It was a letter that any man would understand, and Fanny’s regret at having sent it was so bitter that Annie tried to comfort her by saying that as Jack was constantly moving from place to place he might not get it, especially if, as was possible, he came home sooner than he had expected to when he left. This was a straw, but Fanny clung to it while Annie debated in her mind whether to tell of her engagement as she ought to have done long before.

“I believe it would kill her to tell her now,” she thought. “I’ll wait and possibly—”

Here the little sting, which she had thought gone forever made itself felt. Possibly, when Jack knew from Fanny herself that she loved him, and when he saw her again he might regret he was bound to her, and then?—

She could not answer any more than she could say to Fanny, “Jack belongs to me.”

“You are cold,” she said at last as she saw Fanny shiver and draw her shawl closer around her. “Go to bed and trust Jack, who will do right, whatever happens.”

“But the shame of it,—the shame of it. You would never have done it,” Fanny answered, as she rose slowly and kissing Annie good-night went to her room.

Neither of the sisters slept much, and Annie the least. Regret that she had not told Fanny of her engagement when she was in Washington, and a morbid dread of the possible future, kept her awake long after midnight, and both she and Fanny were tired and white when at a later hour than usual they met at the breakfast table. As usual Fanny was the first to rally. She had dreamed that Jack came upon her unexpectedly at The Plateau and found her in her chair by the window, not watching for him, as she did not expect him, and had no thought he was near until he came behind her and kissed her, saying ‘Fanny!’ in the old-time voice, which sent through her such a thrill of ecstasy that she awoke and had not slept since. This she told to Annie, her face glowing with excitement, while Annie made no reply.

“I know what you think,” Fanny said. “You don’t believe Jack will be quite so ready to respond as all that, but something tells me he will.”

Her feeling of shame was wearing away, and in a few days she was as gay as ever, and Annie often heard her humming Bonny Doon, and once she tried Dixie, which Jack had said she rattled off so fast. The weather now was very hot and sultry, but the sultriest, hottest day found her at The Plateau, which one would have thought she owned from her interest in it. She would not acknowledge that she believed in dreams, but the one in which Jack figured so largely had made a strong impression upon her, filling her with a presentiment that it would come true, and at The Plateau, too. Every day she went there and sat in the bay window of our room, sometimes reading, sometimes half-dozing, and always with a thought of Jack coming up behind her and saying softly, not ‘Mrs. Errington,’ but ‘Fanny,’—a word which would mean all heaven to her.

Chapter XIV.—Author’s Story Continued.
FANNY OR MRS. ERRINGTON.

It was in Boston that Jack received Fanny’s letter, together with one from Annie, which had followed him from Montreal. He recognized Fanny’s handwriting and wondered why she was writing to him. Annie’s letter was of the most importance, and he read it two or three times and kissed her name when he finished it and said aloud “My Annie, my wife that is to be. I shall see you very soon.”

It did not occur to him that there was in it a little note of pain scarcely perceptible to one who did not hold the key, but still there, for Annie’s heart had been sore when she wrote it. Easily affected by the atmosphere around her she could not help being more or less moved by Fanny’s oft repeated assertion that Jack would forgive her everything and that they would meet on the old footing, and when she looked at the brilliant woman lovelier now than she had ever been, for to her beauty of face and person was added a grace and elegance which she had lacked in her girlhood, she said to herself, “How can he be insensible to her?”

And this affected her spirits when she wrote to Jack, who was quite oblivious of it all.

“Now for Fanny’s letter,” he said, when Annie’s had been put away, and breaking the seal he read it with many and strange emotions, the most prominent of which was surprise that it should have been written.

Then, as he remembered how impulsive Fanny was, acting usually on the spur of the moment and repenting afterwards, he understood better, but was sorry, for her words awoke no answering response in his heart. The chords which had once thrilled to her slightest touch were stilled forever, and nothing she could do would stir them into life again. She had tried to be guarded, asking only for his friendship as she had it when they were girl and boy together, but he read between the lines and saw the love offered to him and the feeling of assurance that it would be accepted. Some men would have rejoiced to return in part the pain they had been made to suffer, but Jack never harbored malice.

“Poor Fan, I am sorry for you,” he said, “but it is too late; my love for you can no more be resurrected than The Boy you wept over years ago. I am your friend always, but never your lover again.”

Then he began to wonder how he should meet her, and to wish she were not at The Elms, and why Annie had not told her, as she ought to have done. Fanny’s offer of money he resented, although knowing it was well meant. “Money, always money, as if that were all,—but, thank God, I do not need it, and if I did, I’d starve before I’d touch a dollar which came this way,” he thought, and without reading the letter a second time he tore it in pieces which he burned in the gas and then blew the ashes away with his breath.

Poor Fanny, singing snatches of Bonny Doon,—putting aside all regret for what she had done, and making herself believe that in a general way her dream would come true. She had had it three times,—not always the same in detail, but the same in substance, and it must come true. It did not occur to her that this was the natural result of dwelling upon it so constantly and having it in her mind before falling asleep. It was a sign for good and she grew brighter every day, and every day went to The Plateau near train time and sat in the willow chair and watched and waited for Jack, with a feeling that he would certainly come.

And he did come, but not by train. He had business in Petersburg, and after it was transacted drove to Lovering. The road led past The Plateau, and as he had not seen the place for some time he dismissed the carriage which had brought him from Petersburg and walked up the hill to The Plateau. The rear door stood open, and with no thought that Fanny was there, but a hope that he might find Annie, he went in. There was no one below stairs, but on a table in the parlor lay a white scarf which he recognized as Annie’s. She was there, of course, and he went up the stairs whistling as he went and calling softly, “Annie, my darling, where are you? Don’t you hear me coming?”

No one answered, for Fanny was asleep. She had sat in the bay window two hours or more reading and thinking, until, overcome by the heat and lulled by the drone of insects outside and the gentle soughing of the wind through the two tall pines which stood in the grounds, her book had dropped into her lap, one hand had fallen at her side, and her head lay back upon her chair, with her face turned a little to one side. Had she posed for a month she could not have selected a more graceful attitude in which to be found by a lover than this in which Jack found her. He saw her as he crossed the threshold, and still thinking it to be Annie went very cautiously towards her, starting as he came close to her and drawing a long breath. That head was not Annie’s. Her hair was brown;—this was much darker. Neither was that hand Annie’s. Hers was smaller and not quite so white as this one, which he had kissed so many times and for which he had bought a wedding ring, now put away forever. There was another on the hand,—a broad band of gold, guarded by a costly solitaire, which, as a ray of sunlight struck it, blinked up at him with glints of color as if it had been a human eye asking what he did there. He knew this was Fanny, and he came very near speaking her name. Then remembering the construction she would put upon it he restrained himself, and stepping in front of her stood for a moment looking at her as she slept, and noticing what changes had been wrought in her since he last saw her on the platform of the car, waving good-bye to him. She was, if possible, more beautiful now than then,—with a kind of patrician beauty he felt but could not define. Her figure had lost some of its girlish symmetry, but had gained in a greater fullness of outline, partly the result of nature and partly owing to the skill of French dress-making. He had never seen her asleep before, and had not realized how long and heavy were the dark lashes resting on her cheeks. He saw them now, and saw, too, the incipient lines around her mouth and eyes and the few threads of silver in her hair, and was conscious of a sensation such as we feel when we see a lovely rose begin to loose its freshness.

For a full minute he stood looking at her with no stir in his heart, or longing for possession. And he was glad it was so. If there had been a regret for the past, or a desire for the future, he would have felt himself disloyal to Annie. But there was none. She was only a beautiful woman, of whose unconsciousness he was taking an undue advantage. It was time to waken her, and he involuntarily gave a whistle with which he used to notify her of his presence on the piazza when he was a boy and she a girl like the picture in the medallion. The sound awoke her instantly and fully, and starting up she looked at him with eyes in which her whole soul was showing, but in which there was no surprise. Her dream had come true. Jack was there! Her Jack, with the same handsome face and honest eyes she remembered so well and with something more,—something which contact with the world had brought to him. She had called him countrified many a time, and made fun of his coats and pants and shabby hats, but Col. Errington’s clothes had never fitted better nor been worn with more grace than Jack’s were now. There was, however, nothing of the dude about him. He was simply a well-dressed man after the fashion of the city rather than the country. And Fanny saw it at a glance and was glad.

“Jack!” she said, stretching her hands to him and forgetting for an instant what was to have been the password between them, if he had received her letter.

He had not forgotten, and taking her hands and smiling upon her, as he would have smiled upon any friend not seen for a long time, he said in his old teasing way, “Well, Sleeping Beauty, the beast took you unawares. I hope I did not frighten you.”

He was perfectly self-possessed, with something about him, aside from his clothes, which Fanny had never seen before. As a girl she had asserted her superiority over him, as she did over everyone, and in his blind love he had submitted to her will and confessed himself an ignoramus whom she was to teach. Now he was a man to be respected and feared, rather than dictated to and taught.

Old Phyllis had been wont to say, when she saw Jack’s perfect obedience to Fan’s slightest whim, “I clar for’t, Miss Fanny done tote Mas’r Jack roun’ by de nose shameful.” That time was past. He had opinions of his own, and after they had talked together a few minutes Fanny realized the change and began to feel that Jack might be the ruling spirit now. He had called her neither Fanny, nor Mrs. Errington. Evidently he had not received her letter, and she was glad, for with this changed Jack beside her she began to feel all her shame and regret for having sent it returning to her. This Jack would hardly receive it as the old Jack would have done. He might think her unwomanly and immodest, and her hands worked nervously together as she talked on indifferent subjects, scarcely looking at him, or, if she did, blushing painfully and letting her eyes fall at once. She never dreamed it would be so hard to talk with Jack as she found it. She had thought that all she had to do was to see him,—to smile upon him in the witching way she knew so well, and then their former relations would be at once re-established. Now he was there with her, in the house which was to have been hers,—in the room where she was to wait and watch for him, and she was more ill at ease and constrained than she had ever been in her life.

“It is the letter which makes me so cowardly, and which he must never read,” she thought, and after a moment she said with a gasp, “Ja-ack.”

“Yes,” he answered, as she did not go on at once.

“Ja-ack,—I sent you a letter ten days ago. I hope you did not receive it.”

“No?” Jack said, more as an interrogative than an assertion.

But Fanny understood the latter, and went on more cheerfully; “I am so glad. Promise me that if you do receive it, as you may some time, you will bring it to me unopened and unread.”

She was looking at him entreatingly, waiting for his reply, which came quickly:

“If your letter ever comes to me I will surely bring it to you unread.”

Unconsciously he had laid a little emphasis on the if,—or there was something in his face or voice which told Fan the truth.

“Jack,” she began again, and this time in a tremor of distress, “did you get my letter?”

With her eyes confronting him as they were Jack had no choice left him.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Oh, Jack, what must you think of me?” Fanny cried, covering her face with her hands, while the tears trickled through her fingers and fell upon her black dress. “I don’t know why I did it,” she went on rapidly, “only I longed to let you know how I hated myself for the wrong I did you, and for which I have paid more dearly than you know. I could not help writing the letter after I began to think about it, and I hurried to get it off, and when Annie expressed her disapprobation I was angry.”

“Did Annie know you wrote it?” Jack asked in some surprise, and Fanny replied, “Not until it was posted. Something she said opened my eyes to what I had done. It was like waking from a dream, and I went to the office to withdraw it, but it was gone. After awhile I was glad I had sent it, or at least not sorry, and I made myself believe that you would call me Fanny when we met in token of perfect forgiveness and was happy in the thought. I wrote it here in this room,—in this window, where I was to wait and watch for you. You see I know it all. I made Annie tell me everything, and if my heart had not been dried and seared it would have broken for you,—Jack, for you.” There was a sound in her voice as she said “For you, Jack; for you,” which would have stirred Jack mightily and made him take her in his arms, if the past and Annie had not stood between them.

“I came up here into this room,” she continued, “and on my knees expiated my sin, if anguish and tears can do it. I had not cried in so long that I thought I should never cry again. That was before George died. I never loved him; he knew I never did, but I was faithful to him, and he said I was kind. He left me all his money,—so much more than I can manage or know what to do with and I wanted you to have some of it,—wanted you to forgive me and take it from me.”

In her excitement she had laid her heart more bare than she had done in her letter. Jack had understood that;—he understood her now and pitied her for the pain he must inflict. At the mention of money his face clouded and his voice was harder than it would otherwise have been, as he said, “How much you mistake me, if you think I could take your money,—his money. You mean it kindly, I know, and so far I thank you. I am not as poor now as I was when you shrank from sharing my poverty, and if I were, you must see that I should accept nothing from you. I do forgive you, Fanny. It is impossible that I should feel otherwise than kindly to one who was so much to me once that the whole world was full of her, and I had no thought of anything which was not connected with her.”

Fanny was not crying now, but listening with her head upon the table where his arm was resting while he toyed with a fancy paper-knife, the last article he had bought for her. He had found it in Richmond and brought it to the room the morning of the day her letter came. He was thinking of this and of everything connected with that time. Perhaps this was why he spoke so plainly. He did not mean to wound her unnecessarily, but he did mean to remove from her mind all hope that things could ever be again between them as they had been.

“You have no idea,” he said, “of my happiness that day when I brought Annie here. It was as if all Heaven had come down to make its abode in this room where the blow fell, and I felt as if my blood were leaving me drop by drop until I was one great block of ice. Heavens, how cold I was, and I never was warm again until the Florida sun shone on me as I sat on the sand at noon, with my head uncovered, hoping the iceberg would thaw.”

Fanny was now sitting bolt upright, her eyes growing larger and blacker until, as Jack went on, she felt her blood oozing away drop by drop and leaving her the iceberg Jack was describing. She was warm enough later on, as Jack continued: “I have never felt unkindly towards you, Fanny, and had you come into this room that night and asked me to forgive you and spoken to me and looked at me as you have looked and spoken now, I have no doubt I should have taken you back, I loved you so much. Even now you stand to me in a different relation from any woman in the world, for you embody the memory of something in my early manhood which was very sweet. I would go through fire and water to serve you, but the past is dead. You have been the wife of another man, and I shall soon be the husband of another woman.”

Fanny’s face was spotted, but it turned as white as the bit of muslin she wore at her throat when Jack added, “Annie is to be my wife.”

“Annie! And she never told me!” Fanny gasped. “I’ll never forgive her, never!”

Jack knew she would, for it was not her nature to harbor malice against anyone, and especially against Annie, who was a part of herself. But the blow had struck her hard. She was so sure of winning Jack that she had never thought of a possible rival, and that rival Annie. Now, however, she began to read backward and to see what in her blindness she had not seen before. For a few minutes resentment against Annie was uppermost in her mind. “She should have told me; it would have saved me all this shame,” she said. And mentally Jack agreed with her, although he would not say so, lest he should seem to be blaming Annie. But he was sorry for Fanny. All her hopes were dead. Jack was gone from her past recall, and the world looked very desolate stretching on into the future year after year, while she walked in it alone. Then with a great effort she controlled herself and, smiling at Jack through her tears, she said, “Never was there a woman more abased and crushed than I am, but I shall not die. I am too plucky for that. If you wanted revenge you have had it. I think we are quits, and now I am going home to have it out with Annie, and that will end it. Don’t come with me. Wait till evening when the storm will be over. My tantrums never lasted long, you know.”

The next moment she was gone, and Jack saw her taking the path through the woods to The Elms. “Annie is somewhat to blame, but I hope Fan won’t scratch her eyes out,” he thought, as he started for the village in another direction. There was no danger of that although Fanny was very indignant, and rushing into the house like a cyclone she plunged at once into the fray. It was nearly supper time, and Annie was in her room making some changes in her toilet when Fanny came in banging the door behind her and standing with her back to it as she told in part what had transpired at The Plateau.

“Were you engaged when I came home at Thanksgiving?” she asked, and Annie answered “No.”

“Were you engaged when you came to Washington?”

“Yes.”

“Then, why didn’t you tell me, and not let me prate about Jack as I did, showing how much I cared for him?”

“Just because you did show me how much you cared for him,” Annie replied, roused at last to defend herself. “I tried to tell you two or three times in Washington, but could not. It did not seem just the thing to parade my happiness before you then, and tell you I had won the lover you jilted and whom I was sure you hoped to win back.”

Annie was speaking very plainly, and without looking at Fan went on: “There was another reason,—a stronger one. I knew how Jack had loved you, and jealousy, perhaps, or some other ignoble feeling, whispered to me that now you were free, he might turn to you again, and this has been the mainspring of my silence, which I regret exceedingly. I might have written it to you, and did begin one or two letters, but tore them up, saying to myself, “I’ll give Jack a chance to see her, and if after that he wavers ever so little towards me I shall know it and give him up.” I could not share a divided love. I must have all of Jack, or none. When you came home you were full of him and so sure of him that I could not tell you. If I had known you were going to write to him as you did, I should have mustered courage and stopped it. I did not know until it was too late, and, like a coward, I waited to let Jack decide for himself.”

“Which he has with a vengeance,” Fanny interposed. “You ought to have heard him talk to me till I could have crept on my knees out of his sight, I felt so small and ashamed. It was kind, perhaps, to take such heroic measures to cure me, but not like the old Jack whom I could twist around my little finger. He isn’t that Jack at all. I couldn’t twist him now. I should be afraid of him. I was afraid of him, as I sat listening to him, but never respected him so much in my life. I have had one man of whom I stood in fear. I don’t want another. You are welcome to him. He would have come home with me, but I told him to wait till I’d had it out with you. I’ve had it out. It’s the only mean thing I ever knew you do, but I forgive you and hope you will be happy. Of course you will, but Jack will be the master. I shouldn’t like that. You will. If I were you I would take off that brown thing which is so unbecoming. Put on a white gown this hot night. You are lovely in white. Jack is coming, and you want to look your best.”

Fan’s anger and resentment were wearing off. She had played her game and lost it, and as she had once said in an emergency, there was no use crying for spilled milk, she wouldn’t cry now. Jack was still Jack, and Annie was Annie, and she could not afford to quarrel with them. They were engaged, and she would do what she could to further their happiness, and would begin by improving Annie’s personal appearance. The brown gown annoyed her, and she made Annie put on a white one and fixed her hair more as she wore her own and fastened a rose at her neck and kissed her, saying as she held her off for inspection, “All you need is a little style to make you a beauty, but just as you are any man might be proud of you and glad that you were his. Jack is, I know. I believe I hear him. He has come early. Go down and have the first cooing over before I get there. Tell him the eagle has not harmed his dove. Go.”

She pushed Annie from the room, and then falling upon the bed, with her face down and her hands clinched, she lay there a long time, fighting the hardest battle of her life, while below stairs the cooing went on and Annie was nestled in Jack’s arms, with her head upon his breast, while he chided her for not having told Fanny and saved her from so much mortification. But he covered her mouth with kisses while he chided, and she knew he was not angry. “We must be married very soon now,” he said energetically, as if afraid that Fanny might carry him off bodily if he waited. He had nothing, however, to fear from Fanny, who, having fought her fight and conquered, was quite herself when she at last came down to the supper which had waited so long that Phyllis’s turban stood higher than Fanny had seen it before since she came home. Fanny had made Annie as attractive as possible, and then had twisted her own hair into a fashion very unbecoming to her. She had not worn her widow’s cap since she came to Lovering, but she brought out one now, and perching it on the top of her head surveyed herself in the mirror with a grim kind of satisfaction. She could scarcely have told why she did this, unless it were from some Quixotic idea not to overshadow Annie in Jack’s eyes. She did not yet understand how wholly she had lost his love and how absolutely Annie had won it. Jack was not much given to noticing one’s dress unless it were very pronounced. He had thought Annie uncommonly pretty when he came suddenly upon her watering a lily by the door, but he did not think of associating her prettiness with her dress or the arrangement of her hair. She was Annie,—his Annie,—whom he had not seen for weeks, and he kept her at his side until Phyllis asked if they was “never gwine to be done wid dat ar an’ come to supper.”

With the sound of Phyllis’s voice there came also the soft trail of Fanny’s long dress on the stairs. There was a good deal of dignity in her manner as she entered the room and took her seat at the table, meeting with a smile Annie’s look of surprise at the cap on her head and the way in which she had twisted her hair back from her high forehead.

“Lord save us, what has de chile done to alter her like dat ar,” came from under Phyllis’s breath, while even Jack wondered what had changed her so, and finally-attributed it to the cap, which seemed so out of place on her.

Fanny did most of the talking, and when supper was over went to her room, leaving Jack and Annie alone, as she knew they wished to be. She was not one to do anything by the halves. She had given Jack up to her sister and she meant to make the best of it, and as to her the best seemed to be to remove herself from their way she very soon found Lovering quite too hot for comfort, and decided to go to the White Sulphur Springs with Marie.

“Maybe I shall come to see you married, and maybe I shall not,” she said to Annie. “I can’t tell how I shall feel. If I do come you may think I have a good deal of inward and spiritual grace. I ought to have something to sustain me, for between you and Jack I have been pounded to a pummice. Even George would be satisfied, if he knew. Poor George! he wasn’t the worst man in the world.”

She was getting up quite a little sentiment for her husband’s memory and talked of him a good deal, especially to Jack, during the last days of her stay in Lovering, and she persisted in wearing her cap and twisting her hair in a fashion which Annie thought horrid. Once at the Springs, however, there was a change. The cap disappeared,—the hair came back to its usual becoming style; there were narrow bands of white at the neck and wrists of her black dresses, and among the guests there was no one half so much admired and sought after as the beautiful Mrs. George Errington of Washington.

Jack had decided that his marriage should take place some time in October, and soon after Fanny left he made arrangements whereby he could leave his business for a while and join the party in Europe for the winter. Nothing could please Annie better, and she immediately wrote to Fanny asking if she would go with them.

“Not if I know myself,” was her prompt reply, “and you are crazy to ask it. A real honeymoon in Europe, such as your’s and Jack’s will be, must be delightful, but you ought to be alone. Think of me,—Jack’s first love,—stalking along with you! No, thank you. And don’t think I am eating my heart out with disappointment. I am not. I felt stunned at first to find myself so completely stranded, but there is a good deal left for me to enjoy yet. It is something to be admired and complimented and sought after as I am here, even if they are simpletons, or fortune-hunters, who do it. The wedding is the 20th of October, is it? Well, I have decided to come and do the honors, and I am going to bring you a diamond pin and earrings, and make over to you Carl’s present to me three years ago. He meant it for Jack’s wife, and Jack’s wife shall have it. Give him my love, dear old boy. Don’t be jealous. He is a dear old boy, and you are sure to be happy with him. Going on the Celtic, are you? We went on the Celtic, and our stateroom, where Jack’s eyes haunted me so, was No —. Funny if you should get it.”

“Jack,” Annie said, the first time she saw him after the receipt of this letter, “have you engaged our stateroom on the Celtic?”

“Yes.”

“What is the number?”

“No —.”

“Oh, Jack, can’t you change it?”

“Change it! They told me it was one of the best rooms on the ship. Why should I change it?”

“I don’t know,” Annie said, holding Jack’s hand and rubbing her head against his coat sleeve, “I don’t know,—only that’s the room Fanny had when you haunted her so with your eyes. Maybe the Colonel will haunt me.”

“Humbug! If he does I’ll pitch him overboard. Don’t go to being nervous, little woman,” Jack replied, swinging her up in his arms as if she had been a child, and kissing her till she struggled away from him.

That day Jack received a letter saying that Mr. Emery had sold the house on The Plateau to a lady,—a widow,—who would probably take possession about the first of October. As she might arrive unexpectedly, she would be obliged if Mr. Fullerton would leave the key of the house with the station master where she could get it at once. “A lady and a widow,” Annie said, her interest and curiosity piqued and increased by the fact that neither the name nor whereabouts of the stranger was given. Everything pertaining to The Plateau was as much a mystery as ever, but busied with her preparations for her wedding and journey abroad Annie forgot The Plateau, until one morning when Jack came in and told her that the lady of The Plateau had come on the early train from Richmond. He had not seen her, but some of the villagers had and described her as in deep mourning, with a thick veil over her face, hiding her features from view. A stalwart negro, who seemed to be her factotum, had gotten the key from the station master, and called a carriage into which he put his lady and a white girl, presumably her maid. Besides the big negro there were three more servants in the party and they were now domiciled at The Plateau. This was exciting, and the excitement was further increased by the rumor circulated by some black who had been to The Plateau to the effect that the servants were all a stuck-up lot of city negroes,—that the big one was a butler, and the white one spoke some foreign gibberish and wore a cap.

“Who can the lady be?” Annie wondered, and when, the next day, Jack proposed a drive past The Plateau she assented readily, hoping she might get a glimpse of the stranger.

It was a warm afternoon, and as they drove slowly up the hill they noticed that every window of the house was open, while the servants seemed to be busy going in and out. A box of flowers stood in the bay window of our room, and near it a bird’s cage was hanging, showing that the owner had appropriated the chamber to herself.

“There she is,” Annie said, as the figure of a tall woman passed before the window and was gone before Jack had a view of her.

“Who do you suppose she is?” Annie asked, and in the next breath exclaimed, “Jack, what are you doing? You certainly are not going to call!”

“I certainly am,” he replied, turning into the grounds, while Annie continued to expostulate.

“But, Jack, it’s so soon. What will she think? I haven’t any cards, and you do not even know her name.”

“We will learn it, then,” Jack said, springing from the buggy and helping Annie to alight.

They went to the front door, where Jack was going to enter unannounced.

“Are you crazy?” Annie said, giving a pull to the bell, which echoed through the whole house and brought at once the white maid who spoke the foreign tongue.

“Marie! Marie! How came you here?” Annie gasped, beginning to understand and looking enquiringly at Jack, whose face told her that he knew whom they had come to see.

“Tell your mistress that Miss Hathern and Mr. Fullerton are here,” he said, and with a bow the girl departed, meeting her mistress on the stairs and saying something to her in French.

The next moment Fanny was in the room, half laughing and half crying as she tried to explain.

“I did not want the place sold to strangers, and bought it myself, or had Mr. Emery do it for me. I have owned it all the time.”

With Jack present she could not say that when she bought it she had a hope that she might some day live there a portion of the year with him. She had taken a great fancy to the house the first time she saw it, and had anticipated the day when as Jack’s wife she could give it to him and say “We will still live here, and you shall see me from the window waiting and watching as you come over the hill.” That dream was ended, but she would keep the place as the sepulchre of her hopes and Jack’s, and when she was tired of Washington, as she was often likely to be, she would come to The Plateau as to a kind of Retreat, where she could rest and be near her old home. Mr. Emery had bought the place in his own name and then conveyed it to her, and she had furnished the means with which to keep it up, and had put it in Annie’s care and Jack’s until she chose to appear as the real proprietor. A good deal of this she told to Annie and Jack, the latter of whom understood what she omitted.

“And here I am,” she added, with a smile which belied a pain in her heart if there were any. “I’ve come for the wedding and can be mistress of ceremonies, and have brought Annie the loveliest gown, cream satin, and veil and orange wreath. You will be married in church,” she continued, as she saw Annie about to protest. “I know you meant to have a quiet, poky thing at home, with gingerbread and lemonade, but my sister shall have a wedding that is a wedding, and one which will make the people stare. You certainly ought to let me have my way in this.”

There was no use combatting Fan when she was as much in earnest as she was now, and Annie did not try, but yielded to her in everything.

The next two weeks were busy and exciting ones in Lovering, where the people gossiped and commented, and messages were sent every day over the wires to Richmond and Petersburg, and Fanny drove about the town; to the caterer’s, the florist’s’ and The Elms, where Annie’s dress was making by a modiste from Richmond.

“Now you look like a bride. Full dress becomes you,” Fanny said, when at last Annie stood ready for her bridal, the creamy satin falling in soft folds around her slight figure, which gathered height from the length of the train.

The diamonds Fanny had brought lay in their case upon the bureau, and on Annie’s neck were strings of exquisite pearls which Fanny had fastened there, saying “They are more like you than the diamonds, which will do for other occasions.” Fanny was spending her money like water and Annie was not the only one who benefited by it. Grand as she was in her bridal robes, Phyllis in her way was grander still and far more conscious of herself.

Fanny had not only bought her a wonderful turban of crimson and orange, but also a black silk dress with a short train. A negro in silk was something which Lovering had not reached with all its strides towards freedom, and some of the people disapproved and said so privately, while the blacks were loud in their denunciations, saying “Phyllis was nuffin but a nigger, if she did war silk.”

Phyllis held her own and carried herself as if she owned the house and the church and the rector and the whole business, and walked like a duchess behind the bridal party under the canopies which Fanny had ordered from Richmond. The like had never been seen in Lovering, and a crowd of whites and blacks gathered at the church around the tent, as they called it, discussing the guests as they arrived. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the house and grounds that night. There was no moon, but there were Chinese lanterns and lamps and torches everywhere, making it almost as light as day outside, while inside it was like a great garden of flowers, wagon loads of which had been sent from Petersburg, together with a brass band which at intervals played on the wide piazza, around which hundreds of lookers on were assembled. It was an affair not soon to be forgotten, and to this day the stranger in Lovering is sometimes told by the blacks of the grand doings when Miss Annie Hathern was married to “Mas’r Fullerton, him as has been to congress twict sense, and is the firstest man here;” of the band and the tents and lanterns and fireworks and the canterer from Richmond, and of old Phyllis’s silk gown in which she felt so big. More blacks than Phyllis have worn silk in the reconstructed south, but she was the pioneer in Lovering and fully realized the éclat of her position, making a most imposing figure as she moved among the staff of trained servants which filled the kitchen that night and with whom she had more than one fierce battle.

What Fanny felt no one could guess. She seemed very happy as she did the honors of the house, her black dress in sharp contrast to the creamy satin of the bride who looked so lovely and young as she stood by her husband’s side and received the congratulations of her friends. This was on Wednesday, and as they were to sail on Saturday the bridal pair left The Elms the next morning amid the cheers and good wishes of the crowd of people assembled to see them off. Fanny was not with them. She had said good-bye at the house and then been driven to The Plateau, where, alone in her room, with her face buried in her hands, she rocked to and fro, moaning to herself, “Oh, Annie,—oh, Jack. It is very hard to bear. I am glad you are happy; but how desolate your going has left me and how dreary life is to me now.”