And he was astonished and dismayed at his suffering.

But few men suffer patiently; they are usually quick for their own relief, and accordingly very early the following morning Leonard made an excuse for calling on Sappha. Mrs. Bloommaert had gone, however, to Nassau Street, and he did not need to urge the excuse prepared. He launched at once into his wrongs and his sufferings; and indeed the latter had left some intelligible traces. Sappha was moved by his pale face and troubled eyes to unusual sympathy; but this did not suffice. He felt that the only way to prevent a recurrence of the night’s suffering was to insist upon a public acknowledgment of his rights as her accepted lover, and he told Sappha this in no equivocal words.

She was distressed by his passion and evident distraction, but she would not listen for a moment to his proposal to explain their position to her father that night. And his eager entreaties finally roused in her something like anger. “You are too selfish, Leonard,” she said, “and please do not make your love for me the excuse for your selfishness. You must be happy, no matter who is unhappy. Could you have picked out in the whole year a time more unpropitious, more inopportune, than this very week? Every person who has any patriotic feeling gives up all their interest to our country for the next few days. Christmas and New Year’s holidays have claims we cannot forget. It is my father’s holiday, his great holiday, when he throws all business cares from his mind. My mother has all manner of little domesticities and household hopes and fears and duties to attend to. Have at least a little patience! Wait until the New Year’s feast is over.”

“And give St. Ange another ten days full of delightful opportunities.”

“St. Ange! What do you mean, Leonard? Surely you are not jealous of St. Ange. He has given you no cause whatever.”

“At first he behaved with all the honour imaginable; but lately I have seen a change. He is no longer influenced by a belief in our engagement. Naturally he thinks, if it had existed, you or I would have shown some signs of so close a relationship. I have been held back on every hand, and you have not been as seclusive and exclusive as you might have been.”

“Oh, Leonard! How can you?”

“You have been very kind and familiar with St. Ange. He comes here quite as much as I do. He goes out with your grandmother and mother, and often your father is seen walking on the Battery with him. He never walks with me. I do not like it. It is too much suffering! I cannot endure it.”

“I heard mother come in. I will go and speak to her, Leonard.”

“Do. She must see how reasonable I am.”

But the moment Sappha entered her mother’s room she was met by a rebuff. Mrs. Bloommaert just looked in her face, and understood; and before she had spoken half a dozen words she said with an air of resolve and annoyance. “Now, Sappha, I will hear nothing about Leonard. He has been quite unreasonable lately, and he was in a bad temper last night. Oh, yes, he was! I know bad temper when I see it.”

“But, mother, this is important. He is really determined.”

“Do not tell me what he is determined on, for I shall certainly repeat all you say to your father.”

“He wants, dear mother, he wants——”

“Just what he cannot have; what he has no right to have—yet. He promised you to wait. I know he did. Do not tell me anything, Sappha, because I shall feel it my duty to tell your father all you say—just at this time too! It is too bad! It is exceedingly selfish and inconsiderate; and I am astonished at Leonard Murray.”

“I do not think you ought to call Leonard ‘selfish and inconsiderate.’ He is very unhappy.”

“When all the city is happy and rejoicing! Can he not put aside his own happiness for a while and rejoice with every one else? We are going to keep Christmas for the Christ’s sake; we are going to honour the brave men who have done our country such honour; we are going, all of us, to think of our country and forget ourselves; and Leonard must take this very time to urge some bit of pleasure that will be his, and his only, that no one else must share——”

“You forget me, mother.”

“No. I am sure you are no party to anything that is so selfishly personal. I think you would put the general good, and the general happiness, before your own satisfaction.”

Then Sappha answered, “I hope you judge me rightly, mother; and I will be very firm with Leonard. Yet he seems so miserable.”

“He is nursing some silly idea that in some way or other he is being wronged. This notion blots all other ideas out of recognition; he is, as I said before, suffering from selfishness; and selfishness is the worst-tempered of all vices.”

“At any rate, he is wretched. Come and speak to him, mother.”

“No, I will not. I have other things to do. Of course he is wretched! he ought to be, for bad temper, fortunately, bites at both ends. My advice to you is, be a little cross yourself. Dear me! How tiresome men in love are!”

To this last exclamation Sappha closed the door. She walked slowly downstairs, she lingered, she seemed unable to come to any decision. But in the midst of her uncertainty she listened to her heart, and what her heart said to her was this: “It can never be wrong to be kind.” So strengthened, and even counselled, by this suggestion, she went back to her lover. He was walking about the room in a fever of self-torment, and as the door opened he turned inquiringly. And it was the loveliest of Sapphas he saw. She met him in all her charms; her eyes had a sunny radiance, her mouth was all smiles, she looked as if there was not a care in the wide world—a healing, lovesome woman, wonderfully sweet and comforting.

“Dearest one,” she said softly, “sit here beside me. Let me have your hand, Leonard, and listen to me. My mother says this is the very worst time in all the year to speak to my father. He is so full of public affairs, and you know, just now, they ought to come before any private ones. Ought they not, dear?”

“Yes, of course, but——”

“Well, there can be no ‘but’ for a few days. Christmas is Christ’s feast—we cannot presume to put ourselves before Christmas; and then come all the honours, and feasts, and public rejoicings for our dear country. You would not put yourself, nor even Sappha, before America, her honour and freedom? And so I think, with mother, we must wait until after the New Year before we say a word about ourselves. Dear, a few months, a few weeks ago, you were so happy with my assurance only. Is it less sweet now than then?”

And as she spoke more and more tenderly, aiding her words with loving glances and the light pressure of her little hand, softer thoughts flowed in, and the enchanter, love, usurped the place of every evil passion. Leonard finally promised to be happy, and to let others be happy; and he kissed this agreement on her lips. Alas!

And when Sappha had watched and smiled him out of sight she turned in with a sigh and a sudden depression of spirit. She had won Leonard to her wish and way, but anger is always self-immolation, and for a time at least Leonard had fallen in her esteem, for she was compelled to disapprove of much that he had said; and the more we judge, the less we love.

The whole affair seemed trifling to Mrs. Bloommaert; it was an annoyance in the midst of events of far more importance, and had to be got out of the way—that was all. But to Sappha it was different. She had forgiven Leonard, but unhappy is the lover whom a woman forgives; and Sappha was herself quite conscious that some virtue had gone out of her life. It was not a little event to Sappha, for there are no little events with the heart.

Fortunately Annette and St. Ange came in, and Sappha was compelled to meet them on the level of their joyous temper. They had finished decorating madame’s house, and their arms were full of box and feathery hemlock and the blooms of many-coloured everlasting flowers and great bunches of the vermilion berries of the darling pyracantha shrub. They were tingling with the Christmas joy, and their ringing laughter, their jokes and snatches of song, their quips and mock reproofs of their own mirth, filled the house with the electric atmosphere of Merry Christmas. Negroes were chattering among them, raising ladders, and running messages, and the tapping of the little hammers, and the cries of admiration as the room grew to a fairy bower, was far better than the music of many instruments—it was the music of the heart.

“We ought to have had holly,” said St. Ange. “There is always holly in Christmas decorations.”

“The pyracantha berries are just as pretty,” answered Mrs. Bloommaert, “and the pyracantha is a rapid grower, and can be cut with impunity—even with profit to the bush; but to cut holly! that is rather a cruel business. It is almost as bad as flinging the Christmas tree into the streets when it has done its whole duty.”

“But, aunt Carlita, what else can be done? It is too big to keep, and——”

“I will tell you. In Germany, the home of the Christmas tree, they give it house room until Shrove Tuesday, then it is formally burned.”

“Well,” said Sapphira, “we are not going to have a Christmas tree this year; my father likes far better the Yule Klap.”

“What an outlandish name!” exclaimed St. Ange.

“Truly so, but then, such a delightful custom!” replied Annette. “To-morrow night you will have to do your part in the Yule Klap; I hope you are prepared.”

“But then, I know not.”

“My aunt will tell you all about it.” And Mrs. Bloommaert said: “Come now, it is easy enough. The judge will open the Christmas room, and then every one will throw their gifts into the room, crying ‘Yule Klap’ in a disguised voice. The gifts may be rich or poor, but they must be wrapped in a great number of coverings, and each cover be addressed to a different person, but the person whose name is on the last cover gets the gift. The gifts are to be strictly anonymous. So then no thanks are to be given, and there can be no envious feelings awakened.”

“That is charming,” cried St. Ange. Then he was in a hurry to leave, but Mrs. Bloommaert insisted that he should stay and drink a glass of hot negus ere he went into the cold air. While the negro boy was bringing in a tray full of Christmas dainties, and Sappha spicing the Portugal wine, they finished the dressing of the room; and then sat down round the fire to refresh themselves.

And very soon St. Ange began to talk of certain Christmas feasts he had spent in Europe—in Madrid, at the Christmas turkey fair, amid glorious sunshine, the flower girls selling camillas and violets; everywhere colour, beauty, music, barbarism, and dirt. At Rome in the antique fish market, always brilliantly lighted with large torches on Christmas Eve. “For I assure you,” he said, “the sumptuous fish supper of that night is beyond anything that can be conceived of here.”—at Naples, where Christmas is kept with confectionery, and the Toledo is a feast of sugar and sweets.

“Are then the Neapolitans so fond of confectionery?” asked Annette. “They must be very children,” she added.

“They are children among sweets,” he answered. “A Neapolitan noble told me that the king was ever fearing revolution; ‘but,’ he added, ‘if he will only present every Neapolitan with a box of sweets a revolution will be impossible.’”

“I do not think a box of sweets to every American would have prevented our Revolution,” said Sappha.

Every one laughed heartily at the idea, and then she pictured Washington and Putnam, and her grandfather Bloommaert’s reception of these peace offerings. And the scene was so funnily enacted that no one could help laughing heartily at it. Yet in the very climax of the hilarious chorus Sappha had a heavy heart; her mirth was only from the lips outward. However, it seemed only too real to Leonard, who entered suddenly while the peal of laughter was at its height. And he was so totally unexpected that the moment’s sudden silence which followed was the most natural consequence; especially as it ended in a rush of inquiries and exclamations.

“So glad to see you!”

“Come and sit down, and have a glass of hot negus.”

“What good fortune sent you?”

“Is there any strange news?” And then Mrs. Bloommaert’s rather stiff question: “Is anything wrong, Leonard?”

Leonard turned to her at once. “No, indeed,” he answered. “I met the judge at the City Hall and he asked me to bring you this letter. I think he expects to be detained. He was just going on to an important committee. If there is any answer, I will carry it, if you wish me to do so.”

And as Mrs. Bloommaert read the letter Sappha brought him some spiced wine, but he would not take it. He said “he was going back to complete some decorations, whose position required a very clear head and steady foot.” But he knew in his heart that it was no fear of danger made him refuse the proffered cup of good-will. It was jealousy that whispered to him: “The cup was not mingled for you. There was no thought of you in it. Others were expected and prepared for, and you were not even told.” Under the influence of such thoughts he was constrained and quite unlike himself, and an effectual destroyer of happiness. An uncomfortable silence, broken by bungling attempts to restore the natural mirth he had disturbed, were not happy efforts. He made himself an intruder, and then blamed every one else for the position he had taken voluntarily, through his own misconception. Sappha was painfully aware of the constraint, and she wished for once that Annette would open her generally ready stream of badinage. But Annette was busy advising, in a somewhat private detail, St. Ange concerning his part of the game of Yule Klap; and St. Ange, having received her instructions while Leonard was waiting, rose when Leonard did, and proposed to walk part of the way with him.

“You will call this evening, will you not?” asked Sappha timidly, as they stood by a little table full of mysterious packages.

“It will be impossible,” he answered. “Every part of the decorations are in my charge, and I have a great deal to attend to.”

“To-morrow is Christmas Eve. You will be here for the Yule Klap?”

“If I am wanted!”

“Oh, Leonard! If you are wanted! If you are not present I shall not care for anything, or any one else.”

“Then I will come, dearest.” This conversation had been held, almost in whispers, as Sappha was supposed to be showing Leonard some of the Yule Klap offerings she was preparing. Then the young men went away together, but the ocean between them could not really have set them more apart. St. Ange made several attempts to open a conversation on Yule Klap. He wanted Leonard’s advice about the gifts most suitable; but Leonard professed both ignorance and indifference concerning a game so childish; and at Vaarick Street St. Ange, having failed completely to evoke anything like friendly intercourse, bid him good-morning. He was worried over his friend’s evident displeasure; and over his own failure to either account for or dispel it. He went westward to Greenwich Street, and having made many purchases in the most fashionable stores, rather wearily returned to his rooms at the City Hotel. He was depressed and had a premonition of trouble.

After this little cloud the Christmas festivities went on with unalloyed pleasure. Madame and Annette were to stay at the Bowling Green house until Saturday, and when the judge saw his mother’s delight in her anticipated visit to the theatre on Christmas night he had no heart to say one opposing word. But Sappha was not now so eager. She felt sure that in Leonard’s present temper he would not like her to be the guest of St. Ange, and she resolved to forego the pleasure. “I shall have a little headache in the morning, and it will grow worse towards night, and I shall beg to be left at home that I may sleep it away. I do not think it will be wrong,” she mused. “There is not room in the box St. Ange has taken but for six; and if there was room, I am sure Leonard would not accept the invitation to join us. Well, then, it is better to make an excuse than to make trouble. Why did not Leonard rent a box? He might have thought of it just as well as St. Ange. I wish I knew what it is best, what it is right, to do.”

To such troubled thoughts she fell asleep, and when she awoke in the morning the weather had settled the matter for her. It was bitterly cold, and a furious snowstorm was blocking up the pathways and making a visit to the theatre beyond a safe or pleasant probability. Madame sadly admitted the condition, but the day went happily forward; and about two o’clock Leonard and St. Ange and Peter arrived, and the judge opened the Christmas room, and then there was two hours of pure mirth—of surprise without end; of beautiful gifts whose donors were to speculate about; half-guesses sent into conscious faces; questions asked with beaming eyes; all the delightful uncertainties which love could make, and love alone unravel. The Christmas dinner followed, and after it a dance, which madame, with Peter for her partner, opened. Every one joined in it, and the merriest of evenings was thus inaugurated. So nobody regretted the theatre, not even madame, for she had been privately informed by St. Ange that the box was reserved for the great naval performance on the seventh of January; and that it would be one far more worth seeing, one never to be forgotten. And madame kept this bit of anticipatory pleasure as a little secret, and was as gay as a child over it.

Leonard also was in his most charming mood, and Sappha was divinely happy; her beauty was enchanting, and her manner so mild and sweet that she diffused on all hands a sense of exquisite peace and felicity. For Leonard had whispered to her such words of contrition and devotion as erased totally and forever the memory of his unworthy temper and suspicions. And after that confession there could be only sorrow for his fault, and delight in pardoning and forgetting it.

All throughout the following week he preserved this sunny mood. He was undoubtedly very busy, for the naval dinner was to be given on the twenty-ninth of December, and he was the director of the committee of young men who were turning the great dining room of the City Hotel into a marine palace. It was his taste which colonnaded it with the masts of ships wreathed with laurel and all the national flags of the world—except that of Great Britain. It was Leonard who devised the greensward, in the midst of which was a real lake, and floating on it a miniature United States war frigate.

It was Leonard, also, who hung behind the dais on which Mayor Clinton, Decatur, Hall, and the officers of the navy were to sit, the mainsail of a ship thirty-three feet by sixteen, on which the American eagle was painted, holding in his beak a scroll bearing these significant words: “Our children are the property of our country.” There were many other transparencies to attend to; besides which, every table was to bear a miniature warship with American colours displayed. And to the five hundred gentlemen of New York, who sat down to the dinner served in that room, these were no childish symbols. They were the palpable, visible signs of a patriotism that meant freedom or death, and nothing less.

In the midst of all the business connected with such preparations, in a time when the things wanted were not always procurable, and had to be supplied by the things that could be obtained, Leonard—whose heart was hot in his work of patriotism—was naturally very busy and very much occupied with the work on hand. Yet he found time sufficient to see Sappha often enough to convince her he had not fallen away from the promise he had made her—“to harbour no unworthy suspicions of any one who loved him.”

At length New Year’s Eve arrived. More than three hundred of New York’s loveliest women had been for weeks preparing for it, and all were eager for the pleasure it promised them.

The Bloommaert party, consisting of the judge, Mrs. Bloommaert, Sappha, and Annette, were early arrivals; and Leonard, who was one of the directors, met them at the door. And he looked so noble, and so handsome, and his manner was so fine and gracious, that even Judge Bloommaert was impressed by his personality, and returned his greeting with unusual warmth. But then, as Leonard reflected, any man who failed in politeness, or even in cordiality, in the presence of three such lovely women as Sappha, Annette, and Mrs. Bloommaert, would surely be something less than human.

Mrs. Bloommaert’s beauty was yet in its ripe perfection. She was as the full blown rose that has not yet dropped a single leaf. She wore a gown of white satin covered with a netting of gold thread; and there was a string of pearls round her throat, and a large comb in form the braids and bows of her glossy black hair. She carried in her hand a little fan of exquisite workmanship, and used it with a grace that no woman in the room, old or young, could imitate.

Sappha’s gown was of white satin of so rich a quality that any trimming on it would have been vulgar and superfluous. Her sandals also were of white satin; and in her beautiful, brown hair there was one white rose; and round her slender throat the necklace of pearls which had come to her among the gifts of the Yule Klap. Annette was dressed in a slip of pale blue satin, covered with white gauze of the most transparent quality; a very mist of white over a little cloud of pale blue. Her sandals were blue, and she wore a necklace of turquoise stones cut in the shape of stars and united by a tiny ornament of frosted silver. Her hair hung free, and was loosely curled and confined by a simple band of blue ribbon.

And if Sappha, with her “eyes grey-lit in shadowing hair above,” seemed to wear Love’s very vesture with just that touch of pride that made men wonder and revere, Annette was like a Love from Greuze’s dainty brush—a laughing, dancing, teasing, mocking fairy. Achille was constantly hovering around her, and this evident admiration and attention Sappha was careful to point out to Leonard.

The dance begun at nine o’clock, and at eleven supper was served in a room fitted up like the great cabin of a ship of the line; but after supper dancing was resumed, and continued until nearly two o’clock in the morning. Then reluctantly the happy crowd went to their homes to rest, for it was then New Year’s Day, always a busy, fatiguing anniversary—a day which every one felt it a duty to consecrate to friendship and hospitality.

Indeed, in Judge Bloommaert’s household there was barely time for a little sleep before the parlours were crowded with callers; and all of them brought but one topic of conversation—the arrival of the captive British war vessel, the Macedonian. For her conqueror had brought her as far as Hell Gate the day previous, in order that she might arrive on the first of January, and be presented to New York as a “New Year’s Gift.” And, as if good fortune was pleased with this honour to her favourite city, the very breeze that was needed sprang up, and at the very moment it was needed; and amid the shouting crowds that lined the banks of the East River, the captive vessel was taken to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“I had the heart-ache for her,” said Leonard. “She carried herself so proudly. I bethought me of how she had borne the living fury of the elements, and the living fury of fiery battle, and I lifted my hat a moment to the wounded ship in her humiliation, just as I would have done to any great soldier or sailor, if I saw them marched between shouting enemies, manacled and helpless.” And at these words the judge regarded him silently; and there was a quivering fire in Sappha’s eyes as she said softly: “You felt as the brave always feel in the presence of a fallen enemy. You remember the motto of the old Plantagenet knights—‘Honour to the vanquished!’”

“I remember. You told me that once before. Do you know your brother Peter would not look at her?”

“That was strange,” said Mrs. Bloommaert. “What was the matter with Peter?”

“Peter always looks on a ship as a woman, and he cannot bear to see her in distress.”

“It is a strange feeling, that, between ships and ship men,” said Dr. Smith. “Sailors all give them consciousness and sympathy, and it is a common thing to hear them say of any craft, ‘she behaves well.’ Captain Tim Barnard of the privateer General Armstrong, when chasing an enemy, talks to his ship, as an Arabian to his horse; urges her, entreats her to put forth all her speed, makes her promises of additional guns, or a new flag, and, what is more, he firmly believes she understands and obeys him.”

“Well,” answered the judge, “every one I know connected with shipping speaks as commonly and as naturally of the average life of a ship as they do of the average life of a sailor.”

“Once,” said Achille, “when I was in England I watched from the cliff a ship in danger. She flashed out signals of distress, and her minute guns sounded like the cries of some living creature, and as I looked and listened I saw men running to some boats that were lying half-alive on their stocks, and in a moment they were in the raving, raging sea. Boats and men seemed alike eager and pitiful. And the gallant ship! She was like a mother in extremity—if she must go, she entreated that her sons might be saved.”

“Were they?”

“Yes, all of them; but the next morning her figure-head, looking seaward wistfully, was lying on the beach; and her broken rudder beside it. They were sadder than spoken words. No one saw the ship die. She went down to her grave alone—but I think she was glad of that.”

“Come, come then,” said Peter, who had entered during this conversation, “we need not go so far afield for splendid facts. Let us remember the nineteenth of last August, when Captain Isaac Hull wounded to death the fine British man-of-war Guerrière. It was seen at once that her case was hopeless, and the Constitution watched by her all night, and removed not only all her men, but also all their private possessions. On the morning of the twentieth she was ready for her grave. A slow match was applied to her magazine, and the Constitution bore away. At a safe distance she hove to, and the officers and men of both ships stood watching. The guns which had been left shotted soon began to go off. They were the death knells of the dying man-of-war. Presently the flames reached the magazine, a mass of wreckage flew skyward. The Guerrière was no more. But William Storey, who was present, told me every man stood bare-headed as she sank, and that her officers wept, while some of her men blubbered like children.”

“Thank you, Peter,” said the judge. “It is a good thing to hear that Hull was so noble to his prisoners.”

“As for that,” continued Peter, “there wasn’t a touch of ill-will on either side, after the fight was over. Storey said the prisoners and captors sat around the fok’sle together, telling yarns, exchanging tobacco and many little courtesies. Hull is too brave a man to fear brave men. Some captains might have handcuffed the crew, not so Hull; and, indeed, every American sailor on the Constitution felt a manly unwillingness to handcuff enemies who had fought so bravely.”

“Sappha,” said the judge, “I have heard Mr. Murray singing with you at intervals this afternoon and evening a verse or two that you were setting to a wonderful bit of music. Try it again, my dear.”

“It is The March of the Men of Moray, father. Mr. Murray wrote two or three verses to it about the Macedonia. Come, Leonard,” and she struck a few ringing chords and looked inspiration into his bending face. Then out rang the little ballad to the marching music of his clan:

“Thank you, Mr. Murray,” said the judge. “’Tis a stirring melody!”

“’Tis the march of my forefather’s clan, sir.”

“And you have said for America, and for England, what they deserve. We both love fair play; and I am sure both nations know how to take, either a victory or a defeat, like men, and gentlemen. God make honourable peace between us, and that right early!”

To this pious wish the company remaining, departed; but after Leonard had made his long, sweet adieu, Sappha heard her father gently tapping on the table the time of “The March of the Men of Moray,” as in pleasant thoughtfulness he hummed to its music,

CHAPTER SIX

The Miracle of Love

And for a few days the subject was not named; Sappha was busy helping her mother to put in order the numerous household goods and affairs that had been disarranged by the licence of the holidays, and Leonard also had some unusual business, the nature of which he promised to reveal before the week was over. New Year’s Day fell that year on a Friday, and on the Tuesday following it Sappha went to visit her grandmother and cousin. It was a sunshiny, winter day, and the old house on Nassau Street had such an antique, handsome homelikeness, as made far finer dwellings look common and vulgar in comparison with it. Madame sat by the blazing fire writing letters; Annette was marking new towels with the Bloommaert initials; but when she saw Sappha at the gate she put away her work and ran to meet her.

Then there was no more writing, and no more sampler letters; the three women sat down to “talk things over.” And when the Yule Klap presents and the New Year’s feasts had been discussed, they drifted very naturally to the guests and to their dressing and conversation. Madame enjoyed it all, and the morning passed quickly and pleasantly away.

“Grandmother has a secret, Sappha, and I cannot coax it from her,” said Annette. Then she laid her hand upon madame’s, and added: “Now that Sappha is here, do tell us both, grandmother.”

“Until Thursday morning I will not tell you,” she answered. “Do you wish me to break my promise? That is not my way.”

“You promised Achille, eh, grandmother? Oh, I see that I have guessed correctly—you are smiling, grandmother, and you cannot help it—so then, it is something Achille is going to do! Very well, Achille shall tell me. I shall insist upon it.”

They joked, and wondered about “grandmother’s secret,” and ineffectually begged to share it, until dinner was over; then madame went to her room, and the girls dropped the subject at once—they had more interesting matter to discuss.

“Have you seen Leonard since the New Year?” asked Annette. “How delightfully he conducted himself! How charmingly he sang and talked! I do believe that uncle Gerardus was quite impressed by his intelligence. He is very handsome also—does he still make love to you, Sappha?”

“He would not be in the fashion if he omitted the fine words all the young men say nowadays. I might as well ask you if Achille flatters the fair Annette in the same silly way?”

“Do you think it silly? I think it is heavenly sweet, and quite proper. Yes, the dear Achille continually invents new names for me. The ‘fair Annette’ is out of date. I am now his ‘Heart’s Desire!’ I am afraid he is distractingly in love with me.”

“But why do you fear it? Are you not in love with the dear Achille?”

“I fear it, because I am sure that I am life or death to him; and I am not quite sure that I am in love with any one—it is such a responsibility. Are you in love with Leonard?”

“What is the use of being in love, when you cannot marry for nearly three years. I have promised father and mother not to engage myself to any one until after the war.”

“How foolish! Such silly promises ought to be broken—are made to be broken. Does Leonard want to marry you?”

“I wish you would ask him. In so many ways Leonard is inscrutable. He has some business on hand now that he is keeping a secret. I think secrets are in the air. Pray, when will you marry Achille? Or has he not asked you yet?”

“My dear Sappha, he is the most sensitive of mortals. He says love should not be talked about—it makes it common; takes off all the bloom and glory from Cupid’s wings; just as handling the butterfly makes it crushed and shabby. I think he is right. Achille does not need to talk, he says such things with his soft black eyes that perhaps he had better not say with his beautiful red lips. However, his lips are not as prudent as they might be.”

“Oh, Annette! Do you really mean that he has kissed you?—and yet you are not engaged.”

“Suppose it is so! I do not feel a whit the worse for it. I am going to be Mrs. St. Ange. I have made up my mind on that subject.”

“But Achille?”

“That is settled. I intend to marry him. Some people will say I am making a poor match—because, you know, I shall have a great deal of property and money; but I do not intend to listen to any one’s opinion.”

“But Achille has not really asked you to be his wife?”

“That is nothing. He will do so the very hour I am ready to accept him. I put the question off until after the holidays, because one can never tell what might happen at New Year’s.”

“Were you expecting anything to happen?—anything unforeseen, Annette?”

“Well, I thought young Washington Irving might come home at Christmas, and I wanted to see him again. I felt sure you knew that I have been considering him.”

“He loved Matilda Hoffman.”

“I know that, of course. But after she—withdrew, I felt that it might be my office to comfort him. He looked so charming, and so sorrowful.”

“I have not seen him lately,” said Sappha.

“He went to Philadelphia about some magazine he is editing; but I heard that he is coming back to board with Mrs. Ryckman. His great friend, Harry Brevoort, told Achille so. However, I have given Mr. Irving quite up. I don’t think I could take any interest in the Analectic Magazine; though I am sure I cannot imagine what an Analectic Magazine is like. But then, as Achille says, I have no occasion to know such things. I rather think it is something dreadful—it might be a doctor’s magazine. I believe Mr. Irving thought of being a doctor.”

“I certainly believe you would find Achille more agreeable to you than Mr. Irving.”

“Achille is so wonderfully polite. You cannot make him forget his fine manners—and grandmother is very fond of him. She does not like Mr. Irving. She thinks his ‘History of New York,’ a piece of great impertinence—and I wish to please grandmother, for several reasons.”

In such conversation they passed the afternoon, until madame came back to them, Sappha always skilfully parrying Annette’s point blank questions, by others just as direct; and in this way easily leading her cousin to personal subjects of far superior interest to her—that is, her own lovers and love affairs. Just before madame’s tea hour Leonard came. He was in the highest possible spirits, and carried himself as if something very important had happened to him; as, indeed, it had.

He said he had been at the Bowling Green, and found no one at home. Mrs. Bloommaert had gone to drink a cup of tea with Mrs. Jane Renwick, and hear her talk of “poor Robert Burns,” who had sung of her as The Blue-Eyed Lassie.

“Well, then, now we shall find out if Mr. Washington Irving is in New York, or is likely to be here; for he certainly could not be in the city a day without going to see Jane Renwick,” said Annette.

“What does Sapphira Bloommaert or Annette de Vries want with Mr. Washington Irving?” asked madame. “Has he not turned the respectable Dutch of New York into ridicule—made people to laugh at their homely ways. Such laughter is not good for them, nor yet for us.”

“We were just wondering about him, grandmother—you know he is a possibility now.”

“Annette De Vries!”

“For American girls, I mean. I was telling Sappha that little Mary Sanford is quite willing to comfort the widowed lover.”

“Such silly chatter is this! Leonard, have you news more sensible?”

“I think I have, madame. In the first place, there is to be such a play at the Park Theatre on Thursday night as never has been seen, nor is ever likely to be seen again. I went to the Bowling Green to ask Mrs. Bloommaert and Sappha to come to my box, and now I come here to tell you. There is room there also for you madame, and for Annette. I hope you will do me the great honour to accept my invitation;” and he rose and bowed to madame first, and then with a charming exaggeration to Sappha and Annette.

Madame put off answering for herself and Annette, but Sappha accepted the invitation with delight; and in the conversation incident to this proposal, and the asides springing readily from it, the daylight faded and the good supper was brought in and thoroughly enjoyed. Then the table was cleared, and the hearth swept, and the candles placed on the high chimney piece, where their light did not weary madame’s eyes; and the little company drew their chairs within the comfort line of the blazing fire.

Annette was a little quieter than seemed natural, but then Achille had not called. The day was slipping away without his customary devotion, and Sappha was present to notice this remissness; it was, therefore, very annoying, for Annette felt its contradiction after her little fanfaronade about her power over the impassioned, sensitive Achille St. Ange.

Suddenly Leonard seemed to take a resolve, or else the news he had to tell urged him beyond restraint. He looked at Sappha with a demanding interest, and then said: “Madame, I remember that you once asserted all young men ought to have either a business or a profession, if only to keep them out of mischief. I have this day concluded to begin the study of the law. I hope I may thus be kept out of mischief.”

“Come, now, you have done a wise thing, Leonard; I am glad of what you say.”

“I feel quite satisfied, madame, that I have done right—done what my dear father would approve, if he were alive to direct me. And yet, at last, I acted without taking much thought or advice on the subject.”

“That also may be a wise thing, Leonard. Young men sometimes take more thought than is good for purpose—they think and think till they cannot act.”

“As I say, the resolve came suddenly. I had a large bill to pay two days ago for business connected with my real estate; and as I looked at it I thought, Why not do this business myself? Half an hour afterwards Mr. King said this same thing to me; and I went home and considered the subject. Then I called on several good business men and asked them who was the best real estate lawyer in the city.”

“Real estate!” cried madame, “then you are not going to study criminal law?”

“No, no! I want to know all about the laws regulating the buying and selling of property, leasing, mortgaging, renting, and so on—what tenants ought to do, and what landlords ought to do—don’t you see, madame?” He said “madame,” but he looked at Sappha, who was watching him with an expression more speculative than approving.

“Yes,” answered madame, “I see. And your idea is a very prudent one. Listen, if a good teacher on this subject you want, go and article yourself to Seth Vanderlyn. What he does not know about real estate is not worth knowing.”

“Oh, I have done better than Seth Vanderlyn! I am going to read with Aaron Burr! What do you think of that? The most learned, the most delightful, the most eminent of all living lawyers. I am really so excited at my good fortune I know not what to say. Mr. King and Mr. Read and several other men of affairs and experience told me I had selected a lawyer who had no compeer in land and property business. In such respect they all said I had done well, and for other matters, I was the best judge. I suppose they referred to Mr. Burr’s duelling episode.”

Sappha’s face expressed only dismay and distress. She had neither a word nor a smile for Leonard’s great news. He turned to Annette. She was lost in the contemplation of her feet—which were small and beautifully shod, and she silently turned them in and out, as if their perfect fit was the present question of importance. Madame’s brows were drawn together, and there was a look of uncertainty on her face. In a moment of time Leonard saw all these different signs of disapproval and dislike. His face flushed with anger, and he continued in a tone of offence:

“I thought you would all rejoice with me. I thought you would at least commend the step I had taken—I——”

“It is no good step for you,” answered madame in a voice of regret. “If with bad men you go you are counted one with them; if with doomed men you go, you catch misfortune from them.”

“I do not understand what you mean, madame.”

“Leonard,” interrupted Sappha, “you have not asked my father’s opinion? If you had, you would never have taken this foolish step.”

“‘Foolish step?’ Why, Sappha, every one to whom I have named my purpose thinks me fortunate. And if you only knew Mr. Burr you would confess it an enormous privilege to be under his advice and tuition. He is the most fascinating of men.”

“Fascinating! Yes, that is right,” said madame. “His charm I know well. But listen to me, Leonard Murray, this is a fascination to be thrown off—it is no good for you. All of your friends, do you wish to lose?”

“Yes, if they are so foolish as to leave me because, wanting instruction, I have chosen the best of masters.”

“Well, then, say also, the most unpopular man in New York.”

“Indeed, madame, you are mistaken,” answered Leonard warmly. “I do not know a more popular man than Mr. Burr in New York to-day. No lawyer has a larger practice, and during the few hours I passed in his office the last two days I saw there the most honourable and influential of our citizens. Every one treated him with respect, and it is a fact that the first day his return to New York was known five hundred gentlemen called on him before he slept that night. It is also a fact that within twelve days after he nailed up his sign in Nassau Street he received two thousand dollars in cash fees. His business is now large and lucrative, and no one but those stupid Tory Federalists are against him.”

“My father is a stupid Tory Federalist, Leonard,” said Sappha coldly.

“Oh, how unfortunate I am! I do nothing but make mistakes to-night. Poor Mr. Burr! A majority of our great men have fought duels; is Mr. Burr to be the scapegoat of all American duellists? De Witt Clinton, though his enemy, admits that no man ever received provocation so frequent, so irritating, so injurious, and so untruthful, as Burr received from Alexander Hamilton. My dear friends, I assure you that Burr has more defenders than his victim.”

“Very likely,” replied Sappha with a remarkable show of temper, “a great many people prefer a living dog to a dead lion.”

“I thought I was sure of your sympathy, Sappha,” answered Leonard, and as he uttered these words Annette rose up hastily, clapped her hands together, and said: “Thank goodness, I hear Achille St. Ange’s footsteps! Now we shall have some sensible conversation.” She ran to the door and set it wide open, and Achille saw the comforting firelight, and the beautiful girl standing in its glow, waiting to welcome him. It gave him a sense of content, almost of home and love. He came in holding her hand; his black fur cloak throwing into remarkable significance the pallor of his haughty, handsome face, lighted by eyes of intense blackness and brilliancy.

Leonard was not pleased at what he considered the intrusion, but Achille’s fine manners and the easy tone of his conversation were really a welcome relief to the uncomfortable strain introduced by the Burr topic. Achille was cheery and agreeable, and had plenty of those little critical things to say of acquaintances every one likes to hear—critical, but not unkindly so. This night, also, he was even unusually handsome, and his sumptuous dress only in the diapason of the general air of luxury which was the distinguishing quality of his life.

To the gay persiflage of his conversation madame paid little attention. She was lost in thoughtful reminiscence, and when she re-entered the society of those around her she returned to the conversation which the entrance of Achille had interrupted.

“I have been taking thought, Leonard,” she said, “and I wonder me at you! Of good days are you tired? If so, then join yourself to Aaron Burr. I am not pleased that you should do this, but so, nothing will help, I fear—at least no ordinary advice.”

“Is not that a hard thing to say, madame?”

“Very well, but it is the truth. So then, to make short work of it, no ordinary advice will I give you; but an extraordinary reason, that may perhaps turn your mind another way. I know not—there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

“First, madame, permit me to ask Mr. St. Ange, in your presence, if he thinks I require either ordinary or extraordinary arguments against the course I have marked out for myself.”

Madame moved her head in assent, and then Leonard, in a few sentences, told Achille of his proposed study with Mr. Burr, and asked him frankly “if he considered Mr. Burr’s duelling experience inimical to business relations with him?”

And Achille answered promptly: “If Mr. Burr had not fought Mr. Hamilton I should consider your engagement with him disastrous, both to your social and business reputation. Mr. Hamilton had slandered Mr. Burr in public and in private, and even while Mr. Burr supposed him to be his friend he had disseminated the unguarded sallies of his host while a guest at his dinner table. As I understand the subject, Mr. Burr had no alternative between two inexorable facts—to fight, which might mean physical death; not to fight, which would certainly mean social and political death. Mr. Burr had, I think, a too great patience. I would have appealed to the sword to stop the tongue long before Mr. Burr did.”

Leonard was delighted and grateful, and said so, and Achille added: “We must remember that Cheetham, who edited Hamilton’s newspaper, asked the public through that organ: ‘Is the Vice-President sunk so low as to submit to be insulted by General Hamilton?’ It seems to me then that Cheetham really sent the challenge to Mr. Burr, and that the Vice-President had no honourable alternative. He had to fight or be eternally branded a poltroon, a dastardly coward!” And he uttered these shameful words with such passionate scorn that they seemed to disturb the air like wildfire.

“About duelling there may be two opinions,” said Madame, “but when treason is the question, what then?”

“But that question was settled by Mr. Burr’s trial, madame,” answered Leonard. “The law and the testimony, the judge, and the jury decided that Mr. Burr was not guilty of treason. Should we go behind that settlement?”

“The people have gone behind it, and will do so.”

“I doubt that as a final result,” said Leonard. “Many are of Mr. Vanderlyn’s opinion, that the natural boundaries of the United States are the Atlantic and Pacific, and that all foreign authority must be got rid of within that territory. If Aaron Burr did not succeed, he thought others would.”

“But Aaron Burr would have set up a monarchy for himself.”

“That is not conceivable, madame. I said so to Mr. Vanderlyn, and he laughed at the idea. He said, ‘Burr had remarkable military genius, and that his object was to atone for his political failure by some great military feat, but whatever the feat he contemplated, it would have been in the end for his country.’ Vanderlyn put aside all evidence to the contrary, because given by men who had been at first confederate with Burr, and then betrayed him. What reliance could be placed on anything such men said? I believe,” said Leonard, with confident fervour, “that Mr. Burr will outlive the memory of his faults and attain yet the success his great abilities deserve.”

“He will not!” said madame. “The hatred of the living a man may fight, and hope to conquer, but the vengeance of the dead, who then can escape that? Sooner or later it drives ‘the one followed’ to destroy himself. This trouble began twelve years gone by. Hamilton and Burr called it to themselves, that night they tricked justice, slandered the innocent, and let the guilty go free. Snuff the candles, Achille, the room is full of shadows; more light give us, and I will tell you when, and how, the doom of both men was called to them.”

There was a few minutes’ delay, during which the silence was unbroken, and then madame continued:

“It was in the year of God eighteen hundred, in the month of March, and we had come near to the spring. Mr. Hamilton was then of all the lawyers in New York the most famous, and it was one of the sights of the city to see him going to court with his papers and books. In that month came the trial of Levi Weekes for the murder of the beautiful Gulielma Sands, and Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Burr were united in the defence of Weekes. Very well indeed I knew Elma Sands, for she lived with her uncle and aunt Ring, who were tenants of mine for many years. At the time of her murder they lived in Greenwich Street, near Franklin; and Weekes boarded with them. He was a brother of Ezra Weekes, who kept the famous City Hotel, and with his brother he could have boarded. But not so, with the Rings he stayed, because of Elma, and every one said they were promised to each other, and when the spring came were to be married. Well, then, this dreadful thing happened—Elma Sands went out with Levi Weekes one Sunday in December, 1799, and never again was she seen by any one. Distracted were her uncle and aunt, and everywhere, far and near, Elma was sought. It was no good. What I could do, I did, for I had watched the orphan girl grow from her childhood to her womanhood, and so sorry also was I for the uncle and aunt, who slept not, nor yet rested, and whose terrible suspense was ended in five weeks, by the finding of Elma’s body in a well eighty feet deep. Then the city went wild about her murder; for the appearance of the body left no room for doubt as to what poor Elma’s fate had been; and every one felt quite sure that Levi Weekes was the criminal.” Here madame paused and appeared to be much affected, and Achille, without a word, pushed a glass of water closer to her, and having drank of it, she continued:

“It was Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Burr that defended the prisoner; the prosecutor was Cadwallader D. Colden, and Chief Justice Lansing was the judge. On both sides there were great lawyers, and the trial was long and wearisome; but never were Elias Ring and his wife absent from it, no, not for one hour. So the end came at last. It was a stormy night in April that it came, and very late, and the court room was but dimly lighted, for some of the candles had burned themselves away, and had not been renewed, and the people had been listening to Hamilton’s speech, and thinking of nothing else. A great speech it was; my son Judge Bloommaert told me it was wonderful; and though every one was worn out, none left the building.

“Then Aaron Burr arose. Some facts he set forth in such a way as to throw all suspicion on the chief witness against Weekes; and while people were amazed at the charge, and no time had been given to examine it, or deny it, he lifted two candles from the table and flashed them in the face of the man he had accused; and as he did this thing he cried out in a voice like doom: ‘Gentlemen, behold the murderer!’ Shocked and terrified was the man, and like a foolish one he rushed from the room; and this cry of Aaron Burr’s the weary, excited jury took for the truth, and so then, Levi Weekes was declared ‘not guilty.’ Stupefied were all present, and before they could recover themselves from their astonishment Catherine Ring stood up. She was a Quakeress and to speak in public accustomed, and so, lifting her face and hands to heaven she refused the verdict; and gave the case ‘to the justice of God and the vengeance of the Dead!’

“I say plainly, every one was thrilled with awe and terror. Her voice was low and even, but straight to every heart it went; and those furthest away heard it clear and fateful as those close at her side. Mr. Hamilton began to put up his papers, but she stepped close to his side and said: ‘Alexander Hamilton, if there be justice in heaven, heaven will see that thee dies a bloody death; and thy helper shall help thee to it!’ At these words Burr rose, and looked at her with a smile, and she continued, ‘Take thy time, Aaron Burr. Thee need not hurry; thee will long for death, long before death will have thee. Nay, but thee shall be a dead man long before thee can hide thyself in the grave. And all that we have suffered in that long month of not knowing, thee shall suffer many times over. Dost thee think God had no witness in this room? Go thy way, Alexander Hamilton! Go thy way, Aaron Burr! There is one that follows after!’ She turned then to Judge Lansing, but he had left the bench. Then she touched her husband’s arm, and said: ‘Come, Elias, the unrighteous judge cannot escape the righteous one. Some day he will go out, and be heard of no more forever.’[2]

“And here is the wonderful thing—all the time she was dooming these three great men not one soul moved or spoke. The entire audience sat or stood silent and motionless; and when out of the court-room they went, it was as if they were leaving a church. And Elias and Catherine Ring passed through them, and though they had the pity and respect of all there, no one spoke to them, and no one stayed them. For every word of doom Catherine Ring had uttered had been heard; and her inspired face spoke to the crowd; Elias walking at her side praying aloud as he walked.

“My son Gerardus was present during the entire trial; he heard all, he saw all, and he told me the story I have just told you. And what I say is the truth—Hamilton’s earthly doom has been fulfilled; Burr is yet learning the unpitying vengence of the dead. That insane idea of conquest, who drove him to it? Who, at the critical hour, turned his confederates against him? Who sent him to wander in Europe a degraded, desperate man? What a cup of shame and poverty he drank there, I and a few others know. Then, when reckless with his misfortune, back he comes to New York, and for a short time he is lifted up by the many old acquaintances who remember his abilities and his sufferings. But only to be cast down is he lifted up. In less than one month he hears of the death of his grandson, a beautiful, intelligent boy of twelve years old, on whom all his future hopes were built. A terrible blow it was, but only the beginning of sorrow. Six months afterwards his idolised daughter left Charleston for New York. She was heartbroken by the loss of her son, and was coming to her father to be comforted. She sailed on the thirtieth of December, 1811, A. D., and ought to have been in New York about the fifth of January. She did not come. She never came. She was never heard of again. It was then Catherine Ring’s promised retribution overtook him. Who can tell what agonies of suspense he endured? There was daily hope, and there was daily despair! Such nights of grief! Such days of watching! His worst unfriends pitied him. To have heard of the unhappy woman would have pleased every one; but no, no, never a word came. When some weeks were gone over, there was a report that the ship in which she sailed had been taken by pirates, and all on board murdered except Mr. Burr’s daughter. She, it was said, had been put on shore a captive. The miserable man! He would not, he could not, bear this idea. He said to me one morning, as I talked with him at the garden gate, ‘Theodosia is dead! If she were not all the prisons in the world could not keep her from me!’ Well, then, all of you must remember the loss of Theodosia Burr Alston?”

“I was in New Orleans at the time,” said Leonard. “I heard nothing there, or if so, have forgotten.”

“I also was in New Orleans,” said Achille. “I do not remember—no, not at all.”

“I do remember,” said Sappha. “Mother was very sorry for Mr. Burr. We often spoke of him.”

“You never told me about it, grandmother,” added Annette. “Why did you not?”

“Good reasons had I. So much was there to say that could not be talked about. A great many people had yet in mind Catherine Ring’s words, and so Aaron Burr’s long watch for the child that never came was quietly and pitifully passed over. Yes, people remember; and if they do not remember they feel—they feel, they know not what. I have watched. One by one, I have seen those that welcomed Aaron Burr home drop away from him. This day a man stops and greets him, to-morrow he passes him by. The unlucky, they only stick to him; because for a familiar they know him. Aaron Burr is a doomed man—haunted by the wraiths of those he has wronged—a doomed man, and nothing that he does shall ever prosper.”

She ceased speaking with these words, and after some desultory conversation on the subject, Sappha said, “she must go home.” Then Annette went upstairs with her, and Achille made an effort to continue the subject; but neither madame nor yet Leonard were disposed for discussion; and when Sappha returned to the parlour, cloaked and wrapped in furs, Leonard hastily assumed his street costume and went out with her. Then the conversation, the warmth, and the drowsy light, added to the unusual feeling which the Ring tragedy had evoked, produced an effect upon madame she did not anticipate—she gradually lost consciousness, and finally fell asleep. For a while Achille and Annette spoke in whispers, and Annette tried all her powers to win from her companion the secret madame made so much of. He dallied with it, but kept it inviolate; and she dropped her pretty head with a sense of defeat that the circumstance hardly seemed to warrant. Quiet and speechless she sat, and Achille held her hand and watched the shadow of disappointment obliterate the dimples and smiles, not always as becoming in his eyes as her graver deportment. The glow of the firelight, the stillness thrilled through and through with that old tragedy of love, the look of defeat in Annette’s pretty face, and her whole attitude of submission to it, pleased the young man. He thought her more womanly and exquisite than ever before; and he kissed the hand he held, and said in the softest, sweetest voice: “I cannot tell you madame’s secret, but I will tell you one of my own—Annette, beautiful Annette, I love you.”

And Annette behaved with the most amazing propriety. He felt the little hand he held tremble to his words, and he saw on her face the transfiguration of love, though she did not lift it, or answer him in any other way. But this coy reticence was exactly the conduct Achille approved; and in that dim room, where only sleep kept vigil, Achille asked Annette to be his wife, and Annette answered him as he desired.

“I shall speak to madame in the morning,” he said; “to-night it will be too much.”

“It is too much even for me,” answered Annette; “I never dreamed of being so happy.”

“Nor I,” answered the fortunate lover. He then surrendered himself to her charm. He forgot how often he had privately declared he would never do so; forgot how often he had told himself that Annette de Vries was a beauty with

[Illustration: “IN THAT DIM ROOM, WHERE ONLY SLEEP KEPT VIGIL, ACHILLE ASKED ANNETTE TO BE HIS WIFE.”]

a heart like a little glacier. As for Annette, she was satisfied. In the first days of her acquaintance with Achille St. Ange she had resolved to be his wife; and her resolve was now in process of accomplishment. And after all, it had not been a difficult end to attain; a little love, a little listening, a little patience, a little persistence, and the man was won. It was only another case of proving the folly of any resistance to invincible woman. For has not all experience proved that if a woman seriously determines to marry a certain man she is about as sure to accomplish her end as if, wishing to reach Washington, she entered a train bound for that city?

During this scene between Annette and Achille Sappha and Leonard Murray were walking in the clear, frosty starlight. They were lovers, but their conversation was too anxious to be loverlike. Sappha was entreating Leonard to cancel his engagement with Mr. Burr. She was sure if he did not her father would permit no engagement with his daughter. “You will have to choose,” she said, “between Mr. Burr and myself. You cannot take both into your life, Leonard; I am sure it is impossible.” She did not name the Ring tragedy. She was far less impressed by it than Leonard had been. It was her father’s opposition she feared.

Not so Leonard. He had inherited from his Scotch ancestors a vivid vein of supernatural tendency. His own clan had numerous traditions of posthumous revenge, so vindictive that Leonard’s first unconscious commentary on madame’s narrative was the whispered exclamation—only heard by Achille—“The vengeance of the dead is terrible!” But if there was this latent fear in his heart, mingled with the personal one that association might include him in that vengeance, the feeling was strongly combated by another inherited tendency, so vital as to be almost beyond reasoning with—the sentiment of loyalty to a person or a cause to which he had once given his allegiance. It had been a kind of insanity in his clan, for they had always gathered to the last man in the cause of their exiled kings, though they knew right well that to stand by the Stuarts was to stand by misfortune and death.

So, tossed between these two horns of a dilemma, Leonard could not make Sappha the unconditional promise she asked. He had given to Aaron Burr a fealty founded on an intense admiration for his great abilities and his great wrongs. The physical charm of the man had also fascinated Leonard, as it fascinated almost every one who came fairly under its influence; and thus, though warned by one ancestral strain to retire from some malignity he could not control, he was urged forward by another sentiment which put his word, his honour, his friendship, and his loyalty before all other considerations.

These underlying motives of action were but partially understood by Leonard, and were not comprehended in any measure by Sappha. But at eighteen years of age we do not need to know, in order to feel; we can feel without knowledge; and Sappha was certain that the association of her lover with a man so unfortunate as Mr. Burr would include both of them in its inimical proneness to calamity.

The mingling of these elements in Leonard’s nature must be recognised before we can understand how a lover, earnest and devoted, could hesitate about casting adrift a friendship so recent when it threatened a tie still fonder and more personal. But the most invulnerable sentiments a man has to conquer are those he brings with him from previous incarnations. Prejudices and opinions planted in his mind during last year, or the present year, will have a demonstrative vitality; but there is a stubborn quality about those we bring with us that is only gained by passing through the grave and tasting of immortality. If Sappha’s and Leonard’s love for each other was not of the past, then it was hardly one year old; yet she was demanding for it a sacrifice of feelings incorporate in Leonard’s nature from unknown centuries.

They walked together talking only of Mr. Burr for more than an hour; then Sappha said “she was cold and must go into the house.” She was not so much cold as weary. We are always weary when we do not understand, and Sappha could not understand why Mr. Burr should interfere in her affairs. At the door Leonard spoke to her about the theatre on Friday night, and she promised to give her father and mother his invitation. “It is too late to detain you longer, my beloved,” he said; “but I will call early in the morning for the answer. I hope they will accept my offer. It will make me very proud and happy.”