Mrs. Hallam's companion; and The Spring Farm, and other tales

CHAPTER I.
MILDRED.

The time was a hot morning in July, the place one of those little mountain towns between Albany and Pittsfield, and the scene opens in a farm house kitchen, where Mildred Leach was seated upon the doorstep shelling peas, with her feet braced against the doorjamb to keep her baby brother, who was creeping on the floor, from tumbling out, and her little sister Bessie, who was standing outside, from coming in. On the bed in a room off the kitchen Mildred’s mother was lying with a headache, and both the kitchen and the bedroom smelled of camphor and vinegar, and the vegetables which were cooking on the stove and filling the house with the odor which made the girl faint and sick, as she leaned against the door-post and longed, as she always was longing, for some change in her monotonous life. Of the world outside the mountain town where she was born she knew very little, and that little she had learned from Hugh McGregor, the village doctor’s son, who had been away to school, and seen the President and New York and a Cunarder as it came sailing up the harbor. On his return home Hugh had narrated his adventures to Mildred, who listened with kindling eyes and flushed cheeks, exclaiming, when he finished, “Oh! if I could see all that; and I will some day. I shall not stay forever in old Rocky Point. I hate it.”

Mildred was only thirteen, and not pretty, as girls usually are at that age. She was thin and sallow, and her great brown eyes were too large for her face, and her thick curly hair too heavy for her head. A mop her brother Tom called it, when trying to tease her; and Mildred hated her hair and hated herself whenever she looked in the ten by twelve glass in her room, and never dreamed of the wonderful beauty which later on she would develop, when her face and form were rounded out, her sallow complexion cleared, and her hair subdued and softened into a mass of waves and curls. Her father, John Leach, was a poor farmer, who, although he owned the house in which he lived, together with a few acres of stony land around it, was in one sense a tenant of Mr. Giles Thornton, the proprietor of Thornton Park, for he rented land enough of him to eke out his slender income. To Mildred, Thornton Park was a Paradise, and nothing she had ever read or heard of equaled it in her estimation, and many a night when she should have been asleep she stood at her window, looking off in the distance at the turrets and towers of the beautiful place which elicited admiration from people much older than herself. To live there would be perfect bliss, she thought, even though she were as great an invalid as its mistress, and as sickly and helpless as little Alice, the only daughter of the house. Against her own humble surroundings Mildred was in hot rebellion, and was always planning for improvement and change, not only for herself, but for her family, whom she loved devotedly, and to whom she was giving all the strength of her young life. Mrs. Leach was a martyr to headaches, which frequently kept her in bed for days, during which time the care and the work fell upon Mildred, whose shoulders were too slender for the burden they bore.

“But it will be different some time,” she was thinking on that hot July morning when she sat shelling peas, sometimes kissing Charlie, whose fat hands were either making havoc with the pods or pulling her hair, and sometimes scolding Bessie for chewing her bonnet strings and soiling her clean apron.

“You must look nice when Mrs. Thornton goes by,” she said, for Mrs. Thornton was expected from New York that day, and Mildred was watching for the return of the carriage, which half an hour before had passed on its way to the station.

And very soon it came in sight,—a handsome barouche, drawn by two shining black horses, with a long-coated driver on the box, and Mr. and Mrs. Thornton and the two children inside,—Gerard, a dark, handsome boy of eleven, and Alice, a sickly little girl, with some spinal trouble which kept her from walking or playing as other children did. Leaning back upon cushions was Mrs. Thornton,—her face very pale, and her eyes closed, while opposite her, with his gold-headed cane in his hand, was Mr. Thornton,—a tall, handsome man who carried himself as grandly as if the blood of a hundred kings was flowing in his veins. He did not see the children on the doorsteps, until Gerard, in response to a nod from Mildred, lifted his cap, while Alice leaned eagerly forward and said, “Look, mamma, there’s Milly and Bessie and the baby. Hello, Milly. I’ve comed back;” then he said quickly, “Allie, be quiet; and you Gerard, why do you lift your cap to such people? It’s not necessary;” and in these few words was embodied the character of the man.

Courteous to his equals, but proud and haughty to his inferiors, with an implicit belief in the Thorntons and no belief at all in such people as the Leaches, or indeed in many of the citizens of Rocky Point, where he owned, or held mortgages on, half the smaller premises. The world was made for him, and he was Giles Thornton, of English extraction on his father’s side and Southern blood on his mother’s, and in his pride and pomposity he went on past the old red farm house, while Mildred sat for a moment looking after the carriage and envying its occupants.

“Oh, if I were rich, like Mrs. Thornton, and could wear silks and jewels; and I will, some day,” she said, with a far-off look in her eyes, as if she were seeing the future and what it held for her. “Yes, I will be rich, no matter what it costs,” she continued, “and people shall envy me, and I’ll make father and mother so happy? and you, Charlie”——

Here she stopped, and parting the curls from her baby brother’s brow, looked earnestly into his blue eyes; then went on, “you shall have a golden crown, and you, Bessie darling, shall have,—shall have,—Gerard Thornton himself, if you want him.”

“And I lame Alice?” asked a cheery voice, as there bounded into the kitchen a ten year old lad, who, with his naked feet, sunny face and torn straw hat, might have stood for Whittier’s barefoot boy.

“Oh, Tom,” Mildred cried, “I’m glad you’ve come. Won’t you pick up the pods while I get the peas into the pot? It’s almost noon, and I’ve got the table to set.”

Before Tom could reply, another voice called out, “You have given Gerard to Bessie and Alice to Tom; now what am I to have, Miss Prophetess?”

The speaker was a fair-haired youth of seventeen, with a slight Scotch accent and a frank, open, genial face, such as strangers always trust. He had stopped a moment at the corner of the house to pick a rose for Mildred, and hearing her prophecies, sauntered leisurely to the doorstep, where he sat down, and fanning himself with his big hat, asked what she had for him.

“Nothing, Hugh McGregor,” Mildred replied, with a little flush on her cheek. “Nothing but that;” and she tossed him a pea-pod she had picked from the floor.

“Thanks,” Hugh said, catching the pod in his hand. “There are two peas in it yet, a big and a little one. I am the big, you are the little, and I’m going to keep them and see which hardens first, you or I.”

“What a fool you are,” Mildred said, with increased color on her cheek, while Hugh pocketed the pod and went on: “A crown for Charlie, Gerard for Bessie, Allie for Tom, a pea-pod for me, and what for you, my darling?”

“I am not your darling,” Mildred answered quickly; “and I’m going to be,—mistress of Thornton Park,” she added, after a little hesitancy, while Hugh rejoined: “As you have given Gerard to Bessie, I don’t see how you’ll bring it about, unless Mrs. Thornton dies, a thing not unlikely, and you marry that big-feeling man, whom you say you hate because he turned you from his premises. Have you forgotten that?”

Mildred had not forgotten it, and her face was scarlet as she recalled the time the past summer when, wishing to buy a dress for Charlie, then six months old, she had gone into one of Mr. Thornton’s pastures after huckleberries, which grew there so abundantly, and which found a ready market at the groceries in town. In Rocky Point, berries were considered public property, and she had no thought that she was trespassing until a voice close to her said, “What are you doing here? Begone, before I have you arrested.”

In great alarm Mildred had seized her ten quart pail, which was nearly full, and hurried away, never venturing again upon the forbidden ground.

“Yes, I remember it,” she said, “but that wouldn’t keep me from being mistress of the Park, if I had a chance and he wasn’t there. Wouldn’t I make a good one?”

“Ye-es,” Hugh answered slowly, as he looked her over from her head to her feet. “But you’ll have to grow taller and fill out some, and do something with that snarly pate of yours, which looks this morning like an oven broom,” and with this thrust at her bushy hair Hugh disappeared from the door just in time to escape the dipper of water which went splashing after him.

“Oven broom, indeed!” Mildred said indignantly, with a pull at the broom; “I wonder if I am to blame for my hair. I hate it!”

This was Mildred’s favorite expression, and there were but few things to which she had not applied it. But most of all she hated her humble home and the boiled dinner she put upon the table just as the clock struck twelve, wondering as she did so if they knew what such a dish was at Thornton Park, and what they were having there that day.

CHAPTER II.
AT THORNTON PARK.

Meanwhile the barouche had stopped under the grand archway at the side entrance of the Park house, where a host of servants was in waiting; the butler, the housekeeper, the cook, the laundress, the maids, the gardener and groom and several more, for, aping his English ancestry and the custom of his mother’s Southern home before the war, Mr. Thornton kept about him a retinue of servants with whom he was very popular. He paid them well and fed them well, and while requiring from them the utmost deference, was kind in every way, and they came crowding around him with words of welcome and offers of assistance. Mrs. Thornton went at once to her room, while Alice was taken possession of by her nurse, who had come from the city the night before, and who soon had her charge in a little willow carriage, drawing her around the grounds. Gerard, who was a quiet, studious boy, went to the library, while Mr. Thornton, after seeing that his wife was comfortable, joined his little daughter, whose love for her country home he knew, and to whom he said, “I suppose you are quite happy now?”

“Yes, papa,” she replied, “only I want somebody to play with me. Ann is too big. I want Milly Leach. She was so nice to me last summer. Can’t I have her, papa?”

For Alice to want a thing was for her to have it, if possession were possible, and her father answered her:

“Yes, daughter, you shall have her,” without knowing at all who Milly Leach was. But Alice explained that she was the girl who lived in the little red house where Ann had often taken her the summer before to play with Tom and Bessie. And so it came about that Ann was sent that afternoon to the farm house with a request from Mr. Thornton that Mildred should come for the summer and amuse his daughter. Three dollars a week was the remuneration offered, for he always held out a golden bait when the fish was doubtful, as he thought it might be in this case. Mrs. Leach was better, and sitting up while Mildred combed and brushed the hair much like her own, except that it was softer and smoother, because it had more care and there was less of it.

“Oh, mother,” she cried, when Ann made her errand known, “can’t I go? Three dollars a week! Only think, what a lot; and I’ll give it all to you, and you can get that pretty French calico at Mr. Overton’s store. May I go?”

“Who will do the work when I’m sick?” Mrs. Leach asked, herself a good deal moved by the three dollars a week, which seemed a fortune to her.

“I guess they’ll let me come home when you have a headache,” Milly pleaded, and on this condition it was finally arranged that she should go to the Park for a time at least, and two days after we saw her shelling peas and longing for a change, the change came and she started out on her career in her best gingham dress and white apron, with her small satchel of clothes in her hand and a great lump in her throat as she kissed her mother and Bessie and Charlie, and would have kissed Tom if he had not disappeared with a don’t-care air and a watery look in his eyes, which he wiped with his checked shirt sleeve, and then, boy-like, threw a green apple after his sister, hiding behind the tree when she looked around to see whence it came.

It was a lovely morning, and Thornton Park lay fair and beautiful in the distance as she walked rapidly on until a familiar whistle stopped her and she saw Hugh hurrying across the fields and waving his hat to her.

“Hello!” he said, as he came to her side, “I nearly broke my neck to catch you. And so you are going to be a hired girl. Let me carry that satchel,” and he took it from her while she answered hotly, “I ain’t a hired girl. I’m Allie’s little friend; that’s what she said when she came with Ann last night and we made the bargain, and I’m to have three dollars a week.”

“Three dollars a week! That is big,” Hugh said, staggered a little at the price. “But, I say, don’t go so fast. Let’s sit down awhile and talk;” and seating himself upon a log, with Mildred beside him and the satchel at his feet, he went on: “Milly, I don’t want you to go to Thornton Park. Won’t you give it up? Seems as if I was losing you.”

“You never had me to lose,” was the girl’s reply, and Hugh continued:

“That’s so; but I mean that I like you better than any girl I ever knew; like you just as I should my sister if I had one.”

Here Milly elevated her eyebrows a little, while Hugh went on: “And I don’t want you to go to that fine place and learn to despise us all, and the old home by the brook.”

“I shall never do that, for I love father and mother and Tom and Bessie and Charlie better than I do myself. I’d die for them, but I do hate the old house and the poverty and work, and I mean to be a grand lady and rich, and then I’ll help them all, and you, too, if you’ll let me.”

“I don’t need your help, and I don’t want to see you a grand lady, and I don’t want you to be snubbed by that proud Thornton,” Hugh replied, and Milly answered quickly, with short, emphatic nods of her head:

“I sha’n’t be snubbed by him, for if he sasses me I shall sass him. I’ve made up my mind to that.”

“And when you do may I be there to hear; but you are a brick, any way,” was Hugh’s laughing rejoinder, and as Milly had risen to her feet, he, too, arose, and taking up the satchel walked with her to the Park gate, where he said good-bye, but called to her after a minute, “I say, Milly, I have that pea-pod yet, and you are beginning to wilt, but I am as plump as ever.”

“Pshaw!” was Mildred’s scornful reply, as she hurried on through the Park, while Hugh walked slowly down the road, wishing he had money and could give it all to Milly.

“But I shall never be rich,” he said to himself, “even if I’m a lawyer as I mean to be, for only dishonest lawyers make money, they say, and I sha’n’t be a cheat if I never make a cent.”

Meanwhile Milly had reached the house, which had always impressed her with a good deal of awe, it was so stately and grand. Going up to the front door she was about to ring, when the same voice which had ordered her from the berry pasture, said to her rather sharply:

“What are you doing here, little girl?”

“I’m Mildred Leach, and I’ve come to be Allie’s little friend,” Mildred answered, facing the speaker squarely, with her satchel in both hands.

“Oh, yes; I know, but go to the side door, and say Miss Alice instead of Allie,” Mr. Thornton replied as he began to puff at his cigar.

Here was sass at the outset, and remembering her promise to Hugh, Milly gave a vigorous pull at the bell, saying as she did so:

“I sha’n’t call her Miss, and I shall go into the front door, or I sha’n’t stay. I ain’t dirt!”

This speech was so astounding and unexpected, that instead of resenting it, Mr. Thornton laughed aloud, and as a servant just then came to the door, he sauntered away, saying to himself:

“Plucky, by Jove; but if she suits Allie, I don’t care.”

If Mr. Thornton had a redeeming trait it was his love for his wife and children, especially little Alice, for whom he would sacrifice everything, even his pride, which is saying a great deal, and when, an hour later, he found her in the Park with Mildred at her side making dandelion curls for her, he was very gracious and friendly, asking her how old she was, and giving her numerous charges with regard to his daughter. Then he went away, while Mildred looked admiringly after him, thinking how handsome he was in his city clothes, and how different he was from her father.

“It’s because he’s rich and has money. I mean to have some, too,” she thought, and with the seeds of ambition taking deeper and deeper root, she began her life at Thornton Park, where she soon became a great favorite, not only with Alice, but with Mrs. Thornton, to whom she was almost as necessary as to Alice herself.

Regularly every Saturday night her three dollars were paid to her, and as regularly every Sunday morning she took them home, where they were very acceptable, for Mr. Leach had not the least idea of thrift, and his daughter’s wages tided over many an ugly gap in the household economy. Mrs. Leach had the French calico gown, and Charlie a pair of red shoes, and Bessie a new white frock, and Tom a new straw hat, but for all that they missed Mildred everywhere, she was so helpful and willing, even when rebelling most against her condition, and when in September Mrs. Thornton proposed that she should go with them to New York, Mrs. Leach refused so decidedly that the wages were at once doubled, and six dollars a week offered in place of three. Money was nothing to Mrs. Thornton, and as what she set her mind upon she usually managed to get, she succeeded in this, and when in October the family returned to the city, Mildred went with them, very smart in the new suit Mrs. Thornton had given her, and very red about the eyes from the tears she had shed when saying good-bye to her home.

“If I’d known I should feel this way, I believe I wouldn’t have gone,” she had thought, as she went from room to room with Charlie in her arms, Bessie holding her hand, and Tom following in the rear, whistling “The girl I left behind me,” and trying to seem very brave.

On a bench by the brook which ran back of the house Mildred at last sat down with Charlie in her lap, and looking at the water running so fast at her feet, wondered if she should ever see it again, and where Hugh was that he did not come to say good-bye. She had a little package for him, and when at last he appeared, and leaping across the brook, sat down beside her, she gave it to him, and said with a forced laugh:

“A splint from the oven broom. You used to ask for one, and here ’tis.”

He knew what she meant, and opening the paper saw one of her dark curls.

“Thanks, Milly,” he said, with a lump in his throat. “I’ll keep it, and the peas, too, till you come back. When will that be?”

“I don’t know; next summer, most likely; though perhaps I shall stay away until I’m such a fine lady that you won’t know me. I’m to study with Allie’s governess and learn everything, so as to teach some time,” she said.

“Here’s the carriage,” Tom called round the corner, and kissing Charlie and Bessie and Tom, who did not resist her now, and crying on her mother’s neck, and wringing her father’s hard hand and saying good-bye to Hugh, she went out from the home where for many a long year she was not seen again.

At first the inmates of the farm house missed the young girl sadly; but they gradually learned to get on very well without her, and when in the spring word came that Mrs. Thornton was going to Europe and wished to take Mildred with her, offering as an inducement a sum far beyond what they knew the girl’s services were worth, and when Mildred, too, joined her entreaties with Mrs. Thornton’s, telling of the advantage the foreign life would be to her, as she was to share in Alice’s instruction, the father and mother consented, with no thought, however, that she would not return within the year. When Hugh heard of it he went alone into the woods, and sitting down near the chestnut tree, where he and Milly had often gathered the brown nuts together, thought the matter out in his plain, practical way.

“That ends it with Milly,” he said. “Europe will turn her head, and if she ever comes home she will despise us more than ever and me most of all, with my gawky manners and big hands and feet.”

Then, taking from his pocket a little box, he opened it carefully, and removing a fold of paper looked wistfully at the contents. A curl of dark-brown hair and a gray pod with two peas inside,—one shriveled and harder than the other, and as it seemed to him harder and more shriveled than when he last looked at it.

“It’s just as I thought it would be,” he said, “She will grow away from me with her French and German and foreign ways, unless I grow with her,” and for the first time in his life Hugh felt the stirring of a genuine and laudable ambition. “I will make something of myself,” he said. “I have it in me, I know.”

The curl and the peas were put away, and from that time forward Hugh’s career was onward and upward, first to school in Pittsfield, then to college at Amherst, then to a law office in Albany, and then ten years later back to Rocky Point, where he devoted himself to his profession and won golden laurels as the most honorable and prominent lawyer in all the mountain district. Rocky Point had had a boom in the meantime, and now spread itself over the hillside and across the pasture land, almost to the red farm house which stood by the running brook, its exterior a little changed, as blinds had been added and an extra room with a bow window, which looked toward the village and the brook. And here on summer mornings fifteen years after Mildred went away a pale-faced woman sat, with her hair now white as snow, combed smoothly back from her brow, her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes turned towards the window through which she knew the sun was shining brightly, although she could not see it, for Mrs. Leach was blind. Headache and hereditary disease had done their work, and when her husband died she could not see his face, on which her tears fell so fast. For more than two years he had been lying in the cemetery up the mountain road, and beside his grave was another and a shorter one, nearly level with the ground, for it was twelve years since Charlie died and won the golden crown which Milly had promised him that day when the spirit of prophecy was upon her.

During all these years Mildred had never come back to the old home which bore so many proofs of her loving remembrance, for every dollar she could spare from her liberal allowance was sent to her people. Mrs. Thornton had died in Paris, where Alice was so far cured of her spinal trouble that only a slight limp told that she had ever been lame. At the time of Mrs. Thornton’s death there was staying in the same hotel an English lady, a widow, who had recently lost her only daughter, a girl about Mildred’s age, with something of Mildred’s look in her eyes. To this lady, whose name was Mrs. Gardner, Mildred had in her helpful way rendered many little services and made herself so agreeable that when Mrs. Thornton died the lady offered to take her as her companion and possibly adopted daughter, if the girl proved all she hoped she might. When this proposal was made to Mr. Thornton he neither assented nor objected. The girl could do as she pleased, he said, and as she pleased to go she went, sorry to leave Alice, but glad to escape from the father, whose utter indifference and apparent forgetfulness of her presence in his family, had chafed and offended her. Rude he had never been to her, but she might have been a mere machine, so far as he had any interest in or care for her. She was simply a servant, whose name he scarcely remembered, and of whose family he knew very little when Mrs. Gardner questioned him of them.

“Very poor and very common; such as would be called peasantry on the continent,” he said, and Mildred, who accidentally overheard the remark, felt the hot blood stain her face and throb through her veins as she registered a vow that this proud, cold man, who likened her to a peasant, should some day hold a different opinion of her.

She was nearly fifteen now, and older than her years with her besetting sin, ambition, intensified by her life abroad, and as she saw, in the position which Mrs. Gardner offered her an added round to the ladder she was climbing, she took it unhesitatingly, and went with her to Switzerland, from which place she wrote to her mother, asking pardon if she had done wrong, and enclosing fifty pounds which she had been saving for her.

“Taken the bits in her teeth,” was Hugh’s comment, when he heard of it, while Mr. and Mrs. Leach mourned over their wayward daughter, whose loving letters, however, and substantial gifts made some amends for her protracted absence.

She had gone with Mrs. Gardner as a companion, but grew so rapidly into favor that the lady began at last to call her daughter, and when she found that her middle name was Frances, to address her as Fanny, the name of the little girl she had lost, and to register her as Miss Gardner. To this Mildred at first objected as something not quite honorable, but when she saw how much more attention Fanny Gardner received than Mildred Leach had done, she gave up the point, and became so accustomed to her new name that the sound of the old would have seemed strange to her had she heard it spoken. Of the change, however, she never told her mother, and seldom said much of Mrs. Gardner, except that she was kind and rich and handsome, with many suitors for her hand, and when at last she wrote that the lady had married a Mr. Harwood, and spoke of her ever after as Mrs. Harwood, the name Gardner passed in time entirely from the minds of both Mr. and Mrs. Leach, who, being very human, began to feel a pride in the fact that they had a daughter abroad, who was growing into a fine lady and could speak both German and French.

From point to point Mildred traveled with the Harwoods, passing always as Mrs. Harwood’s adopted daughter, which she was to all intents and purposes. And in a way she was very happy, although at times there came over her such a longing for home that she was half resolved to give up all her grandeur and go back to the life she had so detested. They were at a villa on the Rhine, not very far from Constance, when she heard of Charlie’s death, and burying her face in the soft grass of the terrace she sobbed as if her heart were broken.

“Oh, Charlie,” she moaned, “dead, and I not there to see you. I never dreamed that you would die; and I meant to do so much for you when you were older. I wish I had never left you, Charlie, my darling.”

Could Mildred have had her way she would have gone home then, but Mrs. Harwood would not permit it, and so the years went on until in Egypt she heard of her father’s death, and that her mother was blind. It was Tom who wrote her the news, which he did not break very gently, for in a way he resented his sister’s long absence, and let her know that he did.

“Not that we really need you,” he wrote, “for Bessie sees to the house, which is fixed up a good deal, thanks to you and mother’s Uncle Silas. Did you ever hear of him? I scarcely had until he died last year and left us five thousand dollars, which makes us quite rich. We have some blinds and a new room with a bay window and a girl to do the work; so, you see, we are very fine, but mother is always fretting for you, and more since she was blind, lamenting that she can never see your face again. Should we know you, I wonder? I guess not, it is so long since you went away, thirteen years. Why, you are twenty-six! Almost an old maid, and I suppose an awful swell, with your French and German and Italian. Bessie can speak French a little. She is eighteen, and the handsomest girl you ever saw, unless it is Alice Thornton, whose back is straight as a string. She comes to Thornton Park every summer with Gerard, and when she isn’t here with Bessie, Bessie is there with her. Mr. Thornton is in town sometimes, high and mighty as ever, with a face as black as thunder when he sees Gerard talking French to Bessie, for it was of him she learned it. I have been away to the Academy several quarters, and would like to go to college, but shall have to give that up, now father is dead. Did I tell you I was reading law with Hugh? He is a big man every way, stands six feet in his slippers, and head and shoulders above every lawyer in these parts. Why, they sometimes send for him to go to Albany to try a suit. I used to think he was sweet on you, but he has not mentioned you for a long time, except when mother got blind, and then he said, ‘Milly ought to be here.’ But don’t fret; we get along well enough, and you wouldn’t be happy with us.

When Mildred read this letter she made up her mind to go home at any cost, and would have done so, if on her return from Naples she had not been stricken down with a malarial fever, which kept her an invalid for months, and when she recovered from it there had come into her life a new excitement which absorbed every other thought, and led finally to a result without which this story would never have been written.

CHAPTER IV.
AT THE FARM HOUSE.

It was fifteen years since Milly Leach sat shelling peas on the doorstep where now two young girls were sitting, one listening to and the other reading a letter which evidently excited and agitated her greatly. It was as follows:

“Dear Alice,—You will probably be surprised to hear that I am going to be married to a Miss Fanny Gardner, whom I first met in Florence. She is twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and the most beautiful woman I ever saw, and good as she is beautiful. You are sure to like her. The ceremony takes place at —— church in London, and after the wedding breakfast at her mother’s town house we shall go for a short time to Wales and Ireland and then sail for home.

“I suppose you and Gerard are at the Park, or will be soon, and I want you to see that everything is in order. We shall occupy the suite of rooms on the south side of the house instead of the east, and I’d like to have them refurnished throughout, and will leave everything to your good taste, only suggesting that although Miss Gardner’s hair is rather a peculiar color,—golden brown, some might call it,—she is not a blonde; neither is she a brunette; and such tints as soft French grays and pinks will suit her better than blue. The wedding day is fixed for June —. Shall telegraph as soon as we reach New York, and possibly write you before.

“Oh—h,” and the girl who was listening drew a long breath. “Oh—h! Going to be married,—to Fanny Gardner. That’s a pretty name. She’s English, I suppose. I guess you’ll like her;” and Bessie put her hand, half pityingly, half caressingly upon the arm of her friend, down whose cheeks two great tears were rolling.

“Yes,” Alice replied; “but it is so sudden, and I’m thinking of mother. I wonder what Gerard will say. There he is now. Oh, Gerard,” she called, as a young man came through the gate and seating himself upon a lower step took Bessie’s hand in his and held it while the bright blush on her lovely face told what he was to her.

“What’s the matter, Allie?” he said to his sister. “You look solemn as a graveyard.”

“Papa is going to be married,” Alice replied, with a sob.

“Wha—at!” and Gerard started to his feet. “Father married! Why, he is nearly fifty years old. Let me see,”—and taking the letter from Alice he read it aloud, commenting as he read. “Twenty-seven or twenty-eight; not much older than I am, for I am twenty-five; quite too young for me to call her mother. ‘The most beautiful woman I ever saw.’ He must be hard hit. ‘Ceremony takes place——’ Why, girls, it’s to-day! It’s past. I congratulate you, Allie, on a stepmother, and here’s to her health from her son;” and stooping over Bessie he kissed her before she could remonstrate.

Just then Hugh McGregor came up the walk, and taking off his straw hat wiped the perspiration from his face, while he stood for a moment surveying the group before him with a quizzical smile upon his lips. Fifteen years had changed Hugh from the tall, awkward boy of seventeen into the taller, less awkward man of thirty-two, who, having mingled a good deal with the world, had acquired much of the ease and polish which such mingling brings. Handsome he could not be called; there was too much of the rugged Scotch in him for that, but he had something better than beauty in his frank, honest face and kindly blue eyes, which bespoke the man who could be trusted to the death and never betray the trust. He, too, had received a letter from Mr. Thornton, whose business in Rocky Point he had in charge, and after reading it had gone to Thornton Park with the news. Finding both Alice and Gerard absent, he had followed on to the farm house where he was sure they were.

“I see you know it,” he said, pointing to the letter in Gerard’s hand. “I have heard from your father and came to tell you. Did you suspect this at all?”

“No,” Alice replied; “he has never written a word of any Miss Gardner. I wonder who she is.”

“I don’t know,” Hugh answered slowly, while there swept over him the same sensation he had experienced when he first saw the name in Mr. Thornton’s letter.

It did not seem quite new, and he repeated it over and over again but did not associate it with Mildred although she was often in his mind, more as a pleasant memory now, perhaps, for the feelings of the man were not quite what the boy’s had been, and in one sense Milly had dropped out of his life. When she first went away, and he was in school, everything was done with a direct reference to making of himself something of which Milly would be proud when she came back. But Milly had not come back, and the years had crept on and he was a man honored among men, and in his busy life had but little leisure for thought beyond his business. It was seldom now that he looked at the dark brown curl, or the little pea in the pod, hard as a bullet, and shriveled almost to nothing. But when he did he always thought of the summer day years ago and the young girl on the steps and the sound of the brook gurgling over the stones as it ran under the little bridge. And it all came back to him now, with news of Mr. Thornton’s bride, though why it should he could not tell. He only knew that Milly was haunting him that morning with strange persistency, and his first question to Bessie was, “When did you hear from your sister?”

“Last night. She is in London, or was,—but wrote she was going on a journey and then was coming home. I shall believe that when I see her. Mother has the letter, and will be glad to see you,” was Bessie’s reply, and Hugh went into the pleasant, sunny room where the blind woman was sitting, with her hands folded on her lap and a listening expression on her face.

“Oh, Hugh,” she exclaimed, “I am glad you have come. I want to talk to you.”

Straightening her widow’s cap, which was a little awry, as deftly as a woman could have done, he sat down beside her, while she continued, as she drew a letter from her bosom, where she always kept Milly’s last. “I heard from Milly last night. I am afraid she is not happy, but she is coming home by and by. She says so. Read it, please.”

Taking the letter he began to read:

“Darling Mother:—I am in London, but shall not stay long, for I am going on a journey, and it may be weeks, if not months, before I can write you again. But don’t worry. If anything happens to me you will know it. I am quite well and—oh, mother, I never loved you as I do now or needed your prayers so much. Pray for me. I can’t pray for myself, but I’d give half my life to put my arms around your neck and look into your dear, blind eyes, which, if they could see, would not know me, I am so changed. My hair fell out when I was so sick in Naples, and is not the same color it used to be. Everything is different. Oh, if I could see you, and I shall in the fall, if I live.

“Give my love to Tom and Bessie, and tell Hugh,——No, don’t tell him anything. God bless you, darling mother. Good-bye,

Hugh’s face was a study as he read this letter, which sounded like a cry for help from an aching heart. Was Milly unhappy, and if so, why? he asked himself as he still held the letter with his eyes fixed upon the words “Tell Hugh——No, don’t tell him anything.” Did they mean that in her trouble she had for a moment turned to him, he wondered, but quickly put that thought aside. She had been too long silent to think of him now; and he was content that it should be so. His liking for her had been but a boy’s fancy for a little girl, he reasoned, and yet, as he held the letter in his hand, it seemed to bring Milly very near to him, and he saw her plainly as she looked when entering Thornton Park that morning so long ago. “I felt I was losing her then. I am sure of it now,” he was thinking, when Mrs. Leach asked what he thought of Milly’s letter, and where he supposed she was going, and what ailed her.

Hugh was Mrs. Leach’s confidant and oracle, whom she consulted on all occasions, and Tom himself was no kinder or tenderer in his manner to her than this big-hearted Scotchman, who soothed and comforted her now just as he always did, and then, without returning to the young people by the door he went out through the long window of Mrs. Leach’s room and off across the fields to the woods on the mountain side, where he sat down upon a rocky ledge to rest, wondering why the day was so oppressive, and why the words “Tell Hugh” should affect him so strangely, and why Mildred seemed so near to him that once he put up his hand with a feeling that he should touch her little hard, brown hand, browned and hardened with the work she hated so much. It was not often that he indulged in sentiment of this kind, but the spell was on him, and he sat bound by it until the whistle from the large shop had called the workmen from their dinners. Then he arose and went down the mountain road to his office, saying to himself: “I wonder where she is to-day, when I am so impressed with a sense of her nearness that I believe she is thinking of me,” and with this comforting assurance, Hugh was very patient and kind to the old woman whose will he had changed a dozen times, and who came to have it changed again, without a thought of offering him any remuneration for his trouble.

Meantime the group by the door had been joined by Tom, who had grown into just the kind of man Whittier’s barefoot boy would have grown into if he had grown at all,—a frank, sunny-faced young man, whom every old woman and young girl liked, and whom one young girl loved with all the intensity of her nature, caring nothing that he was poor and one whom her proud father would scorn as a son-in-law. They were not exactly engaged,—for Alice said her father must be consulted first, and they were waiting for him, while Gerard, who could wait for nothing where Bessie was concerned, was drinking his fill of love in her blue eyes, with no thought or care as to whether his father would oppose him or not.

“Hello, you are all here,” Tom said, as he came round the corner and laid his hand on Allie’s shoulder; then, glancing at her face, he continued: “Why, you’ve been crying. What’s the matter, Allie?”

“Oh, Tom, papa is married to-day,—to Fanny Gardner, an English girl with golden-brown hair and only twenty-eight years old and very handsome, he says. I know I shall hate her,” Alice sobbed, while Tom burst into a merry laugh.

“Your father married to a girl with golden-brown hair, which should be gray to match his,—that is a shame, by Jove. But, I say, Allie, I’m glad of it, for with a young wife at Thornton Park, you will be de trop, don’t you see?” And just as Gerard had done to Bessie so Tom did to Alice—kissed her pale face, with his best wishes to the bride, who was discussed pretty freely, from her name to the furniture of her room, which was to harmonize with the complexion of one who was neither a blond nor a brunette, but very beautiful.

For the next few weeks there was a great deal of bustle and excitement at Thornton Park, where Bessie went every day to talk over and assist in the arrangement of the bridal rooms, which were just completed when there came a telegram from New York saying that the newly married pair had arrived and would be home the following day.

CHAPTER V.
THE BRIDE.

A Cunard steamer had landed its living freight at the wharf, where there was the usual scramble and confusion, as trunks and boxes were opened and angry, excited women confronted with their spoils by relentless custom house officers, bent upon doing their duty, unless stopped by the means so frequently employed upon such occasions. Outside the long building stood an open carriage in which a lady sat, very simply but elegantly attired, with money, and Paris, and Worth showing in every article of her dress, from her round hat to her dainty boots, which could not be called small, for the feet they covered harmonized with the lady herself, who was tall and well proportioned, with a splendidly developed figure, on which anything looked well. There was a brilliant color in her cheeks, and her brown eyes were large and bright and beautiful, but very sad as they looked upon the scenes around her without seeming to see anything. Nor did their expression change when she was joined by an elderly man, who, taking his seat beside her, said first to the driver:

“To the Windsor,” and then to her, “I was longer than I thought I should be; those rascally officers gave me a world of trouble, but we shall soon be at the hotel now. Are you very tired?”

The question was asked very tenderly, for Giles Thornton was greatly in love with his bride of a few weeks. He had first met her in Florence, where she was recovering from the long illness which had lasted for months and made her weak as a child and almost as helpless. During her sickness her hair had fallen out, and owing to some unusual freak of nature it had come in much lighter than it was before and not so curly, although it still lay in wavy masses upon her head, and here and there coiled itself into rings around her forehead. The Harwoods were staying at the same hotel with Mr. Thornton, and it was in the Boboli Gardens that he first met her as she was being wheeled in an invalid chair by her attendant.

“Will he know me?” was her first thought when he was presented to her.

But there was no fear of that, for Mildred Leach had passed as wholly out of his mind as if he had never seen her, and if she had not there was no danger of his recognizing the girl who had been his daughter’s companion in this lovely woman whose voice and manner and appearance were indicative of the refinement and cultivation to which for years she had been accustomed. To him she was Miss Gardner, an English girl, and during the half hour he walked by her chair in the gardens, he felt his heart throb as it had never throbbed since he buried his wife. He had loved her devotedly and had never thought to fill her place until now when love did its work at first sight, and when two weeks later the Harwoods left Florence for Venice and Switzerland, he was with them, to all intents and purposes Mildred’s lover, although he had not openly announced himself as such.

To Mrs. Harwood Mildred had said, “Don’t tell him who I am. I prefer to do that when the time comes. I am going to punish him for calling my father a peasant when you inquired about him. I heard him. I have not forgotten.”

And so Mr. Thornton went blindly to his fate, which came one day in Ouchy in the grounds of the Beau-Rivage, where Mildred was sitting alone, with her eyes fixed upon the lake and the mountains beyond, and her thoughts back in the old farm house, with her mother and Bessie and Tom and Hugh, of whom she had not heard a word for months.

“He has forgotten me,” she said to herself, “and why shouldn’t he? I was never much to him, and yet”——

She did not get any farther, for there was a footstep near; some one was coming, and in a moment Mr. Thornton said to her, “Alone, Miss Gardner, and dreaming? May I dispel the dream and sit beside you a moment?”

Mildred knew then what was before her, as well as she did half an hour later, during which time Giles Thornton had laid himself and his fortune at her feet, and what was harder than all to meet, had made her believe that he loved her. She knew that he admired her, but she had not counted upon his love, which moved her a little, for Mr. Thornton was not a man to whom one could listen quietly when he was in earnest and resolved to carry his point, and for an instant Mildred wavered. It was something to be Mrs. Giles Thornton, of Thornton Park, and ought to satisfy her ambition. With all her beauty and social advantages, she as yet had received no eligible offer. It was known that she had no money, and only an Italian count and the youngest son of an English earl had asked her hand in marriage. But both were poor, and one almost an imbecile, from whom she shrank in disgust. Mr. Thornton was different; he was a gentleman of wealth and position, and as his wife she would for a part of the year live near her family. But with the thought of them there came the memory of an overgrown, awkward boy, whose feet and hands were so big that he never knew what to do with them, but whose heart was so much bigger than his feet and hands, that it bore down the scale and Mr. Thornton’s chance was lost for the time being.

“Hugh may never be anything to me,” she thought, “but I must see him before I give myself to any one.”

Then turning to Mr. Thornton, she said, “I thank you for your offer, which I believe is sincere, and that makes it harder for me to tell you what I must. Do you remember a girl, Mildred Leach, who was your daughter’s little friend, as she called herself, for she was as proud as you, and would not be a maid?”

“Ye-es,” Mr. Thornton stammered, as he looked wistfully into the beautiful face confronting him so steadily. “I had forgotten her entirely, but I remember now. She left us to go with an English lady, a Mrs. Gardner. Why, that is Mrs. Harwood,—and,—and,—oh, you are not she!”

“Yes, I am,” was Mildred’s reply, and then very rapidly she told her story, not omitting her having overheard him liken her parents to peasants when speaking of them to Mrs. Gardner. “I determined then,” she said, “that if possible I would one day humble your pride, but if I have done so, it has not given me the satisfaction I thought it would, and I am sorry to cause you pain, for I believe you were in earnest when you asked me to be your wife, which I can never be.”

“No,” he answered slowly, like one who had received a blow from which he could not at once recover. “No, you can never be my wife; Mildred Leach; it does not seem possible.”

Then he arose and walked rapidly away, and when the evening boat left Ouchy for Geneva he was on it, going he cared but little where, if by going he could forget the past as connected with Mildred Leach.

“I cannot marry her family,” he said many times during the next few months, when he was wandering everywhere and vainly trying to forget her, for always before him was the face he had never admired so much as when he last saw it, flushed and pale by turns, with a wondrous light in the brown eyes where tears were gathering. “If it were not for her family, or if I could separate her from them, I would not give her up,” he had often thought when in the following May he met her again at the Grand Hotel in Paris, where the Harwoods were stopping.

He could not tell what it was which impressed him with the idea that she had changed her mind, as she came forward to meet him, saying she was glad to see him, and adding that Mr. and Mrs. Harwood had gone to the opera. She seemed very quiet and absent minded at first, and then rousing herself, said to him abruptly, “You did not stop long enough in Ouchy for me to inquire after my family. You must have seen them often since I left home.”

“Yes,—no,” he answered in some embarrassment; “I have of course been to Thornton Park, but I do not remember much about them. I believe your father rents, or did rent, some land of me, but am not sure, as my agent attends to all that.”

“My father is dead,” Mildred answered so sharply as to make him jump and color painfully, as if guilty of a misdemeanor in not knowing that her father was dead.

“I beg your pardon. I am very sorry. I,—yes,—am very sorry,” he began; but she cut him short by saying, “Do you know Hugh McGregor?”

“Oh, yes. I know him well,” and Mr. Thornton brightened perceptibly. “He is my lawyer, and attends to all my business in Rocky Point; a fine fellow,—a very fine fellow. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Mildred replied, while her breath came heavily, “I know him, and I hear he is to marry my sister Bessie.”

“Oh, indeed,” and as if memory had suddenly come back to him, Mr. Thornton seemed immensely relieved. “I remember now,—Bessie Leach; that’s the girl I have sometimes seen with Alice. Gerard taught her French,—a very pretty girl. And Mr. McGregor is engaged to her? I am very glad. Any girl might be proud to marry him.”

Mildred made no reply to this, and Mr. Thornton never guessed the dreary emptiness of her soul as she sat with her hands clasped tightly together, thinking of the man whom any girl would be proud to marry. A few months before she would have said that he was nothing more to her than the friend of her childhood, but she had recently learned her mistake, and that the thought of seeing him again was one of the pleasantest anticipations of her home going. There had come to the hotel a Mr. and Mrs. Hayford from America, who sometimes spent their summers at Rocky Point, where Mrs. Hayford was once a teacher. As Mildred had been her pupil, she remembered her at once, after hearing the name, and would have introduced herself but for a conversation accidentally overheard between Mrs. Hayford and a friend who had also been at Rocky Point, and to whom she was retailing the news, first of New York and then of Rocky Point, where she had spent a few days in April prior to sailing.

“Do you remember that Hercules of a lawyer, Hugh McGregor, whom you admired so much?” was asked. “They say he is engaged to Bessie Leach, a girl much younger than himself, but very pretty,—beautiful, in fact, and——

Mildred heard no more, but hurried away, with an ache in her heart that she could not quite define. Tom had intimated that Gerard was interested in Bessie, and now Hugh was engaged to her. Well, it was all right, she said, and would not admit to herself how hard the blow had struck her and how she smarted under it. And it was just when the smart was at its keenest that Mr. Thornton came again across her path, more in love, if possible, than ever, and more intent upon making her his wife. He had fought a desperate battle with his pride and had conquered it, and within twenty-four hours after meeting her in Paris, she had promised to marry him, and when her pledge was given she was conscious of a feeling of quiet and content which she had scarcely hoped for. In his character as lover Mr. Thornton did not seem at all like the man she had feared in her childhood, nor if he felt it did he gave the slightest sign that he was stooping from his high position. She had been very frank with him and had made no pretension of love. “I will be true to you,” she said, “and try to please you in everything. I am tired of the aimless life I have led so many years, and I think Mrs. Harwood is a little tired of me too. She says I ought to have married long ago, but I could not marry a fool even if he had a title. I shall be so glad to go home to my friends, although I am so changed they will never know me.”

Then she added laughingly: “Wouldn’t it be great fun not to write them who I am and see if they will recognize me?”

She did not really mean what she said, or guess that it harmonized perfectly with a plan which Mr. Thornton had in mind, and was resolved to carry out, if possible. If he could have had his wish he would not have gone to Rocky Point at all, but his children were there and Mildred’s heart was set upon it, and he must meet the difficulty in some way. He could marry Mildred, but not her family, and he shrank from the intimacy which must necessarily exist between the Park and the farm house when it was known who his wife was. In his estimation the Leaches were nobodies, and he could not have them running in and out of his house and treating him with the familiarity of a son and brother, as he was sure they would do if he did not stop it. If Mildred would consent to remain incognito while at the Park the annoyance would be prevented, and this consent he tried to gain by many specious arguments. His real reason, he knew, must be kept from sight, and so he asked it as a personal favor, saying it would please him very much and be a kind of excitement for her.

“Possibly you will be recognized,” he said; “and if so, all right; if not, we will tell them just before we go to New York in the autumn and enjoy their surprise.”

He did not add that, once away from Rocky Point, it would probably be long before he took her there again. He only talked of the plan as a joke, which Mildred did not quite see. She was willing to keep the secret until she met them, but to keep it longer was absurd and foolish, she said, and involved a deception, which she abhorred.

“I accepted you partly that I might be near them and see them every day,” she said, “and am longing to throw my arms around mother’s neck and tell her I have come back.”

“And so you shall in time, but humor my whim for once. You will not be sorry,” Mr. Thornton pleaded, and Mildred consented at last, and felt in a measure repaid when she saw how happy it made Mr. Thornton, whose real motive she did not guess.

This was the last of April, and six weeks later Mildred was Mrs. Giles Thornton, traveling through Scotland and Wales and trying to believe herself happy in her husband’s love and the costly gifts he lavished upon her. She had been courted and admired as Fanny Gardner, but the deference paid her now and her independence were very sweet to her, and if she could have forgotten Hugh and been permitted to make herself known to her family, she would have been content at least on the morning when she left New York and started for Thornton Park.

CHAPTER VI.
MRS. GILES THORNTON.

She was very lovely in all the fullness of her matured beauty as she stepped from the train at Rocky Point, and with her large bright eyes swept the crowd of curious people gathered to see her, not one of whom she recognized. A handsome open carriage from Brewster’s, sent up a few days before for this occasion, was waiting for them, and with a half bow to those who ventured to salute her husband, Mildred seated herself in it and was driven through the well-remembered street, her heart beating so loudly that she could hear it distinctly as she drew near the top of the hill from which she knew she would see her old home and possibly her mother. And when the hill top was reached and she saw the house with its doors opened wide, and from the upper window of what had been hers and Bessie’s room a muslin curtain blowing in and out, she grew so white that her husband laid his hand on hers, and said, “Don’t take it so hard, darling. You are doing it to please me.”

“Yes, but it seems as if I must stop here,” she answered faintly as she leaned forward to look at the house around which there was no sign of life, or stir, except the moving of the curtain and the gambols of two kittens playing in the doorway where Mildred half expected to meet the glance of Bessie’s blue eyes and see the gleam of Charlie’s golden hair.

But Charlie was lying on the mountain side, and Bessie, although out of sight, was watching the carriage and the beautiful stranger in whom she saw no trace of her sister.

“I’ve seen her,” Bessie said, as she went into her mother’s room, “and she is very lovely, with such a bright color on her cheeks. And so young to be Mr. Thornton’s wife! I wonder if she loves him. I couldn’t.”

“No. I suppose you prefer Gerard,” Mrs. Leach replied, while Bessie answered blushingly, “Of course I do. Poor Gerard! How angry his father will be when he knows about Tom and me, too. Gerard was going to tell him at once, but I persuaded him to wait until the honeymoon was over. Just two months I’ll give him, and during that time I mean to cultivate Mrs. Thornton and get her on my side. I hope she is not proud like him. She did not look so.”

Bessie had been at the Park that morning helping Alice give the last touches to the rooms intended for the bride. These had been finished in the tints which Mr. Thornton had prescribed. Everything was new, from the carpets on the floors to the lace-canopied bedstead of brass. There were flowers everywhere in great profusion, roses mostly of every variety, and in a glass on a bracket in a corner, Bessie had put a bunch of June pinks from her own garden, explaining to Alice that her mother had sent them to the bride, as they were her favorite flowers and would make the rooms so sweet. Everything was finished at last, and after Bessie was gone Alice had nothing to do but to wait for the coming of the carriage which she soon saw entering the Park. Mildred’s face was very white and her voice trembled as she saw Alice in the distance and said, “I can’t bear it. I came near shrieking to the old home that I was Mildred. I must tell Alice. I cannot be so hypocritical. There is no reason for it.”

“No, no,” and Mr. Thornton spoke a little sternly. “It is too late now, and you have promised. I wish it and have my reason. Ah, here we are, and there are Alice and Gerard.”

They had stopped under the great archway at the side entrance where Gerard and Alice were waiting for them and scanning the bride curiously as she alighted and their father presented her to them,—not as their mother, but as “Mrs. Thornton, my wife.”

All Mildred’s color had come back and her face was glowing with excitement as she took Alice’s hand; then unable to control herself, she threw her arms around the neck of the astonished girl and burst into a flood of tears, while Mr. Thornton looked on in dismay, dreading what might follow. He was himself beginning to think it a very foolish and unnatural thing to try to keep his wife’s identity from her people, but he was not a man to give up easily, and once in a dilemma of his own making he would stay in it at any cost.

“She is very tired and must go to her room,” he said to his daughter, who was crying herself, and holding Mildred’s hands in her own.

Had Mildred tried she could have done nothing better for her cause than she had done. Alice had been very doubtful as to whether she should like her new mother or not, but something in the eyes which looked so appealingly into hers, and in the tears she felt upon her cheek, and the clasp of the arms around the neck, disarmed all prejudice and made of her a friend at once. As for Gerard, he had never meant to be anything but friendly, and when the scene between the two ladies was over he came forward with the slow, quiet manner natural to him and said, “Now it is my turn to welcome Mrs. Thornton, who does not look as if she could have for a son a great six-footer like me. But I’ll call you mother, if you say so.”

“No, don’t,” Mildred answered, flashing on him a smile which made his heart beat rapidly and brought a thought of Bessie, who sometimes smiled like that.

Leading the way to Mildred’s rooms, Alice said, as she threw open the door, “I hope you will like them.”

“Like them! They are perfect,” was Mildred’s answer, as she walked through the apartments, feeling that it must be a dream from which she would bye-and-bye awaken. “And so many roses,” she said, stopping here and there over a bowl or cluster of them until, guided by the perfume, she came upon the pinks her mother had sent to her.

Taking up the glass she held it for an instant while Alice said, “June pinks, perhaps you do not have them in England. They are old-fashioned flowers, but very sweet. A friend of mine, Bessie Leach, brought them for you from her mother, who is blind.”

There was a low cry and a crash as the finger-glass fell to the floor and Mildred sank into the nearest chair, white as ashes, with a look in her eyes which startled and frightened Alice.

“It is the heat and fatigue of the voyage. I was very sea-sick,” Mildred said, trying to smile and recover herself, while Alice went for a towel to wipe up the water trickling over the carpet, and wondering if Mrs. Thornton was given to faintings and hysterics like this.

“She don’t look like it,” she thought, as she picked up and carried out the bits of glass and the pinks which had done the mischief.

When lunch was served Mildred was too ill to go down. A severe headache had come on, and for a time Alice sat by her couch bathing her forehead and brushing her hair, which was more a mottled than golden brown, for it was darker in some places than others, especially when seen in certain lights and shadows. But this only added to its beauty, and Alice ran her fingers through the shining mass, admiring the color and the texture and admiring the woman generally and answering the many questions which were asked her. Hungry at heart to hear something of her family, Mildred said to her, “Tell me of your friends. Have you any here? Girl friends, I mean.”

“Only one with whom I am intimate,” Alice replied, and then as girls will she went off into rhapsodies over Bessie Leach, and in a burst of confidence concluded by saying, “You must not tell papa, for he is not to know it yet, but Bessie is to be my sister. She is to marry Gerard.”

“Marry Gerard!” and Mildred raised herself upon her elbow and shedding her heavy hair back from her face stared at Alice with an expression in her eyes which the girl could not understand, and which made her wonder if her stepmother, too, were as proud as her father and would resent Gerard’s choice.

This called forth another eulogy upon Bessie’s beauty and sweetness, with many injunctions that Mildred should not repeat to her husband what had been told her.

“Nobody knows it for certain but Mr. McGregor and ourselves,” she added, and then, turning her face away so that it could not be seen, Mildred said, “Mr. McGregor? That is your father’s attorney. Is he a married man?”

The question was a singular one, but Alice was not quick to suspect, and answered laughingly, “Hugh McGregor married! Why, I don’t suppose he has ever looked twice at any girl. He is a confirmed old bachelor, but very nice. Father thinks the world of him.”

“Yes, oh, yes,” Mildred moaned, as she clasped her hands over her forehead where the pain was so intense.

“You are worse. You are white as a sheet; let me call papa,” Alice cried, alarmed at the look of anguish in the dark eyes and the gray pallor of the face which seemed to have grown pinched and thin in a moment.

But her husband was the last person whom Mildred wished to see then, and detaining Alice she said, “Don’t call him, please. It will soon pass off, and don’t think me ungrateful, either, but I’d rather be alone for a while. I may sleep and that will do me good.”

And so, after darkening the room, Alice went out and left the wretched woman alone in her grief and pain.

“Mrs. Hayford was mistaken. Hugh is not engaged to Bessie, and I am Mrs. Giles Thornton,” she said, a little bitterly. “My ambition ought to be satisfied. I have made my own bed and must lie in it, and go on lying, too!”

She smiled faintly at her own joke and then continued: “If I had only resisted and come back Mildred Leach! But it is now too late, and Hugh will always despise me for the deception. Oh, Hugh!”

There was a spasmodic wringing of the hands, and then, as if ashamed of herself Mildred said, “I must not, will not be faithless to my husband, who loves me, I know, and I will be worthy of his love and make him happy, so help me Heaven!”

The vow was made and Mildred would keep it to the death. The might have been, which has broken so many hearts when the knowledge came too late, was put away and buried deep down in the inmost recesses of her soul, and when two hours later she awoke from a refreshing sleep and found her husband sitting by her, she put her hand in his just as she had never put it before, and did not shrink from him when he stooped down to caress her.