A victim of covetousness!" exclaimed Roy, trying to check his merriment.

"Of misplaced confidence!" uttered Orrin, gloomily, removing his cambric, and arising with a show of melancholy composure. "I hope I have the pleasure of seeing you quite well, Mrs. Fordham! I should judge so from your blooming appearance, but having just had a notable lesson in the deceitfulness of outward seeming, I am sceptical as to the evidence of the senses and human reason."

"A dash of scepticism is like vaccine virus,—a useful thing, where there is fear of infection," said Jessie, not comprehending what had gone before, and not choosing to ask questions of him.

She bowed in passing him, making of her full hands a tacit excuse for the cavalier salutation,—a pretext that was transparent to the person she intended to slight. Depositing her burden upon a table, she bent over it, pretending to rearrange the grapes and stir the contents of the pitcher, that her face might cool before he had a chance to scrutinize it. His presence in this place was odious to her. What had she, in her self-abasement and earnest reachings after a nobler life than he had ever thought of, or aspired to, to do with his masquerading tricks and persiflage? His mummery, then and there, was more than heartless—it was an insult to her, with the recollection of her broken vows and blighted life, dogging every thought of possible happiness. Her residence in Hamilton had no severer trial than these chance encounters with him—her husband's nearest of kin.

"Nectar and grapes of Eshcol!" he exclaimed in a tone of calm despair, referring to the contents of waiter and plate. "You may not believe it, Mrs. Fordham—in fact I don't expect you to, for it is the nature of your sex to trust and trust again,—but you are nourishing a serpent! a base trickster! yet one of whose want of originality I am ashamed. The interesting invalid dodge is the stalest and flimsiest known to the guild of artful dodgers. Now, if I were in his place—"

"I am heartily glad you are not!" escaped Jessie, against her will to treat him with civility for Roy's sake.

Her emphasis of sincerity was unmistakable and wrought with various effect upon her two auditors.

"So am I!" laughed Roy, his eyes alight with more than mirth. "The grapes you cannot touch, my grasping friend! They were a present to me, not an hour since, from Miss Fanny Provost—a basketful, wreathed with exquisite flowers. She believes in the reality of my interesting invalidism. As for the nectar—give him a sip—Jessie, please! It is not fair that one man should monopolize all the good things of life."

Jessie poured out the draught, without jest or smile; then stood back with a gesture that bade him help himself if he would. She would not be a party to the sport, Orrin perceived.

"A missish, spiteful show of disdain!" he thought, contemptuously. "She is hardly worth a scene!"

To show that he was not repelled or overawed, he advanced a step; took up the goblet with a profound obeisance; stared her in the eyes, and swallowed a mouthful. Roy's shout of exultation and the uncontrollable grimace of the dupe, moved Jessie to a smile, but she did not speak.

"Witches' broth?" queried Orrin, with the tragical gravity of one who has made up his mind to die like a man.

"So Socrates might have glared and growled!" said Roy. "'The hemlock, jailor?'" mimicking the other's tone. "Not this time, my dear fellow! Only sage tea, sweetened with honey and stiffened with alum—an incomparable gargle, according to such eminent authorities as Miss Eunice Kirke, her sister, and, last and least, Dr. Bradley."

Orrin took up his hat, undismayed to the last.

"Sage tea! I go home a wiser, if not a better man! I am glad to see there is nothing the matter with you, Roy, while I lament, as one of your blood and lineage, over your unblushing hypocrisy. Mrs. Fordham—"

"You used to call her 'Jessie,'" interrupted Roy. "I said, 'Cousin Hester,' yesterday, to your bride. Shall I imitate your formal address?"

"No! But my little wife is august in nobody's eyes. Whereas, Mrs. Fordham—Cousin Jessie—I beg your pardon! Which shall it be?"

His back was to Roy; his meaning gaze upon herself was, to her perception, audacious insolence. Not daring to resent it in Roy's hearing, she yet obeyed the wifely impulse to seek his protection.

"That is for your cousin to decide. My name belongs to him!" She said it proudly, flashing her wide eyes from one to the other, and moving involuntarily nearer to Roy.

Wyllys caught up the last words.

"His relations should be yours, if the partnership be in good faith, and on equal terms."

"That is for him to decide!" answered she, precisely as before.

"Thank you! I do not shirk the responsibility," said Roy putting himself in the breach as usual, when he saw her non-plussed or disturbed. "Another sip of nectar, Orrin, before you breast the storm?"

A wry face was the response, and the most fascinating man in Hamilton bowed himself out. As he drew the door to after him, he glanced across the hall. The room Roy had showed him as his was opposite, and the door open. There was fire in that grate also; a lady's sewing-chair in front of it, and a work-box he recognized as Jessie's on the small table beside it. On the back of the chair hung a linen apron, with pockets, such as he had seen her wear when engaged in household tasks in Dundee, or gardening. He guessed directly that she had stopped in there to lay it off when she brought up the gargle. That this was her apartment, he was sure, when another step revealed a bureau with a ladies' dressing-case open upon it.

"Separate apartments!" he mused, picking his steps lightly down the cottage stairs. "Very unsentimental! Very un-American! decidedly independent and jolly. But, in this case, what is the meaning of it?"

He believed he had the clue to the mystery before he inserted his latch-key in the door of his—or his wife's—house. Jessie Fordham could not forget that Jessie Kirke had loved him. The decent show of conjugal felicity he had witnessed that day was a hollow crust below which the lava still surged and seethed. Jessie was more faithful to the one great passion of her life, and less philosophical than he had been ready to believe. Her scrupulous avoidance of him whenever this could be done without awakening suspicion; the half bitter retorts that fell now and then from the lips she would train to the utterance of conventional lies; the indignant sparkle of the eyes that answered the searching appeal of his—what were all these but the ill-concealed tokens of an attachment that had so inwrought itself with the fibres of heart and being as to defy her strenuous attempts to pluck it forth, or keep it out of sight. It was a revelation to him, and a flattering one—one that merited serious consideration.

The devil gat hold of him in that hour; sifted him as wheat, bringing all that was base in his nature uppermost. Heretofore, he had shunned everything that could secure for him the reputation of a cicisbeo. When a woman was once married, she became an object of indifference to him. He accounted the pursuit of such, a hazardous and flavorless exhibition of Lothario-ism which the refined age should frown down. He was not a gourmand or libertine, he had often proudly asserted to himself. Pleasures of that stamp he left to men of grosser tastes and coarser grain. He had meant to allow his cousin all the domestic peace which should honestly fall to his share, and to cultivate amicable relations with his cousin-in-law—Roy's wife, who had given conclusive evidence of intelligent appreciation of himself.

But if Jessie were unhappy; not on terms with her respectable husband, cleverly as both dissembled—if Jessie still loved him—

"C'est une autre chose!" he muttered between his teeth, and complacently knocking the snow off his boots upon the marble steps of his "mansion."

His most heartless propositions always sought cover in the facile foreign tongue.

A writer in the last generation defined an egotist to be "One who would burn down his neighbor's house to boil an egg for himself."

Orrin Wyllys was an Egotist.

CHAPTER XXII.

The snow-storm waxed furious as the day wore on.

Jessie unclosed the blinds of the windows opposite the bed, that Roy might see it in all its might and beauty.

"It is a foot deep in the street," she said. "The evergreens in the Campus are loaded; the firs and junipers are like enormous sugar-loaves, and some of the slighter trees—cedar and arbor-vitæ—are bowed nearly double. There is one"—laughing with almost her olden glee—"the ambitious arbor-vitæ near the east gate, which you said last Sunday, 'carried too much sail aloft for a gale,' whose crown not only touches the ground, but is frozen there, while the roots hold firm. I wish you could see it! It reminds me of the poor lady who, in her rage to be ultra-fashionable, had her hair dressed very à la Chinoise,—dragged up so high and twisted so tightly on the back of her head, that she could not get her heels to the floor. I do enjoy a grand old-fashioned snow-storm! None of the petulant flurries with swirling flakes, that spend their strength in an hour, but such a tempest as this, that does not abate under a day and a night. One has such a delicious feeling of home comfort and seclusion—the almost certainty that strangers will not intermeddle with fireside joys and interests while the household is shut in—I was about to say—tucked in snugly by the great white veil."

Roy liked to hear her talk. Her girlish prattle was more charming to him than the profoundest disquisitions of scholars, or the brilliant repartee of literary coteries. Aware of this, and that part of her nursely duty was to amuse the patient; ignorant that his heart was leaping with a new-born hope, so sweet and sudden that his head whirled dizzily under its influence, and the world took on rarest robes of beauty, she rambled on, her eyes bent upon the driving fleeces without. She had never been handsomer than now. Every trace of the shock that had prostrated nervous forces and reason, three months before, was gone from figure and countenance, while she thought only of gratifying her companion and her own fancy for a wild, winter day. Not dreaming of the impassioned gaze that dwelt upon her, she stood in an attitude of careless grace, a half smile playing about her mouth.

"As she used to stand in the oriel, at sunset!" thought Roy, with an unheard sigh. "Is all that, then,

"'The tender grace of a day that is dead'?

Can it 'never come back to me?'"

"I can think how Old Windbeam would wrap this mantle about his head and shoulders," resumed Jessie more softly. "How blackly the pines show against his sides! The meadows are an immense méringue; Willow Creek is frozen and invisible under the snow—so tightly locked within its banks that its groans can be heard, in the pauses of the storm, all the way to the Parsonage. I used to lie awake on sharp, frosty nights, and hear the rumble of the imprisoned air running all the way from the upper bridge down to the falls. The holly-berries on the tree by the front porch peep out saucily from the little woolly piles that collect upon the spikes and leaves; the church-yard is level from fence to fence—oh, Roy!"

With the cry, she sank down upon a low seat, weeping as from the depths of a riven heart.

"Under the snow! under the snow!" she reiterated, in a transport of distress. "I cannot bear to think of it!"

"Come to me, dear Jessie!" said Fordham, in gentle command. He hardly expected that she would obey, but she did, groping her way by reason of the blinding tears, and sobbing unrestrainedly. He had not seen her weep before since the night of her arrival at the cottage.

"Sit here!" he said, designating a chair at his side. "I have something to say when you can hear it. These tears will ease your burdened heart, and they are due to the memory of the dear ones who are for a little while out of our sight."

She had stifled her sobs, but her head was still bowed; her frame heaved in the ground-swell of the passing storm.

"For a little while! Out of our sight!" he repeated, thoughtfully—longingly. "We shall be together—all of us—very soon. Did you ever ask yourself if you would be able to await the call of the Master—all your appointed time;—ever imagine what a crushing load mortality and its ills would be to you, if, 'while in the body pent,' you could be a witness of the blessedness of those who are 'forever with the Lord'? Dear child! The Father leads us as wisely as lovingly!"

The expression of his religious faith and experience never sounded like cant, even in the ears of the scoffer. It was a part of his life. His utterances were fearless, simple, fervent, enforcing respect for their author, although the listener might not be in sympathy with their spirit. Jessie ceased to weep or sigh while he talked; presently showed her tear-stained face, tremulous with sad smiles, and laid her hand timidly upon his.

"Thank you! Every word is a drop of comfort. But so much talking is bad for your throat, and the fever will return if you are agitated. It was childish and selfish in me to give way as I did. But," her lip quivering anew—"it came in upon me like a flood! the happy by-gone hours and the dear old manse! Just how it all looked, as I had seen it, a hundred times in the winter weather I always loved. And the changes—and where they are now!"

"I ought to thank you for allowing me to sorrow with and try to console you. Don't be afraid of me, dear! afraid to bring your trials, with your pleasures, to your friend. If left to yourself, just now,—if I had not called you to me, you would have rushed away to hide your tears in your own room. You never wound me except when you act and look as if you stood in dread of my displeasure or criticism. Won't you be candid and tell me why this is so? Am I a very cruel taskmaster? Do you not believe me when I say that I desire no other earthly good as I do to make you contented—happy, if that can be."

"I do believe it! I should be slow to see and to be convinced if I did not!" began Jessie, the truth trembling upon her tongue. The temptation to unbosom herself without fear and reserve was very strong. "But I feel myself to be unworthy of your regard, and the goodness you show me. And you are so wise and discreet—so self-contained—"

A pang changed his features. He stirred restlessly, biting his lip to keep back a repetition of the word "self-contained!" that would have been a groan.

"You are suffering!" said Jessie, anxiously. "I have made you worse!"

"No; a passing pain—that is all! You always make me better. What should I have done without you, to-day, my kind nurse?"

A perverse fit, one of her spoiled-child freaks, seized Jessie.

"Phoebe would have taken excellent care of you!" she said, demurely, casting down her eyes to hide the gleam of mischief darting up to the surface. "She wanted to make brown gravy soup, and roast a fat duck for your dinner, with mince-pie—'to leave a nice taste in his mouth, ma'am.' And she persists in the belief that a gargle of red-pepper tea, with mustard-draughts upon your feet, and a cayenne poultice about your throat 'would pull you through,' when doctor's stuffs fail. As to society, your cousin, or, maybe, Dr. Baxter would have come in to cheer you up. What a godsend a big linen sheet would be to the good President, on a day like this, with a listener who is hors du combat with a hoarse cold!"

"I have not needed to be cheered up, since I saw the first glimpse of your face, this morning!" answered Roy, unguardedly. Conscious that he was trenching upon forbidden ground, he diverted the conversation. "What a flow of spirits Orrin has! I did hurt my throat laughing at his tragico-comico envy of my surroundings. I wish he had a home, one like this, if it were shared by a congenial companion, a woman who was more nearly his equal, mentally and morally, than the one he has chosen. He would be much happier than he can hope to be in the splendid pile he calls by that name."

"He seems perfectly satisfied with wife and house," returned Jessie, dryly. "And the marriage was certainly one of preference on Miss Sanford's part. Not that I admire or like her, and I know her better than you do. But I am persuaded that we waste our pity when we expend it on either of them."

They chatted, then, of various matters in the familiar style in which their conversations were generally carried on, until the day closing in about them, the fire spread a mellow radiance over the area immediately around it; the white bed and the noble head laid high on the pillows; upon Jessie's earnest face and crown of raven hair. It was the hour and the scene for the confidential talk of husband and wife; the outpouring of true soul to true; the only unrestrained heart-communion this side the Land where subterfuge and disguise are unknown; speech as far more excellent and satisfying than the language of unwedded lovers as the perfume from the unfolded lily surpasses that which steals from the bud.

Between these two, love was neither named nor hinted at. The wife's hands lay crossed upon her knees, and the husband did not offer to hold or touch them, or stroke the beautiful hair with which the betrothed had toyed unrebuked. It was an anomalous intimacy, the restraints and courtesies of which would have been laughed at as affectations, if the story of them were not totally discredited by the world outside "the great white veil" that shut them into their home,—theirs in name and in fact.

Jessie got up, at length, stepping over the carpet without rustle or jar, "the poetry of motion," thought the looker-on, and laid more coals upon the fiery mass in the grate. Many-colored flames shot up through and darted, like living serpents, along the pile; the low crackling and hissing of the igniting lumps awoke a cricket in the chimney-corner. Jessie, kneeling on the rug, glanced over her shoulder, on hearing the cheery chirp, and smiled at Roy.

"You don't treat the crickets on your hearth as Gruffand Tackleton boasted that he did—'crunch 'em, sir!' I like to hear the little busybodies—don't you?"

Without rising, when she had seemed to hearken for a while, she began to sing. Roy had not heard a note from her, even in church, since their marriage, and he held his breath, lay motionless, lest she should awaken from her reverie. It was an old ballad she was crooning—half Scotch, and with a thought of pathos in the melody, although the words were not plaintive.