What Can She Do?

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

The Works of E. P. Roe

VOLUME TEN

WHAT CAN SHE DO?

ILLUSTRATED

DEDICATION

IF I WERE
TO DEDICATE THIS
BOOK IT WOULD BE TO THOSE
GIRLS WHO RESOLVE THAT THEY WILL NOT PLAY THE POOR ROLE OF MICAWBER, THEIR ONLY CHANCE FOR
LIFE BEING THAT SOME ONE WILL "TURN UP"
WHOM THEY MAY BURDEN WITH
THEIR HELPLESS
WEIGHT

PREFACE

This book was not written to amuse, to create purposeless excitement, or to secure a little praise as a bit of artistic work. It would probably fail in all these things. It was written with a definite, earnest purpose, which I trust will be apparent to the reader.

As society in our land grows older, and departs from primitive simplicity, as many are becoming rich, but more poor, the changes that I have sought to warn against become more threatening. The ordinary avenues of industry are growing thronged, and it daily involves a more fearful risk for a woman to be thrown out upon the world with unskilled hands, an untrained mind, and an unbraced moral nature. Impressed with this danger by some considerable observation, by a multitude of facts that might wring tears from stony eyes, I have tried to write earnestly if not wisely.

Of necessity, it touches somewhat on a subject delicate and difficult to treat--the "skeleton in the closet" of society. But the evil exists on every side, and at some time or other threatens every home and life. It is my belief that Christian teachers should not timidly or loftily ignore it, for, mark it well, the evil does not let us or ours alone. It is my belief that it should be dealt with in a plain, fearless, manly manner. Those who differ with me have a right to their opinion.

There is one other thought that I wish to suggest. Much of the fiction of our day, otherwise strong and admirable, is discouraging in this respect. In the delineation of character, some are good, some are bad, and some indifferent. We have a lovely heroine, a noble hero, developing seemingly in harmony with the inevitable laws of their natures. Associated with them are those of the commoner or baser sort, also developing in accordance with the innate principles of their natures. The first are presented as if created of finer clay than the others. The first are the flowers in the garden of society, the latter the weeds. According to this theory of character, the heroine must grow as a moss-rose and the weed remain a weed. Credit is not due to one; blame should not be visited on the other. Is this true? Is not the choice between good and evil placed before every human soul, save where ignorance and mental feebleness destroy free agency? In the field of the world which the angels of God are to reap, is it not even possible for the tares to become wheat? And cannot the sweetest and most beautiful natural flowers of character borrow from the skies a fragrance and bloom not of earth? So God's inspired Word teaches me.

I have turned away from many an exquisite and artistic delineation of human life, sighing, God might as well never have spoken words of hope, warning, and strength for all there is in this book. The Divine and human Friend might have remained in the Heavens, and never come to earth in human guise, that He might press His great heart of world-wide sympathy against the burdened, suffering heart of humanity. He need not have died to open a way of life for all. There is nothing here but human motive, human strength, and earthly destiny. We protest against this narrowing down of life, though it be done with the faultless skill and taste of the most cultured genius. The children of men are not orphaned. Our Creator is still "Emmanuel--God with us." Earthly existence is but the prelude of our life, and even from this the Divine artist can take much of the discord, and give an earnest of the eternal harmonies.

We all are honored with the privilege of "co-working with Him."

If I in my little sphere can by this book lead one father to train his children to be more strong and self-reliant, one mother to teach her daughters a purer, more patient, more heroic womanhood--if I have placed one more barrier in the tempter's way, and inspired one more wholesome fear and principle in the heart of the tempted--if, by lifting the dark curtain a moment, I can reveal enough to keep one country girl from leaving her safe native village for unprotected life in some great city--if I can add one iota toward a public opinion that will honor useful labor, however humble, and condemn and render disgraceful idleness and helplessness, however gilded--if, chief of all, I lead one heavy-laden heart to the only source of rest, I shall be well rewarded, whatever is said of this volume.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I THREE GIRLS

CHAPTER II A FUTURE OP HUMAN DESIGNING

CHAPTER III THREE MEN

CHAPTER IV THE SKIES DARKENING

CHAPTER V THE STORM THREATENING

CHAPTER VI THE WRECK

CHAPTER VII AMONG THE BREAKERS

CHAPTER VIII WARPED

CHAPTER IX A DESERT ISLAND

CHAPTER X EDITH BECOMES A "DIVINITY"

CHAPTER XI MRS. ALLEN'S POLICY

CHAPTER XII WAITING FOR SOME ONE TO TURN UP

CHAPTER XIII THEY TURN UP

CHAPTER XIV WE CAN'T WORK

CHAPTER XV THE TEMPTATION

CHAPTER XVI BLACK HANNIBAL'S WHITE HEART

CHAPTER XVII THE CHANGES OF TWO SHORT MONTHS

CHAPTER XVIII IGNORANCE LOOKING FOR WORK

CHAPTER XIX A FALLING STAR

CHAPTER XX DESOLATION

CHAPTER XXI EDITH'S TRUE KNIGHT

CHAPTER XXII A MYSTERY

CHAPTER XXIII A DANGEROUS STEP

CHAPTER XXIV SCORN AND KINDNESS

CHAPTER XXV A HORROR OF GREAT DARKNESS

CHAPTER XXVI FRIEND AND SAVIOUR

CHAPTER XXVII THE MYSTERY SOLVED

CHAPTER XXVIII EDITH TELLS THE OLD, OLD STORY

CHAPTER XXIX HANNIBAL LEARNS HOW HIS HEART CAN BE WHITE

CHAPTER XXX EDITH'S AND ARDEN'S FRIENDSHIP

CHAPTER XXXI ZELL

CHAPTER XXXII EDITH BRINGS THE WANDERER HOME

CHAPTER XXXIII EDITH'S GREAT TEMPTATION

CHAPTER XXXIV SAVED

CHAPTER XXXV CLOSING SCENES

CHAPTER XXXVI LAST WORDS

CHAPTER I

THREE GIRLS

It was a very cold blustering day in early January, and even brilliant thronged Broadway felt the influence of winter's harshest frown. There had been a heavy fall of snow which, though in the main cleared from the sidewalks, lay in the streets comparatively unsullied and unpacked. Fitful gusts of the passing gale caught it up and whirled it in every direction. From roof, ledges, and window-sills, miniature avalanches suddenly descended on the startled pedestrians, and the air was here and there loaded with falling flakes from wild hurrying masses of clouds, the rear-guard of the storm that the biting northwest wind was driving seaward.

It was early in the afternoon, and the great thoroughfare was almost deserted. Few indeed would be abroad for pleasure in such weather, and the great tide of humanity that must flow up and down this channel every working day of the year under all skies had not yet turned northward.

But surely this graceful figure coming up the street with quick, elastic steps has not the aspect of one driven forth by grave business cares, nor in the natural course of things would one expect so young a lady to know much of life's burdens and responsibilities. As she passes I am sure the reader would not turn away from so pleasant a vision, even if Broadway were presenting all its numberless attractions, but at such a time would make the most of the occasion, assured that nothing so agreeable would greet his eyes again that sombre day.

The fierce gusts make little impression on her heavy, close-fitting velvet dress, and in her progress against the wind she appears so trim and taut that a sailor's eye would be captivated. She bends her little turbaned head to the blast, and her foot strikes the pavement with a decision that suggests a naturally brave, resolute nature, and gives abundant proof of vigor and health. A trimming of silver fox fur caught and contrasted the snow crystals against the black velvet of her dress, in which the flakes catch and mingle, increasing the sense of lightness and airiness which her movements awaken, and were you seeking a fanciful embodiment of the spirit of the snow, you might rest satisfied with the first character that appears upon the scene of my story.

But on nearer view there was nothing spirit-like or even spirituelle in her aspect, save that an extremely transparent complexion was rendered positively dazzling by the keen air and the glow of exercise; and the face was much too full and blooming to suggest the shadowy and ethereal.

When near Twenty-first Street she entered a fruit store and seemed in search of some delicacy for an invalid. As her eye glanced around among the fragrant tropical fruits that suggested lands in wide contrast to the wintry scene without, she suddenly uttered a low exclamation of delight, as she turned from them to old friends, all the more welcome because so unexpected at that season. These were nothing less than a dozen strawberries, in dainty baskets, decked out, or more truly eked out, with a few green leaves. Three or four baskets constituted the fruiterer's entire stock, and probably the entire supply for the metropolis of America that day.

She had scarcely time to lift a basket and inhale its delicious aroma, before the proprietor of the store was in bowing attendance, quite as openly admiring her carnation cheeks as she the ruby fruit The man's tongue was, however, more decorous than his eyes, and to her question as to price he replied:

"_Only_ two dollars a basket, miss, and certainly they are beauties for this season of the year. They are all I could get, and I don't believe there is another strawberry in New York."

"I will take them all," was the brief, decisive answer, and from a costly portemonnaie she threw down the price, a proceeding which the man noted in agreeable surprise, again curiously scanning the fair face as he made up the parcel with ostentatious zeal. But his customer was unconscious, or, more truly, indifferent to his admiration, and seemed much more interested in the samples of choice fruit arranged on every side. From one to another of these she flitted with the delicate sensuousness of a butterfly, smelling them and touching them lightly with the hand she had ungloved (which was as white as the snow without), as if they had for her a peculiar fascination.

"You seem very fond of fruit," said the merchant, his _amour propre_ pleased by her evident interest in his stock.

"I have ever had a passion for fine fruits and flowers," was the reply, spoken with that perfect frankness characteristic of American girls. "No, you need not send it; I prefer to take it with me."

And with a slight smile, she passed out, leaving the fruiterer chuckling over the thought that he had probably had the pleasantest bit of trade on Broadway that dull day.

Plunging through the drifts, our nymph of the snow resolutely crossed the street and passed down to a flower store, but, instead of buying a bouquet, ordered several pots of budding and blooming plants to be sent to her address. She then made her way to Fifth Avenue and soon mounted a broad flight of steps to one of its most stately houses. The door yielded to her key, her thick walking boots clattered for a moment on the marble floor, but could not disguise the lightness of her step as she tripped up the winding stair and pushed open a rosewood door leading into the upper hall.

"Mother, mother," she exclaimed, "here is a treat for you that will banish nerves, headache, and horrors generally. See what I have found for you out in the wintry snows. Now am I not a good fairy for once?"

"Oh, Edith, child, not so boisterous, please," responded a querulous voice from a great easy-chair by the glowing grate, and a middle-aged lady turned a white, faded face toward her daughter.

"Forgive me, mother, but my tramp in the January storm has made me feel rampantly well. I wish you could go out and take a run every day as I do. You would then look younger and prettier than your daughters, as you used to."

The invalid shivered and drew her shawl closer around her, complaining:

"I think you have brought the whole month of January in with you. You really must show more consideration, my dear, for if I should take cold--" and the lady ended with a weary, suggestive sigh.

In fact, Edith had entered the dim heavily-perfumed room like a gust of wholesome air, her young blood tingling and electric with exercise, and her heart buoyant with the thought of the surprise and pleasure she had in store for her mother. But the manner in which she had been received had already chilled her more than the biting blasts on Broadway. She therefore opened her bundle and set out the little baskets before her mother very quietly. The lady glanced at them for a moment and then said, indifferently:

"It is very good of you to think of me, my dear; they look very pretty. I am sorry I cannot eat them, but their acid would only increase my dyspepsia. Those raised in winter must be very sour. Ugh! the thought of it sets my teeth on edge," and the poor, nervous creature shrank deeper into her wrappings.

"I am very sorry, mother, I thought they would be a great treat for you," said Edith, quite crestfallen. "Never mind; I got some flowers, and they will be here soon."

"Thank you, dear, but the doctor says they are not healthy in a room--Oh, dear--that child! what shall I do!"

The front door banged, there was a step on the stairs, but not so light as Edith's had been, and a moment later the door burst open, and "the child" rushed in like a mild whirlwind, exclaiming:

"Hurrah! hurrah! school to the shades. No more teachers and tyrants for me," and down went an armful of books with a bang on the table.

"Oh, Zell!" cried Edith, "please be quiet; mother has a headache."

"There, there, your baby will kiss it all away," and the irrepressible young creature threw her arms around the bundle that Mrs. Allen had made herself into by her many wrappings, and before she ceased, the red pouting lips left the faintest tinge of their own color on the faded cheeks of the mother.

The lady endured the boisterous embrace with a martyr-like expression. Zell was evidently a privileged character, the spoiled pet of the household. But a new voice was now heard that was sharper than the "pet" was accustomed to.

"Zell, you are a perfect bear. One would think you had learned your manners at a boys' boarding school."

Zell's great black eyes blazed for a moment toward the speaker, who was a young lady reclining on a lounge near the window, and who in appearance must have been the counterpart of Mrs. Allen herself as she had looked twenty-three years before. In contrast with her sharp, annoyed tone, her cheeks and eyes were wet with tears.

"What are you crying about?" was Zell's brusque response. "Oh, I see; a novel. What a ridiculous old thing you are. I never saw you shed a tear over real trouble, and yet every few days you are dissolved in brine over Adolph Moonshine's agonies, and Seraphina's sentiment, which any sensible person can see is caused by dyspepsia. No such whipped syllabub for me, but real life."

"And what does 'real life' mean for you, I would like to know, but eating, dressing, and flirting?" was the acid retort.

"Though you call me 'child,' I have lived long enough to learn that eating, dressing, and flirting, and while you are about it you might as well add drinking, is the 'real life' of most of the ladies of our set. Indeed, if my poor memory does not fail me, I have seen you myself take a turn at these things sufficiently often to make the sublime scorn of your tone a little inconsistent."

As these barbed arrows flew, the tears rapidly exhaled from the hot cheeks of the young lady on the sofa. Her elegant languor vanished, and she started up; but Mrs. Allen now interfered, and in tones harsh and high, very different from the previous delicate murmurs, exclaimed:

"Children, you drive me wild. Zell, leave the room, and don't show yourself again till you can behave yourself."

Zell was now sobbing, partly in sorrow and partly in anger, but she let fly a few more Parthian arrows over her shoulder as she passed out.

"This is a pretty way to treat one on their birthday. I came home with heart as light as the snowflakes around me, and now you have spoiled everything. I don't know how it is, but I always have a good time everywhere else, but there is something in this house that often sets one's teeth on edge," and the door banged appropriately with a spiteful emphasis as the last word was spoken.

"Poor child," said Edith, "it _is_ too bad that she should be so dashed with cold water on her birthday."

"She isn't a child," said the eldest sister, rising from the sofa and sweeping from the room, "though she often acts like one, and a very bad one too. Her birthday should remind her that if she is ever to be a woman, it is time to commence," and the stately young lady passed coldly away. Edith, went to the window and looked dejectedly out into the early gloom of the declining winter day. Mrs. Allen sighed and looked more nervous and uncomfortable than usual.

The upholsterer had done his part in that elegant home, The feet sank into the carpets as in moss. Luxurious chairs seemed to embrace the form that sank into them. Everything, was padded, rounded, and softened, except tongues and tempers. If wealth could remove the asperities from these as from material things, it might well be coveted. But this is beyond the upholsterer's art, and Mrs. Allen knew little of the Divine art that can wrap up words and deeds with a kindness softer than eider-down.

"Mother's room," instead of being a refuge and a favorite haunt of these three girls, was a place where, as we have seen, their "teeth were set on edge."

Naturally they shunned the place, visiting the invalid rather than living with her; their reluctant feet impelled across the threshold by a sense of duty rather than drawn by the cords of love. The mother felt this in a vague, uncomfortable way, for mother love was there, only it had seemingly turned sour, and instead of attracting her children by sweetness and sympathy, she querulously complained to them and to her husband of their neglect. He would sometimes laugh it off, sometimes shrug his shoulders indifferently, and again harshly chide the girls, according to his mood, for he varied much in this respect. After being cool and wary all day in Wall Street, he took off the curb at home; therefore the variations that never could be counted on. How he would be at dinner did not depend on himself or any principle, but on circumstances. In the main he was indulgent and kind, though quick and passionate, brooking no opposition; and the girls were really more attached to him and found more pleasure in his society than in their mother's. Zelica, the youngest, was his special favorite, and he humored and petted her at a ruinous rate, though often storming at some of her follies.

Mrs. Allen saw this preference of her husband, and was weak enough to feel and show jealousy. But her complainings were ineffectual, for we can no more scold people into loving us than nature could make buds blossom by daily nipping them with frost. And yet she made her children uncomfortable by causing them to feel that it was unnatural and wrong that they did not care more for their mother. This was especially true of Edith, who tried to satisfy her conscience, as we have seen, by bringing costly presents and delicacies that were seldom needed or appreciated.

Edith soon became so oppressed by her mother's sighs and silence and the heavy perfumed air, that she sprang up, and pressing a remorseful kiss on the white thin face, said:

"I must dress for dinner, mamma: I will send your maid," and vanished also.

CHAPTER II

A FUTURE OF HUMAN DESIGNING

The dining-room at six o'clock wore a far more cheerful aspect than the invalid's room upstairs. It was furnished in a costly manner, but more ostentatiously than good taste would dictate. You instinctively felt that it was a sacred place to the master of the house, in which he daily sacrificed to one of his chosen deities.

The portly colored waiter, in dress coat and white vest, has just placed the soup on the table, and Mr. Allen enters, supporting his wife. He had sort of manly toleration for all her whims and weaknesses. He had never indulged in any lofty ideas of womanhood, nor had any special longings for her sympathy and companionship. Business was the one engrossing thing of his life, and this he honestly believed woman incapable of, from her very nature. It was true of his wife, but due to a false education rather than to any innate difficulties, and he no more expected her to comprehend and sympathize intelligently with his business operations, than to see her go down to Wall Street with him wearing his hat and coat.

She had been the leading belle in his set years ago. He had admired her immensely as a stylish, beautiful woman, and carried her off from dozens of competitors, who were fortunate in their failure. He always maintained a show of gallantry and deference; which, though but veneer, was certainly better than open disregard and brutal neglect.

So now, with a good-natured tolerance and politeness, he seated the feeble creature in a cushioned chair at the table, treating her more like a spoiled child than as a friend and companion. The girls immediately appeared also, for they knew their father's weakness too well to keep him waiting for his dinner.

Zell bounded into his arms in her usual impulsive style, and the father caressed her in a way that showed that his heart was very tender toward his youngest child.

"And so my baby is seventeen to-day," he said. "Well, well, how fast we are growing old."

The girl laughed; the man sighed. The one was on the threshold of what she deemed the richest pleasures of life; the other had well-nigh exhausted them, and for a moment realized it.

Still he was in excellent spirits, for he had been unusually fortunate that day, and had seen his way to an "operation" that promised a golden future. He sat down therefore to the good cheer with not a little of the spirit of the man in the parable, whose complacent exhortation to his soul has ever been the language of false security and prosperity.

The father's open favoritism for Zell was another source of jealousy, her sisters naturally feeling injured by it. Thus in this household even human love was discordant and perverted, and the Divine love unknown. What chance had character, that thing of slow growth, in such an atmosphere?

The popping of a champagne cork took the place of grace at the opening of the meal, and the glasses were filled all around. In honor of Zell's birthday they drank to her health and happiness. By no better form or more suggestive ceremony could this Christian (?) family wish their youngest member "God-speed" on entering the vicissitudes of a new year of life. But what they did was done heartily, and every glass was drained. To them it seemed very appropriate and her father said, glancing admiringly at her flaming cheeks and dancing eyes-- "This is just the thing to drink Zell's health in, for she is as full of sparkle and effervescence as the champagne itself."

Had he been a wiser and more thoughtful man, he would have carried the simile further and remembered the fate of champagne when exposed. However piquant and pleasing Zell's sparkle might be, it would hardly secure success and safety for life. But in his creed a girl's first duty was to be pretty and fascinating, and he was extremely proud of the beauty of his daughters. It was his plan to marry them to rich men who would maintain them in the irresponsible luxury that their mother had enjoyed.

Circumstances seemed to justify his security. The son of a rich man, he had also inherited a taste for business and the art of making money. Years of prosperity had confirmed his confidence, and he looked complacently around upon his family and talked of the future in sanguine tones.

He was a man considerably past his prime, and his florid face and portly form indicated that he was in the habit of doing ample justice to the good cheer before him. Intense application to business in early years and indulgence of appetite in later life had seriously impaired a constitution naturally good. He reminded you of a flower fully blown or of fruit overripe.

"Since you have permitted Zell to leave school, I suppose she must make her debut soon," said Mrs. Allen with more animation than usual in her tone.

"Oh, certainly," cried Zell, "on Edith's birthday, in February. We have arranged it all, haven't we, Edith?"

"Heigho! then I am to have no part in the matter," said her father.

"Yes, indeed, papa," cried the saucy girl, "you are to have no end of kisses, and a very long bill."

This sally pleased him immensely, for it expressed his ideal of womanly return for masculine affection, at least the bills had never been wanting in his experience. But, mellowed by wine and elated by the success of the day, he now prepared to give the coup that would make a far greater sensation in the family circle than even a debut or a birthday party. So, glancing from one eager face to another (for between the wine and the excitement even Mrs. Allen was no longer a colorless, languid creature, ready to faint at the embrace of her child), he said with a twinkle in his eye--

"Well, go to your mother about the party. She is a veteran in such matters. But let there be some limit to the length of the bill, or I can't carry out another plan I have in view for you."

Chorus--"What is that?"

Coolly filling his glass, he commenced leisurely sipping, while glancing humorously from one to another, enjoying their impatient expectancy.

"If you don't tell us right away," cried Zell, bouncing up, "I'll pull your whiskers without mercy."

"Papa, you will throw mother into a fever. See how flushed her face is!" said Laura, the eldest daughter, speaking at the same time two words for herself.

The face of Edith, with dazzling complexion all aglow, and large dark eyes lustrous with excitement, was more eloquent than words could have been, and the bon vivant drank in her expression with as much zest as he sipped his wine. Perhaps it was well for him to make the most of that little keen-edged moment of bright anticipation and bewildering hope, for what he was about to propose would cost him many thousands, and exile him from business, which to him was the very breath of life.

But Mrs. Allen's matter-of-fact voice brought things to a crisis, for with an injured air she said:

"How can you, George, when you know the state of my nerves?"

"What I propose, mamma, will cure your nerves and everything else, for it is nothing less than a tour through Europe."

There was a shriek of delight from the girls, in which even the exquisite Laura joined, and Mrs. Allen trembled with excitement. Apart from the trip itself, they considered it a sort of disgrace that a family of their social position and wealth had never been abroad. Therefore the announcement was doubly welcome. Hitherto Mr. Allen's devotion to business had made it impossible, and he had given them no hints of the near consummation of their wishes. But he had begun to feel the need of change and rest himself, and this weighed more with him than all their entreaties.

In a moment Zell had her arms about his neck, and her sisters were throwing him kisses across the table. His wife, looking unusually gratified, said:

"You are a sensible man at last," which was a great deal for Mrs. Allen to say.

"Why, mamma," exclaimed her husband, elevating his eyebrows in comic surprise, "that I should live to hear you say that!"

"Now don't be silly," she replied, joining slightly in the laugh at her expense, "or we shall think that you have taken too much champagne, and that this Europe business is all a hoax."

"Wait till you have been outside of Sandy Hook an hour, and you will find everything real enough then. I think I see the elegant ladies of my household about that time."

"For shame, papa! what an uncomfortable suggestion over a dinner table!" said the fastidious Laura. "Picture the ladies of your household in the salons of Paris. I promise we will do you credit there."

"I hope so, for I fear I shall have need of _credit_ when you all reach that Mecca of women."

"It's no more the Mecca of women than Wall Street is the Jerusalem of men. What you are all going to do in Heaven without Wall Street, I don't see."

Mr. Allen gave his significant shrug and said, "I don't meet notes till they are due," which was his way of saying: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

"The salons of Paris!" said Edith, with some disdain. "Think of the scenery, the orange-groves, and vineyards that we shall see, the Alpine flowers--"

"I declare," interrupted Zell, "I believe that Edith would rather see a grape-vine and orange-tree than all the toilets of Paris."

"I shall enjoy seeing both," was the reply, "and so have the advantage of you in having two strings to my bow."

"By the way, that reminds me to ask how many beaux you now have on the string," said the father.

Edith tossed her head with a pretty blush and said: "Pity me, my father; you know I am always poor at arithmetic."

"You will take up with a crooked stick after all. Now Laura is a sensible girl, like her mother, and has picked out one of the richest, longest-headed fellows on the street."

"Indeed!" said his wife. "I do not see but you are paying yourself a greater compliment than either Laura or me."

"Oh, no, a mere business statement. Laura means business, and so does Mr. Goulden."

Laura looked annoyed and said:

"Pa, I thought you never talked business at home."

"Oh, this is a feminine phase that women understand. I want your sisters to profit by your good example."

"I shall marry an Italian count," cried Zell.

"Who will turn out a fourth-rate Italian barber, and I shall have to support you both. But I won't do it. You would have to help him shave."

"No, I should transform him into a leader of banditti, and we would live in princely state in the Apennines. Then we would capture you, papa, and carry you off to the mountains, and I would be your jailer, and give you nothing but turtle-soup, champagne, and kisses till you paid a ransom that would break Wall Street."

"I would not pay a cent, but stay and eat you out of house and home."

"I never expect to marry," said Edith, "but some day I am going to commence saving my money--now don't laugh, papa, for I could be economical if I once made up my mind"--and the pretty head gave a decisive little nod.

"I am going to save my money and buy a beautiful place in the country and make it as near like the garden of Eden as possible."

"Snakes will get into it as of old," was Mrs. Allen's cynical remark.

"Yes, that is woman's experience with a garden," said her husband with a mock sigh.

Popping off the cork of another bottle, he added, "I have got ahead of you, Edith. I own a place in the country, much as I dislike that kind of property. I had to take it to-day in a trade, and so am a landholder in Pushton--prospect, you see, of my becoming a rural gentleman (Squire is the title, I believe), and of exchanging stock in Wall Street for the stock of a farm. Here's to my estate of three acres with a story and a half mansion upon it! Perhaps you would rather go up there this summer than to Paris, my dear?" to his wife.

Mrs. Allen gave a contemptuous shrug as if the jest were too preposterous to be answered, but Edith cried:

"Fill my glass; I will drink to your country place. I know the cottage is a sweet rustic little box, all smothered with vines and roses like one I saw last June." Then she added in sport, "I wish you would give it to me for my birthday present. It would make such a nice porter's lodge at the entrance to my future Eden."

"Are you in earnest?" asked the father suddenly.

Both were excited by the wine they had drunk. She glanced at her father, and saw that he was in a mood to say yes to anything, and, quick as thought, she determined to get the place if possible.

"Of course I am. I would rather have it than all the jewelry in New York." She was over-supplied with that style of gift.

"You shall have it then, for I am sure I don't want it, and am devoutly thankful to be rid of it."

Edith clapped her hands with a delight scarcely less demonstrative than that of Zell in her wildest moods.

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Allen; "the idea of giving a young lady such an elephant!"

"Bat remember," continued her father, "you must manage it yourself, pay the taxes, keep it repaired, insured, etc. There is a first-class summer hotel near it. Next year, after we get back from Europe, we will go up there and stay awhile. You shall then take possession, employ an agent to take care of it, who by the way will cheat you to your heart's content. I will wager you a box of gloves that, before a year passes, you will try to sell the ivy-twined cottage for anything you can get, and will be thoroughly cured of your mania for country life."

"I'll take you up," said Edith, in great excitement, "but remember, I want my deed on my birthday."

"All right," said Mr. Allen, laughing. "I will transfer it to you to-morrow, while I think of it. But don't try to trade it off to me before next month for a new dress."

Edith was half wild over her present. Many and varied were her questions, but her father only said:

"I don't know much about it. I did not listen to half the man said, but I remember he stated there was a good deal of fruit on the place, for it made me think of you at the time. Bless you, I could not stop for such small game. I am negotiating a large and promising operation which you understand about as well as farming. It will take some time to carry it through, but when finished we will start for the 'salons of Paris.'"

"I half believe," said Laura, with a covert sneer, "that Edith would rather go up to her farm of three acres."

"I am well satisfied as papa has arranged it," said the practical girl. "Everything in its place, and get all out of life you can, is my creed."

"That means, get all out of me you can, don't it, sly puss?" laughed the father, well pleased, though, with the worldly wisdom of the speech.

"Kisses, kisses, unlimited kisses, and consider yourself well repaid," was the arch rejoinder; and not a few, looking at her as she then appeared, would have coveted such bargains. So her father seemed to think as he gazed admiringly at her.

But something in Zell's pouting lips and vexed expression caught his eye, and he said good-naturedly:

"Heigho, youngster, what has brought a thunder-cloud across your saucy face?"

"In providing for birthdays to come, I guess you have forgotten your baby's birthday present."

"Come here, you envious elf," said her father, taking something from his pocket. Like light she flashed out from under the cloud and was at his side in an instant, dimpling, smiling, and twinkling with expectation, her black eyes as quick and restless as her father was deliberate and slow in undoing a dainty parcel.

"Oh, George, do be quick about it, or Zell will explode. You both make me nervous," said Mrs. Allen fretfully.

Suddenly pressing open a velvet casket, Mr. Allen hung a jewelled watch with a long gold chain about his favorite's neck, while she improvised a hornpipe around his chair.

"There," said he, "is something that is worth more than Edith's farm, tumble-down cottage, roses, and all. So remember that those lips were made to kiss, not to pout with."

Zell put her lips to proper uses to that extent that Mrs. Allen began to grow jealous, nervous, and out of sorts generally, and having finished her chocolate, rose feebly from the table. Her husband offered his arm and the family dinner party broke up.

And yet, take it altogether, each one was in higher spirits than usual, and Zell and Edith were in a state of positive delight. They had received costly gifts that specially gratified their peculiar tastes, and these, with the promise of a grand party and a trip to Europe, youthful buoyancy, and champagne, so dilated their little feminine souls that Mrs. Allen's fears of an explosion of some kind were scarcely groundless. They dragged their stately sister Laura, now unwontedly bland and affable, to the piano, and called for the quickest and most brilliant of waltzes, and a moment later their lithe figures flowed away in a rhythm of motion, that from their exuberance of feeling, was as fantastic as it was graceful.

Mr. Allen assisted his wife to her room and soon left her in an unusually contented frame of mind to develop strategy for the coming party. Mrs. Allen's nerves utterly incapacitated her for the care of her household, attendance upon church, and such humdrum matters, but in view of a great occasion like a "grand crush ball," where among the luminaries of fashion she could become the refulgent centre of a constellation which her fair daughters would make around her, her spirit rose to the emergency. When it came to dress and dressmakers and all the complications of the campaign now opening, notwithstanding her nerves, she could be quite Napoleonic.

Her husband retired to the library, lighted a choice Havana, skimmed his evening papers, and then as usual went to his club.

This, as a general thing, was the extent of the library's literary uses. The best authors in gold and Russia smiled down from the black walnut shelves, but the books were present rather as furniture than from any intrinsic value in themselves to the family. They were given prominence on the same principle that led Mrs. Allen to give a certain tone to her entertainments by inviting many literary and scientific men. She might be unable to appreciate the works of the _savants_, but as they appreciated the labors of her masterly French cook, many compromised the matter by eating the _petits soupers_ and shrugging their shoulders over the entertainers.

And yet the Allens were anything but vulgar upstarts. Both husband and wife were descended from old and wealthy New York families. They had all the polish which life-long association with the fashionable world bestows. What was more, they were highly intelligent, and, in their own sphere, gifted people. Mr. Allen was a leader in business in one of the chief commercial centres, and to lead in legitimate business in our day requires as much ability, indeed we may say genius, as to lead in any order department of life. He would have shown no more ignorance in the study, studio, and laboratory, than their occupants would have shown in the counting-room. That to which he devoted his energies he had become a master in. It is true he had narrowed down his life to little else than business. He had never acquired a taste for art and literature, nor had he given himself time for broad culture. But we meet narrow artists, narrow clergymen, narrow scientists just as truly. If you do not get on their hobby and ride with them, they seem disposed to ride over you. Indeed, in our brief life with its fierce competitions, few other than what are known as "one idea" men have time to succeed. Even genius must drive with tremendous and concentrated energy, to distance competitors. Mr. Allen was quite as great in his department as any of the lions that his wife lured into her parlors were in theirs.

Mrs. Allen was also a leader in her own chosen sphere, or rather in the one to which she had been educated. Given _carte-blanche_ in the way of expense, she would produce a brilliant entertainment which few could surpass. The coloring and decorations of her rooms would not be more rich, varied, or in better taste, than the diversity, and yet harmony of the people she would bring together by her adroit selections. She had studied society, and for it she lived, not to make it better, not to elevate its character, and tone down its extravagances, but simply to shine in it, to be talked about and envied.

Both husband and wife had achieved no small success, and to succeed in such a city as New York in their chosen departments required a certain amount of genius. The _savants_ had a general admiration for Mrs. Allen's style and taste, but found that she had nothing to offer on the social exchange of her parlors but fashion's smallest chit-chat. They had a certain respect for Mr. Allen's wealth and business power, but, having discussed the news of the day, they would pass on, and the people during the intervals of dancing drifted into congenial schools and shoals, like fish in a lake. Mr. and Mrs. Allen had a vague admiration for the learning of the scholars and the culture of the artists, but would infinitely prefer marrying their daughters to downtown merchant princes.

Take the world over, perhaps all classes of people are despising others quite as much as they are despised themselves.

But when the French cook appeared upon the scene, then was produced your true democracy. Then was shown a phase of life into which all entered with a zest that proved the common tie of humanity.

CHAPTER III

THREE MEN

While Mrs. Allen was planning the social pyrotechnics that should dazzle the fashionable world, Edith and Zell were working off their exuberant spirits in the manner described in the last chapter, which was as natural to their city-bred feet as a wild romp is to a country girl.

The brilliant notes of the piano and the rustle of their silks had rendered them oblivious to the fact that the door-bell had rung twice, and that three gentlemen were peering curiously through the half-open door. They were evidently frequent and favored visitors, and had motioned the old colored waiter not to announce them, and he reluctantly obeyed.

For a moment they feasted their eyes on the scene, as the two girls, with twining arms and many innovations on the regular step, whirled through the rooms, and then Zell's quick eye detected them.

Pouncing upon the eldest gentleman of the party, she dragged him from his ambush, while the others also entered. The youngest approached the blushing, panting Edith with an almost boyish confidence of manner, as if assured of a welcome, while the remaining gentleman, who was verging toward middle age, quietly glided to the piano and gave his hand to Laura, who greeted him with a cordiality scarcely to be expected from so stately a young lady.

The laws of affinity and selection were evidently in force here, and as the reader must surmise, long acquaintance had led to the present easy and intimate relations.

"What do you mean," cried Zell, dragging under the gaslight her cavalier, who assumed much penitence and fear, "by thus rudely and abruptly breaking in upon the retirement of three secluded young ladies?"

"At their devotions," added the cynical voice of the gentleman at the piano, who was no other than Mr. Goulden, Laura's admirer.

Zell's attendant threw himself in the attitude of a suppliant and said deprecatingly:

"Nay, but we are astronomers."

"That's a fib, and not a very white one either," she retorted. "I don't believe you ever look toward heaven for anything."

"What need of looking thither for heavenly bodies?" he replied in a low, meaning tone, regarding with undisguised admiration her glowing cheeks. "Moreover, I don't like telescopic distances," he continued, with a half-made motion to put his arm around her waist.

"Come," she said, pirouetting out of his reach, "remember I am no longer a child, I am seventeen to-day."

"Would that you might never be a day older in appearance and feelings!"

"Are you willing to leave me so far behind?" she asked with some maliciousness.

"No, but you would make me a boy again. If old Ponce de Leon had met a Miss Zell, he would soon have forsaken the swamps and alligators of Florida." "Oh, what a watery, scaly compliment! Preferred to swamps and alligators! Who would have believed it?"

"I am not blind to your pretty, wilful blindness. You know I likened you to something too divine and precious to be found on earth."

"Which is still true in the carrying out of your marvellously mixed metaphors. I must lend you my rhetoric book. But as your meaning dawns on me, I see that you are symbolized by old Ponce. I shall look in the history for the age of the ancient Spaniard to-morrow, and then I shall know how old you are, a thing I could never find out."

As with little jets of silvery laughter and with butterfly motion she hovered round him, the very embodiment of life and beautiful youth, she would have made, to an artist's eye, a very true realization of the far-famed mythical fountain.

And yet, as a moment later she confidingly took his arm and strolled toward the library, it was evident that all her flutter and hesitancy, her seeming freedom and mimic show of war, were like those of some bright tropical bird fascinated by a remorseless serpent whose intent eyes and deadly purpose are creating a spell that cannot be resisted.

Mr. Van Dam, upon whose arm she was leaning, was one of the worst products of artificial metropolitan life. He had inherited a name which ancestry had rendered honorable, but which he to the utmost dishonored, and yet so adroitly, so shrewdly respecting fashion's code, though shunning nothing wrong, that he did not lose the _entree_ of the gilded homes of those who called themselves "the best society."

True, it was whispered that he was rather fast, that he played heavily and a trifle too successfully, and that he lived the life of anything but a saint at his luxurious rooms. "But then," continued society, openly and complacently, "he is so fine-looking, so courtly and polished, so well connected, and what is still more to the point, my dear, he is reputed to be immensely wealthy, so we must not heed these rumors. After all, it is the way of these young men of the world."

Thus "the best society" that would have politely frozen out of its parlors the Chevalier Bayard, _sans peur et sans reproche_, had he not appeared in the latest style, with golden fame rather than golden spurs, welcomed Mr. Van Dam. Indeed, not a few forced exotic belles, who had prematurely developed in the hothouse atmosphere of wealth and extravagance, regarded him as a sort of social lion; and his reticence, with a certain mystery in which he shrouded his evil life, made him all the more fascinating. He was past the prime of life, though exceedingly well preserved, for he was one of those cool, deliberate votaries of pleasure that reduce amusement to a science, and carefully shun all injurious excess. While exceedingly deferential toward the sex in general, and bestowing compliments and attentions as adroitly as a financier would place his money, he at the same time permitted the impression to grow that he was extremely fastidious in his taste, and had never married because it had never been his fortune to meet the faultless being who could satisfy his exacting eyes. Any special and continued admiration on his part therefore made its recipient an object of distinction and envy to very many in the unreal world in which he glided serpent-like, rather than moved as a man. To morbid minds his rumored evil deeds became piquant eccentricities, and the whispers of the oriental orgies that were said to take place in his bachelor apartments made him an object of a curious interest, and many sighed for the opportunity of reforming so distinguished a sybarite.

On Edith's entrance into society he had been much impressed by her beauty, and had gradually grown quite attentive, equally attracted by her father's wealth. But she, though with no clear perception of his character, and with no higher moral standard than that of her set, instinctively shrank from the man. Indeed, in some respects, they were too much alike for that mysterious attraction that so often occurs between opposites. Not that she had his unnatural depravity, but like him she was shrewd, practical, resolute, and was controlled by her judgment rather than by her impulses. Her vanity, of which she had no little share, led her to accept his attentions to a certain point, but the keen man of the world soon saw that his "little game," as in his own vernacular he styled it, would not be successful, and he was the last one to sigh in vain or mope an hour in lovelorn melancholy. While ceasing to press his suit, he continued to be a frequent and familiar visitor at the house, and thus his attention was drawn to Zell, who, though young, had developed early in the stimulating atmosphere in which she lived. At first he petted and played with ner as a child, as she wilfully flitted in and out of the parlors, whether her sisters wanted her or not. He continually brought her _bon-bons_ and like fanciful trifles, till at last, in jest, the family called him Zell's "ancient beau."

But during the past year it had dawned on him that the child he petted on account of her beauty and sprightliness, was rapidly becoming a brilliant woman, who would make a wife far more to his taste than her equally beautiful but matter-of-fact sister. Therefore he warily, so as not to alarm the jealous father, but with all the subtle skill of which he was master, sought to win her affections, knowing that she would have her own way when she knew what way she wanted.

For Zell this unscrupulous man had a peculiar fascination. He petted and flattered her to her heart's content, and thus made her the envy of her young acquaintances, which was incense indeed to her vain little soul. He never lectured or preached to her on account of her follies and nonsense, as her elderly friends usually did, but gave to her wild, impulsive moods free rein. Where a true friend would have cautioned and curbed, he applauded and incited, causing Zell to mistake extravagance in language and boldness in manner for spirit and brilliancy. Laura and Edith often remonstrated with her, but she did not heed them. Indeed, she feared no one save her father, and Mr. Van Dam was propriety itself when he was present, which was but seldom. What with his business, and club, and Mrs. Allen's nerves, the girls were left mainly to themselves.

What wonder that there are so many shipwrecks, when young, heedless, inexperienced hands must steer, unguided, through the most perilous and treacherous of seas?

Mr. Allen's elegant, costly home was literally an unguarded fold, many a laborer, living in a tenement house, doing more to shield his daughters from the evil of the world.

To Mr. Van Dam, Zell was a perfect prize. Though he had sipped at the cup of pleasure so leisurely and systematically, he was getting down to the dregs. His taste was becoming palled, and satiety was burdening him with its leaden weight. But as the child he petted developed daily toward womanhood, he became interested, then fascinated by the process. Her beauty was so brilliant, her excessive sprightliness so contagious, that he felt his sluggish pulses stir and tingle with excitement the moment he came into her presence. Her wild, varying moods kept him constantly on the _qui vive_, and he would say in confidence to one of his intimate cronies:

"The point is, Hal, she is such a spicy, piquant contrast to the insipid society girls, who have no more individuality than fashion blocks in Broadway windows."

He liked the kittenish young creature all the more because her repartee was often a little cutting. If she had always struck him with a velvet paw, the thing would have grown monotonous, but he occasionally got a scratch that made him wince, cool and brazen as he was. But, after all, he daily saw that he was gaining power over her, and the manner in which the frank-hearted girl took his arm and leaned upon it spoke volumes to the experienced man. While he habitually wore a mask, Zell could conceal nothing, and across her April face flitted her innermost thoughts.

If she had had a _mother_, she might, even in the wilderness of earth, have become a blossom fit for heavenly gardens, but as it was, her wayward nature, so full of dangerous beauty, was left to run wild.

Edith was beginning to be troubled at Zell's intimacy with Mr. Van Dam, and to conceive a growing dislike for him mingled with suspicion. As for Laura, the eldest, she was like her mother, too much wrapped up in herself to have many thoughts for any one else, and they all regarded Zell as a mere child still. Mr. Allen, who would have been very anxious had Zell been receiving the attentions of some penniless young clerk or artist, laughed at her "flirtation with old Van Dam" as an eminently safe proceeding.

But on the present evening her sisters were too much occupied with their own friends to give Zell or her dangerous admirer much attention. As yet no formal engagement had bound any of them, but an intimacy and mutual liking, tending to such a result, was rapidly growing.

In Edith's case the attraction of contrasts was again shown. Augustus Elliot, the youth who had approached her with such confidence and grace, was quite as stylish a personage as herself, and that was saying a great deal. But every line of his full handsome face, as well as the expression of his light blue eyes, showed that he had less decision in the whole of his luxurious nature than she in her little finger. Self-indulgence and good-natured vanity were unmistakably his characteristics. To yield, not for the good of others, but because not strong enough to stand sturdily alone, was the law of his being. If he could ever have been kept under the influence of good and stronger natures, who would have developed his naturally kind heart and good impulses into something like principle, he might have had a safe and creditable career. But he was the idol of a foolish, fashionable mother, and the pet of two or three sisters who were empty-brained enough to think their handsome brother the perfection of mankind; and by eye, manner, and often the plainest words, they told him as much, and he had at last come to believe them. Why should they not? He was faultless in his own dress, faultless in his criticism of a lady's dress, taking the prevailing fashion as the standard. He was perfectly versed in the polite slang of the day. He scented afar off and announced the slightest change in the mode, so that his elegant sisters could appear on the avenue in advance of the other fashion-plates. As they sailed away on a sunny afternoon in their gorgeous plumage, the envy of many a competing belle, they would say:

"Isn't he a duck of a brother to give us a hint of a change so early? After all there is no eye or taste like that of man when once perfected."

And then they knew him to be equally _au fait_ on the flavor of wines, the points of horses, the merits of every watering-place, and all the other lore which in their world gave pre-eminence. They had been educated to have no other ideal of manhood, and if an earnest, straight forward man, with a purpose, had spoken out before them, they would have regarded him as an uncouth monster.

Notwithstanding all his vanity, "Gus," as he was familiarly called, was a very weak man, and though he would not acknowledge it, even to himself, instinctively recognized the fact. He continually attached himself to strong, resolute natures, by whom, if they were adroit, he could easily be made a tool of. He took a great fancy to Edith from the first hour of their acquaintance, and she soon obtained a strong influence over him. She instinctively detected his yielding disposition, and liked him the better for it, while his good-nature and abundant supply of society talk made him a general favorite.

When every one whispered, "What a handsome couple they would make!" and she found him so looked up to and quoted in the fashionable world, she began to entertain quite an admiration as well as liking for him, though she saw more and more clearly that there was nothing in him that she could lean upon.

Gus's parents, who knew that the Allens were immensely wealthy, urged on the match, but Mr. Allen, aware that the Elliots were living to the extent of their means, discouraged it, plainly telling Edith his reasons.

"But," said Edith, at the same time showing her heart in the practical suggestion, "could not Gus go into business himself?"

"The worst thing he could do," said the keen Mr. Allen. "He has tried it a few times, I have learned, but has not one business qualification. He could not keep himself in toothpicks. His mother and sisters have spoiled him. He is nothing but a society man. Mr. Elliot has not a word to say at home. His business is to make money for them to spend, and a tough time he has to keep up with them. You girls must marry men who can take care of you, unless you wish to support your husbands."

Mr. Allen's verdict was true, and Edith felt that it was. When a boy, Gus could get out of lessons by running to his mother with a plea of headache or any trifle, and in youth he had escaped business in like manner. His father had tried him a few times in his office, but was soon glad to fall in with his wife's opinion, that _her_ son "had too much spirit and refinement for plodding humdrum business, that he was a born gentleman and suited only to elegant leisure," and as his gentleman son only did mischief downtown, the poor over-worked father was glad to have him out of the way, for he with difficulty made both ends meet, as it was. Hoping he would do better with strangers, he had, by personal influence, procured him situations elsewhere, but between the mother's weakness and the young man's confirmed habits of idleness, it always ended by Gus saying to his employers:

"I'm going of on a little trip--by-by," at which they gave a sigh of relief. It had at last become a recognized fact that Gus must marry an heiress, this being about the only way for so fine a gentleman to achieve the fortune that he could not stoop to toil for. As he admired himself complacently in the gilded mirror that ornamented his dressing-room, he felt that a wise selection would be his only difficulty, and though an heiress is something of a _rara avis_, he sternly resolved to cage one with such heavy golden plumage that even his mother, whom no one satisfied save himself, would give a sigh of perfect content. When at last he met Edith Allen, it seemed as if inclination might happily blend with his lofty sense of duty, and he soon became Edith's devoted and favored attendant. And yet, as we have seen, our heroine was not the sentimental style of girl that falls hopelessly and helplessly in love with a man for some occult reason, not even known to herself, and who mopes and pines till she is permitted to marry him, be he fool, villain, or saint. Edith was fully capable of appreciating and weighing her father's words, and under their influence nearly decided to chill her handsome but helpless admirer into a mere passing acquaintance; but when he next appeared before her in his uniform, as an officer in one of the "crack" city regiments, her eyes, taste, and vanity, and somehow her heart, so pleaded for him that, so far from being an icicle, she smiled on him like a July sun.

But whenever he sought to press his suit into something definite, she evaded and shunned the point, as only a feminine diplomatist can. In fact, Gus, on account of his vanity, was not a very urgent suitor, as the idea of final refusal was preposterous. He regarded himself as virtually accepted already. Meanwhile Edith for once in her life was playing the role of Micawber, and "waiting for something to turn up." And something had, for this trip to Europe would put time and space between them, and gently cure both of their folly, as she deemed it. Folly! She did not realize that Gus regarded himself as acting on sound business principles and a strong sense of duty, as well as obeying the impulses of what heart he had. The sweet approval of conscience and judgment attended his action, while both condemned her.

As Gus approached this evening, she felt a pang of commiseration that not only were they separated by her father's and her own disapproval, but that soon the briny ocean would also be between them, and she was unusually kind. She decided to play with her poor little mouse till the last, and then let absence remedy all. Her mind was quick, if not very profound.

As Mr. Goulden leaned across the corner of the piano, and paid the blushing Laura some delicate compliments, one could not but think of an adroit financier, skilfully placing some money. There was nothing ardent, nothing incoherent and lover-like, in his carefully modulated tones, and nicely selected words that meant much or little, as he might afterward decide. Mr. Goulden always knew what he was about, as truly in a lady's boudoir as in Wall Street. The stately, elegant Laura suited his tastes; her father's financial status _had_ suited him also. But he, who through his agents knew all that was going on in Wall Street, was aware that Mr. Allen had engaged in a very heavy speculation, which, though promising well at the time, might, by some unexpected turn of the wheel, wear a very different aspect. He would see the game through before proceeding with his own, and in the meantime, by judicious attention, hold Laura well in hand.

In that brilliantly lighted parlor none of these currents and counter currents were apparent on the surface. That was like the ripple and sparkle of a summer sea in the sunlight. Every year teaches us something of what is hidden under the fair but treacherous seeming of life.

The young ladies were now satisfied with the company they had, and the gentlemen, as can well be understood, wished no further additions. Therefore they agreed to retire to the library for a game of cards.

"Hannibal," said Edith, summoning the portentous colored butler who presided over the front door and dining-room, "if any one calls, say we are out or engaged."

That solemn dignitary bowed as low as his stiff white collar would permit, but soliloquized:

"I guess I is sumpen too black to tell a white lie, so I'se say dey is engaged."

As the ladies swept away, leaning heavily on the arms of their favored gallants, he added, with a slight grin illumining the gravity of his face, "It looks mighty like it."

CHAPTER IV

THE SKIES DARKENING

The game of cards fared indifferently, for they were all too intent on little games of their own to give close attention. Mr. Van Dam won when he chose, and gave the game away when he chose, but made Zell think the skill was mainly hers.

Still, in common parlance, they had a "good time." From such clever men the jests and compliments were rather better than the average, and repartee from the ruby lips that smiled upon them could not seem other than brilliant.

Edith soon added to the sources of enjoyment by ordering cake and wine, for though not the eldest she seemed naturally to take the lead.

Mr. Goulden drank sparingly. He meant that not a film should come across his judgment. Mr. Van Dam drank freely, but he was seasoned to more fiery potations than sherry. Not so poor Gus, who, while he could never resist the wine, soon felt its influence. But he had sufficient control never to go beyond the point of tipsiness that fashion allows in the drawing-room.

Of course through Zell's unrestrained chatter the recently made plans soon came out.

Adroit Mr. Van Dam turned to Zell with an expression of much pleased surprise, exclaiming:

"How fortunate I am! I had completed my plans to go abroad some little time since."

Zell clapped her hands with delight, but an involuntary shadow darkened. Edith's face.

Gus looked nonplussed. He knew that his father and mother with difficulty kept pace with his home expenses and that a Continental tour was impossible for him. Mr. Goulden looked a little thoughtful, as if a new element had entered into the problem.

"Oh, come," laughed Zell. "Let us all be good, and go on a pilgrimage together to Paris--I mean Jerusalem."

"I will worship devoutly with you at either shrine," said Mr. Van Dam.

"And with equal sincerity, I suppose," said Edith, rather coldly.

"I sadly fear, Miss Edith, that my sincerity will not be superior to that of the other devotees," was the keen retort, in blandest tones.

Edith bit her lip, but said gayly, "Count me out of your pilgrim band. I want no shrine with relics of the past. I wish no incense rising about me obscuring the view. I like the present, and wish to see what is beyond."

"But suppose you are both shrine and divinity yourself?" said Gus, with what he meant for a killing look.

"Do you mean that compliment for me?" asked Edith, all sweetness.

Between wine and love Gus was inclined to be sentimental, and so in a low, meaning tone answered:

"Who more deserving?"

Edith's eyes twinkled a moment, but with a half sigh she replied:

"I fear you read my character rightly. A shrine suggests many offerings, and a divinity many worshippers."

Zell laughed outright, and said, "In that respect all women would be shrines and divinities if they could."

Van Dam and Goulden could not suppress a smile at the unfortunate issue of Elliot's sentiment, while the latter glanced keenly to see how much truth was hinted in the badinage.

"For my part," said Laura, looking fixedly at nothing, "I would rather have one true devotee than a thousand pilgrims who were _gushing_ at every shrine they met."

"Brava!" cried Mr. Goulden. "That was the keenest arrow yet flown;" for the other two men were notorious flirts.

"I do not think so. Its point was much too broad," said Zell, with a meaning look at Mr. Goulden, that brought a faint color into his imperturbable face, and an angry flush to Laura's.

A disconcerted manner had shown that even Gus's vanity had not been impervious to Edith's barb, but he had now recovered himself, and ventured again:

"I would have my divinity a patron saint sufficiently human to pity human weakness, and so come at last to listen to no other prayer than mine."

"Surely, Mr. Elliot, you would wish your saint to listen for some other reason than your weakness only," said Edith.

"Come, ladies and gentlemen, I move this party breaks up, or some one will get hurt," said Gus, with a half-vexed laugh.

"What is the matter?" asked Edith innocently.

"Yes," echoed Zell, rising, "what is the matter with _you_, Mr. Van Dam? Are you asleep, that you are so quiet? Tell us about your divinity."

"I am an astronomer and fire-worshipper, somewhat dazzled at present by the nearness and brilliancy of my bright luminary."

"Nonsense! your sight is failing, and you have mistaken a will-o'-the-wisp for the sun.

"'Dancing here, dancing there, Catch it if you can and dare,'" and she flitted away before him.

He followed with his intent eyes and graceful, serpent-like gliding, knowing her to be under a spell that would soon bring her fluttering back.

After circling round him a few moments she took his arm and he commenced breathing into her ear the poison of his passion.

No woman could remain the same after being with Mr. Van Dam. Out of the evil abundance of his heart he spoke, but the venom of his words and manner were all the more deadly because so subtle, so minutely and delicately distributed, that it was like a pestilential atmosphere, in which truth and purity withered.

No parent should permit to his daughters the companionship of a thoroughly bad man, whatever his social standing. His very tone and glance are unconsciously demoralizing, and, even if he tries, he cannot prevent the bitter waters overflowing from their bad source, his heart.

Mr. Van Dam did not try. He meant to secure Zell, with or without her father's approval, believing that when the marriage was once consummated Mr. Allen's consent and money would follow eventually.

For some little time longer the young ladies and their favored attendants strolled about the room in quiet tete-a-tete, and then the gentlemen bowed themselves out.

The door-bell had rung several times during the evening, but Hannibal, with the solemnity of a funeral, had quenched each comer by saying with the decision of the voice of fate:

"De ladies am engaged, sah," and no Cerberus at the door, or mailed warder of the middle ages, could have proved such an effectual barrier against all intruders as this old negro in his white waistcoat and stiff necktie, backed by the usage of modern society. Indeed, in some respects he was a greater potentate than old King Canute, for he could say to the human passions, inclinations, and desires that surged up to Mr. Allen's front door, "Thus far and no farther."

But upon this evening there was a caller who looked with cool, undaunted eyes upon the stiff necktie and solemn visage rising above it, and to Hannibal's reiterated statement, "Dey _am_ engaged," replied in a quiet tone of command:

"Take that card to Miss Edith."

Even Hannibal's sovereignty broke down before this persistent, imperturbable visitor, and scratching his head with a perplexed grin he half soliloquized, half replied:

"Miss Edith mighty 'ticlar to hab her orders obeyed."

"I am the best judge in this case," was the decisive response. "You take the card and I will be responsible."

Hannibal came to the conclusion that for some occult reason the gentleman, who was well known to him, had a right to pronounce the "open sesame" where the portal had been remained closed to all others, and, being a diplomatist, resolved to know more fully the quarter of the wind before assuming too much. But his statecraft was sorely puzzled to know why one of Mr. Allen's under-clerks should suddenly appear in the role of social caller upon the young ladies, for Mr. Fox, the gentleman in question, ostensibly had no higher position. His appearance and manner indicated a mystery. Old Hannibal's wool had not grown white for nothing, and he was the last man in the world to go through a mystery as a blundering bumblebee would through a spider's web. He was for leaving the web all intact till he knew who spun it and whom it was to catch. If it was Mr. Allen's work or Miss Edith's, it _must_ stand; if not, he could play bumblebee with a vengeance, and carry off the gossamer of intrigue with one sweep.

So, showing Mr. Fox into a small reception room, he made his way to the library door with a motion that would have reminded you of a great, stealthy cat, and called in a loud, impressive whisper:

"Miss Edith!"

Edith at once rose and went to him, knowing that her prime minister had some important question of state to present when summoning her in that tone.

Screened by the library door, Hannibal commenced in a deprecating way:

"I told Mr. Fox you'se engaged, but he say I must give you dis card. He kinder acted as if he own dis niggar and de whole establishment."

A sudden heavy frown drew Edith's dark eyebrows together and she said loud enough for Mr. Fox in his ambush to hear:

"Was there ever such impudence!" and straightway the frown passed to the listener, intensified, like a flying cloud darkening one spot now and another a moment later.

"Return the card, and say I am engaged," she said haughtily. "Stay," she added thoughtfully. "Perhaps he wished to see papa, or there is some important business matter which needs immediate attention. If not, dismiss him," and Edith returned to the library quite as much puzzled as Hannibal had been. Two or three times recently she had found Mr. Fox's card on returning from evenings out. Why had he called? She had only a cool, bowing acquaintance with him, formed by his coming occasionally to see her father on business, and her father had not thought it worth while to formally introduce Mr. Fox to any of his family at such times, but had treated him as a sort of upper servant. Her certainly was putting on strange airs, as her old grand-vizier had intimated. But in the game of cards, and her other little game with Grus, she soon forgot his existence.

Meantime Hannibal, reassured, was regal again, and marched down the marble hall with something like the feeling and bearing of his great namesake. If there were a web here, the Allens were not spinning it, and he owed. Mr. Fox nothing but a slight grudge for his "airs."

Therefore with the manner of one feeling himself master of the situation he said:

"Hab you a message for Mr. Allen?"

"No," replied Mr. Fox quietly.

"Den I tell you again Miss Edith _am_ engaged."

Looking straight into Hannibal's eyes, without a muscle changing in his impassive face, Mr. Fox said in the steady tone of command:

"Say to Miss Edith I will call again," and he passed out of the door as if _he_ were master of the situation.

Hannibal rolled up his eyes till nothing but the whites were seen, and muttered:

"Brass ain't no name for it."

Mr. Fox's action can soon be explained. Mr. Allen, while accustomed to operate largely in Wall Street through his brokers, was also the head of a cloth-importing firm. This in fact had been his regular and legitimate business, but like so many others he had been drawn into the vortex of speculation, and after many lucky hits had acquired that overweening confidence that prepares the way for a fall. He came to believe that he had only to put his hand to a thing to give it the needful impulse to success. In his larger and more exciting operations in Wall Street he had left the cloth business mainly to his junior partners and dependants, they employing his capital. Mr. Fox was merely a clerk in this establishment, and not in very high standing either. He was also another unwholesome product of metropolitan life. As office boy among the lawyers, as a hanger-on of the criminal courts, he had scrambled into a certain kind of legal knowledge and had gained a small pettifogging practice when an opening in Mr. Allen's business led to his present connection. Mr. Allen felt that in his varied and extended business he needed a man of Mr. Fox's stamp to deal with the legal questions that came up, look after the intricacies of the revenue laws, and manage the immaculate saints of the custom-house. As far as the firm had dirty, disagreeable, perplexing work to do, Mr. Fox was to do it. Whenever it came in contact with the majesty of the law and government, Mr. Fox was to represent it. Whenever some Israelite in whom _was_ guile sought, on varied pretext, to wriggle out of the whole or part of a bill, the wary Mr. Fox met him on his own plane and with his own weapons, skirmished with him, and won the little fight.

I would not for a moment give the impression that Mr. Allen was in favor of sharp practice. He merely wished to conduct his business on the business principles and practice of the day, and it was not his purpose, and certainly not his policy, to pass beyond the law. But even the judges disagree as to what the law is, and he was dealing with many who thrived by evading it; therefore the need of a nimble Mr. Fox who could burrow and double on his tracks with the best of them. All went well for years, and the firm was saved many an annoyance, many a loss, and if this guerilla of the house, as perhaps we may term him, had been as devoted to Mr. Allen's interests as to his own, all might have gone well to the end. But these very sharp tools are apt to cut both ways, and so it turned out in this case. The astute Mr. Fox determined to serve Mr. Allen faithfully as long as he could faithfully and pre-eminently serve himself. If he who had scrambled from the streets to his present place of power could reach a higher position by stepping on the great rich merchant, such power would have additional satisfaction. He was as keen-scented after money as Mr. Allen, only the latter hunted like a lion, and the former like a fox. He mastered Mr. Allen's business thoroughly in all its details. Until recently no opportunity had occurred save work which, though useful, caused him to be half-despised by the others who would not or could not do it. But of late he had gained a strong vantage point. He watched with intense interest Mr. Allen's attraction toward, and entrance upon, a speculation that he knew to be as uncertain of issue as it was large in proportions, for, if the case ever became critical, he was conscious of the power of introducing a very important element into the problem.

In his care of the custom-house business he had discovered technical violations of the revenue laws which already involved the loss to the firm of a million dollars, and, with his peculiar loyalty to himself, thought this knowledge ought to be worth a great deal. As Mr. Allen went down into the deep waters of Wall Street, he saw that it might be. In saving his employer from wreck he might virtually become captain of the ship.

After this brief delineation of character, it would strike the reader as very incongruous to say that Mr. Fox had fallen in love with Edith. Mr. Fox never stumbled or fell. He could slide down and scramble up to any extent, and when cornered could take a flying leap like that of a cat. But he had been greatly impressed by Edith's beauty, and to win her also would be an additional and piquant feature in the game. He had absolute confidence in money, much of which he might have gained from Mr. Allen himself. He knew a million of her father's money was in his power, and this, in a certain sense, placed him in the position of a suitor worth a million, and such he knew to be almost omnipotent on the avenue. If this money could also be the means of causing Mr. Allen's ruin, or saving him from it, he believed that Edith would be his as truly as the bonds and certificates of stock that he often counted and gloated over. Even before Mr. Allen entered on what he called his great and final operation for the present, Mr. Fox was half inclined to show his hand and make the most of it, but within the last few days he had learned that perhaps a greater opportunity was opening before him. Meantime in the full consciousness of power he had begun to call on Edith, as we have seen, something as a cat plays around and watches a caged bird, which it expects to have in its claws before long.

The next morning at breakfast Edith mentioned Mr. Fox's recent calls.

"What is he coming here for?" growled Mr. Allen, looking with a frown at his daughter.

"I'm sure I don't know."

"I hope you don't see him."

"Certainly not. I was out the first two times, and last night sent word that I was engaged. But he insisted on his card being given to me and put on airs generally, so Hannibal seems to think."

That dignitary gave a confirming and indignant grunt.

"He said he would call again, didn't he, Hannibal?"

"Yes'm," blurted Hannibal, "and he looked as if de next time he'd put us all in his breeches pocket and carry us off."

"What's Fox up to now?" muttered Mr. Allen, knitting his brows. "I must look into this."

But even within a few hours the cloud land of Wall Street had changed some of its aspects. The serenity of the preceding day was giving place to indications of a disturbance in the financial atmosphere. He had to buy more stock to keep the control he was gaining on the market, and things were not shaping favorably for its rise. He was already carrying a tremendous load, and even his herculean shoulders began to feel the burden. In the press and rush of business he forgot about Fox's social ambition in venturing to call where such men as Van Dam and Gus Elliot had undisputed rights.

Those upon whom society lays its hands are orthodox of course.

The wary Fox was watching the stock market as closely as Mr. Allen, and chuckled over the aspect of affairs; and he concluded to keep quietly out of the way a little longer, and await further developments.

Things moved rapidly as they usually do in the maelstrom of speculation. Though Mr. Allen was a trained athlete in business, the strain upon him grew greater day by day. But true to his promise, and in accordance with his habit of promptness, he transferred the deed for the little place in the country to Edith, who gloated over its dry technicalities as if they were full of romantic hope and suggestion to her.

One day when alone with Laura, Mr. Allen asked her suddenly:

"Has Mr. Goulden made any formal proposal yet?"

With rising color Laura answered:

"No."

"Why not? He seems very slow about it."

"I hardly know how you expect me to reply to such a question," said Laura, a little haughtily.

"Is he as attentive as ever?"

"Yes, I suppose so, though he has not called quite so often of late."

"Humph!" ejaculated Mr. Allen meditatively, adding after a moment, "Can't you make him speak out?"

"You certainly don't mean me to propose to him?" asked Laura, reddening.

"No, no, no!" said her father with some irritation, "but any clever woman can make a man who has gone as far as Mr. Goulden commit himself whenever she chooses. Your mother would have had the thing settled long ago, or else would have enjoyed the pleasure of refusing him."

"I am not mistress of that kind of finesse," said Laura coldly.

"You are a woman," replied her father coolly, "and don't need any lessons. It would be well for us both if you would exert your native power in this case."

Laura glanced keenly at her father and asked quickly:

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. A word to the wise is sufficient."

Having thus indicated to his daughter that phase of Wall Street tactics and principles that could be developed on the avenue, he took himself off to the central point of operations.

CHAPTER V

THE STORM THREATENING

Laura had a better motive than that suggested by her father for wishing to lead Mr. Goulden to commit himself, for as far as she could love any one beyond herself she loved him, and she also realized fully that he could continue to her all that her elegant and expensive tastes craved. Notwithstanding her show of maidenly pride and reserve, she was ready enough to do as she had been bidden. Mr. Allen guessed as much. Indeed, as was quite natural, his wife was the type of the average woman to his mind, only he believed that she was a little cleverer in these matters than the majority. The manner in which she had "hooked" him made a deep and lasting impression on his memory.

But Mr. Goulden was a wary fish. He had no objection to being hooked if the conditions were all right, and until satisfied as to these he would play around at a safe distance. As he saw Mr. Allen daily getting into deeper water, he grew more cautious. His calls were not quite so frequent. He managed never to be with Laura except in company with others, and while his manner was very complimentary it was never exactly lover-like. Therefore, all Laura's feminine diplomacy was in vain, and that which a woman can say frankly the moment a man speaks, she could scarcely hint. Moreover, Mr. Goulden was adroit enough to chill her heart while he flattered her vanity. There was something about his manner she could not understand, but it was impossible to take offence at the polished gentleman.

Her father understood him better. He saw that Mr. Goulden had resolved to settle the question on financial principles only.

As the chances diminished of securing him indirectly through Laura as a prop to his tottering fortunes, he at last came to the conclusion to try to interest him directly in his speculation, feeling sure if he could control only a part of Mr. Goulden's large means and credit, he could carry his operation through successfully.

Mr. Goulden warily listened to the scheme, warily weighed it, and concluded within the brief compass of Mr. Allen's explanation to have nothing to do with it. But his outward manner was all deference and courteous attention.

At the end of Mr. Allen's rather eager and rose-colored statements, he replied in politest and most regretful tones that he "was very sorry he could not avail himself of so promising an opening, but in fact, he was 'in deep' himself--carrying all he could stand up under very well, and was rather in the borrowing than in the lending line at present."

Keen Mr. Allen saw through all this in a moment, and his face flushed angrily in spite of his efforts at self-control. Muttering something to the effect:

"I thought I would give you a chance to make a good thing," he bade a rather abrupt "good-morning."

As the pressure grew heavier upon him he was led to do a thing the suggestion of which a few weeks previously he would have regarded as an insult. Mrs. Allen had a snug little property of her own, which had been secured to her on first mortgages, and in bonds that were quiet and safe. These her husband held in trust for her, and now pledged them as collateral on which to borrow money to carry through his gigantic operation. In respect to part of this transaction, Mrs. Allen was obliged to sign a paper which might have revealed to her the danger involved, but she languidly took the pen, yawned, and signed away the result of her father's long years of toil without reading a line.

"There," she said, "I hope you will not bother me about business again. Now in regard to this party--" and she was about to enter into an eager discussion of all the complicated details, when her husband, interrupting, said:

"Another time, my dear--I am very much pressed by business at present."

"Oh, business, nothing but business," whined his wife. "You never have time to attend to me or your family."

But Mr. Allen was out of hearing of the querulous tones before the sentence was finished.

Of course he never meant that his wife should lose a cent, and to satisfy his conscience, and impressed by his danger, he resolved that as soon as he was out of this quaking morass of speculation he would settle on his wife and each daughter enough to secure them in wealth through life, and arrange it in such a way that no one could touch the principal.

The large sum that he now secured eased up matters and helped him greatly, and affairs began to wear a brightening aspect. He felt sure that the stock he had invested in was destined to rise in time, and indeed it already gave evidences of buoyancy. He noticed with an inward chuckle that Mr. Goulden began to call a little oftener. He was the best financial barometer in Wall Street.

But the case would require the most adroit and delicate management for weeks still, and this Mr. Allen could have given. Success also depended on a favorable state of the money market, and a good degree of stability and quietness throughout the financial world. Political changes in Europe, a war in Asia, heavy failures in Liverpool, London, or Paris, might easily spoil all. Reducing Mr. Allen's vast complicated operation to its final analysis, he had simply bet several millions--all he had--that nothing would happen throughout the world that could interfere with a scheme so problematical that the chances could scarcely be called even.

But gambling is occasionally successful, and it began to look as if Mr. Allen would win his bet; and so he might had nothing happened. The world was quiet enough, remarkably quiet, considering the superabundance of explosive elements everywhere.

The financial centres seethed on as usual, like a witch's caldron, but there were no infernal ebullitions in the form of "Black Fridays." The storm that threatened to wreck Mr. Allen was no wide, sweeping tempest, but rather one of those little local whirlwinds that sometimes in the west destroy a farm or township.

For the last few weeks Mr. Fox had quietly watched the game, matured his plans, and secured his proof in the best legal form. He now concluded it was time to act, as he believed Mr. Allen to be in his power. So one morning he coolly walked into that gentleman's office, closed the door, and took a seat. Mr. Allen looked up with an expression of surprise and annoyance on his face. He instinctively disliked Mr. Fox, as a lion might be irritated by a cat, and the instinctive enmity was all the stronger because of a certain family likeness. But Mr. Allen's astuteness had nothing mean or cringing in it, while Mr. Fox heretofore had been a sort of Uriah Heep to him. Therefore his surprise and annoyance at his new role of cool confidence.

"Well, sir," said he, rather impatiently, returning to his writing, as a broad hint that communications must be brief if made at all.

"Mr. Allen," said Mr. Fox, in that clear-cut, decisive tone, that betokens resolute purpose, and a little anger also "I must request you to give me your undivided attention for a little time, and surely what I am about to say is important enough to make it worth the while."

Though Mr. Allen flushed angrily, he knew that his clerk would not employ such a tone and manner without reason, so he raised his head and looked steadily at his unwelcome visitor and again said briefly:

"Well, sir?"

"I wish, in the first place," said Mr. Fox, thinking to begin with the least important exaction, and gradually reach, a climax in his extortion, "I wish permission to pay my addresses to your daughter Miss Edith."

Knowing nothing of a father's pride and affection, he had unwittingly brought in the climax first.

The angry flush deepened on Mr. Allen's face, but he still managed to control himself, and to remember that the father of three pretty daughters must expect some scenes like these, and that the only thing to do was to get rid of the objectionable suitors as civilly as possible. He was also too much of an American to put on any of the high-stepping airs of the European aristocracy. Here it is simply one sovereign proposing for the daughter of another, and generally the young people practically arrange it all before asking any consent in the case. After all, Mr. Fox had only paid his daughter the highest compliment in his power, and if any other of his clerks had made a similar request he would probably have given as kind and delicate a refusal as possible. It was because he disliked Mr. Fox, and instinctively gauged his character, that he said with a short, dry laugh:

"Come, Mr. Fox, you are forgetting yourself. You have been a useful employe" in my store. If you feel that you should have more salary, name what will satisfy you, and I will consult my partners, and try and arrange it."--"There," thought he, "if he can't take that hint as to his place, I shall have to give him a kick." But both surprise and anger began to get the better of him when Mr. Fox replied:

"I must really beg your closer attention; I said nothing of increased salary. You will soon see that is no object with me now. I asked your permission to pay my addresses to your daughter."

"I decline to give it," said Mr. Allen, harshly, "and if I hear any more of this nonsense I will discharge you from my employ."

"Why?" was the quiet response, yet spoken with the intensity of passion.

"Because I never would permit my daughter to marry a man in your circumstances, and, if you will have it, you are not the style of a man I would wish to take into my family."

"If a man who was worth a million asked for your daughter's hand would you answer him in this manner?"

"Perhaps not," said Mr. Allen, with another of his short, dry laughs, which expressed little save irritation, "but you have my answer as respects yourself."

"I am not so sure of that," was the bold retort. "I am practically worth a million--indeed several millions to you, as you are now situated. You have talked long enough in the dark, Mr. Allen. For some time back there have been in your importations violations of the revenue laws. I have only to give the facts in my possession to the proper authorities and the government would legally claim from you a million of dollars, of which I should get half. So you see that I am positively worth five hundred thousand, and to you I am worth a million with respect to this item alone."

Mr. Allen sprang excitedly to his feet. Mr. Fox coolly got up and edged toward the door, which he had purposely left unlatched.

"Moreover," continued Mr. Fox, in his hard metallic voice, "in view of your other operations in Wall Street, which I know all about, the loss of a million would involve the loss of all you have."

Mr. Fox now had his hand on the door-knob, and Mr. Allen was glaring at him as if purposing to rush upon him and rend him to pieces.

Standing in the passageway, Mr. Fox concluded, in a low, meaning tone:

"You had better make terms with me within twenty-four hours."

And the door closed sharply, reminding one of the shutting of a steel trap.

Mr. Allen sank suddenly back in his chair and stared at the closed door, looking as if he were a prisoner and all escape cut off.

He seemed to be in a lethargy or under a partial paralysis; he slowly and weakly rubbed his head with his hand, as if vaguely conscious that the trouble was there.

Gradually the stupor began to pass off, his blood to circulate, and his mind to realize the situation.

Rising feebly, as if a sudden age had fallen, on him, he went to the door and gave orders that he must not be disturbed, and then sat down to think. Half an hour later he sent for his lawyer, stated the case to him, enjoined secrecy, and asked him to see Fox, hoping that it might be a case of mere blackmailing bravado. Keen as Mr. Allen's lawyer was, he had more than his match in the astute Mr. Fox. Moreover the latter had everything in his favor. There had been a slight infringement of the revenue laws, and though involving but small loss to the government, the consequences were the same. The invoice would be confiscated as soon as the facts were known. Mr. Fox had secured ample proof of this.

Mr. Allen might be able to prove that there was no intention to violate the law, as indeed there had not been. In fact, he had left those matters to his subordinates, and they had been a little careless, averaging matters, contenting themselves with complying with the general intent of the law, rather than, with painstaking care, conforming to its letter. Bat the law is very matter-of-fact, and can be excessively literal when money is to be made by those who live by enforcing or evading it, as may suit them. Mr. Fox could carry his case, if he pressed it, and secure his share of the plunder. On account of a very slight loss, Mr. Allen might be compelled to lose a million.

Before the day's decline the lawyer had asked Mr. Fox to take no further steps, stating vaguely that Mr. Allen would look into the matter, and would not be unreasonable.

A sardonic grin gave a momentary lurid hue to Mr. Fox's sallow face. Knowing the game to be in his own hands, he could quietly bide his time; so, assuming a tone of much moderation and dignity, he replied, he had no wish to be hard, and could be reasonable also. "But," added he, in a meaning tone, "there must be no double work in this matter. Mr. Allen must see what I am worth to him--nothing could be plainer. His best policy now is to act promptly and liberally toward me, for I pledge you my word that if I see any disposition to evade my requirements I will blow out the bottom of everything," and a snaky glitter in his small black eyes showed how remorselessly he could scuttle the ship bearing Mr. Allen's fortunes.

A speedy investigation showed Mr. Fox's fatal power, and Mr. Allen's partners were for paying him off, but when they found that he exacted an interest in the business that quite threw them into the background, they were indignant and inclined to fight it out. Mr. Allen could not tell them that he was in no condition to fight. If his financial status had been the same as some weeks previously, he would rather have lost the million than have listened one moment to Mr. Fox's repulsive conditions, but now to risk litigation and commercial reputation on one hand, and total ruin on the other, was an abyss from which he shrank back appalled.

His only resource was to temporize, both with his partners and Mr. Fox, and so gain time, hoping that the Wall Street scheme, that had caused so much evil, might also cure it. Of course he could not tell his partners how he was situated. The slightest breath of suspicion might cause the evenly balanced scales in which hung all chances to hopelessly decline. The speculation now promised well.

If he could only keep things quiet a little longer--

Edith must help him. Calling her into the library after dinner, he asked:

"Has Mr. Fox called lately?"

"No, sir, not for some little time."

"Will you oblige me by seeing him and being civil if he calls again?" "Why, papa, I thought you did not wish me to see him."

"Circumstances have altered since then. Is he very disagreeable to you?"

"Well, papa, I have scarcely thought of him, but to tell you the truth when he has been here on business I have involuntarily thought of a mousing cat, or the animal he is named after on the scent of a hen-roost. But of course I can be civil or even polite to him if you wish it."

A spasm of pain crossed her father's face and he put his hand hastily to his head, a frequent act of late. He rose and took a few turns up and down the room, muttering:

"Curse it all, I must tell her. Half knowledge is always dangerous, and is sure to lead to blunders, and there must be no blunders now."

Stopping abruptly before his daughter, he said, "He has proposed for your hand."

An expression of disgust flitted across Edith's face, and she replied quickly:

"We both have surely but one answer to such a proposition from _him_."

"Edith, you seem to have more sense in regard to business and such matters than most young ladies. I must now test you, and it is for you to show whether you are a woman or a shallow-brained girl. I am sorry to tell you these things. They are not suited to your age or sex, but there is no help for it," and he explained how he was situated.

Edith listened with paling cheek, dilating eyes, and parting lips, but still with rising courage and a growing purpose to help her father.

"I do not wish you to marry this villain," he continued. "Heaven forbid!" (Not that Mr. Allen referred this or any other matter to Heaven; it was only a strong way of expressing his own disapproval.) "But we must manage to temporize and keep this man at bay till I can extricate myself from my difficulties. As soon as I stand on firm ground I will defy him."

To Edith, with her standard of morality, the course indicated by her father seemed eminently filial and praiseworthy. The thought of marrying Mr. Fox made her flesh creep, but a brief flirtation was another affair. She had flirted not a little in her day for the mere amusement of the thing, and with the motives her father had presented she could do it in this case as if it were an act of devotion. Of the pure and lofty morality of the Bible she had as little idea as a Persian houri, and rugged Roman virtue could not develop in the social atmosphere in which the Allens lived. It was with a clear conscience that she resolved to beguile Mr. Fox, and signified as much to her father.

"Play him off," said this model father, "as Mr. Goulden does Laura. Curse him!--how I would like to slam the front door in his face. But my time may come yet," he added with set teeth.

That morning Mr. Allen sent for Mr. Fox, as he dared brave him no longer without some definite show of yielding, in order to keep back his fatal disclosures. With a dignity and formality scarcely in keeping with his fear and the import of his words, he said:

"I have considered your statements, sir, and admit their weight. As I informed you through my lawyer, I wish to be reasonable and hope you intend to be the same, for these are very grave matters. In regard to my daughter, you have my permission to call upon her as do her other gentleman friends, and she will receive you. In this land, that is all the vantage-ground a _gentleman_ asks, as indeed it is all that can be granted. I am not the King of Dahomey or the Shah of Persia, and able to give my daughters where interest may dictate. A lady's inclination must be consulted. But I give you the permission you ask; you may pay your addresses to my daughter. You could scarcely ask a father to say more."

"It matters little to me what you or others say, but much what they do. My action shall be based upon yours and Miss Edith's. I have learned in your employ the value of promptness in all business matters. I hope you understand me."

"I do, sir, but there can be no indecent haste in these matters. In gaining the important position--in assuming the relations you desire--there should be some show of dignity, otherwise society would be disgusted, and you would lose the respect which should follow such vast acquirements."

"Where I can secure the whole cloth, I shall not worry about the selvage of etiquette and passing opinion," was Mr. Fox's cynical reply.

Mr. Allen could not prevent an expression of intense disgust from coming out upon his face, and he replied with some heat:

"Well, sir, something is due to my own position, and I cannot treat my daughter like a bale of cloth, as you suggest in your figurative speech. However," he added, warily, "I will take the necessary steps as soon as possible, and will trespass upon your time no longer."

As Mr. Fox glided out of the office with his sardonic smile, Mr. Allen felt for the moment that he would rather become bankrupt than make terms with him.

Meanwhile the month of February was rapidly passing, though each day was an age of anxiety and suspense to Mr. Allen. The tension was too much for him, and he evidently aged and failed under it. He drank more than he ate, and his temper was very variable. From his wife he only received chidings and complaints that in his horrid "mania for business" he was neglecting her and his family in general. She could never get him to sit down and talk sensibly of the birthday and debut party that was now so near. He would always say, testily, "Manage it to suit yourselves."

Laura and Zell were too much wrapped up in their own affairs to give much thought to anything else. But Edith, of late, understood her father and felt deeply for him. One evening finding him sitting dejectedly alone in the library after dinner, she said:

"Why go on with this party, papa? I am sure I am ready to give it up if it will be any relief to you."

The heart of this strong, confident man of the world was sore and lonely. For perhaps the first time he felt the need of support and sympathy. He drew his beautiful daughter, whom thus far he had scarcely more than admired, down upon his lap and buried his face upon her shoulder. A breath of divine impulse swept aside for a moment the stifling curtains of his sordid life, and he caught a glimpse of the large happy realm of love.

"And would you really give up anything for the sake of your old father?" he asked in a low tone.

"Everything," cried Edith, much moved by the unusual display of affection and feeling on the part of her father.

"The others would not," said he bitterly.

"Indeed, papa, I think they would if they only knew. We would all do anything to see you your old jovial self again. Give up this wretched struggle; tell Mr. Fox to do his worst. I am not afraid of being poor; I am sure we could work up again."

"You know nothing about poverty," sighed her father. "When you are down, the world that bowed at your feet will run over and trample on you. I have seen it so often, but never thought of danger to me and mine."

"But this party," said the practical Edith, "why not give this up? It will cost a great deal."

"By no means give it up," said her father. "It may help me very much. My credit is everything now. The appearance of wealth which such, a display insures will do much to secure the wealth. I am watched day and night, and must show no sign of weakness. Go on with the party and make it as brilliant as possible. If I fail, two or three thousand will make no difference, and it may help me to succeed. Whatever strengthens my credit for the next few days is everything to me. My stock is rising, only it is too slow. Things look better--if I could only gain time. But I am very uneasy--my head troubles me," and he put his hand to his head, and Edith remembered how often, she had seen him do that of late.

"By the way," said he, abruptly, "tell me how you get on with Mr. Fox."

"Oh, never mind about that now; do rest a little, mind and body."

"No, tell me," said her father sharply, showing how little control he had over himself.

"Well, I think I have beaten him so far. He is very demonstrative, and acts as if I belonged to him. Did I not manage to always meet him in company with others, he would come at once to an open declaration. As it is, I cannot prevent it much longer. He is coming this evening, and I fear he will press matters. He seems to think that the asking is a mere form, and that our extremity will leave no choice."

"You must avoid him a little longer. Come, we will go to the theatre, and then you might be sick for a few days."

In a few minutes they were off, and were scarcely well away when Mr. Fox, dressed in more style than he could carry gracefully, appeared.

"Miss Edith am out," said Hannibal loftily.

"I half believe you lie," muttered Mr. Fox, looking very black.

"Sarch de house, sah. It am a berry gentlemanly proceeding."

"Where has she gone? and whom did she go with?"

"I hab no orders to say," said Hannibal, looking fixedly at the ceiling of the vestibule.

The knightly suitor turned on his heel, muttering, "They are playing me false."

'Twas a pity, and he so true.

The next day Edith was sick and Mr. Allen's stock was rising. Hannibal again sent Mr. Fox baffled away, but with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

On the following morning Mr. Allen found a note on his desk. His face grew livid as he read it, and he often put his hand to his head. He sat down and wrote to this effect, however:

"I am arranging the partnership matter as rapidly as possible. In regard to my daughter you will ruin all if you show no more discretion. I cannot compel her to marry you. You may make it impossible to influence her in your favor. You have been well received. What more can you ask? A matter of this kind must be arranged delicately."

Mr. Fox pondered over this with a peculiarly foxy expression. "It sounds plausible. If I only thought he was true," soliloquized this embodiment of truth.

Mr. Allen's stock was higher, and Mr. Fox watched the rise grimly, but he saw Edith, who was all smiles and graciousness, and gave him a verbal invitation to her birthday-party which was to take place early in the following week.

The fellow had not a little vanity, and was insnared, his suspicions quieted for the time. Valuing money himself supremely, it seemed most rational that father and daughter should regard him as the most eligible young man in the city.

Edith's friends, and Gus in particular, were rather astonished at the new-comer. Laura was frigid and remonstrant, Zell and Mr. Van Dam satirical, but Edith wilfully tossed her head and said he was clever and well off, and she liked him well enough to talk to him a little. Society had made her a good actress. Meanwhile on the Tuesday following (and this was Friday) the long expected party would take place.

CHAPTER VI

THE WRECK

On Saturday Mr. Allen's stock was rising, and he ventured to sell a little in a quiet way. If he "unloaded" rapidly and openly, he would break down the market.

Mr. Fox watched events uneasily. Mr. Goulden grew genial and more pronounced in his attentions. Gus, on Saturday, showed almost as much solicitude for a decisively favorable answer as did Mr. Fox, if the language of his eyes meant anything; but Edith played him and Mr. Fox off against each other so adroitly that they were learning to hate each other as cordially as they agreed in admiring her. Though she inclined in her favor to Mr. Fox, he was suspicious from nature, and annoyed at never being able to see her alone.

As before, they were at cards together in the library, and Edith went for a moment into the parlor to get something. With the excuse of obtaining it for her, Mr. Fox followed, and the moment they were alone he seized her hand and pressed a kiss upon it. An angry flush came into her face, but by a great effort she so far controlled herself as to put her finger to her lips and point to the library, as if her chief anxiety was that the attention of its occupants should not be excited. Mr. Fox was delighted, though the angry flush was a little puzzling. But if Edith permitted that she would permit more, and if her only shrinking was lest others should see and know at present, that could soon be overcome. These thoughts passed through his mind while the incensed girl hastily obtained what she wished. But she, feeling that her cheeks were too hot to return immediately to the critical eyes in the library, passed out through the front parlor, that she might have time to be herself again when she appeared. On what little links destiny sometimes hangs!

That which changed all her future and that of others--that involving life and death--occurred in the half moment occupied in her passing out of the front parlor. The consequences she would feel most keenly, terribly indeed at times, though she might never guess the cause. Her act was a simple, natural one under the circumstances, and yet it told Mr. Fox, in his cat-like watchfulness, that with all his cunning he was being made a fool of. The moment Edith had passed around the sliding door and thought herself unobserved, an expression of intense disgust came out upon her expressive face, and with her lace handkerchief she rubbed the hand he had kissed, as if removing the slime of a reptile; and the large mirror at the further end of the room had faithfully reflected the suggestive little pantomime. He saw and understood all in a flash.

No words could have so plainly told her feeling toward him, and he was one of those reptiles that could sting remorselessly in revenge. The nature of the imposition practiced upon him, and the fact that it was partially successful and might have been wholly so, cut him in the sorest spot. He who thought himself able to cope with the shrewdest and most artful had been overreached by a girl, and he saw at that moment that her purpose to beguile him long enough for Mr. Allen to extricate himself from his difficulties might have been successful. He had had before an uneasy consciousness that he ought to act decisively, and now he knew it.

"I'm a fool--a cursed fool," he muttered, speaking the truth for once, "but it's not too late yet."

His resolution was taken instantly, but when Edith appeared after a moment in the library, smiling and affable again, lie seemed in good spirits also, but there was a steely, serpent-like glitter in his eyes, that made him more repulsive than ever. But he stayed as late as the others, knowing that it might be his last evening at the Allens'. For Edith had said as part of her plan for avoiding Mr. Fox:

"We shall be too busy to see any company till Tuesday evening, and then we hope to see you all."

Her sisters had assented, expecting that it would be the case.

With a refinement of malice, Mr. Fox sought to give general annoyance, by a polite insolence toward the others, which they with difficulty ignored, and a lover-like gallantry toward Edith, which was like nettles to Gus, and nauseating to her; but she did not dare resent it. He could at least torment her a little longer.

At last all were gone, and her father coming in from his club said, drawing her aside:

"All right yet?"

"Yes, but I hope the ordeal will be over soon, or I shall die with disgust, or, like some I have read of in fairy stories, be killed by a poisonous breath."

"Keep it up a little longer, that is a good, brave girl. I think that by another week we shall be able to defy him," said her father in cheerful tones. "If my stock rises as much in the next few days as of late, I shall soon be on _terra firma_."

If he had known that the mine beneath his feet was loaded, and the fuse fired, his full face would have become as pale as it was florid with wine and the dissipation of the evening.

Monday morning came--all seemed quiet. His stock was rising so rapidly that he determined to hold on a little longer.

Goulden met and congratulated him, saying that he had bought a little himself, and would take more if Mr. Allen would sell, as now he was easier in funds than when spoken to before on the subject.

Mr. Allen replied rather coldly that he would not sell any stock that day.

Mr. Fox kept out of the way, and quietly attended to his routine as usual, but there was a sardonic smile on his face, as if he were gloating over some secret evil.

Tuesday, the long-expected day that the Allens believed would make one of the most brilliant epochs in their history, dawned in appropriate brightness. The sun dissipated the few opposing clouds and declined in undimmed splendor, and Edith, who alone had fears and forebodings, took the day as an omen that the storm had passed, and that better days than ever were coming.

Invitations by the hundred, with imposing monogram and coat-of-arms, had gone out, and acceptances had flowed back in full current. All that lavish expenditure could secure in one of the most luxurious social centres of the world had been obtained without stint to make the entertainment perfect.

But one knew that it might become like Belshazzar's feast.

The avalanche often hangs over the Alpine passes so that a loud word will bring it whirling down upon the hapless traveller. The avalanche of ruin, impending over Mr. Allen, was so delicately poised that a whisper could precipitate its crushing weight, and that whisper had been spoken.

All the morning of Tuesday his stock was rising, and he resolved that on the morning after the party he would commence selling rapidly, and, so far from being bankrupt, he would realize much of the profit that he had expected.

But a rumor was floating through the afternoon papers that a well-known merchant, eminent in financial and social circles, had been detected in violating the revenue laws, and that the losses which such violation would involve to him would be immense. The stock market, more sensitive than a belle's vanity, paused to see what it meant. One of Mr. Allen's partners of the cloth house brought a paper to him. He grew pale as he read it, put his hand suddenly to his head, but after a moment seemingly found his voice and said:

"Could Fox have been so dastardly?"

His partner shrugged his shoulder as much as to say, "Fox could do anything in that line."

Mr. Allen sent for Fox, but he could not be found. In the meantime the stock market closed and the rise of his stock was evidently checked for the moment.

By reason of the party, Mr. Allen had to return uptown, but he arranged with his partner to remain and if anything new developed to send word by special messenger.

By eight o'clock the Allen mansion on Fifth Avenue was all aglow with light. By nine, carriages began to roll up to the awning that stretched from the heavy arched doorway across the sidewalk, and ladies that would soon glide through the spacious rooms in elegant drapery, now seemed misshapen bundles in their wrapping, and gathered up dresses as they hurried out of the publicity of the street. The dressing-rooms where the spheroidal bundles were undergoing metamorphose became buzzing centres of life.

Before the long pier glasses there was a marshalling of every charm, real or borrowed (more correctly bought), in view of the hoped-for conquests of the evening, and it would seem that not a few went on the military maxim that success is often secured by putting on as bold a front, and making as great and startling display, as possible. But as fragrant, modest flowers usually bloom in the garden with gaudy, scentless ones, so those inclined to be _bizarre_ made an excellent foil for the refined and elegant, and thus had their uses. There is little in the world that is not of value, looking at it from some point of view.

In another apartment the opposing forces, if we may so style them, were almost as eagerly investing themselves in--shall we say charms also? or rather with the attributes of manhood? At any rate the glasses seem quite as anxiously consulted in that room as in the other. One might almost imagine them the magic mirrors of prophecy in which anxious eyes caught a glimpse of coming fate. There were certain youthful belles and beaux who turned away with open complacent smiles, vanity whispering plainly to them of noble achievement in the parlors below. There were others, perhaps not young, who turned away with faces composed in the rigid and habitual lines of pride. They were past learning anything from the mirror, or from any other source that might reflect disparagingly upon them. Prejudice in their own favor surrounded their minds as with a Chinese wall. Conceit had become a disease with them, and those faculties that might have let in wholesome, though unwelcome, truth were paralyzed.

But the majority turned away not quite satisfied--with an inward foreboding that all was not as well as it might be--that critical eyes would see ground for criticism. Especially was this true of those whom Time's interfering fingers had pulled somewhat awry, even beyond the remedy of art, and of those whose bank account, jewels, silks, etc., were not quite up to the standard of some others who might jostle them in the crush. Realize, my reader, the anguish of a lady compelled to stand by another lady wearing larger diamonds than her own, or more point lace, or a longer train. What _will_ the world think, as under the chandelier this painful contrast comes out? Such moments of deep humiliation cause sleepless nights, and the next day result in bills that become as crushing as criminal indictments to poor overworked men. Under the impulse of such trying scenes as these, many a matron has gone forth on Broadway with firm lips and eyes in which glowed inexorable purpose, and placed the gems that would be mill-stones about her husband's neck on the fat arms or fingers that might have helped him forward. There are many phases of heroism, but if you want your breath quite taken away, go to Tiffany's, and see some large-souled woman, who will not even count the cost or realize the dire consequences--see her, like some martyr of the past, who would show to the world the object of his faith though the heavens fell, march to the counter, select the costliest, and say in tones of majesty:

"Send the bill to my husband!"

Oh, acme of faith! The martyrs knew that the Almighty was equal to the occasion. She knows that her husband is not; yet she trusts, or, what is the same thing here, gets trusted. Men allied to such women are soon lifted up to--attics. It is still true that great deeds bring humanity nearer heaven!

Therefore, my reader, deem it not trivial that I have paused so long over the Allens' party. It is philosophical to trace great events and phenomenal human action to their hidden causes.

There were also diffident men and maidens who descended into the social arena of Mrs. Allen's parlors, as awkward swimmers venture into deep water, but this is fleeting experience in fashionable life. And we sincerely hope that some believed that the old divine paradox, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," is as true in the drawing-room as when the contribution-box goes round, and proposed to enjoy themselves by contributing to the enjoyment of others, and to see nothing that would tempt to heroic conduct at Tiffany's the next day.

When the last finishing touches had been given, and maids and hairdressers stood around in rapt politic breathlessness, and were beginning to pass into that stage in which they might be regarded as exclamation points, Mrs. Allen and her daughters swept away to take their places at the head of the parlors in order to receive. They liked the prelude of applause upstairs well enough, but then it was only like the tuning of the instruments before the orchestra fairly opens.

Mrs. Allen, as she majestically took her position, evidently belonged to that class whom pride petrifies. Her self-complacency on such an occasion was habitual, her coolness and repose those of a veteran. A nervous creature upstairs with her family, excitement made her, under the eye of society, so steady and self-controlled that she was like one of the old French marshals who could plan a campaign under the hottest fire. Her blue eyes grew quite brilliant and seemed to take in everything. Some natural color shone where the cosmetics permitted, and her form seemed to dilate with something more than the mysteries of French modistes. Her manner and expression said:

"I am Mrs. Allen. We are of an old New York family. We are very, very rich. This entertainment is immensely expensive and perfect in kind. I defy criticism. I expect applause."

Of course this was all veiled by society's completest polish; but still by a close observer it could be seen, just as a skilful sculptor drapes a form, but leaves its outlines perfect.

Laura was the echo of her mother, modified by the element of youth.

Zell fairly blazed. What with sparkling jewelry, flaming cheeks, flashing eyes, and words thrown off like scintillating sparks, she suggested an exquisite July firework, burning longer than usual and surprising every one. Admiration followed her like a torrent, and her vanity dilated without measure as attention and compliments were almost forced upon her, and yet it was frank, good-natured vanity, as naturally to be expected in her case as a throng of gaudy poppies where a handful of seed had been dropped. Zell's nature was a soil where good or bad seed would grow vigorously.

Mr. Van Dam was never far off, and watched her with intent, gloating eyes, saying in self-congratulation:

"What a delicious morsel she will make!" and adding his mite to the general chorus of flattery by mild assertions like the following:

"Do you know that there is not a lady present that for a moment can compare with you?"

"How delightfully frank he is!" thought Zell of her distinguished admirer, who was as open as a quicksand that can swallow up anything and leave not a trace on its surface. Edith was quite as beautiful as Zell, but far less brilliant and pronounced. Though quiet and graceful, she was not stately like Laura. Her full dark eyes were lustrous rather than sparkling, and they dwelt shrewdly and comprehendingly on all that was passing, and conveyed their intelligence to a brain that was judging quite accurately of men and things at a time when so many people "lose their heads."

Zell was intoxicated by the incense she received. Laura offered herself so much that she was enshrouded in a thick cloud of complacency all the time. Edith was told by the eyes and manner of those around her that she was beautiful and highly favored by wealth and position generally. But she knew this, as a matter of fact, before, and did not mean to make a fool of herself on account of it. These points thoroughly settled and quietly realized, she was in a condition to go out of herself and enjoy all that was going on.

She was specially elated at this time also, as she had gathered from her father's words that his danger was nearly over and that before the week was out they could defy Mr. Fox, look forward to Europe and bright voyaging generally.

Mr. Allen did not tell her his terrible fear that Mr. Fox had been a little too prompt, and that crushing disaster might still be impending. He had said to himself, "Let her and all of them make the most of this evening. It may be the last of the kind that they will enjoy."

The spacious parlors filled rapidly. If lavish expenditure and a large brilliant attendance could insure their enjoyment, it was not wanting. Flowers in fanciful baskets on the tables and in great banks on the mantels and in the fireplaces deservedly attracted much attention and praise, though the sum expended on their transient beauty was appalling. Their delicious fragrance mingling with perfumes of artificial origin suggested a like intermingling of the more delicate, subtile, but genuine manifestations of character, and the graces of mind and manner borrowed for the occasion.

The scene was very brilliant. There were marvellous toilets--dresses not beginning as promptly as they should, perhaps, but seemingly seeking to make up for this deficiency by elegance and costliness, having once commenced. There was no economy in the train, if there had been in the waist. Therefore gleaming shoulders, glittering diamonds, the soft radiance of pearls, the sheen of gold, and lustrous eyes aglow with excitement, and later in the evening, with wine, gave a general phosphorescent effect to the parlors that Mrs. Allen recognized, from long experience, as the sparkling crown of success. So much elegance on the part of the ladies present would make the party the gem of the season, and the gentlemen in dark dress made a good black enamel setting.

There was a confused rustle of silks and a hum of voices, and now and then a silvery laugh would ring out above these like the trill of a bird in a breezy grove. Later, light airy music floated through the rooms, followed by the rhythmic cadence of feet. A thinly clad shivering little match-girl stopped on her weary tramp to her cellar and caught glimpses of the scene through the oft-opening door and between the curtains of the windows. It seemed to her that those glancing forms were in heaven. Alas for this earthly paradise!

Mr. Fox, with characteristic malice, had managed that Mr. Allen and perhaps the family should have, as his contribution to the entertainment, the sickening dread which the news in the afternoon papers would occasion. As the evening advanced he determined to accept the invitation and watch the effect. He avoided Mr. Allen, and soon gathered that Edith and the rest knew nothing of the impending blow. Edith smiled graciously on him; she felt that, like the sun, she could shine on all that night. But as, in his insolence, his attentions grew marked, she soon shook him off by permitting Gus Elliot to claim her for a waltz.

Mr. Fox glided around, Mephistopheles-like, gloating on the sinister changes that he would soon occasion. He was to succeed even better than he dreamed.

The evening went forward with music and dancing, discussing, disparaging, flirting, and skirmishing, culminating in numbers and brilliancy as some gorgeous flower might expand; and seemingly it would have ended by the gay company's rustling departure like the flower, as the varied colored petals drop away from the stem, had not an event occurred which was like a rude hand plucking the flower in its fullest bloom and tearing the petals away in mass.

The magnificent supper had just been demolished. Champagne had foamed without stint, cause and symbol of the increasing but transient excitement of the occasion. More potent wines and liquors, suggestive of the stronger and deeper passions that were swaying the mingled throng, had done their work, and all, save the utterly _blase_, had secured that noble elevation which it is the province of these grand social combinations to create. Even Mr. Allen regained his habitual confidence and elevation as his waist-coat expanded under, or rather over, those means of cheer and consolation which he had so long regarded as the best panacea for earthly ills. The oppressive sense of danger gave place to a consciousness of the warm, rosy present. Mr. Fox and the custom-house seemed but the ugly phantoms of a past dream. Was he not the rich Mr. Allen, the owner of this magnificent mansion, the cornerstone of this superb entertainment? If by reason of wine he saw a little double, he only saw double homage on every side. He heard in men's tones, and saw in woman's glances, that any one who could pay for his surroundings that night was no ordinary person. His wife looked majestic as she swept through the parlors on the arm of one of his most distinguished fellow-citizens. Through the library door he could see Mr. Goulden leaning toward Laura and saying something that made even her pale face quite peony-like. Edith, exquisite as a moss-rose, was about to lead off in the German in the large front parlor. Zell was near him, the sparkling centre of a breezy, merry little throng that had gathered round her. It seemed that all that he loved and valued most was grouped around him in the guise most attractive to his worldly eyes. In this moment of unnatural elation hope whispered, "To-morrow you can sell your stock, and, instead of failing, increase your vast fortune, and then away to new scenes, new pleasures, free from the burden of care and fear." It was at that moment of false confidence and pride, when in suggestive words descriptive of the ancient tragedy of Belshazzar he "had drank wine and praised the gods of gold and of silver" which he had so long worshipped, and which had secured to him all that so dilated his soul with exultation, that he saw the handwriting, not of shadowy fingers "upon the wall," but of his partner, sent, as agreed, by a special messenger. With revulsion and chill of fear he tore open the envelope and read:

"Pox has done his worst. We are out for a million--All will be in the morning papers."

Even his florid, wine-inflamed cheeks grew pale, and he raised his hand tremblingly to his head, and slowly lifted his eyes like a man who dreads seeing something, but is impelled to look. The first object they rested on was the sardonic, mocking face of Mr. Fox, who, ever on the alert, had seen the messenger enter, and guessed his errand. The moment Mr. Allen saw this hated visage, a sudden fury took possession of him. He crushed the missive in his clenched fist, and took a hasty stride of wrath toward his tormentor, stopped, put his hand again to his head, a film came over his eyes, he reeled a second, and then fell like a stone to the floor. The heavy thud of the fall, the clash of the chandelier overhead, could be heard throughout the rooms above the music and hum of voices, and all were startled. Edith in the very act of leading off in the dance stood a second like an exquisite statue of awed expectancy, and then Zell's shriek of fear and agony, "Father!" brought her to the spot, and with wild, frightened eyes, and blanched faces, the two girls knelt above the unconscious man, while the startled guests gathered round in helpless curiosity.

The usual paralysis following sudden accident was brief on this occasion, for there were two skilful physicians present, one of them having long been the family attendant. Mrs. Allen and Laura, in a half-hysterical state, stood clinging to each other, supported by Mr. Goulden, as the medical gentlemen made a slight examination and applied restoratives. After a moment they lifted their heads and looked gravely and significantly at each other; then the family adviser said:

"Mr. Allen had better be carried at once to his room, and the house become quiet."

An injudicious guest asked in a loud whisper, "Is it apoplexy?"

Mrs. Allen caught the word, and with a stifled cry fainted dead away, and was borne to her apartment in an unconscious state. Laura, who had inherited Mrs. Allen's nervous nature, was also conveyed to her room, laughing and crying in turns beyond control. Zell still knelt over her father, sobbing passionately, while Edith, with her large eyes dilated with fear, and her cheeks in wan contrast with the sunset glow they had worn all the evening, maintained her presence of mind, and asked Mr. Goulden, Mr. Van Dam, and Gus Elliot, to carry her father to his room. They, much pleased in thus being singled out as special friends of the family, officiously obeyed.

Poor Mr. Allen was borne away from the pinnacle of his imaginary triumph as if dead, Zell following, wringing her hands, and with streaming eyes; but Edith reminded one of some wild, timid creature of the woods, which, though in an extremity of danger and fear, is alert and watchful, as if looking for some avenue of escape. Her searching eyes turned almost constantly toward the family physician, and he as persistently avoided meeting them.

CHAPTER VII

AMONG THE BREAKERS

After another brief but fuller examination of Mr. Allen in the privacy of his own room, Dr. Mark went down to the parlors. The guests were gathered in little groups, talking in low, excited whispers; those who had seen the reading of the note and Mr. Allen's strange action gaining brief eminence by their repeated statements of what they had witnessed and their varied surmises. The role of commentator, if mysterious human action be the text, is always popular, and as this explanatory class are proverbially gifted in conjecture, there were many theories of explanation. Some of the guests had already the good taste to prepare for departure, and when Dr. Mark appeared from the sick room, and said:

"Mr. Allen and the family will be unable to appear again this evening. I am under the painful necessity of saying that this occasion, which opened so brilliantly, must now come to a sad and sudden end. I will convey your adieux and expressions of sympathy to the family"--there was a general move to the dressing-rooms. The doctor was overwhelmed for a moment with expressions of sympathy, that in the main were felt, and well questioned by eager and genuine curiosity, for Fox had dropped some mysterious hints during the evening, which had been quietly circulating. But Dr. Mark was professionally non-committal, and soon excused himself that he might attend to his patient.

The house, that seemingly a moment before was ablaze with light and resounding with fashionable revelry, suddenly became still, and grew darker and darker, as if the shadowing wings of the dreaded angel were drawing very near. In the large, elegant rooms, where so short a time before gems and eyes had vied in brightness, old Hannibal now walked alone with silent tread and a peculiarly awed and solemn visage. One by one he extinguished the lights, leaving but faint glimmers here and there, that were like a few forlorn hopes struggling against the increasing darkness of disaster. Under his breath he kept repeating fervently, "De Lord hab mercy," and this, perhaps, was the only intelligent prayer that went up from the stricken household in this hour of sudden danger and alarm. Though we believe the Divine Father sees the dumb agony of His creatures, and pities them, and often when they, like the drowning, are grasping at straws of human help and cheer, puts out His strong hand and holds them up; still it is in accordance with His just law that those who seek and value His friendship find it and possess it in adversity. The height of the storm is a poor time and the middle of the angry Atlantic a poor place in which to provide life-boats.

The Allens had never looked to Heaven, save as a matter of form. They had a pew in a fashionable church, but did not very regularly occupy it, and such attendance had done scarcely anything to awaken or quicken their spiritual life. They came home and gossiped about the appearance of their "set," and perhaps criticised the music, but one would never have dreamed from manner or conversation that they had gone to a sacred place to worship God in humility. Indeed, scarcely a thought of Him seemed to have dwelt in their minds. Religious faith had never been of any practical help, and now in their extremity it seemed utterly intangible, and in no sense to be depended on.

When Mrs. Allen recovered from her swoon, and Laura had gained some self-control, they sent for Dr. Mark, and eagerly suggested both their hope and fear.

"It's only a fainting fit, doctor, is it not? Will he not soon be better?"

"My dear madam, we will do all we can," said the doctor, with that professional solemnity which might accompany the reading of a death warrant, "but it is my painful duty to tell you to prepare for the worst. Your husband has an attack of apoplexy."

He had scarcely uttered the words before she was again in a swoon, and Laura also lost her transient quietness. Leaving his assistant and Mrs. Allen's maid to take care of them, he went back to his graver charge.

Mr. Allen lay insensible on his bed, and one could hardly realize that he was a dying man. His face was as flushed and full as it often appeared on his return from his club. To the girls' unpracticed ears, his loud, stentorous breathing only indicated heavy sleep. But neither they nor the doctor could arouse him, and at last the physician met Edith's questioning eyes, and gravely and significantly shook his head. Though she had borne up so steadily and quietly, he felt more for her than for any of the others.

"Oh, doctor! can't you save him?" she pleaded.

"You must save him," cried Zell, her eyes flashing through her tears, "I would be ashamed, if I were a physician, to stand over a strong man, and say helplessly, 'I can do nothing.' Is this all your boasted skill amounts to? Either do something at once or let us get some one who will."

"Your feelings to-night, Miss Zell," said the doctor quietly, "will excuse anything you say, however wild and irrational. I am doing all--"

"I am not wild or unreasonable," cried Zell. "I only demand that my father's life be saved." Then starting up she threw off a shawl and stood before Dr. Mark in the dress she had worn in the evening, that seemed a sad mockery in that room of death. Her neck and arms were bare, and even the cool, experienced physician was startled by her wonderful beauty and strange manner. Her white throat was convulsed, her bosom heaved tumultuously, and on her face was the expression that might have rested on the face of a maiden like herself centuries before, when shown the rack and dungeon, and told to choose between her faith and her life.

But after a moment she extended her white rounded arm toward him and said steadily:

"I have read that if the blood of a young, vigorous person is infused into another who is feeble and old, it will give renewed strength and health. Open a vein in my arm. Save his life if you take mine."

"You are a brave, noble girl," said Dr. Mark, with much emotion, taking the extended hand and pressing it tenderly, "but you are asking what is impossible in this case. Do you not remember that I am an old friend of your father's? It grieves me to the heart that his attack is so severe that I fear all within the reach of human skill is vain."

Zell, who was a creature of impulse, and often of noblest impulse, as we have seen, now reacted into a passion of weeping, and sank helplessly on the floor. She was capable of heroic action, but she had no strength for woman's lot, which is so often that of patient endurance.

Edith came and put her arms around her, and with gentle, soothing words, as if speaking to a child, half carried her to her room, where she at last sobbed herself asleep.

For another hour Edith and the doctor watched alone, and the dying man sank rapidly, going down into the darkness of death without word or sign.

"Oh that he would speak once more!" moaned Edith.

"I fear he will not, my dear," said the doctor, pitifully.

A little later Mr. Allen was motionless, like one who has been touched in unquiet sleep and becomes still. Death had touched him, and a deeper sleep had fallen upon him.

One of the great daily bulletins will go to press in an hour. A reporter jumps into a waiting hack and is driven rapidly uptown.

While the city sleeps preparations must go on in the markets for breakfast, and in printing rooms for that equal necessity in our day, the latest news. Therefore all night long there are dusky figures flitting hither and thither, seeing to it that when we come down in gown and slippers, our steak and the world's gossip be ready.

The breakfast of the Gothamites was furnished abundantly with _sauce piquante_ on the morning of the last day of February, for Hannibal had shaken his head ominously, and wiped away a few honest tears, before he could tremulously say to the eager reporter:

"Mr. Allen--hab--just--died."

Gathering what few particulars he could, and imagining many more, the reporter was driven back even more rapidly, full of the elation of a man who has found a good thing and means to make the most of it. Mr. Allen himself was not of importance to him, but news about him was. And this fact crowning the story of his violation of the revenue law and his prospective loss of a million, would make a brisk breeze in the paper to which he was attached, and might waft him a little further on as an enterprising news-gatherer.

It certainly would be the topic of the day on all lips, and poor Mr. Allen might have plumed himself on this if he had known it, for few people, unless they commit a crime, are of sufficient importance to be talked of all day In large, busy New York. In the world's eyes Mr. Allen had committed a crime. Not that they regarded his stock gambling as such. Multitudes of church members in good and regular standing were openly engaged in this. Nor could the slight and unintentional violation of the revenue law be regarded as such, though so grave in its consequences. But he had faltered and died when he should not have given way. What the world demands is success: and sometimes a devil may secure this where a true man cannot. The world regarded Mr. Van Dam and Mr. Goulden as very successful men.

Mr. Fox also had secured success by one adroit wriggle--we can describe his mode of achieving greatness by no better phrase. He was destined to receive half a million for his treachery to his employers. During the war, when United States securities were at their worst; when men, pledged to take them, forfeited money rather than do so, Mr. Allen had lent the government millions, because he believed in it, loved it, and was resolved to sustain it. That same government now rewards him by putting it in the power of a dishonest clerk to ruin him, and gives him $500,000 for doing so. Thus it resulted; for we are compelled to pass hastily over the events immediately following Mr. Allen's death. His partners made a good fight, showed that there was no intention to violate the law, and that it was often difficult to comply with it literally--that the sum claimed to be lost to the government was ridiculously disproportionate to the amount confiscated. But it was all in vain. There was the letter of the law, and there were Mr. Fox and his associates in the custom-house, "all honorable men," with hands itching to clutch the plunder.

But before this question was settled the fate of the stock operation in Wall Street was most effectually disposed of. As soon as Mr. Goulden heard of Mr. Allen's death, he sold at a slight loss all he had; but his action awakened suspicion, and it was speedily learned that the rise was due mainly to Mr. Allen's strong pushing, and the inevitable results followed. As poor Mr. Allen's remains were lowered into the vault, his stock in Wall Street was also going down with a run.

In brief, in the absence of the master's hand, and by reason of his embarrassments, there were general wreck and ruin in his affairs; and Mrs. Allen was soon compelled to face the fact, even more awful to her than her husband's death, that not a penny remained of his colossal fortune, and that she had yawningly signed away all of her own means. But she could only wring her hands in view of these blighting truths, and indulge in half-uttered complaints against her husband's "folly," as she termed it. From the first her grief had been more emotional than deep, and her mind, recovering in part its usual poise, had begun to be much occupied with preparations for a grand funeral, which was carried out to her taste. Then arose deeply interesting questions as to various styles of mourning costume, and an exciting vista of dressmaking opened before her. She was growing into quite a serene and hopeful frame when the miserable and blighting facts all broke upon her. When there was little of seeming necessity to do, and there were multitudes to do for her, Mrs. Allen's nerves permitted no small degree of activity. But now, as it became certain that she and her daughters must do all themselves, her hands grew helpless. The idea of being poor was to her like dying. It was entering on an experience so utterly foreign and unknown that it seemed like going to another world and phase of existence, and she shrank in pitiable dread from it.

Laura had all her mother's helpless shrinking from poverty, but with another and even bitterer ingredient added. Mr. Goulden was extremely polite, exquisitely sympathetic, and in terms as vague as elegantly expressed had offered to do anything (but nothing in particular) in his power to show his regard for the family and his esteem for his departed friend. He was very sorry that business would compel him to leave town for some little time--

Laura had the spirit to interrupt him saying, "It matters little, sir. There are no further Wall Street operations to be carried on here. Invest your time and friendship where it will pay."

Mr. Goulden, who plumed himself that he would slip out of this bad matrimonial speculation with such polished skill that he would leave only flattering regret and sighs behind, under the biting satire of Laura's words suddenly saw what a contemptible creature is the man whom selfish policy, rather than honor and principle, governs. He had brains enough to comprehend himself and lose his self-respect then and there, as he went away tingling with shame from the girl whom he had wronged, but who had detected his sordid meanness. Sigh after him! She would ever despise him, and that hurt Mr. Goulden's vanity severely. He had come very near loving Laura Allen, about as near perhaps as he ever would come to loving any one, and it had cost him a little more to give her up than to choose between a good and a bad venture on the Street. With compressed lips he had said to himself--"No gushing sentiment. In carrying out your purpose to be rich you must marry wealth." Therefore he had gone to make what he meant to be his final call, feeling quite heroic in his steadfastness--his loyalty to purpose, that is, himself. But as he recalled during his homeward walk her glad welcome, her wistful, pleading looks, and then, as she realized the truth, her pain, her contempt, and her meaning words of scorn, his miserable egotism was swept aside, and for the first time the selfish man saw the question from her standpoint, and as we have said he was not so shallow but that he saw and loathed himself. He lost his self-respect as he never had done before, and therefore to a certain extent his power ever to be happy again.

Small men, full of petty conceit, can recover from any wounds upon their vanity, but proud and large-minded men have a self-respect, even though based upon questionable foundation. It is essential to them, and losing it they are inwardly wretched. As soldiers carry the painful scars of some wounds through life, so Mr. Goulden would find that Laura's words had left a sore place while memory lasted.

Mr. Van Dam quite disarmed Edith's suspicions and prejudices by being more friendly and intimate with Zell than ever, and the latter was happy and exultant in the fact, saying, with much elation, that her friend was "not a mercenary wretch, like Mr. Goulden, but remained just as true and kind as ever."

It was evident that this attention and show of kindness to the warm-hearted girl made a deep impression and greatly increased Mr. Van Dam's power over her. But Edith's suspicion and dislike began to return as she saw more of the manner and spirit of the man. She instinctively felt that he was bad and designing.

One day she quite incensed Zell, who was chanting his praises, by saying:

"I haven't any faith in him. What has he done to show real friendship for us? He comes here only to amuse himself with you; Gus Elliot is the only one who has been of any help."

But Edith had her misgivings about Gus also. Now, in her trouble and poverty, his weakness began to reveal itself in a new and repulsive light. In fact, that exquisitely fine young gentleman loved Edith well enough to marry her, but not to work for her. That was a sacrifice that he could not make for any woman. Though out of his natural kindness and good-nature he felt very sorry for her, and wanted to help and pet her, he had been shown his danger so clearly that he was constrained and awkward when with her, for, to tell the truth, his father had taken him aside and said:

"Look here, Gus. See to it that you don't entangle yourself with Miss Allen, now her father has failed. She couldn't support you now, and you never can support even yourself. If you would go to work like a man--but one has got to be a man to do that. It seems true, as your mother says, that you are of too fine clay for common uses. Therefore, don't make a fool of yourself. You can't keep up your style on a pretty face, and you must not wrong the girl by making her think you can take care of her. I tell you plainly, I can't bear another ounce added to my burden, and how long I shall stand up under it as it is, I can't tell."

Gus listened with a sulky, injured air. He felt that his father never appreciated him as did his mother and sisters, and indeed society at large. Society to Gus was the ultra-fashionable world of which he was one of the shining lights. The ladies of the family quite restored his equanimity by saying:

"Now see here, Gus, don't dream of throwing yourself away on Edith Allen. You can marry any girl you please in the city. So, for Heaven's sake" (though what Heaven had to do with their advice it is hard to say), "don't let her lead you on to say what you would wish unsaid. Remember they are no more now than any other poor people, except that they are refined, etc., but this will only make poverty harder for them. Of course we are sorry for them, but in this world people have got to take care of themselves. So we must be on the lookout for some one who has money which can't be sunk in a stock operation as if thrown into the sea."

After all this sound reason, poor, weak Grus, vaguely conscious of his helplessness, as stated by his father, and quite believing his mother's assurance that "he could marry any girl he pleased," was in no mood to urge the penniless Edith to give him her empty hand, while before the party, when he believed it full, he was doing his best to bring her to this point, though in fact she gave him little opportunity.

Edith detected the change, and before very long surmised the cause. It made the young girl curl her lip, and say, in a tone of scorn that would have done Gus good to hear:

"The idea of a _man_ acting in this style."

But she did not care enough about him to receive a wound of any depth, and with a good-natured tolerance recognized his weakness, and his genuine liking for her, and determined to make him useful.

Edith was very practical, and possessed of a brave, resolute nature. She was capable of strong feelings, but Gus Elliot was not the man to awaken such in any woman. She liked his company, and proposed to use him in certain ways. Under her easy manner Gus also became at ease, and, finding that he was not expected to propose and be sentimental, was all the more inclined to be friendly.

"I want you to find me books, and papers also, if there are any, that tell how to raise fruit," she said to him one day.

"What a funny request! I should as soon expect you would ask for instruction how to drive four-in-hand."

"Nothing of that style, henceforth. I must learn something useful now. Only the rich can afford to be good-for-nothing, and we are not rich now."

"For which I am very sorry," said Gus, with some feeling.

"Thank you. Such disinterested sympathy is beautiful," said Edith dryly.

Gus looked a little red and awkward, but hastened to say, "I will hunt up what you wish, and bring it as soon as possible."

"Four are very good. That is all at present," said Edith, in a tone that made Gus feel that it was indeed all that it was in his power to do for her at that time, and he went away with a dim perception that he was scarcely more than her errand boy. It made him very uncomfortable. Though he wished her to understand he could not marry her now, he wished her to sigh a little after him. Gus's vanity rather resented that, instead of pining for him, she should with a little quiet satire set him to work. He had never read a romance that ended so queerly. He had expected that they might have a little tender scene over the inexorable fate that parted them, give and take a memento, gasp, appeal to the moon, and see each other's face no more, she going to the work and poverty that he could never stoop to from the innate refinement and elegance of his being, and he to hunt up the heiress to whom he would give the honor of maintaining him in his true sphere.

But his little melodrama was entirely spoiled by her matter-of-fact way, and what was worse still he felt in her presence as if he did not amount to much, and that she knew it; and yet, like the poor moth that singes its wings around the lamp, he could not keep away.

The prominent trait of Gus's character, as of so many others in our luxurious age of self-pleasing, was weakness; and yet one must be insane with vanity to be at ease if he can do nothing resolutely and dare nothing great. He is a cripple, and, if not a fool, knows it.

During the eventful month that followed Mr. Allen's death, Mrs. Allen and her daughters led what seemed to them a very strange life. While in one sense it was real and intensely painful, in another the experiences were so new and strange that it all seemed an unreal dream, a distressing nightmare of trouble and danger, from which they might awaken to their old life.

Mrs. Allen, from her large circle of acquaintances, had numerous callers, many coming from mere morbid curiosity, more from mingled motives, and not a few from genuine tearful sympathy. To these "her friends," as she emphatically called them, she found a melancholy pleasure in recounting all the recent woes, in which she ever appeared as chief sufferer and chief mourner, though her husband seemed among the minor losses, and thus most of her time was spent daring the last few weeks at her old home. Her friends appeared to find a melancholy pleasure in listening to these details and then in recounting them again to other "friends" with a running commentary of their own, until that little fraction of the feminine world acquainted with the Allens had sighed, surmised, and perhaps gossiped over the "afflicted family" so exhaustively that it was really time for something new. The men and the papers downtown also had their say, and perhaps all tried, as far as human nature would permit, to say nothing but good of the dead and unfortunate.

Laura, after the stinging pain of each successive blow to her happiness, sank into a dreary apathy, and did mechanically the few things Edith asked of her.

Zell lived in varied moods and conditions, now weeping bitterly for her father, again resenting with impotent passion the change in their fortunes, but ending usually by comforting herself with the thought that Mr. Van Dam was true to her. He was as true and faithful as an insidious, incurable disease when once infused into the system. His infernal policy now was to gradually alienate her interest from her family and centre it in him. Though promising nothing in an open, manly way, he adroitly made her believe that only through him, could she now hope to reach brighter days again, and to Zell he seemed the one means of escape from a detested life of poverty and privation. She became more infatuated with him than ever, and cherished a secret resentment against Edith because of her distrust and dislike of him.

The Allens had but few near relatives in the city at this time, and with these they were not on very good terms, nor were they the people to be helpful in adversity. Mr. Allen's partners were men of the world like himself, and they were also incensed that he should have been carrying on private speculations in Wall Street to the extent of risking all his capital. His fatal stock operation, together with the government confiscation, had involved them also in ruin; and they had enough to do to look after themselves. They were far more eager to secure something out of the general wreck than to see that anything remained for the family. The Allens were left very much to themselves in their struggle with disaster, securing help and advice chiefly as they paid for it.

Mr. Allen was accustomed to say that women were incapable of business, and yet here are the ladies of his own household compelled to grapple with the most perplexing forms of business or suffer aggravated losses. Though all of his family were of mature years, and thousands had been spent on their education, they were as helpless as four children in dealing with the practical questions that daily came to them for decision. At first all matters were naturally referred to the widow, but she would only wring her hands and say:

"I don't know anything about these horrid things. Can't I be left alone with my sorrow in peace a few days? Go to Edith."

And to Edith at last all came till the poor girl was almost distracted. It was of no use to go to Laura for advice, for she would only say in dreary apathy:

"Just as you think best. Anything you say."

She was indulging in unrestrained wretchedness to the utmost. Luxurious despair is so much easier than painful perplexing action.

Zell was still "the child" and entirely occupied with Mr. Van Dam. So Edith had to bear the brunt of everything. She did not do this in uncomplaining sweetness, like an angel, but scolded the others soundly for leaving all to her. They whined back that they "couldn't do anything, and didn't know how to do anything."

"You know as much as I do," retorted Edith.

And this was true. Had not Edith possessed a practical resolute nature, that preferred any kind of action to apathetic inaction and futile grieving, she would have been as helpless as the rest.

Do you say then that it was a mere matter of chance that Edith should be superior to the others, and that she deserved no credit, and they no blame? Why should such all-important conditions of character be the mere result of chance and circumstance? Would not Christian education and principle have vastly improved the Edith that existed? Would they not have made the others helpful, self-forgetting, and sympathetic? Why should the world be full of people so deformed, or morally feeble, or so ignorant, as to be helpless? Why should the naturally strong work with only contempt and condemnation for the weak? While many say, "Stand aside, I am holier than thou," perhaps more say, "Stand aside, I am wiser--stronger than thou," and the weak are made more hopelessly discouraged. This helplessness on one hand, and arrogant fault-finding strength on the other, are not the result of chance, but of an imperfect education. They come from the neglect and wrong-doing of those whose province it was to train and educate.

If we find among a family of children reaching maturity one helpless from deformity, and another from feebleness, and are told that the parents, by employing surgical skill, might have removed the deformity, and overcome the weakness by tonic treatment, but had neglected to do so, we should not have much to say about chance. I know of a poor man who spent nearly all that he had in the world to have his boy's leg straightened, and he was called a "good father." What are these physical defects compared with the graver defects of character?

Even though Mr. Allen is dead, we cannot say that he was a good father, though he spent so many thousands on his daughters. We certainly cannot call Mrs. Allen a good mother, and the proof of this is that Laura is feeble and selfish, Zell deformed through lack of self-control, and Edith hard and pitiless in her comparative strength. They were unable to cope with the practical questions of their situation. They had been launched upon the perilous, uncertain voyage of life without the compass of a true faith or the charts of principle to guide them, and they had been provided with no life-boats of knowledge to save them in case of disaster. They are now tossing among the breakers of misfortune, almost utterly the sport of the winds and waves of circumstances. If these girls never reached the shore of happiness and safety, could we wonder?

How would your daughter fare, my reader, if you were gone and she were poor, with her hands and brain to depend on for bread, and her heart culture for happiness? In spite of all your providence and foresight, such may be her situation. Such becomes the condition of many men's daughters every day.

But time and events swept the Allens forward, as the shipwrecked are borne on the crest of a wave, and we must follow their fortunes. Hungry creditors, especially the petty ones uptown, stripped them of everything they could lay their hands on, and they were soon compelled to leave their Fifth Avenue mansion. The little place in the country, given to Edith partly in jest by her father as a birthday present, was now their only refuge, and to this they prepared to go on the first of April. Edith, as usual, took the lead, and was to go in advance of the others with such furniture as they had been able to keep, and prepare for their coming. Old Hannibal, who had grown gray in the service of the family, and now declined to leave it, was to accompany her. On a dark, lowering day, symbolic of their fortunes, some loaded drays took down to the boat that with which they would commence the meagre housekeeping of their poverty. Edith went slowly down the broad steps leading from her elegant home, and before she entered the carriage turned for one lingering, tearful look, such as Eve may have bent upon the gate of Paradise closing behind her, then sprang into the carriage, drew the curtains, and sobbed all the way to the boat. Scarcely once before, during that long, hard month, had she so given way to her feelings. But she was alone now and none could see her tears and call her weak. Hannibal took his seat on the box with the driver, and looked and felt very much as he did when following his master to Greenwood.

CHAPTER VIII

WARPED

It is the early breakfast hour at a small frame house, situated about a mile from the staid but thriving village of Pushton. But the indications around the house do not denote thrift. Quite the reverse. As the neighbors expressed it, "there was a screw loose with Lacey," the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from lack of paint. But as you entered and passed from the province of the master to that of the mistress a new element was apparent, struggling with, but unable to overcome, the predominant tendency to unthrift and seediness. But everything that Mrs. Lacey controlled was as neat as the poor overworked woman could keep it.

At the time our story becomes interested in her fortunes, Mrs. Lacey was a middle-aged woman, but appeared older than her years warranted, from the long-continued strain of incessant toil, and from that which wears much faster still, the depression of an unhappy, ill-mated life. Her face wore the pathetic expression of confirmed discouragement. She reminded one of soldiers fighting when they know that it is of no use, and that defeat will be the only result, but who fight on mechanically, in obedience to orders.

She is now placing a very plain but wholesome and well-prepared breakfast on the table, and it would seem that both the eating and cooking were carried on in the same large living-room. Her daughter, a rosy-cheeked, half-grown girl of fourteen, was assisting her, and both mother and daughter seemed in a nervous state of expectancy, as if hoping and fearing the result of a near event. A moment's glance showed that this event related to a lad of about seventeen, who was walking about the room, vainly trying to control the agitation which is natural even to the cool and experienced when feeling that they are at one of the crises of life.

It could not be expected of Arden Lacey at his age to be cool and experienced. Indeed his light curling hair, blue eyes, and a mobile sensitive mouth, suggested the reverse of a stolid self-poise, or cheerful endurance. Any one accustomed to observe character could see that he was possessed of a nervous, fine-fibred nature capable of noble achievement under right influences, but also easily warped and susceptible to sad injury under brutal wrong. He was like those delicate and somewhat complicated musical instruments that produce the sweetest harmonies when in tune and well played upon, but the most jangling discords when unstrung and in rough, ignorant hands. He had inherited his nervous temperament, his tendency to irritation and excess, from the diseased, over-stimulated system of his father, who was fast becoming a confirmed inebriate, and who had been poisoning himself with bad liquors all his life. From his mother he had obtained what balance he had in temperament, but he owed more to her daily influence and training. It was the one struggle of the poor woman's life to shield her children from the evil consequences of their father's life. For her son she had special anxiety, knowing his sensitive, high-strung nature, and his tendency to go headlong into evil if his self-respect and self-control were once lost. His passionate love for her had been the boy's best trait, and through this she had controlled him thus far. But she had thought that it might be best for him to be away from his father's presence and influence if she could only find something that accorded with his bent. And this eventually proved to be a college education. The boy was of a quick and studious mind. From earliest years he had been fond of books, and as time advanced, the passion for study and reading grew upon him. He had a strong imagination, and his favorite styles of reading were such as appealed to this. In the scenes of history and romance he escaped from the sordid life of toil and shame to which his father condemned him, into a large realm that seemed rich and glorified in contrast. When he was but fourteen the thought of a liberal education fired his ambition and became the dream of his life. He made the very most of the district school to which he was sent in winter. The teacher happened to be a well-educated man, and took pride in his apt, eager scholar. Between the boy's and the mother's savings they had obtained enough to secure private lessons in Latin and Greek, and now at the age of seventeen he was tolerably well prepared for college.

But the father had no sympathy at all with these tastes, and from the incessant labor he required of his son, and the constant interruptions he occasioned in his studies even in winter, he had been a perpetual bar to all progress.

On the day previous to the scene described in the opening of this chapter, the winter term had closed, and Mr. Rule, the teacher, had declared that Arden could enter college, and with natural pride in his own work as instructor, intimated that he would lead his class if he did.

Both mother and son were so elated at this that they determined at once to state the fact to the father, thinking that if he had any of the natural feelings of a parent he would take some pride in his boy, and be willing to help him obtain the education he longed for.

But there is little to be hoped from a man who is completely under the influence of ignorance and rum. Mr. Lacey was the son of a small farmer like himself, and never had anything to recommend him but his fine looks, which had captivated poor Mrs. Lacey to her cost. Unlike the majority of his class, who are fast becoming a very intelligent part of the community, and are glad to educate their children, he boasted that he liked the "old ways," and by these he meant the worst ways of his father's day, when books and schools were scarce, and few newspapers found their way to rural homes. He was, like his father before him, a graduate of the village tavern, and had imbibed bad liquor and his ideas of life at the same time from that objectionable source. With the narrow-mindedness of his class, he had a prejudice against all learning that went beyond the three R's, and had watched with growing disapprobation his son's taste for books, believing that it would spoil him as a farm hand, and make him an idle dreamer. He was less and less inclined to work himself as his frame became diseased and enfeebled from intemperance, and he determined now to get as much work as possible out of that "great hulk of a boy," as he called Arden. He had picked up some hints of the college hopes, and the very thought angered him. He determined that when the boy broached the subject he would give him such a "jawing" (to use his own vernacular) "as would put an end to that nonsense." Therefore both Arden and his mother, who were waiting as we have described in such a perturbed anxious state for his entrance, were doomed to bitter disappointment. At last a heavy red-faced man entered the kitchen, stalking in on the white floor out of the drizzling rain with his muddy boots leaving tracks and blotches in keeping with his character. But he had the grace to wash his grimy hands before sitting down to the table. He was always in a bad humor in the morning, and the chilly rain had not improved it. A glance around showed him that something was on hand, and he surmised that it was the college business. He at once thought within himself:

"I'll squelch the thing now, once for all."

Turning to his son, he said, "Look here, youngster, why hain't you been out doing your chores? D'ye expect me to do your work and mine, too?"

"Father," said the impulsive boy with a voice of trembling eagerness, "if you will let me go to college next fall, I'll do my work and yours too. I'll work night and day--"

"What cussed nonsense is this?" demanded the man harshly, clashing down his knife and fork and turning frowningly toward his son.

"No, but father, listen to me before you refuse. Mr. Rule says I'm fit to enter college and that I can lead my class too. I've been studying for this three years. I've set my heart upon it," and in his earnestness, tears gathered in his eyes.

"The more fool you, and old Rule is another," was the coarse answer.

The boy's eyes flashed angrily, but the mother here spoke.

"You ought to be proud of your son, John; if you were a true father you would be. If you'd encourage and help him now, he'd make a man that--"

"Shut up! little you know about it. He'd make one of your snivelling white-fingered loafers that's too proud to get a living by hard work. Perhaps you'd like to make a parson out of him. Now look here, old woman, and you, too, my young cock, I've suspicioned that something of this kind was up, but I tell you once for all it won't go. Just as this hulk of a boy is gettin' of some use to me, you want to spoil him by sending him to college. I'll see him hanged first," and the man turned to his breakfast as if he had settled it. But he was startled by his son's exclaiming passionately:

"I will go."

"Look here, what do _you_ mean?" said the father, rising with a black ugly look.

"I mean I've set my heart on going to college and I will go. You and all the world shan't hinder me. I won't stay here and be a farm drudge all my life."

The man's face was livid with anger, and in a low, hissing tone he said:

"I guess you want taking down a peg, my college gentleman. Perhaps you don't know I'm master till you're twenty-one," and he reached down a large leather strap.

"You strike me if you dare," shouted the boy.

"If I dare! haw! haw! If I don't cut the cussed nonsense out of yer this morning, then I never did," and he took an angry stride toward his son, who sprang behind the stove.

The wife and mother had stood by growing whiter and whiter, and with lips pressed closely together. At this critical moment she stepped before her infuriated husband and seized his arm, exclaiming:

"John, take care. You have reached the end."

"Stand aside," snarled the man, raising the strap, "or I'll give you a taste of it, too."

The woman's grasp tightened on his arm, and in a voice that made him pause and look fixedly at her, she said:

"If you strike me or that boy I'll take my children and we will leave your roof this hateful day never to return."

"Hain't I to be master in my own house?" said the husband sullenly.

"You are not to be a brute in your own house. I know you've struck me before, but I endured it and said nothing about it because you were drunk, but you are not drunk now, and if you lay a finger on me or my son to-day, I will never darken your doors again."

The unnatural father saw that he had gone too far. He had not expected such an issue. He had long been accustomed to follow the lead of his brutal passions, but had now reached a point where he felt he must stop, as his wife said. Turning on his heel, he sullenly took his place at the table, muttering:

"It's a pretty pass when there's mutiny in a man's own house." Then to his son, "You won't get a d--n cent out of me for your college business, mind that."

Rose, the daughter, who had been crying and wringing her hands on the door-step, now came timidly in, and at a sign from her mother she and her brother went into another room.

The man ate for a while in dogged silence, but at last in a tone that was meant to be somewhat conciliatory said:

"What the devil did you mean by putting the boy up to such foolishness?"

"Hush!" said his wife imperiously, "I'm in no mood to talk with you now."

"Oh, ah, indeed, a man can't even speak in his own house, eh? I guess I'll take myself off to where I can have a little more liberty," and he went out, harnessed his old white horse, and started for his favorite groggery in the village.

His father had no sooner gone than Arden came out and said passionately:

"It's no use, mother, I can't stand it; I must leave home to-day. I guess I can make a living; at any rate I'd rather starve than pass through such scenes."

The poor, overwrought woman threw herself down in a low chair and sobbed, rocking herself back and forth.

"Wait till I die, Arden, wait till I die. I feel it won't be long. What have I to live for but you and Rosy? And if you, my pride and joy, go away after what has happened, it will be worse than death," and a tempest of grief shook her gaunt frame.

Arden was deeply moved. Boylike he had been thinking only of himself, but now as never before he realized her hard lot, and in his warm, impulsive heart there came a yearning tenderness for her such as he had never felt before. He took her in his arms and kissed and comforted her, till even her sore heart felt the healing balm of love and ceased its bitter aching. At last she dried her eyes and said with a faint smile: "With such a boy to pet me, the world isn't all flint and thorns yet."

And Rosy came and kissed her too, for she was an affectionate child, though a little inclined to be giddy and vain.

"Don't worry, mother," said Arden. "I will stay and take such good care of you that you will have many years yet, and happier ones, too, I hope," and he resolved to keep this promise, cost what it might.

"I hardly think I ought to ask it of you, though even the thought of your going away breaks my heart." "I will stay," said the boy, almost as passionately as he had said, "I will go." "I now see how much you need a protector."

That night the father came home so stupidly drunk that they had to half carry him to bed where he slept heavily till morning, and rose considerably shaken and depressed from his debauch. The breakfast was as silent as it had been stormy on the previous day. After it was over, Arden followed his father to the door and said:

"I was a boy yesterday morning, but you made me a man, and a rather ugly one too. I learned then for the first time that you occasionally strike my mother. Don't you ever do it again, or it will be worse for you, drunk or sober. I am not going to college, but will stay at home and take care of her. Do we understand each other?"

The man was in such a low, shattered condition that his son's bearing cowed him, and he walked off muttering:

"Young cocks crow mighty loud," but from that time forward he never offered violence to his wife or children.

Still his father's conduct and character had a most disastrous effect upon the young man. He was soured, because disappointed in his most cherished purpose at an age when most youths scarcely have definite plans. Many have a strong natural bent, and if turned aside from this, they are more or less unhappy, and their duties, instead of being wings to help life forward, become a galling yoke.

This was the case with Arden. Farm work, as he had learned it from his father, was coarse, heavy drudgery, with small and uncertain returns, and these were largely spent at the village rum shops in purchasing slow perdition for the husband, and misery and shame for his wife and children. In respectable Pushton, a drunkard's family, especially if poor, had a very low social status. Mrs. Lacey and her children would not accept of bad associations, so they had scarcely any. This ostracism, within certain limits, is perhaps right. The preventive penalties of vice can scarcely be too great, and men and women must be made to feel that wrong-doing is certain to be followed by terrible consequences. The fire is merciful in that it always burns, and sin and suffering are inseparably linked. But the consequences of one person's sin often blight the innocent. The necessity of this from our various ties should be a motive, a hostage against sinning, and doubtless restrains many a one who would go headlong under evil impulses. But multitudes do slip off the paths of virtue, and helpless wives, and often helpless husbands and children, writhe from wounds made by those under sacred obligations to shield them. Upon the families of criminals, society visits a mildew of coldness and scorn that blights nearly all chance of good fruit. But society is very unjust in its discriminations, and some of the most heinous sins in God's sight are treated as mere eccentricities, or condemned in the poor, but winked at in the rich. Gentlemen will admit to their parlors men about whom they know facts which if true of a woman would close every respectable door against her, and God frowns on the Christian (?) society that makes such arbitrary and unjust distinctions. Cast both out, till they bring forth fruits meet for repentance.

But we hope for little of a reformative tendency from the selfish society of the world. Changing human fashion rules it, rather than the eternal truth of the God of love. The saddest feature of all is that the shifting code of fashion is coming more and more to govern the church. Doctrine may remain the same, profession and intellectual belief the same, while practical action drifts far astray. There are multitudes of wealthy churches, that will no more admit associations with that class among which our Lord lived and worked, than will select society. They seem designed to help only respectable, well-connected sinners, toward heaven.

This tendency has two phases. In the cities the poor are practically excluded from worshipping with the rich, and missions are established for them as if they were heathen. There can be no objection to costly, magnificent churches. Nothing is too good to be the expression of our honor and love of God. But they should be like the cathedrals of Europe, where prince and peasant may bow together on the same level they have in the Divine presence. Christ made no distinction between the rich and poor regarding their spiritual value and need, nor should the Christianity named after Him. To the degree that it does, it is not Christianity. The meek and lowly Nazarene is not its inspiration. Perhaps the personage He told to get behind Him when promising the "kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" has more to do with it.

The second phase of this tendency as seen in the country, is kindred but unlike. Poverty may not be so great a bar, but moral delinquencies are more severely visited, and the family under a cloud, through the wrong-doing of one or more of its members, is treated very much as if it had a perpetual pestilence. The highly respectable keep aloof. Too often the quiet country church is not a sanctuary and place of refuge for the victims either of their own or another's sin, a place where the grasp of sympathy and words of encouragement are given; but rather a place where they meet the cold critical gaze of those who are hedged about with virtues and good connections. I hope I am wrong, but how is it where you live, my reader? If a well-to-do thriving man of integrity takes a fine place in your community, we all know how church people will treat him. And what they do is all right. But society--the world--will do the same. Is Christianity--are the followers of the "Friend of publicans and sinners"--to do no more?

If in contrast a drunken wretch like Lacey with his wife and children come in town on top of a wagon-load of shattered furniture, and all are dumped down in a back alley to scramble into the shelter of a tenement house as best they can, do you call upon them? Do you invite them to your pew? Do you ever urge and encourage them to enter your church? and do you make even one of its corners homelike and inviting?

I hope so; but, alas! that was not the general custom in Pushton, and poor Mrs. Lacey had acquired the habit of staying at home, her neighbors had become accustomed to call her husband a "dreadful man," and the family "very irreligious," and as the years passed they seemed to be more and more left to themselves. Mr. Lacey had brought his wife from a distant town where he had met and married her. She was a timid, retiring woman, and time and kindness were needed to draw her out. But no one had seemingly thought it worth while, and at the time our story takes an interest in their affairs, there was a growing isolation.

All this had a very bad effect upon Arden. As he grew out of the democracy of boyhood he met a certain social coldness and distance which he learned to understand only too early, and soon returned this treatment with increased coldness and aversion. Had it not been for the influence of his mother and the books he read, he would have inevitably fallen into low company. But he had promised his mother to shun it. He saw its result in his father's conduct, and as he read, and his mind matured, the narrow coarseness of such company became repugnant. From time to time he was sorely tempted to leave the home which his father made hateful in many respects, and try his fortunes among strangers who would not associate him with a sot; but his love for his mother kept him at her side, for he saw that her life was bound up in him, and that he alone could protect her and his sister and keep some sort of a shelter for them. In his unselfish devotion to them his character was noble. In his harsh cynicism toward the world and especially the church people, for whom he had no charity whatever --in his utter hatred and detestation of his father--it was faulty, though allowance must be made for him. He was also peculiar in other respects, for his unguided reading was of a nature that fed his imagination at the expense of his reasoning faculties. Though he drudged in a narrow round, and his life was as hard and real as poverty and his father's intemperance could make it, he mentally lived and found his solace in a world as large and unreal as an uncurbed fancy could create. Therefore his work was hurried through mechanically in the old slovenly methods to which he had been educated, he caring little for the results, as his father squandered these; and when the necessary toil was over, he would lose all sense of the sordid present in the pages of some book obtained from the village library. As he drove his milk cart to and from town he would sit in the chill drizzling rain, utterly oblivious of discomfort, with a half smile upon his lips, as he pictured to himself some scene of sunny aspect or gloomy castellated grandeur of which his own imagination was the architect. The famous in history, the heroes and heroines of fiction, and especially the characters of Shakespeare were more familiar to him than the people among whom he lived. From the latter he stood more and more aloof, while with the former he held constant intercourse. He had little in common even with his sister, who was of a very different temperament. But his tenderness toward his mother never failed, and she loved him with the passionate intensity of a nature to which love was all, but which had found little to satisfy it on earth, and was ignorant of the love of God.

And so the years dragged on to Arden, and hiss twenty-first birthday made him free from his father's control as he practically long had been, but it also found him bound more strongly than ever by his mother's love and need to his old home life.

CHAPTER IX

A DESERT ISLAND

The good cry that Edith indulged in on her way to the boat was a relief to her heart, which had long been overburdened. But the necessity of controlling her feelings, and the natural buoyancy of youth, enabled her by the time they reached the wharf to see that the furniture and baggage were properly taken care of. No one could detect the traces of grief through her thick veil, or guess from her firm, quiet tones, that she felt somewhat as Columbus might when going in search of a new world. And yet Edith had a hope from her country life which the others did not share at all.

When she was quite a child her feeble health had induced her father to let her spend an entire summer in a farmhouse of the better class, whose owner had some taste for flowers and fruit. These she had enjoyed and luxuriated in as much as any butterfly of the season, and as she romped with the farmer's children, roamed the fields and woods in search of berries, and tumbled in the fragrant hay, health came tingling back with a fullness and vigor that had never been lost. With all her subsequent enjoyment, that summer still dwelt in her memory as the halcyon period of her life, and it was with the country she associated it. Every year she had longed for July, for then her father would break away from business for a couple of months and take them to a place of resort. But the fashionable watering-places were not at all to her taste as compared with that old farmhouse, and whenever it was possible she would wander off and make "disreputable acquaintances," as Mrs. Allen termed them, among the farmers' and laborers' families in the vicinity of the hotel. But by this means she often obtained a basket of fruit or bunch of flowers that the others were glad to share in.

In accordance with her practical nature she asked questions as to the habits, growth, and culture of trees and fruits, so that few city girls situated as she had been knew as much about the products of the garden. She had also haunted conservatories and green-houses as much as her sisters had frequented the costly Broadway temples of fashion, where counters are the altars to which the women of the city bring their daily offerings; and as we have seen, a fruit store was a place of delight to her.

The thought that she could now raise without limit fruit, flowers, and vegetables on her own place was some compensation even for the trouble they had passed through and the change in their fortunes.

Moreover she knew that because of their poverty she would have to secure from her ground substantial returns, and that her gardening must be no amateur trifling, but earnest work. Therefore, having found a seat in the saloon of the boat, she drew out of her leather bag one of her garden-books and some agricultural papers, and commenced studying over for the twentieth time the labors proper for April. After reading a while, she leaned back and closed her eyes and tried to form such crude plans as were possible in her inexperience and her ignorance of a place that she had not even seen.

Opening her eyes suddenly she saw old Hannibal sitting near and regarding her wistfully.

"You are a foolish old fellow to stay with us," she said to him. "You could have obtained plenty of nice places in the city. What made you do it?"

"I'se couldn't gib any good reason to de world, Miss Edie, but de one I hab kinder satisfies my ole black heart."

"Your heart isn't black, Hannibal."

"How you know dat?" he asked quickly.

"Because I've seen it often and often. Sometimes I think it is whiter than mine. I now and then feel so desperate and wicked, that I am afraid of myself."

"Dere now, you'se worried and worn-out and you tinks dat's bein' wicked."

"No. I'm satisfied it is something worse than that. I wonder if God does care about people who are in trouble, I mean practically, so as to help them any?"

"Well, I specs he does," said Hannibal vaguely. "But den dere's so many in trouble dat I'm afeard some hab to kinder look after demselves." Then as if a bright thought struck him, he added, "I specs he sorter lumps 'em jes as Massa Allen did when he said he was sorry for de people burned up in Chicago. He sent 'em a big lot ob money and den seemed to forget all about 'em."

Hannibal had never given much attention to religion, and perhaps was not the best authority that Edith could have consulted. But his conclusion seemed to secure her consent, for she leaned back wearily and again closed her eyes, saying:

"Yes, we are mere human atoms, lost sight of in the multitude."

Soon her deep regular breathing showed that she was asleep, and Hannibal muttered softly:

"Bress de child, dat will do her a heap more good dan askin' dem deep questions," and he watched beside her like a large faithful Newfoundland dog.

At last he touched her elbow and said, "We get off at de next landin', and I guess we mus' be pretty nigh dere."

Edith started up much refreshed and asked, "What sort of an evening is it?"

"Well, I'se sorry to say it's rainin' hard and berry dark."

To her dismay she also found that it was nearly nine o'clock. The boat had been late in starting, and was so heavily laden as to make slow progress against wind and tide. Edith's heart sank within her at the thought of landing alone in a strange place that dismal night. It was indeed a new experience to her. But she donned her waterproof, and the moment the boat touched the wharf, hurried ashore, and stood under her small umbrella, while her household gods were being hustled out into the drenching rain. She knew the injury that must result to them unless they could speedily be carried into the boat-house near. At first there seemed no one to do this save Hannibal, who at once set to work, but she soon observed a man with a lantern gathering up some butter-tubs that the boat was landing, and she immediately appealed to him for help.

"I'm not the dock-master," was the gruff reply.

"You are a man, are you not? and one that will not turn away from a lady in distress. If my things stand long in this rain they will be greatly injured."

The man thus adjured turned his lantern on the speaker, and while we recognize the features of our acquaintance, Arden Lacey, he sees a face on the old dock that quite startles him. If Edith had dropped down with the rain, she could not have been more unexpected, and with her large dark eyes flashing suddenly on him, and her appealing yet half-indignant voice breaking in upon the waking dream with which he was beguiling the outward misery of the night, it seemed as if one of the characters of his fancy had suddenly become real. He who would have passed Edith in surly unnoting indifference on the open street in the garish light of day, now took the keenest interest in her. He had actually been appealed to, as an ancient knight might have been, by a damsel in distress, and he turned and helped her with a will, which, backed by his powerful strength, soon placed her goods under shelter. The lagging dock-master politicly kept out of the way till the work was almost done and then bustled up and made some show of assisting in time for any fees, if they should be offered, but Arden told him that since he had kept out of sight so long, he might remain invisible, which was the unpopular way the young man had.

When the last article had been placed under shelter Edith said:

"I appreciate your help exceedingly. How much am I to pay you for your trouble?"

"Nothing," was the rather curt reply.

The appearance of a lady like Edith, with a beauty that seemed weird and strange as he caught glimpses of her face by the fitful rays of his lantern, had made a sudden and strong impression on his morbid fancy and fitted the wild imaginings with which he had occupied the dreary hour of waiting for the boat. The presence of her sable attendant had increased these impressions. But when she took out her purse to pay him his illusions vanished. Therefore the abrupt tone in which he said "Nothing," and which was mainly caused by vexation at the matter-of-fact world that continually mocked his unreal one.

"I don't quite understand you," said Edith. "I had no intention of employing your time and strength without remuneration."

"I told you I was not the dock-master," said Arden rather coldly. "He'll take all the fees you will give him. You appealed to me as a man, and said you were in distress. I helped you as a man. Good-evening."

"Stay," said Edith hastily. "You seem not only a man, but a gentleman, and I am tempted, in view of my situation, to trespass still further on your kindness," but she hesitated a moment.

It perhaps had never been intimated to Arden before that he was a gentleman, certainly never in the tone with which Edith spoke, and his fanciful, chivalric nature responded at once to the touch of that chord. With the accent of voice he ever used toward his mother, he said:

"I am at your service."

"We are strangers here," continued Edith. "Is there any place near the landing where we can get safe, comfortable lodging?"

"I am sorry to say there is not. The village is a mile away."

"How can we get there?"

"Isn't the stage down?" asked Arden of the dock-master.

"No!" was the gruff response.

"The night is so bad I suppose they didn't come. I would take you myself in a minute if I had a suitable wagon."

"Necessity knows no choice," said Edith quickly. "I will go with you in any kind of a wagon, and I surely hope you won't leave me on this lonely dock in the rain."

"Certainly not," said Arden, reddening in the darkness that he could be thought capable of such an act. "But I thought I could drive to the village and send a carriage for you."

"I would rather go with you now, if you will let me," said Edith decidedly.

"The best I have is at your service, but I fear you will be sorry for your choice. I've only a board for a seat, and my wagon has no springs. Perhaps I could get a low box for you to sit on."

"Hannibal can sit on the box. With your permission I will sit with you, for I wish to ask you some questions."

Arden hung his lantern on a hook in front of his wagon, and helped or partly lifted Edith over the wheel to the seat, which was simply a board resting on the sides of the box. He turned a butter-tub upside down for Hannibal, and then they jogged out from behind the boat-house where he had sheltered his horses.

This was all a new experience to Arden. He had, from his surly misanthropy, little familiarity with society of any kind, and since as a boy he had romped with the girls at school he had been almost a total stranger to all women save those in his own home. Most young men would have been awkward louts under the circumstances. But this was not true of Arden, for he had daily been holding converse in the books he dreamed over with women of finer clay than he could have found at Pushton. He would have been excessively awkward in a drawing-room or any place of conventional resort, or rather he would have been sullen and bearish, but the place and manner in which he had met Edith accorded with his romantic fancy, and the darkness shielded his rough exterior from observation.

Moreover, the presence of this flesh-and-blood woman at his side gave him different sensations from the stately dames, or even the most piquant maidens that had smiled upon him in the shadowy scenes of his imagination; and when at times, as the wagon jolted heavily, she grasped his arm for a second to steady herself, it seemed as if the dusky little figure at his side was a sort of human electric battery charged with that subtile fluid which some believe to be the material life of the universe. Every now and then as they bounced over a stone, the lantern would bob up and throw a ray on a face like those that had looked out upon him from those plays of Shakespeare the scenes of which are laid in Italy.

Thus the dark, chilly, rainy night was becoming the most luminous period of his life. Reason and judgment act slowly, but imagination takes fire.

But to poor Edith all was real and dismal enough, and she often sighed heavily. To Arden each sigh was an appeal for sympathy. He had driven as rapidly as he dared in the darkness to get her out of the rain, but at last she said, clinging to his arm:

"Won't you drive slowly? The jolting has given me a pain in my side."

He was conscious of a new and peculiar sensation there also, though not from jolting. He had been used to that in many ways all his life, but thereafter they jogged forward on a walk through the drizzling rain, and Edith, recovering her breath, and a sense of security, began to asked the questions.

"Do you know where the cottage is that was formerly owned by Mr. Jenks?"

"Oh, yes, it's not far from our house--between our house and the village." Then as if a sudden thought struck him he added quickly, "I heard it was sold; are you the owner?"

"Yes," said Edith a little coolly. She had expected to question and not to be questioned. And yet she was very glad she had met one who knew about her place. But she resolved to be non-committal till she knew more about him.

"What sort of a house is it?" she asked after a moment. "I have never seen it."

"Well, it's not very large, and I fear it is somewhat out of repair--at least it looks so, and I should think a new roof was needed."

Edith could not help saying pathetically, "Oh, dear! I'm so sorry."

Arden then added hastily, "But it's a kind of a pretty place too--a great many fruit-trees and grapevines on it."

"So I've been told," said Edith. "And that will be its chief attraction to me."

"Then you are going to live there?"

"Yes."

Arden's heart gave a sudden throb. Then he would see this mysterious stranger often. But he smiled half bitterly in the darkness as he queried, "What will she appear like in the daylight?"

Her next question broke the spell he was under utterly. They were passing through the village and the little hotel was near, and she naturally asked:

"To whom am I indebted for all this kindness? I am glad to know so much as that you are my neighbor."

Suddenly and painfully conscious of his outward life and surroundings, he answered briefly:

"My name is Arden Lacey. We have a small farm a little beyond your cottage."

Wondering at his change of tone and manner, Edith still ventured to ask:

"And do you know of any one who could bring my furniture and things up to-morrow?"

As he sometimes did that kind of work, an impulse to see more of her impelled him to say:

"I suppose I can do it. I work for a living."

"I am sure that is nothing against you," said Edith kindly.

"You will not live long in Pushton before learning that there is something against us," was the bitter reply. "But that need not prevent my working for you, as I do for others. If you wish, I will make a fire in your house early, to take off the chill and dampness, and then go for your furniture. The people here will send you out in a carriage." "I shall be greatly obliged if you will do so and let me pay you."

"Oh, certainly, I will charge the usual rates."

"Well, then, how much for to-night?" said Edith as she stood in the hotel door.

"To-night is another affair," and he jumped into his wagon and rattled away in the darkness, his lantern looking like a "will-o'-the-wisp" that might vanish altogether.

The landlord received Edith and her attendant with a gruff civility, and gave her in charge of his wife, who was a bustling red-faced woman with a sort of motherly kindness about her.

"Why, you poor child," she said to Edith, turning her round before the light, "you're half drowned. You must have something hot right away, or you'll take your death o' cold," and with something of her husband's faith in whiskey, she soon brought Edith a hot punch that for a few moments seemed to make the girl's head spin, but as it was followed by strong tea and toast, she felt none the worse, and danger from the chill and wet was effectually disposed of.

As she sat sipping her tea before a red-hot stove, she told, in answer to the landlady's questions, how she had got up from the boat.

"Who is this Lacey, and what is there against them?" she asked suddenly.

The hostess went across the hall, opened the bar-room door, and beckoned Edith to follow her.

In a chair by the stove sat a miserable bloated wreck of a man, drivelling and mumbling in a drunken lethargy.

"That's his father," said the woman in a whisper. "When he gets as bad as that he comes here because he knows my husband is the only one as won't turn him out of doors."

An expression of intense disgust flitted across Edith's face, and by the necessary law of association poor Arden sank in her estimation through the foulness of his father's vice.

"Is there anything against the son?" asked Edith in some alarm. "I've engaged him to bring up my furniture and trunks. I hope he's honest."

"Oh, yes, he's honest enough, and he'd be mighty mad if anybody questioned that, but he's kind o' soured and ugly, and don't notice nobody nor nothing. The son and Mrs. Lacey keep to themselves, the man does as you see, but the daughter, who's a smart, pretty girl, tries to rise above it all, and make her way among the rest of the girls; but she has a hard time of it, I guess, poor child."

"I don't wonder," said Edith, "with such a father."

But between the punch and fatigue, she was glad to take refuge from the landlady's garrulousness, and all her troubles in quiet sleep.

The next morning the storm was passing away in broken masses of cloud, through which the sun occasionally shone in April-like uncertainty.

After an early breakfast she and Hannibal were driven in an open wagon to what was to be her future home--the scene of unknown joys and sorrows.

The most memorable places, where the mightiest events of the world have transpired, can never have for us the interest of that humble spot where the little drama of our own life will pass from act to act till our exit.

Most eagerly did Edith note everything as revealed by the broad light of day. The village, though irregular, had a general air of thriftiness and respectability. The street through which she was riding gradually fringed off, from stores and offices, into neat homes, farmhouses, and here and there the abodes of the poor, till at last, three-quarters of a mile out, she saw a rather quaint little cottage with a roof steeply sloping and a long low porch.

"That's your place, miss," said the driver.

Edith's intent eyes took in the general effect with something of the practiced rapidity with which she mastered a lady's toilet on the avenue.

In spite of her predisposition to be pleased, the prospect was depressing. The season was late and patches of discolored snow lay here and there, and were piled up along the fences. The garden and trees had a neglected look. The vines that clambered up the porch had been untrimmed of the last year's growth, and sprawled in every direction. The gate hung from one hinge, and many palings were off the fence, and all had a sodden, dingy appearance from the recent rains. The house itself looked so dilapidated and small, in contrast with their stately mansion on Fifth Avenue, that irrepressible tears came into her eyes, as she murmured:

"It will kill mother just to see it."

Old Hannibal said in a low, encouraging tone, "It'll look a heap better next June, Miss Edie."

But Edith dropped her veil to hide her feelings, and shook her head.

They got down before the rickety gate, took out the basket of provisions which Hannibal had secured, paid the driver, who splashed away through the mud as a boat might that had landed and left two people on a desert island. They walked up the oozy path with hearts about as chill and empty as the unfurnished cottage before them.

But utter repulsiveness had been taken away by a bright fire that Arden had kindled on the hearth of the largest room; and when lighting it he had been so romantic as to dream of the possibility of kindling a more sacred fire in a heart that he knew now to be as cold to him as the chilly room in which he shivered.

Poor Arden! If he could have seen the expression on Edith's face the night previous, as she looked on his besotted father, he would have cursed more bitterly than ever what he termed the blight of his life.

CHAPTER X

EDITH BECOMES A "DIVINITY"

As the wrecked would hasten up the strand and explore eagerly in various directions in order to gain some idea of the nature and resources of the place where they might spend months and even years, so Edith hurriedly passed from one room to another, looking the house over first, as their place of refuge and centre of life, and then went out to a spot from which she could obtain a view of the garden, the little orchard, and the pasture field.

The house had three rooms on the first floor, as many on the second, and a very small attic. There was also a pretty good cellar, though it looked to Edith like a black, dismal hole, and was full of rubbish and old boxes.

The entrance of the house was at the commencement of the porch, which ran along under the windows of the large front room. Back of this was one much smaller, and doors opened from both the apartments named into a long and rather narrow room running the full depth of the house, and which had been designed as the kitchen. With the families that would naturally occupy a house of this character, it would have been the general living-room. To Edith's eyes, accustomed to magnificent spaces and lofty ceilings, these apartments seemed stifling dingy cells. The walls were broken in places and discolored by smoke. With the exception of the large room there were no places for open fires, but only holes for stovepipes.

"How can such a place as this ever look homelike?"

The muddy garden, with its patches of snow, its forlorn and neglected air, its spreading vines and the thickly standing stalks of last year's weeds, was even less inviting. Edith had never seen the country in winter, and the gardens of her experience were full of green, beautiful life. The orchard looked not only gaunt and bare, but very untidy. The previous year had been most abundant in fruit, and the trees were left to bear at will. Therefore many of the limbs were wholly or partly broken off, and lay scattered where they fell, or still hung by a little of the woody fibre and bark.

Edith came back to the fire from the survey of her future home, not only chilled in body by the raw April winds, but more chilled in heart. Though she had not expected summer greenness and a sweet inviting home, yet the reality was so dreary and forbidding, from its necessary contrast with the past, that she sank down on the floor, and buried her head in her lap in an uncontrollable passion of grief. Hannibal was out gathering wood to replenish the fire, and it was a luxury to be alone a few minutes with her sorrow.

But soon she had the consciousness that she was not alone, and looking up, saw Arden in the door, with a grave troubled face. Hastily turning from him, and wiping away her tears, she said rather coldly:

"You should have knocked. The house is my home, if it is empty."

His face changed instantly to its usual hard sullen aspect, and he said briefly:

"I did knock."

"The landlady has told her all about us," he thought, "and she rejects sympathy and fellowship from such as we are."

But Edith's feeling had only been annoyance that a stranger had seen her emotion, so she said quickly, "I beg your pardon. We have had trouble, but I don't give way in this manner often. Have you brought a load?"

"Yes. If your servant will help me I will bring the things in."

As he and Hannibal carried in heavy rolls of carpet and other articles, Edith removed as far as possible the traces of her grief, and soon began to scan by the light of day with some curiosity her acquaintance of the previous evening. He was the very opposite to herself in appearance. Her eyes were large and dark. He had a rather small but piercing blue eye. His locks were light and curly, and his beard sandy. Her hair was brown and straight. He was fully six feet tall, while she was only of medium height. And yet Edith was not a brunette, but possessed a complexion of transparent delicacy which gave her the fragile appearance characteristic of so many American girls. His face was much tamed by exposure to March winds, but his brow was as white as hers. In his morbid tendency to shun every one, he usually kept his eyes fixed on the ground so as to appear not to see people, and this, with his habitual frown, gave a rather heavy and repelling expression to his face.

"He would make a very good representative of the laboring classes," she thought, "if he hadn't so disagreeable an expression."

It had only dimly dawned upon poor Edith as yet that she now belonged to the "laboring classes."

But her energetic nature soon reacted against idle grieving, and her pale cheeks grew rosy, and her face full of eager life as she assisted and directed.

"If I only had one or two women to help me we could soon get things settled," she said, "and I have so little time before the rest come."

Then she added suddenly to Arden, "Haven't you sisters?"

"My sister does not go out to service," said Arden proudly.

"Neither do I," said the shrewd Edith, "but I would be willing to help any one in such an emergency as I am in," and she glanced keenly to see the effect of this speech, while she thought, "What airs these people put on!"

Arden's face changed instantly. Her words seemed like a ray of sunlight falling on a place before shadowed, for the sullen frowning expression passed into one almost of gentleness, as he said:

"That puts things in a different light. I am sure Rose and mother both will be willing to help you as neighbors," and he started for another load, going around by the way of his home and readily obtaining from his mother and sister a promise to assist Edith after dinner.

Edith smiled to herself and said, "I have found the key to his surly nature already." She had, and to many other natures also. Kindness and human fellowship will unbar and unbolt where all other forces may clamor in vain.

Arden went away in a maze of new sensations. This one woman of all the world beside his mother and sister that he had come to know somewhat was to him a strange, beautiful mystery. Edith was in many respects conventional, as all society girls are, but it was the conventionality of a sphere of life that Arden knew only through books, and she seemed to him utterly different from the ladies of Pushton as he understood them from his slight acquaintance. This difference was all in her favor, for he cherished a bitter and unreasonable prejudice against the young girls of his neighborhood as vain, shallow creatures who never read, and thought of nothing save dress and beaux. His own sister in fact had helped to confirm these impressions, for while he was fond of her and kind, he had no great admiration for her, saying in his sweeping cynicism, "She is like the rest of them." If he had met Edith only in the street and in conventional ways, stylishly dressed, he would scarcely have noticed her. But her half-indignant, half-pathetic appeal to him on the dock, the lonely ride in which she had clung to his arm for safety, her tears, and the manner in which she had last spoken to him, had all combined to pierce thoroughly his shell of sullen reserve; and, as we have said, his vivid imagination had taken fire.

Edith and Hannibal worked hard the rest of the forenoon, and her experienced old attendant was invaluable. Edith herself, though having little practical knowledge of work of any kind, had vigor and natural judgment, and her small white hands accomplished more than one would suppose.

So Arden wonderingly thought on his return with a second load, as he saw her lift and handle things that he knew to be heavy. Her short, close-fitting working-dress outlined her fine figure to advantage, and with complexion bright and dazzling with exercise, she seemed to him some frail fairylike creature doomed by a cruel fate to unsuited toil and sorrows. But Edith was very matter-of-fact, and had never in all her life thought of herself as a fairy.

Arden went home to dinner, and by one o'clock Edith said to Hannibal:

"There is one good thing about the place if no other. It gives one a savage appetite. What have you got in the basket?"

"A scrumptious lunch, Miss Edie. I told de landlady you'se used to havin' things mighty nice, and den I found a hen's nest in de barn dis mornin'."

"I hope you didn't take the eggs, Hannibal," said Edith slyly.

"Sartin I did, Miss Edie, cause if I didn't de rats would."

"Perhaps the landlady would also if you had shown them to her."

"Miss Edie," said Hannibal solemnly, "findin' a hen's nest is like findin' a gold mine. It belongs to de one dat finds it."

"I am afraid that wouldn't stand in law. Suppose we were arrested for robbing hens' nests. That wouldn't be a good introduction to our new neighbors."

"Now, Miss Edie," said Hannibal, with an injured air, "you don't spec I do a job like dat so bungly as to get cotched at it?"

"Oh, very well," said Edith, laughing, "since you have conformed to the morality of the age, it must be all right, and a fresh egg would be a rich treat now that it can be eaten with a clear conscience. But, Hannibal, I wish you would find a gold mine out in the garden."

"I guess you'se find dat with all your readin' about strawberries and other yarbs."

"I hope so," said Edith with a sigh, "for I don't see how we are going to live here year after year."

"You'se be rich again. De men wid de long pusses ain't agoin' to look at your black eyes for nothin'," and Hannibal chuckled knowingly.

The color faintly deepened in Edith's cheeks, but she said with some scorn, "Men with long purses want girls with the same. But who are these?"

Coming up the path they saw a tall middle-aged woman, and by her side a young girl of about eighteen who was a marked contrast to her in appearance.

"Dey's his moder and sister. You will drive tings dis arternoon."

Mrs. Lacey and her daughter entered with some little hesitancy and embarrassment, but Edith, with the poise of an accomplished lady, at once put them at ease by saying:

"It is exceedingly kind of you to come and help, and I appreciate it very much."

"No one should refuse to be neighborly," said Mrs. Lacey quietly.

"And to tell the truth I was delighted to come," said Rose, "the winter has been so long and dull."

"Oh, dear!" thought Edith, "if you find them so, what will be our fate?"

Mrs. Lacey undid a bundle and took out a teapot from which the steam yet oozed faintly, and Rose undid another containing some warm buttered biscuits, Mrs. Lacey saying, "I thought your lunch might seem a little cold and cheerless, so I brought these along."

"Now that _is_ kind," said Edith, so cordially that their faces flushed with that natural pleasure which we all feel when our little efforts for others are appreciated. To them it was intensified, for Edith was a grand city lady, and the inroads that she made on the biscuits, and the zest with which she sipped her tea, showed that her words had the ring of truth.

"Do sit down and eat, while things are nice and warm," she said to Hannibal. "There's no use in our putting on airs now," but Hannibal insisted on waiting upon her as when he was butler in the great dining-room on the avenue, and when she was through, carried the things off to the empty kitchen, and took his "bite" on a packing box, prefacing it as his nearest approach to grace by an indignant grunt and profession of his faith.

"Dis ole niggah eat before her? Not much! She's quality now as much as eber."

But the world and Hannibal were at variance on account of a sum of subtraction which had taken away from Edith's name the dollar symbol.

Edith set to work, her helpers now increased to three, with renewed zest, and from time to time stole glances at the mother and daughter to see what the natives were like.

They were very different in appearance: the mother looking prematurely old, and she also seemed bent and stooping under the heavy burdens of life. Her dark blue eyes had a weary, pathetic look, as if some sorrow was ever before them. Her cheek bones were prominent and her cheeks sunken, and the thin hair, brushed plainly under her cap, was streaked with gray. Her quietness and reserve seemed rather the result of a crushed, sad heart than of natural lack of feeling.

The daughter was in the freshest bloom of youth, and was not unlike the flower she was named after, when, as a dewy bud, it begins to develop under the morning sun. Though not a beautiful girl, there was a prettiness, a rural breeziness about her, that would cause any one to look twice as she passed. The wind ever seemed to be in her light flaxen curls, and her full rounded figure suggested superabundant vitality, an impression increased by her quick, restless motions. Her complexion reminded you of strawberries and cream, and her blue eyes had a slightly bold and defiant expression. She felt the blight of her father's course also, but it acted differently on her temperament. Instead of timidly shrinking from the world like her mother, or sullenly ignoring it like her brother, she was for going into society and compelling it to recognize and respect her.

"I have done nothing wrong," she said; "I insist on people treating me in view of what I am myself," and in the sanguine spirit of youth she hoped to carry her point. Therefore her manner was a little self-asserting, which would not have been the case had she not felt that she had prejudice to overcome. Unlike her brother, she cared little for books, and had no ideal world, but lived vividly in her immediate surroundings. The older she grew, the duller and more monotonous did her home life seem. She had little sympathy from her brother; her mother was a sad, silent woman, and her father a daily source of trouble and shame. Her education was very imperfect, and she had no resource in this, while her daily work seemed a tiresome round that brought little return. Her mother attended to the more important duties and gave to her the lighter tasks, which left her a good deal of leisure. She had no work that stimulated her, no training that made her thorough in any department of labor, however humble. From a friend, a dressmaker in the village, she obtained a little fancy work and sewing, and the proceeds resulting, and all her brother gave her, she spent in dress. The sums were small enough in all truth, and yet with the marvellous ingenuity that some girls, fond of dress, acquire, she made a very little go a great way, and she would often appear in toilets that were quite effective. With those of her own age and sex in her narrow little circle, she was not a special favorite, but she was with the young men, for she was bright, chatty, and had the knack of putting awkward fellows at ease. She kept her little parlor as pretty and inviting as her limited materials permitted, and with a growing imperiousness gave the rest of the family, and especially her father, to understand that this parlor was her domain, and that she would permit no intrusion. Clerks from the village and farmers' sons would occasionally drop in of an evening, though they preferred taking her out to ride where they could see her away from her home. But the more respectable young men, with anxious mothers and sisters, were rather shy of poor Rose, and none seemed to care to go beyond a mild flirtation with a girl whose father was "on the rampage," as they expressed it, most of the time. On one occasion, when she had two young friends spending the evening, her father came home reckless and wild with drink, and his language toward the young men was so shocking, and his manner in general so outrageous, that they were glad to get away. If Arden had not come home and collared his father, carrying him off to his room by his almost irresistible strength, Rose's parlor might have become a sad wreck, literally as well as socially. As it was, it seemed deserted for a long time, and she felt very bitter about it. In her fearless frankness, her determination not to succumb to her sinister surroundings (and perhaps from the lack of a sensitive delicacy), she reproached the same young men when she met them for staying away, saying, "It's a shame to treat a girl as if she were to blame for what she can't help."

But Rose's ambition had put on a phase against which circumstances were too strong, and she was made to feel in her struggle to gain a social footing that her father's leprosy had tainted her, and her brother's "ugly, sullen disposition," as it was termed, was a hindrance also. She had an increasing desire to get away among strangers, where she could make her own way on her own merits, and the city of New York seemed to her a great Eldorado, where she might find her true career. Some very showily dressed, knowing-looking girls, that she had met at a picnic, had increased this longing for the city. Her mother and brother thought her restless, vain, and giddy, but she was as good and honest a girl at heart as breathed, only her vigorous nature chafed at repression, wanted outlets, and could not settle down for life to cook, wash, and sew for a drunken father, a taciturn brother, or even a mother whose companionship was depressing, much as she was loved.

Rose welcomed the request of her brother, as helping Edith would cause a ripple in the current of her dull life, and give her a chance of seeing one of the grand city ladies, without the dimness and vagueness of distance, and she scanned Edith with a stronger curiosity than was bestowed upon herself. The result was rather depressing to poor Rose, for, having studied with her quick nice eye Edith's exquisite manner and movements, she sighed to herself:

"I'm not such a lady as this girl, and perhaps never can be."

While Edith was very kind and cordial to the Laceys, she felt, and made them feel, that there was a vast social distance between them. Even practical Edith had not yet realized her poverty, and it would take her some time to doff the manner of the condescending lady.

They accomplished a great deal that afternoon, but it takes much time and labor to make even a small empty house look home-like. Edith had taken the smallest room upstairs, and by evening it was quite in order for her occupation, she meaning to take Zell in with her. Work had progressed in the largest upper room, which she designed for her mother and Laura. Mrs. Lacey and Hannibal were in the kitchen getting that arranged, they very rightly concluding that this was the mainspring in the mechanism of material living, and should be put in readiness at once. Arden had been instructed to purchase and bring from the village a cooking-stove, and Hannibal's face shone with something like delight, as by five o'clock he had a wood fire crackling underneath a pot of water, feeling that the terra firma of comfort was at last reached. He could now _soak_ in his favorite beverage of tea, and make Miss Edie quite "pertlike" too when she was tired.

Mrs. Lacey worked silently. Rose was inclined to be chatty and draw Edith out in regard to city life. She responded good-naturedly as long as Rose confined herself to generalities, but was inclined to be reticent on their own affairs.

Before dark the Laceys prepared to return, the mother saying gravely:

"You may feel it too lonely to stay by yourself. Our house is not very inviting, and my husband's manner is not always what I could wish, but such as it is, you will be welcome in it till the rest of your family comes."

"You are very kind to a stranger," said Edith, heartily, "but I am not a bit afraid to stay here since I have Hannibal as protector," and Hannibal, elated by this compliment, looked as if he might be a very dragon to all intruders. "Moreover," continued Edith, "you have helped me so _splendidly_ that I shall be very comfortable, and they will be here to-morrow night."

Mrs. Lacey bowed silently, but Rose said in her sprightly voice, from the doorway:

"I'll come and help you all day to-morrow."

Arden was still to bring one more load. The setting sun, with the consistency of an April day, had passed into a dark cloud which soon came driving on with wind and rain, and the thick drops dashed against the windows as if thrown from a vast syringe, while the gutter gurgled and groaned with the sudden rush of water.

"Oh, dear! how dismal!" sighed Edith, looking out in the gathering darkness. Then she saw that the loaded wagon had just stopped at the gate, and in dim outline Arden sat in the storm as if he had been a post. "It's too bad," she said impatiently, "my things will all get wet." After a moment she added: "Why don't he come in? Don't he know enough to come in out of the rain?"

"Well, Miss Edie, he's kind o' quar," said Hannibal, "I'se jes done satisfied he's quar."

But the shower ceased suddenly, and Arden dismounted, secured his horses, and soon appeared at the door with a piece of furniture.

"Why, it's not wet," said Edith with surprise.

"I saw appearances of rain, and so borrowed a piece of canvas at the dock."

"But you didn't put the canvas over yourself," said Edith, looking at his dripping form, grateful enough now to bestow a little kindness without the idea of policy. "As soon as you have brought in the load I insist on your staying and taking a cup of tea."

He gave his shoulders an indifferent shrug, saying, "A little cold water is the least of my troubles." Then he added, stealing a timid glance at her, "But you are very kind. People seldom think of their teamsters."

"The more shame to them then," said Edith. "I at least can feel a kindness if I can't make much return. It was very good of you to protect my furniture, and I appreciate your care. Besides your mother and sister have been helping me all the afternoon, and I am oppressed by my obligations to you all."

"I am sorry you feel that way," he said briefly, and vanished in the darkness after another load.

Soon all was safely housed, and he said, about to depart, "There is one more load; I will bring that to-morrow."

From the kitchen she called, "Stay, your tea will be ready in a moment."

"Do not put yourself to that truble," he answered, at the same time longing to stay. "Mother will have supper ready for me." He was so diffident that he needed much encouragement, and moreover he was morbidly sensitive.

But as she turned she caught his wistful glance, and thought to herself, "Poor fellow! he's cold and hungry." With feminine shrewdness she said, "Now, Mr. Lacey, I shall feel slighted if you don't take a cup of my tea, for see, I have made it myself. It's the one thing about housekeeping that I understand. Your mother brought me a nice cup at noon, and I enjoyed it very much. I am going to pay that debt now to you."

"Well--if you really wish it"--said Arden hesitatingly, with another of his bright looks, and color even deeper than the ruddy firelight warranted.

"My conscience!" thought Edith, "how suddenly his face changes. He is 'quar,' as Hannibal says." But she settled matters by saying, "I shall feel hurt if you don't. You must let there be at least some show of kindness on my part, as well as on yours and your friends'."

There came in again a delicate touch of that human fellowship which he had never found in the world, and had seemingly repelled, but which his soul was thirsting for with an intensity never so realized before, and this faintest semblance of human companionship and sympathy seemed inexpressibly sweet to his sore and lonely heart.

He took the cup from her as if it had been a sacrament, and was about to drink it standing, but she placed a chair at the table and said:

"No, sir, you must sit down there in comfort by the fire."

He did so as if in a dream. The whole scene was taking a powerful hold on his imagination.

"Hannibal," she cried, raising her voice in a soft, bird-like call, and from the dim kitchen whence certain spluttering sounds had preceded him, Hannibal appeared with a heaping plate of buttered toast.

"With your permission," she said, "I will sit down and take a cup of tea with you, in a neighborly way, for I wish to ask you some more questions, and tea, you know, is a great incentive to talk," and she took a chair on the opposite side of the table, while Hannibal stood a little in the background to wait on them with all the formality of the olden time.

The wood fire blazed and crackled, and threw its flickering light over Edith's fair face, and intensified her beauty, as her features gleamed out, or faded, as the flames rose and fell. Hannibal stood motionless behind her chair as if he might have been an Ethiopian slave attendant on a young sultana. To Arden's aroused imagination, it seemed like one of the scenes of his fancy, and he was almost afraid to move or speak, lest all should vanish, and he find himself plodding along the dark muddy road.

"What is the matter?" she asked curiously. "Why don't you drink your tea?"

"It all seems as strange and beautiful as a fairy tale," he said, looking at her earnestly.

Her hearty laugh and matter-of-fact tone dispelled his illusion, as she said:

"It's all dreadfully real to me. I feel as if I had done more work to-day than in all my life before, and we have only made a beginning. I want to ask you about the place and the garden, and how to get things done," and she plied him well with the most practical questions.

Sometimes he answered a little incoherently, for through them all he saw a face full of strange weird beauty, as the firelight flickered upon it, and gave a star-like lustre to the large dark eyes.

Hannibal, in the background, grinned and chuckled silently, as he saw Arden's dazed, wondering admiration, saying to himself, "Dey ain't used to such young ladies as mine, up here--it kind o' dazzles 'em."

At last, as if breaking away from the influence of a spell, Arden suddenly rose, turning upon Edith one of those warm, bright looks that he sometimes gave his mother, and said, "You have been very kind; good-night," and was gone in a moment. But the night was luminous about him. Along the muddy road, in the old barn as he cared for his horses, in his poor little room at home, to which he soon retired, he saw only the fair face of Edith, with the firelight playing upon it, with the vividness of one looking directly upon an exquisite cabinet picture, and before that picture his heart was inclined to bow, in the most devoted homage.

Edith's only comment was, "He is 'quar,' Hannibal, as you said."

Wearied with the long day's work, she soon found welcome and dreamless rest.

CHAPTER XI

MRS. ALLEN'S POLICY

True to her promise, Rose helped Edith all the next day, and while she worked, the frank-hearted girl poured out the story of her troubles, and Edith came to have a greater respect and sympathy for her "kind and humble neighbors" as she characterized them in her own mind. Still with her familiarity with the farming class, kept up since her summer in the country as a child, she made a broad distinction between them and the mere laborer. Moreover, the practical girl wished to conciliate the Laceys and every one else she could, for she had a presentiment that there were many trials before them, and that they would need friends. She said in answer to Rose:

"I never realized before that the world was so full of trouble. We have seen plenty of late."

"One can bear any kind of trouble better than a daily shame," said Rose bitterly.

For some unexplained reason Edith thought of Zell and Mr. Van Dam with a sudden pang.

Arden brought his last load and watched eagerly for her appearance, fearing that there might be some great falling off in the vision of the past evening.

But to his eyes the girl he was learning to glorify presented as fair an exterior in the garish day, and the reality of her beauty became a fixed fact in his consciousness, and his fancy had already begun to endow her with angelic qualities. With all her vanity, even sorrowful Edith would have laughed heartily at his ideal of her. It was one of the hardest ordeals of his life to take the money she paid him, and she saw and wondered at his repugnance.

"You will never get rich," she said, "if you are so prodigal in work, and so spare in your charges."

"I would rather not take anything," he said dubiously, holding the money, as if it were a coal of fire, between his thumb and finger.

"Then I must find some one who will do business on business principles," she said coldly. "If the fellow has any sentimental nonsense about him, I'll soon cure that," she thought.

Arden colored, thrust his money carelessly into his pocket as if it were of no account, and said briefly, "Good-morning."

But when alone he put the money in the innermost part of his pocketbook, and when his father asked him for some of it, he sternly answered:

"No, sir, not a cent." Nor did he spend it himself; why he kept it could scarcely have been explained. He was simply acting according to the impulses of a morbid romantic nature that had been suddenly and deeply impressed. The mother's quick eye detected a change in him and she asked:

"What do you think of our new neighbor?"

"Mother," said he fervently, "she is an angel."

"My poor boy," said she anxiously, "take care. Don't let your fancy run away with you."

"Oh," said he with assumed indifference, "one can have a decided opinion of a good thing as well as a bad thing, without making a fool of one's self."

But the mother saw with a half-jealous pang that her son's heart was awaking to a new and stronger love than her own.

Mrs. Allen with Zell and Laura was to come by the boat that evening, and Edith's heart yearned after them as her kindred. Now that she had had a little experience of loneliness and isolation, she deeply regretted her former harshness and impatience, saying to herself, "It is harder for them than for me. They don't like the country, and don't care anything about a garden," and she purposed to be very gentle and long-suffering.

If good resolutions were only accomplished certainties as soon as made, how different life would be!

Arden had ordered a close carriage that she might go down and meet them, and had agreed to bring up their trunks and boxes in his large wagon.

The boat fortunately landed under the clear starlight on this occasion, and feeble Mrs. Allen was soon seated comfortably in the carriage. But her every breath was a sigh, and she regarded the martyrs as a favored class in comparison with herself. Laura still had her look of dreary apathy; but Zell's face wore an expression of interest in the new scenes and experiences, and she plied Edith with many questions as she rode homeward. Mrs. Allen brought a servant up with her who was condemned to ride with Arden, much to their mutual disgust.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Edith as they rode along. "It's a dreadful come-down for us all and I don't know how you are going to stand it, mother."

Mrs. Allen's answer was a long inarticulate sigh.

When she reached the house and entered the room where supper was awaiting them, she glanced around as a prisoner might on being thrust into a cell in which years must be spent, and then she dropped into a chair, sobbing--

"How different--how different from all my past!" and for a few moments they all cried together. As with Edith at first, so now again the new home was baptized with tears as if dedicated to sorrow and trouble.

Edith then led them upstairs to take off their things, and Mrs. Allen had a fresh outburst of sorrow as she recognized the contrast between this bare little chamber and her luxurious sleeping-apartment and dressing-room in the city. Laura soon regained her air of weary indifference, but Zell, hastily throwing off her wraps, came down to explore, and to question Hannibal.

"Bress you, chile, it does my eyes good to see you all, ony you'se musn't take on as if we'se all dyin' with slow 'sumption."

Zell put her hand on the black's shoulder and looked up into his face with a wonderfully gentle and grateful expression, saying:

"You are as good as gold Hannibal. I am so glad you stayed with us, for you seem like one of the best bits of our old home. Never mind, I'll have a grander house again soon, and you shall have a stiffer necktie and higher collar than ever."

"Bress you," said Hannibal with moist eyes, "it does my ole black heart good to hear you. But, Miss Zell, I say," he added in a loud whisper, "when is it gwine to be?"

"Oh!" said poor Zell, asked for definiteness, "some day," and she passed into the large room where Arden was just setting down a trunk.

"Don't leave it there in the middle of the floor," she said sharply. "Take it upstairs."

Arden suddenly straightened himself as if he had received a slight cut from a whip, and turned his sullen face full on Zell, and it seemed very repulsive to the imperious little lady.

"Don't you hear me?" she asked sharply.

"Perhaps it would be well for you not to ask favors of your neighbors in that tone," he replied curtly.

Edith, coming down, saw the situation and said with oil in her voice, "You must excuse my sister, Mr. Lacey. She does not know who you are. Hannibal will assist with the trunks if you will be so kind as to take them upstairs."

"She is different from the rest," thought Arden, readily complying with her request.

But Zell said as she turned away, loud enough for him to hear, "What airs these common country people do put on!" Zell might have loaded Arden's wagon with gold, and he would not have lifted a finger for her after that. If he had known that Edith's kindness had been half policy, his face would have been more sullen and forbidding than ever. But she dwelt glorified and apart in his consciousness, and if she could only maintain that ideal supremacy, he would be her slave. But in his morbid sensitiveness she would have to be very careful. The practical girl at this time did not dream of his fanciful imagining about her, but she was bent on securing friends and helpers, however humble might be their station, and she had shrewdly and quickly learned how to manage Arden.

The next day was spent by the family in getting settled in their narrow quarters, and a dreary time they had of it. It was a long rainy day, the roof leaked badly, and every element of discomfort seemed let loose upon them.

Mrs. Allen had a nervous headache, and one of her worst touches of dyspepsia, and Zell and Laura were so weary and out of sorts that little could be accomplished. Between the tears and sighs within, and the dripping rain without, Edith looked back on the first two days, when the Laceys were helping her, as bright in contrast. But Mrs. Allen was already worrying over the Laceys' connection with their settlement in the neighborhood.

"We shall be associated with these low people," said she to Edith querulously. "Your first acquaintances in a new place are of great importance."

Edith was not ready any such association, and she felt that there was force in her mother's words. She had thought of the Laceys chiefly in the light of their usefulness.

She was glad when the long miserable day came to a close, and she welcomed the bright sunshine of the following morning, hoping it would dispel some of the gloom that seemed gathering round them more thickly than ever.

After partaking of a rather meagre breakfast, for Hannibal's materials were running low, Edith pushed back her chair, and said:

"I move we hold a council of war, and look the situation in the face. We are here, and we've got to live here. Now what shall we do? I suppose we must go to work at something that will bring in money."

"Go to work, and for money!" said Mrs. Allen sharply from her cushioned arm-chair. "I hope we haven't ceased to be ladies."

"But, mother, we can't live forever on the title. The 'butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers' won't supply us long on that ground. What did the lawyer, who settled father's estate, say before you left?"

"Well," replied Mrs. Allen vaguely, "he said he had placed to our credit in--Bank, what there was left, and he gave me a check-book and talked economy as men always do. Your poor father, after losing hundreds at the club, would talk economy the next morning, in the most edifying way. He also said that there was some of that hateful stock remaining that ruined your father, but that it was of uncertain value, and he could not tell how much it would realize, but he would sell it and place the proceeds also to our credit. It will amount to considerable, I think, and it may rise.

"Now, girls," continued Mrs. Allen, settling herself back among the cushions, and resting the forefinger of her right hand impressively on the palm of the left, "this is the proper line of policy for us to pursue. I hope in all these strange changes I am still mistress of my own family. You certainly don't think that I expect to stay in this miserable hovel all my life. If you two girls, Laura and Edith, had made the matches you might, we should still be living on the avenue. But I certainly cannot permit you now to spoil every chance of getting out of this slough. You may not be able to do as well as you could have done, but if you are once called working-girls, what can you do?

"In the first place we must go into the best society of this town. Our position warrants it of course. Therefore, for heaven's sake don't let it get abroad that we are associating with these drunken Laceys."(Mrs. Allen in her rapid generalization gave the impression that the entire family were habitually "on the rampage," and Edith remembered with misgivings that she had drunk tea with Arden Lacey on that very spot.) "Moreover," continued Mrs. Allen, "there is a large summer hotel near here, and 'my friends' have promised to come and see me this summer. "We must try to present an air of pretty, rural elegance, and your young gentleman friends from the city will soon be dropping in. Then Gus Elliot and Mr. Van Dam continue very kind and cordial, I am sure. Zell, though so young, may soon become engaged to Mr. Van Dam, and it's said he is very rich--"

"I can't get up much faith in these two men," interrupted Edith, "and as for Gus, he can't support himself."

"I hope you don't put Gus Elliot and my friend on the same level," said Zell indignantly.

"I don't know where to put 'your friend,'" said Edith curtly. "Why doesn't he speak out? Why doesn't he do something open, manly, and decided? It seems as if he can see nothing and think of nothing but your pretty face. If he would become engaged to you and frankly take the place of lover and brother, he might be of the greatest help to us. But what has he done since father's death but pet and flatter you like an infatuated old--"

"Hush!" cried Zell, blazing with anger and starting up; "no one shall speak so of him. What more has Gus Elliot done?"

"He has been useful as my errand boy," said Edith contemptuously, "and that's all he amounts to as far as I'm concerned. I am disgusted with men. Who in all our trouble has been noble and knightly toward us?--"

"Be still, children; stop your quarrelling," broke in Mrs. Allen. "You have got to take the world as you find it. Men of our day don't act like knights any more than they dress like them. The point I wish you to understand is that we must keep every hold we have on our old life and society. Next winter some of my friends will invite you to visit them in the city and then who knows what may happen?"--and she nodded significantly. Then she added, with a regretful sigh, "What chances you girls have had! There's Cheatem, Argent, Livingston, Pamby, and last and best, Goulden, who might have been secured if Laura had been more prompt, and a host of others. Edith had better have taken Mr. Fox, even, than have had all this happen."

An expression of disgust came out on Edith's face, and she said, "It seems to me that I would rather go to work than take any of them."

"You don't know anything about work," said Mrs. Allen. "It's a great deal easier to marry a fortune than to make one, and a woman can't make a fortune. Marrying well is the only chance you girls have now, and it's my only chance to live again as a lady ought, and I want to see to it that nothing is done to spoil these chances."

Laura listened with a dull assent, conscious that she would marry any man _now_ who would give her an establishment and enable her to sweep past Mr. Goulden in elegant scorn. Zell listened, purposing to marry Mr. Van Dam, though Edith's words raised a vague uneasiness in her mind, and she longed to see him again, meaning to make him more explicit. Edith listened with a cooling adherence to this familiar faith and doctrine of the world in which the mother had brought up her children. She had a glimmering perception that the course indicated was not sound in general, or best for them in particular.

"And now," continued Mrs. Allen, becoming more definite, "we must have a new roof put on the house right away, or we shall all be drowned out, and the house must be painted, a door-bell put in, and fences and things generally put in order. We must fit this room up as a parlor, and we can use the little room there as a dining and sitting-room. Laura and I will take the chamber over the kitchen, and the one over this can be kept as a spare room, so that if any of our city friends come out to see us, they can stay all night."

"Oh, mother, the proposed arrangements will make us all uncomfortable, you especially," remonstrated Edith.

"No matter, I've set my heart on our getting back to the old life, and we must not stop at trifles."

"But are you sure we have money to spare for all these improvements?" continued Edith anxiously.

"Oh, yes, I think so," said Mrs. Allen indefinitely. "And as your poor father used to say, to spend money is often the best way to get money."

"Well, mother," said Edith dubiously, "I suppose you know best, but it doesn't look very clear to me. There seems nothing definite or certain that we can depend on."

"Perhaps not to-day, but leave all to me. Some one will turn up, who will fill your eye and fill your hand, and what more could you ask in a husband? But you must not be too fastidious. These difficult girls are sure to take up with 'crooked sticks' at last." (Mrs. Allen's views as to straight ones were not original.) "Leave all to me. I will tell you when the right ones turn up."

CHAPTER XII

WAITING FOR SOME ONE TO TURN UP

And so the girls were condemned to idleness and ennui, and they all came to suffer from these as from a dull toothache, especially Laura and Zell. Edith had great hopes from her garden, and saw the snow finally disappear and the mud dry up, as the imprisoned inmates of the ark might have watched the abatement of the waters.

On the afternoon of the council wherein Mrs. Allen had marked out the family policy, Edith and Zell walked to the village, and going to one of the leading stores, made arrangements with the proprietor to have his wagon stop daily at their house for orders. They also asked him to send them a carpenter. They made these requests with the manner of olden time, when money seemed to flow from a full fountain, and the man was very polite, thinking he had gained profitable customers.

While they were absent, Rose stepped in to see if she could be of any further help. Mrs. Allen surmised who she was and resolved to snub her effectually. To Rose's question as to their need of assistance, she replied frigidly, that they had two servants now, and did not wish to employ any more help.

Rose colored, bit her lip, then said with an open smile:

"You are under mistake. I am Miss Lacey, and helped your daughter the first two days after she came."

"Oh! ah! Miss Lacey. I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Allen, still more distantly. "My daughter Edith is out. Did she not pay you?"

Rose's face became scarlet, and rising hastily she said, "Either I misunderstand, or am greatly misunderstood. Good-afternoon."

Mrs. Allen slightly inclined her head, while Laura took no notice of her at all. When she was gone, Mrs. Allen said complacently, "I think we will see no more of that bold-faced fly-away creature. The idea of her thinking that we would live on terms of social equality with them!"

Laura's only reply was a yawn, but at last she got up, put on her hat and shawl and went out to walk a little on the porch. Arden, who was returning home with his team, stopped a moment to inquire if there was anything further that he c