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The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals

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Title: The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals

Author: Ann S. Stephens


        
Release date: August 30, 2009 [eBook #29862]
                Most recently updated: January 5, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD COUNTESS; OR, THE TWO PROPOSALS ***




Produced by Roberta Staehlin and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









    THE OLD COUNTESS;
    OR,
    THE TWO PROPOSALS.

    BY

    MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

    AUTHOR OF "LORD HOPE'S CHOICE," "THE REIGNING BELLE," "MARRIED
    IN HASTE," "MABEL'S MISTAKE," "DOUBLY FALSE," "WIVES AND
    WIDOWS," "MARY DERWENT," "THE REJECTED WIFE," "THE SOLDIER'S
    ORPHANS," "THE OLD HOMESTEAD," "FASHION AND FAMINE," "THE
    HEIRESS," "RUBY GRAY'S STRATEGY," "THE CURSE OF GOLD," "SILENT
    STRUGGLES," "THE WIFE'S SECRET," "PALACES AND PRISONS," "THE
    GOLD BRICK," "A NOBLE WOMAN."


    A SEQUEL TO "LORD HOPE'S CHOICE."


    PHILADELPHIA:
    T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;
    306 CHESTNUT STREET.


    Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
    T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
    In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.




CONTENTS.


    Chapter                                                  PAGE

         I.--LOVE LIGHTS IN TWO HEARTS.                        23

        II.--CLARA APPEALS TO HER STEPMOTHER.                  30

       III.--LOVERS' QUARREL.                                  40

        IV.--THE ITALIAN TEACHER.                              48

         V.--THE MOTHER AND DAUGHTER IN OPPOSITION.            57

        VI.--SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES GET INTO A CONJUGAL
            DIFFICULTY.                                        68

       VII.--THE OPERATIC SUPPER.                              77

      VIII.--BEHIND THE SCENES.                                86

        IX.--THE FIRST PERFORMANCE.                            91

         X.--THE TWO FOSTER-CHILDREN MEET.                     96

        XI.--LADY CLARA QUARRELS WITH HER STEPMOTHER.         101

       XII.--THE OLD PRISONER.                                107

      XIII.--THE OLD COUNTESS.                                116

       XIV.--THE OLD COUNTESS AND HER SERVANT.                122

        XV.--THE EARL'S RETURN.                               133

       XVI.--THE WIFE AND THE DAUGHTER.                       143

      XVII.--HUSBAND AND WIFE.                                152

     XVIII.--THE STORMY NIGHT AND SUNSHINY MORNING.           159

       XIX.--AFTER THE FAILURE.                               167

        XX.--LORD HILTON TAKES SUPPER WITH OLYMPIA.           176

       XXI.--ON THE WAY TO HOUGHTON CASTLE.                   184

      XXII.--THE OLD COUNTESS.                                191

     XXIII.--EXPLANATIONS AND CONCESSIONS.                    197

      XXIV.--DOWN BY THE BROOK AMONG THE FERNS.               203

       XXV.--HOW LADY CLARA GOT HER OWN WAY.                  208

      XXVI.--THE QUARREL AND THE LETTER.                      214

     XXVII.--MAGGIE CASEY MEETS HER OLD LOVER.                220

    XXVIII.--JUST FIFTY POUNDS.                               224

      XXIX.--OLYMPIA'S DEFEAT.                                232

       XXX.--THE FAMILY MEETING AT HOUGHTON.                  240

      XXXI.--DOWN AMONG THE FERNS AGAIN.                      247

     XXXII.--OUT AMONG THE TREES.                             253

    XXXIII.--THE BALL AT HOUGHTON.                            263

     XXXIV.--THE OLD WOMAN WANDERS BACK AGAIN.                269

      XXXV.--LADY HOPE IN THE CASTLE.                         274

     XXXVI.--DEATH IN THE TOWER-CHAMBER.                      280

    XXXVII.--THE NEMESIS.                                     289




THE OLD COUNTESS; OR, THE TWO PROPOSALS.

CHAPTER I.

LOVE-LIGHTS IN TWO HEARTS.


During fourteen years Hepworth Closs had been a wanderer over the earth.

When he was carried out from the court-room after Mrs. Yates' confession
of a crime which he had shrinkingly believed committed by another, he
had fainted from the suddenness with which a terrible load had been
lifted from his soul.

In that old woman's guilt he had no share. It swept the blackness from
the marriage he had protested against as hideously wicked. The wrong he
had done was divested of the awful responsibilities which had seemed
more than he could bear. The revelation had made him, comparatively, an
innocent and free man. But a shock had been given to his whole being
which unfitted him for the common uses of society.

After all that had passed through his mind he could not bear to think of
joining his sister or husband. The keen feelings of a nature, not in
its full development wicked or dishonorable, had been startled into
life, when he saw into what a gulf he had almost plunged. He saw the sin
and the wrong he had done in its true light, and not only repented of
it, but abhorred it from the very depths of his soul. He longed to make
atonement, and would have given ten years from his life for a chance by
which he could have sacrificed himself to any one that poor murdered
lady had loved.

These feelings rose up like a barrier between him and his sister. Her
influence over his youth had been so powerful that his own better nature
never might have asserted itself but for the tragedy which followed his
first plunge into deception and wrong-doing. He loved this beautiful
young woman yet, as few brothers of any age or class ever did; but the
shock of that tragedy was on him, and his impulse was to flee from her
and the man for whose sake all this trouble had come.

Hepworth Closs was not the first youth whose life has opened with evil
thoughts and evil deeds, from which his manhood shrank appalled.

The unformed intellect and quick passions of youth have wrecked many a
noble soul, by the sin of an hour or a day, beyond the redemption of a
toiling and regretful after-life. The man who does redeem himself must
have a powerful nature, which will force its strength to be recognized,
and make its regeneration felt. But to the sins of youth much should be
forgiven, which, in the mature man, justice might utterly condemn.

Hepworth Closs arose from that fainting fit humbled and grateful. That
moment his resolve was taken. He would not share the benefits which
might come to him through his sister's marriage, nor in anything partake
of a reward for the evil he had, in mercy, been saved from. The world
was before him. He would work his way into prosperity, if possible; if
not, bear his fate like a man who had deserved suffering, and could
endure it.

One act of restitution was in his power. The property of the unfortunate
person, whom he knew as Lady Hope, had fallen into his possession, for
the house had been purchased in his name, and, in like manner, her
deposits had been made. He had never intended to claim this money as his
own, and invested it now, holding himself as the trustee. This done, he
threw himself upon the world, quite alone.

During fifteen years he had asserted the honorable manhood that had
sprung out of his erring youth. That fearful tragedy had sickened him
with deception, and with all ambition which did not spring out of his
own honest exertions. He went forth, with all his energies on the alert,
and his intellect free from the suspicions that had for a time
enthralled it. He had craved riches, and hoped to obtain them through
Rachael's marriage. This had been a temptation. He had ambition still,
but it took a far more noble direction. With wealth he would gather
knowledge; with both, mental force and moral power.

He went. Men saw him in the gold mines of California, in Australia, and
among the traders of India and Japan. Then he came back to New York, and
was honorably known upon the exchange. Then came a yearning wish to see
his sister, the only relative he had on earth; and we find him at the
gate of Oakhurst Park, just as Lady Clara dashed through it, as bright a
vision of joyous, happy girlhood as ever crossed the path of any man.

That moment I think that Hepworth Closs fell in love with the girl. If
so, it was absolutely his first love. The boyish and most unprincipled
passion he had felt for that murdered lady had no similitude with the
feelings that possessed him now. It was a wicked, insane desire,
springing out of his perverted youth--a feeling that he would have
shuddered to have recognized as love, in these, his better days.

Yes, it is certain Closs loved the girl at first sight, but was
unconscious of it, as the nest is when a dove settles down to its
brooding.

As for the girl, she had seen but few men in her life calculated to
disturb the repose of a creature so gifted and rich in imagination. At
first Hepworth had seemed rather an old person to her, notwithstanding
the gloss of his black hair, and the smooth whiteness of his forehead.
With a trust in this, which gradually betrayed her, she accepted him
frankly as a relative, and in less than three weeks, grew restless as a
bird. She wondered what had made the world all at once so gloriously
beautiful, and why it was so difficult for her to keep the tears out of
her eyes when the soft purple evening came down, and divided the day
which had been spent with him, from the night, when she could only hope
to see him in shadowy dreams.

Rachael Closs saw all this, and it filled her with bitter rejoicing. How
would her powerful old enemy receive the intelligence that a brother of
hers had won the heart of the future Lady Carset? that he would be lord
of the proud old castle, which must go with the title, and mingle the
blood she had so often denounced as base with that which had turned
against her, with such hot scorn, ever since she entered England as Lord
Hope's wife?

The very thought of that haughty old peeress so humiliated was
wonderfully pleasant to the wounded pride of Rachael Closs. But far
beyond this was the yearning, almost passionate fondness she felt for
her brother and the beautiful girl who had been to her at once a Nemesis
and an infatuation.

This was what Lady Hope had hinted at when Hepworth first came. The
great wish of her heart had grown to be the union of these two persons,
next to one supreme object of love, the dearest beings to her on earth.
It seemed to her that those long, weary intervals, which grew more and
more frequent, when Lord Hope left her alone in the desolate splendor of
that great house, would be more endurable if she were certain that these
two persons would always be near her. She was not ambitious for her
brother. That feeling had died out years ago; but her love sprang to
him, like a freshly-kindled flame.

With Lady Hope, as with Rachael Closs, there was no moderation in her
feelings, which were tenacious as they were powerful and exacting. But
Rachael, with all her impetuosity, had strong contradictory qualities.
She was sagacious, and could rein in her passion of love or hate as an
Arab controls his desert steed. That which her soul most desired she
could wait for.

One night, when the moonbeams lay like silver on the stone terrace, and
the shadow of the peacock fell from the balustrade like a second bird,
Lady Hope complained of fatigue, and retreated into her own room,
leaving Hepworth and Clara sitting upon a flight of steps which led down
to a flower-garden, somewhat neglected of late years, which lay beneath
the stone terrace and brightened the grounds nearest to the lady's
apartments. Not far from these steps was a noble old cedar of Lebanon,
rooted deep, where the drawbridge had been hundreds of years before.
Beneath it was a rustic seat, and in its branches innumerable birds were
sleeping.

There never was, perhaps, a finer contrast of silver light and black
shadow in any landscape than surrounded these two persons, as they sat
together side by side, both thinking of the same thing, and both
reluctant to break the delicious silence.

At last Hepworth spoke--it was but a single word, which made his
companion start and hold her breath.

"Clara!"

She did not answer him; that one word frightened her. She had half a
mind to start up and hide herself in the shadows, for he was looking in
her face, and the moonlight fell like a glory over his features, which
she now saw were grave even to sadness.

"Clara, do you know that I must go away soon?"

"Oh, no! no!"

The girl had not expected this. The infinite tenderness in his voice had
led her completely astray, and she broke forth in an eager protest.

"I must, dear child."

"Dear child!" repeated the girl, half crying. "Yes, yes, you treat me
like a child--as if I could help being young--as if I could not feel and
think and be miserable like other people. It's hard, it's cruel,
it's--it's--"

Here Clara burst into a flood of tears, and leaping to her feet, would
have run into the room where Lady Hope was sitting, but Closs caught her
in his arms.

"What are you crying for, Clara? Why do you wish to run away? It is
wrong to say this, but I must go, because of loving you as no man ever
loved a woman before."

"A woman?" said Clara, and gleams of mischief peeped out from behind her
tears. "You called me a child just now."

"Woman or child, Clara, you are the dearest thing to me on earth."

Clara struggled in his arms, and tried to push him from her.

"I--I don't believe you. There!"

"Don't believe me?"

Hepworth released the girl, and allowed her to stand alone. On any
subject touching his honor he was peculiarly sensitive.

"Because--because men who love people don't run away from them. It--it
isn't reasonable."

All the mischief in her eyes was drowned in fresh tears. She thought
that he was offended, and the estrangement of a moment seems eternal to
first love.

"Honorable men do not permit themselves to speak of love at all where
they have reason to think it unwelcome," was his grave reply.

"Unwelcome? Oh, Mr. Closs!"

Clara held out both her hands and came nearer to Hepworth, like a child
that wants to be forgiven. He drew her close to his side, but spoke a
little sadly.

"You see how much I must love you, Clara, to forget all that a guest in
your father's house should remember."

"I--I don't know; I can't understand what it is that you have done
wrong. I'm sure I'm ready to forgive you."

She might have said more, but he took the breath from her lips, and held
her so close to his heart that she could feel its tumultuous beatings.

"But I can never forgive myself, darling."

"Oh, yes you will!"

The creature pursed up her lips and offered them for his kiss--thus, as
she thought, tempting him into self-forgiveness.

"Is it that you really--really love me?" questioned Hepworth, searching
the honest eyes she lifted to his with a glance half-passionate,
half-sorrowful, which brought a glow of blushes to her face.

"Can you ask that now?" she questioned, drooping her head. "Will a good
girl take kisses from the man she does not love?"

"God bless you for saying it, darling! Oh, if it could be--if it could
be!"

"If what could be, Mr. Closs?"

"That you might be my wife, live with me forever, love me forever."

"Your wife?" answered Clara, pondering over the sweet word in loving
tenderness. "Your wife? Are you asking me if I will be that?"

"I dare not ask you, Clara. What would your father say? What would he
have a right to say?"

"I'm sure I don't know," answered Clara, ruefully, for she could not
honestly say that her father would consent.

"You see, Clara, I have nothing to do but say farewell, and go."




CHAPTER II.

CLARA APPEALS TO HER STEPMOTHER.


Lady Hope had retreated into her own room, for the absence of her
husband was beginning to prey upon her; and she was all the more sad and
lonely because she knew in her heart that the two persons whom she saw
together in the moonlight were thinking, perhaps talking, of the love
which she must never know in its fullness again--which she had never
known as good and contented wives experience it.

Indeed, love is the one passion that can neither be wrested from fate or
bribed into life. It must spring up from the heart, like a wild flower
from seed God plants in virgin forest soil, to bring contentment with
its blossoming. The sunshine which falls upon it must be pure and
bright from heaven. Plant it in an atmosphere of sin, and that which
might have been a holy passion becomes a torment, bitter in proportion
to its strength.

Ah! how keenly Rachael Closs felt all this as she sat there alone in her
bower room, looking wistfully out upon those two lovers, both so dear to
her that her very soul yearned with sympathy for the innocent love she
had never known, and never could know upon earth! Yet, dear as these two
persons were to her, she would have seen that fair girl and the manly
form beside her shrouded in their coffins, if that could have brought
back one short twelve-months of the passionate insanity which had won
Lord Hope to cast aside all restraint and fiercely wrench apart the most
sacred ties in order to make her his wife. She asked for
impossibilities. Love born in tumult and founded in selfishness must
have its reactions, and between those two the shadow of a wronged woman
was forever falling; and, struggle as they would, it grew colder and
darker every year. But upon these two persons time operated differently.
The wild impetuosity of his character had hardened into reserve. His
ambition was to stand high among men of his own class--to be known as a
statesman of power in the realm.

But, in all this Rachael knew that she was a drawback and a heavy weight
upon his aspirations. Was it that she was less bright or beautiful? No,
no. Her mirror contradicted the _one_ doubt, and the power which she
felt in her own genius rebuked the other.

Once give her a foothold among the men and women who had so persistently
considered her as an intruder, and the old vigor and pride of her life
would come back with it: the idolatry which had induced that infatuated
man to overlook these stumbling blocks to his pride and impediments to
his ambition would surely revive.

"Let him see me at court; let him compare me with the women whose
cutting disdain wounds me to death, because it disturbs him; let him
place me where this intellect can have free scope, and never on this
earth was there a woman who would work out a husband's greatness so
thoroughly."

In the first years of her marriage, Rachael would say these things to
herself, in the bitterness of her humiliation and disappointment.
Others, less beautiful and lacking her talent, had been again and again
introduced from lower ranks into the nobility of England, accepted by
its queen, and honored by society. Why was she alone so persistently
excluded? The answer was always ready, full of bitterness. The enmity of
old Lady Carset had done it all. It was her influence that had closed
the queen's drawing-room against Lord Hope's second wife. It was her
charge regarding the Carset diamonds that had made Rachael shrink from
wearing the family jewels, which justly belonged to her as Lord Hope's
property. It was this which made her so reluctant to pass the boundaries
of Oakhurst. It was this that embittered her whole life, and rendered it
one long humiliation.

These reflections served to concentrate the hopes and affections of this
woman so entirely around one object, that her love for Hope, which had
been an overwhelming passion, grew into that idolatry no man, whose life
was in the world, could answer to, for isolation was necessary to a
feeling of such cruel intensity.

As the hope of sharing his life and his honors gave way, doubts,
suspicions, and anxieties grew out of her inordinate love, and the
greatest sorrow to her on earth was the absence of her husband. It was
not alone that she missed his company, which was, in fact, all the world
to her; but, as he went more and more into the world, a terrible dread
seized upon her. What if he found, among all the highly born women who
received him so graciously, some one who, in the brightness of a happy
life, might make him regret the sacrifice he had made for her, the
terrible scenes he had gone through in order to obtain her? What if he
might yet come to wish her dead, as she sometimes almost wished herself!

In this way the love, which had flowed like a lava stream through that
woman's life, engendered its own curse, and her mind was continually
haunted by apprehensions which had no foundation, in fact, for, to this
day, Lord Hope loved her with deeper passion than he had ever given to
that better woman; but with him the distractions of statesmanship, and
the allurements of social life, were a resource from intense thought,
while she had so little beside himself.

She had striven to bind him to her by kindness to his child, until the
bright girl became, as it were, a part of himself, with whom it would be
death to part.

Is it strange, then, that this dream of uniting Clara to her only
brother should have been very sweet to the unhappy woman?

Lord Hope had been absent a whole month now, and even with the
excitement of her brother's presence, Rachael had found those four weeks
terribly long.

What would she do if that fair girl were separated from her entirely?
Then solitude would be terrible indeed!

But another anxiety came upon her by degrees. In what way would her
husband receive Hepworth Closs? How would he accept the position the two
persons out yonder were drifting into? Would he consent to a union which
even her partiality admitted as unsuitable, or would he, in his cold,
calm way, plant his foot upon their hearts and crush her fond desire out
of existence?

As Lady Hope pondered over these thoughts in silence and semi-darkness,
Clara came through the window, in great excitement.

"Oh! mamma Rachael! He is going away from us. He told me so just now;
but you will not let him. You will never let him!"

Lady Hope started out of her reverie.

"Going away? Where? Who? I cannot understand, Clara!"

"Hepworth--Mr. Closs, I mean. Oh, mamma! he threatens to leave us here
all alone by ourselves--the most cruel thing that ever was heard of. I
thought how angry you would be, and came at once. You can do anything
with him--he loves you so dearly. Let him threaten if he likes, but you
will not let him go. You will tell him how foolish, how cruel it is to
leave us, while papa is away. Oh! mamma Rachael, you can do anything! Do
this! Do this!"

"But why, darling--why do you care so much?"

"Why! why!" Clara threw back her head till the curls waved away from her
shoulders, then a burning crimson came over her, the shamed face drooped
again, and she answered: "I don't know--I don't know."

Rachael bent her face till it almost touched that hot cheek, and
whispered:

"Is it that you love him, my own Clara?"

Again Clara lifted her face. A strange light came upon it. Her lips were
parted, her blue eyes opened wide.

"Love him--love him? Oh! mamma Rachael, is this love?"

Rachael smiled, and kissed that earnest face, holding it between both
hands.

"I think it is, darling. Nay, I am sure that you love him, and that he
loves you."

"Loves me? Then why does he go away? I should think so but for that."

"Because of that, I am afraid, Clara."

"Loves me, and goes away because he loves me!" said the girl,
bewildered. "I don't understand it."

"There may be many reasons, Clara."

"I can't think of one. Indeed I can't. Papa never was cruel."

"He may not think it quite honorable to let--make you love him, when
your father knows nothing about it."

"But papa would not mind."

"Hepworth does not know that; nor do I. Your father is a very proud man,
Clara, and has a right to look high, for his only child."

"What then? Mr. Closs is handsomer, brighter, more--more everything that
is grand and royal, than any nobleman I have ever seen. What can papa
say against that?"

"But he is a man of no family position--simply Hepworth Closs, nothing
more. We can scarcely call him an Englishman."

"What then, mamma? He is a gentleman. Who, in all this neighborhood, can
compare with him?"

"No one! no one!" answered Rachael, with enthusiasm. "There is but one
man on all the earth so far above the rest; but persons who look upon
birth and wealth as everything, may not see him with our eyes, my Clara.
Then there is another objection. Hepworth is over thirty."

"Mamma Rachael, you know well enough that I never did like boys," said
Clara, with childish petulance.

"And compared with the great landed noblemen of England, he is poor."

"Not so, mamma Rachael. He has made lots and lots of money out in those
countries where they dig gold from the earth. He described it all to me,
about washing dirt in pans, and crushing rocks in great machines, and
picking up pure gold in nuggets--why, he found an awful big one himself.
I daresay he has got more real money than papa. I do, indeed."

Lady Hope sighed. Perhaps she thought so too; for Oakhurst was closely
entailed, and ready money was sometimes scarce in that sumptuous
dwelling.

"And then how much shall I have? Let me ask that of papa."

"But you will inherit something with the Carset title in spite of your
grandmother."

"Yes, I know. An enormous old castle with just land enough to keep it in
repair. That isn't much to boast of, or make a man like Mr. Closs feel
modest when he thinks of me."

"But the title. Is it nothing to be a peeress in your own right?"

"I would rather he were an earl, and I a peeress in his right."

"You are a strange girl, Clara."

"But you love me if I am, mamma Rachael."

"Love you, child! You will never know how much!"

"And if it so happened that he did really like me, you wouldn't go
against it?"

"But what would my will be opposed to that of your father?"

"Only this--you can do anything with papa. Don't I remember when I was a
little girl?"

Rachael sighed heavily.

"That was a long time ago, Clara, and childish wants are easily
satisfied."

Clara threw both arms around her stepmother's neck and kissed her.

"Never mind if he is a little stubborn now and then; you can manage him,
yet, mamma. Only, don't let Mr. Closs do that horrid thing. I never
could ride alone with the ponies after the last three weeks. You don't
know how instructive he is! Why, we have travelled all over the world
together, and now he wants to throw me overboard; but you won't let him
do that, mamma Rachael. What need is there of any thought about what may
come? We are all going on beautifully, now, and, I dare say, papa is
enjoying himself shooting grouse. When he comes back and sees how much
Mr. Closs is like you, everything will be right. Only, mamma Rachael,
tell me one thing. Are you sure that--that he isn't thinking me a child,
and likes me only for that? This very night he called me 'my child,' and
said he was going. That made me wretchedly angry, so I came in here. Now
tell me--"

"Hush! hush! I hear his step on the terrace."

The girl darted off like a swallow. For the whole universe she could not
have met Hepworth there in the presence of a third person.

As she left the room, Closs entered it.

"Rachael," he said, standing before his sister, in the square of
moonlight cast like a block of silver through the window, "I have been
weak enough to love this girl whom we both knew as an infant, when I was
old enough to be a worse man than I shall ever be again; and, still more
reprehensible, I have told her of it within the last half-hour; a
pleasant piece of business, which Lord Hope will be likely to relish.
Don't you think so?"

"I do not know--I cannot tell. Hope loves his daughter, and has never
yet denied anything to her. He may not like it at first; but--oh!
Hepworth, I know almost as little of my husband's feelings or ideas as
you can."

"But you will not think that I have done wrong?"

"What, in loving Clara? What man on earth could help it?"

"Well, I do love her, and I think she loves me."

"I know she does."

"Thank you, sister; but she is such a child."

"She is woman enough to be firm and faithful."

"You approve it all, then?"

Hepworth sat down by his sister and threw his arm around her.

"My poor Rachael! how I wish this, or anything else, could make you
really happy!"

She did not answer; but he felt her form trembling under his arm.

"But I only see in it new troubles for you and dishonor for myself.
There is really but one way for me to act--I must leave this place."

"And Clara? After what you have said, that would, indeed, be
dishonorable."

"She is so young; the pain would all go with me. In a few months I shall
probably have scarcely a place in her memory."

"You wrong the dearest and finest girl in the whole world when you say
that, Hepworth! To desert her now would be profound cruelty."

"Then in what way am I to act?"

"Write to Lord Hope; tell him the truth--that you have won the respect
of men by your actions, and have, with your own energies, acquired
wealth enough to make you a fair match in that respect for his daughter.
Make no allusion to the past; he is proud, and terribly sensitive on
that point, and might suspect you of making claims to equality because
of it."

Hepworth smiled as he stood before her in the moonlight, and she saw it.
Wide travel and experience among men had led him to think that, after
all, the highest level of humanity did not always range with hereditary
titles; but he only said, very calmly:

"Lord Hope cannot accuse me justly of aspiring where he is concerned."

Rachael felt the hot crimson leap to her face. Did Hepworth dare to
equal himself with Lord Hope, the one great idol of her own perverted
life? She answered, angrily, forgetting that the sinner was her only
brother:

"Lord Hope need have no fear that any man living will so aspire."

"Poor foolish girl!" said Hepworth, feeling the flash of her black eyes,
and touched with pity, rather than anger, by her quick resentment. "Do
not let us quarrel about Hope. If he makes you happy, I have nothing to
say against him."

"Happy! happy!"

Rachael shrank back in her seat, uttering these two words in a voice so
full of pathetic sorrow, that it brought the pain of coming tears into
Hepworth's eyes. He was glad to turn the subject.

"Then you are not willing that I should go away?"

"It would almost kill me to lose you again, Hepworth."

The young man felt that she spoke the truth; the very tones of her voice
thrilled him with a tender conviction.

"I will write to Hope," he said; "it must end in that or absence. It
shall not be my fault, Rachael, if I ever go far away from you again."

Lady Hope took her brother's hand between hers.

"That is kind, and I really think the only wise thing to be done," she
said. "Hope knows that you were born a gentleman."

"And having married into the family himself, can hardly say that it is
not good enough for his daughter. This is answer enough for all
objections of that kind. In fact, Rachael, I begin to think we can make
out a tolerable claim. Now that we have decided on the letter, I will
write it at once, here, if you will let me order more lights."

Hepworth rang the bell as he spoke, and directly wax candles were
burning on the ebony desk at which Lady Hope was accustomed to write.

Having made up his mind, Closs was not the man to hesitate in doing the
thing he had resolved on. He spread a sheet of paper before him, and
began his letter at once. Rachael watched him earnestly as his pen flew
over the paper.

For the first time she realized, with a pang of apprehension, the step
she was so blindly encouraging. What if Lord Hope took offense at the
letter, or should condemn her for the intimacy which had led to it? She
was afraid of her husband, and each movement of Hepworth's pen struck
her with dread. Had she, indeed, laid herself open to the wrath of a
man, who was so terrible in his anger, that it made even her brave heart
cower?

"There, it is finished," said Hepworth, addressing his letter, and
flinging down the pen. "Now let us throw aside care, and be happy as we
can till the answer comes."

Lady Hope sighed heavily, and, reaching forth her hand, bade him
good-night.




CHAPTER III.

LOVER'S QUARREL.


They were sitting together, under the great cedar tree, declared lovers;
perhaps not the less happy because some little doubt rested over their
future, so far as the young lady was concerned.

As for Hepworth Closs, he had made up his mind to expect difficulties,
and knew how to conquer them, if human ingenuity could do it. He loved
the bright young creature, and had resolved within himself that no
unreasonable opposition on the part of his former friend should prevent
him marrying her, while there was a possibility of conciliating his
bride, or working upon the love which he had always evinced for his
child.

Hepworth had learned, from conversation with both the ladies, that the
Lord Hope of the present day was a very different person from the rash,
headstrong, audacious young man whom he had almost threatened with
disgrace fourteen years back.

Then he was ready to cast wealth, rank, conscience, everything, aside
for the gratification of any wild passion that beset him. Now he held
the rank to which he was born sacred above all things; was careful, if
not covetous, of wealth, because it added power to rank; and was known
the whole country round as one of the proudest noblemen and most
punctilious magistrates in the three kingdoms.

This man's daughter he--Hepworth Closs--desired to make his wife. Nay,
in spite of fate, meant to make his wife, unless she, in her own self,
cast his love from her. Having settled upon this, he cast off all care,
and gave himself up to the supreme happiness of loving and being
beloved.

So, as the two sat under the cedar tree, that bland autumn day, Clara
thought, in her wilful little heart, that the man looked too confident
and happy. She had no idea of settling down into a commonplace
engagement, sanctioned or unsanctioned. What business had he to look so
supremely contented? Did he not know that girls sometimes changed their
minds?

In short, Lady Clara was in a wilful mood, and could be provoking enough
when the fit came on her. Just now she was embroidering diligently. The
golden stamens of a superb cactus glowed out stitch by stitch, as her
needle flew in and out of its great purplish and crimson leaves.

"Why don't you look up, Clara? I haven't seen your eyes these ten
minutes."

"Indeed! Well, I'm too busy. Pray hand me a thread of that yellow silk."

"Not if I can help it, ladybird. It's very tiresome sitting here, only
to watch your sharp little needle as it drops color into that great
flower. One never gets a sight of your full face."

"Then you don't like the profile?" said Clara, demurely, and her needle
flashed almost into Hepworth's eyes as he bent over her. "That is just
what I expected. It isn't three days since you first pretended to care
for me."

"Pretended! Clara?"

"That was the word," answered Clara, holding her work at arms' length,
and examining it, with her head on one side, like a bird eyeing the
cherry he longs to peck at. "Lovely, isn't it?"

"I have been where you could gather armsful of them from the wayside,"
answered Hepworth. "That is well enough, of course, for silk and
worsted; but you never can get that mixture of crimson, purple and
glittering steel, that makes the flower so regal in the tropics; then
the soft tassel of pale gold, streaming out from the heart, and thrown
into relief by this exquisite combination of colors. Ah, some day I will
show you what a cactus really is, Clara."

"Perhaps," said the provoking girl, searching her work-basket for the
silk she wanted. "Who knows?"

A flash of color flew across Hepworth's forehead. The handsome fellow
never had given himself much to the study of women, and even that pretty
creature had the power to annoy him, mature man as he was. She saw that
he was vexed, and rather liked it; for if the truth must be told, a more
natural coquette never lived than Lady Clara.

"Are you beginning to doubt, Clara?"

"Doubt? Oh! not at all. I don't honestly believe that there ever was a
more perfect flower than that. See how the colors melt into each other;
then the point of that long, prickly leaf coming out behind. I tell you,
Mr. Closs, it's perfect."

She was looking down at her work, and he could not detect all the
mischief that sparkled under her drooping lashes.

"Clara, what does this mean?"

The girl looked up at him so innocently.

"Mean? Why, it means a cactus-flower."

Hepworth Closs had never been a patient man, and the feelings which that
wild girl had awakened in his heart were all too earnest for such
trifling. He rose to leave her. Then she gave him a side glance, half
comic, half repentant.

"Are you going?"

"Yes."

"Dear me, I am so sorry, because I wanted to tell you something."

The girl spoke and acted like a penitent child. Hepworth sat down again,
but his face was clouded.

"You can do anything with mamma Rachael, and I want you to ask a great
favor for me."

"Why not ask yourself? My sister denies you nothing."

"But this is something peculiar, and she may think papa would not like
it. There is to be a new opera brought out in London, and such a lovely
girl is to make her first appearance in it, handsome as the morning, and
with a voice like ten thousand nightingales. Now, I do so want to hear
her on the first night."

"Well, that is easy."

"Yes, yes--if mamma Rachael would only think so. But papa is awful
particular, and she may be afraid to take me. But with you for an
escort, there can't really be any harm; so I want your help."

"But how did you know about this? I have not seen it in the journals."

"No, it hasn't got abroad yet. I will tell you all about it. When I was
a very, very little girl, my poor mother died in America, where she was
travelling among the Indians, I believe, with my father. Well, you see
how hard it was on papa to be left with a poor little girl among the
savages. I do not know just how it was; but when he married mamma
Rachael, ever so long after, of course she got an American nurse in New
York, who has been with me ever since. I call her my maid now, and won't
have any other, French or not--for she's good as gold, and loves me
dearly. You will believe that when I tell you our head gamekeeper wanted
to marry her--she loved him, too, but wouldn't leave me. Margaret left a
sister behind in New York that she was very fond of, and has been pining
to see for years. Just before you came she received a letter from
London, saying that her sister was there, travelling with some lady
connected with the stage, and asking Margaret to come and visit her. Of
course, Margaret went, and has been all this time on a long visit to her
relative, who came to Europe with the great prima donna, Olympia. It is
her adopted daughter that is coming out."

"Olympia. Yes, I saw her in America last year--a wonderfully beautiful
creature, in a certain way; but her style of acting is not exactly what
I should choose for you, Lady Clara, though her voice is wonderful."

"Oh, it isn't her I care about, but the young lady. Margaret says she is
lovely as an angel, with a heavenly voice, but that she is frightened to
death at coming on the stage, and begs and pleads with her mother not to
insist on it; but Olympia is determined. My heart quite aches for this
poor girl. She is about my age, Margaret says, and so beautiful--not a
bit like me. I dare say it's true, for I would give the world to be an
actress, and have the whole world go mad over my singing. By-the-way,
Mr. Closs, do you know that I can sing? Mamma Rachael often says, if I
were not a lady, I might go on the stage and beat half the prima donnas;
besides, she says, I am a natural actress, and that seems to displease
her."

"I think you are a natural actress," said Closs, with a tinge of
sarcasm, for this whole subject displeased him, he scarcely could have
told why.

"Now you mean to be unkind," said Clara, rising, with a warm flush in
her cheeks; "I will not ask another favor of you."

Clara gathered up her embroidery, and prepared to leave the sheltered
seat in which this conversation had been held. She certainly was not
acting now, for Closs saw that her eyes were full of tears.

"Clara," he said, holding out both hands; "Clara, forgive me."

She hesitated a minute, then set down her basket, and crept close to his
side, wiping the tears with one hand, while he clasped the other. Then
she snatched her hand away, and held it behind her.

"No--I won't forgive you."

"Not if I persuade Lady Hope to take you up to London for this
appearance?"

"Ah, then, perhaps."

"And go with you myself?"

"That will be splendid."

"That Olympia is a magnificent creature. I took supper with her once in
New York."

"You, Mr. Closs! You took supper with her?"

"She sang for us that night, divinely."

"And you admire her so much?"

"Very much."

"Mr. Closs, I do not think I care to go. There is no need of your asking
Lady Hope--I decline the whole thing."

"Still, I think we will go, Clara, if it is only to show you how much a
woman can be worshipped, and yet despised. Yes, yes, we will go and hear
Olympia sing."

But Clara was not to be so easily appeased. She gathered up her worsted
and embroidery, huddled them together in her work-basket and went away,
refusing to let Closs carry her basket, or even walk by her side.

While he stood watching the haughty little thing, a voice from the other
side of the cedar tree arrested him. He turned, and saw a face that had
once been familiar, but which he could not at the moment recognize.

The woman came forward with a startled look. She was evidently past
thirty, and had an air of independence, which he had never seen in an
English domestic.

She came closer, their eyes met, and he knew that it was Maggie Casey,
the chambermaid who had led him up to that death-chamber, the last time
he visited it. She had recognized him from the first.

"Mr. Hepworth," she said, in a low voice: "Mr. Hepworth!"

Closs had almost been prepared for this, and did not allow himself to be
taken by surprise.

"You have got half the name right at any rate," he said, quietly;
"Hepworth Closs, and you have it complete. You never could have heard it
in full, when you lived in New York, I fancy."

"Closs, Closs? No, I never heard that name given to you; but it once
belonged to Lady Hope, I remember."

"And of course, naturally belongs to her brother, my good girl," said
Closs, with a quiet smile.

"Her brother? Whose brother? Not the Lady that was--"

The girl broke off, and her voice died in a low whisper.

"No, no!" broke in the man, with sudden impatience; "that was a terrible
thing, which you and I will be all the happier in forgetting. The poor
woman who did it is suffering a hard penalty, if she is not in fact
dead."

"Yes, sir, yes; but how came her grandchild here? How came you there?"

"Hush!" said Hepworth, in a voice of command, that startled the woman;
"who gave you authority to ask such questions? What can you know about
the old woman's grandchild?"

"I know that the young lady who left you ten minutes ago was the little
girl they called her grandchild. I saw the coroner holding the poor
little thing up to look on the dead lady. I think that lady was her
mother."

"And have told her so, perhaps?"

"No; I never did, and I never will. She called the old woman, Yates,
grandmother; but I know better than that, for I know where her
grandchild is this very minute."

"You know her grandchild?"

"Yes, I do, and a prettier creature never lived."

"You know her, and will tell me?"

"Indeed, I will do nothing of the sort," answered Margaret, for she had
thrown off the jaunty abbreviation of her name. "There is something
about all this that puzzles me. People that I never expected to see
again keep crossing my path like ghosts, and somehow most of them have
something to do with that time. Why can't the whole thing rest? I'm sure
that poor old woman, Yates, has had her punishment, and I don't want to
talk about what I don't understand."

"You are wise," said Closs, whose face had lost all its cheerfulness;
"there is no good in even thinking of a dead past, and, as you say, that
poor old woman has her punishment. I am glad you have said nothing of
these things to my sister, or Lady Clara."

"Why should I?" said Margaret, with shrewd good sense: "what good would
it do? In fact, what do I know? I only hope no such trouble will ever
come to this house."

"Heaven forbid!" said Closs, fervently, and the two parted.




CHAPTER IV.

THE ITALIAN TEACHER.


Lady Clara was right. Olympia had brought her daughter to London after a
professional tour on the continent, not as her daughter. Olympia would
not force herself to admit that the tall Juno-like girl, who outshone
her in beauty, and rebuked her flippant grace by a dignity at once calm
and regal, could, by any possibility, be her own offspring, at least as
yet. She had arranged it with Brown that no public acknowledgment of
Caroline's relationship should be made, and that she should pass as an
adopted child or protege, at least until her success on the operatic
stage was confirmed.

Brown had stipulated, on his part, that the girl should receive her
musical training in strict privacy, so far as that was possible, and, in
no case, should be moved from his personal supervision, a condition that
Olympia accepted with delight, for, after a month or two, she began to
feel the presence of her cast-off husband something of a restraint, and
regarded the quick growth and blooming loveliness of the young girl as
almost a wrong to her own ripe beauty. Still she would not loosen her
hold as a parent on the girl's life, but still hoped to reap a golden
harvest from her talent, and sun her own charms, as they waned, in the
splendor of her child's beauty.

With these feelings, Olympia opened her campaign in Europe, and swept a
brilliant career from France to Italy, and from thence to Austria and
St. Petersburg, leaving Caroline with her guardian and maid, in a
village near Florence, where she could perfect herself in Italian and
music at the same time.

There Caroline's life really began. They were staying at a pretty villa,
terraced up from the banks of a bright little stream, that emptied
itself into the Arno, so isolated and lonely, that it was perfect heaven
to Brown, who was set down at once as the young lady's father, and to
Eliza, who delighted in the chance of rest this arrangement promised.

While in Florence, Brown had taken his charge to one of the best
teachers in Europe, who consented to break through his usual rules and
give her lessons in the pretty home she had decided on. He would also
charge himself with selecting a teacher of the language, who should make
her pronunciation of the sweet Tuscan perfect as her voice, which was,
in fact, something wonderful.

Some persons were in the musician's room when these arrangements were
made, and one of them, a young man, drew slowly toward the piano, like a
bird charmed against its will, and listened with rapt attention while
Caroline took her first lesson. The girl looked up once or twice, as her
voice rang out with unusual power, and unconsciously answered back the
warm smile that enkindled his whole face. A musician himself--she knew
by the very expression of his dark eyes.

Brown saw it too, and was delighted with the effect of her genius; which
he, in his partial affection, deemed transcendent.

"He is a professor, I dare say, or perhaps a great singer," thought the
kind old man; "but she charmed him at once."

Brown was confirmed in this idea when the eminent teacher he had
consulted fell into a discussion with the man in Italian, which Caroline
did not hear, and Brown himself could not understand, but which
evidently turned upon Caroline's performance. They were both delighted
with it; that was evident from the very ardor with which they spoke.
Brown was pleased with all this, but Caroline, perhaps, remembered it
with greater interest than he had felt, for the young man's face haunted
her long after she was settled in the pretty villa, and had made herself
at home among the vines and flowers that turned those terraces into a
jungle of fruit and blossoms.

Nothing could be more lovely than the home Brown had chosen, and
certainly no place could have been found more completely isolated. The
coming of her teachers even became a matter of deep interest to
Caroline.

One morning, when her language-master was expected, she went out early
and stood upon the lower terrace, looking down the little stream which
led to the Arno, as I have told you, impatient for his coming; impatient
to know what sort of a person he would prove, and if his society might
not break the monotonous stillness of that beautiful place. It was early
yet. She had no reason to believe that her new teacher would be there
for hours. She felt it very tiresome, walking up and down those terraces
and watching the ripe olives drop one by one into the long grass from
the branches overhead. The restlessness of youth was upon her, and she
longed for some means of leaping over the next three hours, when the new
teacher would come, perhaps with a disappointment.

He might be some poor old soul, whose very presence would prove an
annoyance. No matter; a disappointment or an annoyance was better than
utter stagnation. She wished the new man would come, she wished there
was something for her to work at till he did come.

A flight of stone steps fell down to the water from the lower terrace.
Fastened to an iron staple sunk deep into the granite, was a little boat
swinging by a cable. Caroline's heart gave a leap at the sight.

She ran down the steps, untied the cable, and in a moment was sweeping
down the little stream, pulling her oars like an Indian girl.

It was a lovely flow of water, clear as crystal. The sky was mirrored in
it softly blue; the sun struck it with arrows of silver, the flowering
shrubs trailed down from its banks, and rippled the waters like the lost
plumage of a peacock; fruit-laden vines broke away from the olive
branches, and dipped their purple clusters in the stream, where they
shone out richly--amethysts gleaming through crystal. Everything was
beautiful around her. Full of youth and health she gloried in the
exercise of rowing; gloried in the sunshine and quivering shadows
through which her pretty boat ploughed its way, breaking up pictured
trees and clouds, and turning them to foam.

The current was with her, the wind swept softly down stream, bringing a
scent of wall-flowers and jessamines with it. The boat shot downward
like the shuttle through a web. The water deepened, the stream grew
wider; she could hear the broad, free rush of the Arno, a little way
off. Still she went on.

It would be glorious, finding herself in the broad river sweeping toward
Florence, in her arrow-like boat. Of course she could turn at any time,
but not yet.

Something stopped the boat. A wild vine, hidden in the water, had seized
upon it, and swept it half around, then a current tossed it forward into
a sweeping whirl of waters. She was close by a vortex near the mouth of
the river, a ravenous little whirlpool that threatened to swallow her
up. The oars dropped from her hands; she seized the sides of her boat
and sat still, rigid as stone, white as death. Then a great arrow, or
what seemed to be one, shot through the water close by her, ploughing it
white with foam. Then a man leaped into her boat, pitching a pair of
oars in before him, and holding the cable of another boat in his hand.

He neither spoke nor looked at her, but twisting the cable around one
ankle, and setting the other foot upon it further up, seized his oars,
and for a minute or two battled like a tiger with the waters.

The boat rocked, wheeled slowly away from the awful danger, then plunged
forward with a shock that brought a sharp cry from Caroline's white
lips.

"Do not be afraid. The danger is over."

She turned her pallid face, and over it came a flash of recognition. It
was the man who had listened to her first lesson in Florence. He
recognized her, pale as she was, and slackened his oars--they were out
of danger now.

"Am I so fortunate? My pupil! This is a great happiness."

Caroline leaned forward and held out her trembling hands. Words of
gratitude were on her lips, but they only trembled there, without
utterance. He leaned over the little hands, as they came quivering
toward him, but could not touch them, his own being sufficiently
occupied with the oars.

"There is nothing to fear now sweet lady," he said, in Italian, which
never sounded so sweet to her before. "The danger is wholly past--but it
_was_ danger!"

Caroline shuddered; she almost felt those curling waters sweep over her.
The sensation was terrible.

"And you saved me?--you, whose face I have seen before so often, so
often. It seems like that of a friend."

"Once--only once. I wish it had been a thousand times, if that could
lessen your fright."

"Tell me how it was," said Caroline, beginning to recover herself. "I
cannot realize it."

"Nor I, sweet lady, it was all so sudden. I saw a boat whirling toward
that treacherous vortex, the flash of a blue mantle, the whiteness of an
upturned face. What I did, you know. I cannot tell how it was done; did
not dream who the person was. Now, I long to fall upon my knees and
thank God."

Caroline clasped the hands which had fallen to her lap, bent her head,
and unspoken words of thanksgiving trembled in her heart. The man looked
upon her eagerly. That gentle glow of devotion gave her face the
sweetness of a madonna.

He thought this, and almost dropped the oars, the longing to fall down
upon his knees by her side was so intense.

She saw this, understood it, and smiled for the first time.

"I was asking God to forgive me for being grateful to you before I
thought of Him."

"And I was asking Him to make me grateful enough for having saved you.
Surely that should bring his blessing on us both."

Caroline bent her head, and a sweet smile crept over her lips. Then she
bethought herself of the things of this world, and grew troubled.

"But I am taking you from your course. Forgive me!"

"From my course? Not so. It was for this purpose I come. Perhaps you are
not informed that I am to make your Italian more perfect than it is,
which is scarcely needed."

"You sir!--you?"

She said no more, but her face lighted up, and he saw her hands softly
clasp themselves, as if she were thanking God over again. Then his own
head bent forward, and he made a great effort with the oars, but it was
only to hide the smile that broke over it.

So up the little river these two people went more and more slowly, for
the stillness and the beauty were pleasant beyond anything, and both
dreaded the moment when this delicious happiness would end. But they
reached the steps at last, and there was Mr. Brown and Eliza, on the
lower terrace, in great trouble.

They had missed her and the boat. Dreading they scarcely knew what
danger, both were anxious to follow her, but they had no means. Thus an
hour of keen anxiety had passed, while they stood watching the river.

"There is your father, looking anxious," said the young man. "I hope he
has not suffered much."

Caroline did not answer him, but sprang to the steps and ran up them,
holding out her hands.

"My child! my dear, dear child!" cried Brown, throwing both arms around
her.

He often used endearing terms like this when much affected, and she
thought nothing of it, but kissed his face, and kissed Eliza also, who
scolded her terribly, as was her habit when disturbed by a sudden fit of
tenderness--a state of feeling she was sure to resent.

"Father Brown, this is my new teacher. The professor sent him. He has
just saved my life. I have tried to thank him, but could not. You have
more power."

Brown and Eliza both came close to the young man; but he shook his head,
and tried to evade them. After her tender thankfulness, their gratitude,
generous and pure as it was, seemed coarse to him.

"We must begin the lesson," he said, laughing, and drawing a book from
his pocket. "This little accident, which was nothing, has made us lose
time."

He said this in Italian, which, of course, silenced them; and at this
moment the man could say nothing which his companion would not confirm.

Caroline smiled, and went up the steps from terrace to terrace, while he
kept by her side. Her color had come back more vividly than ever. The
sunshine struck her hair, and turned all its brown to gold. She was
dressed like a peasant of the better class, with some scarlet in her
blue bodice, and more bordering the bottom of her skirt. Her neck was
uncovered, for the blue mantle had fallen off and now lay in the bottom
of the boat. It was a becoming dress, but not for her--she was too
queenly.

They went into that old stone dwelling, forming one group; but the
moment the parlor was reached, Eliza went off to her work, she said--but
if any one had followed her, it would have been to a chamber under the
roof, where she was upon her knees full twenty minutes, thanking God for
Caroline's escape from death.

Then Brown went away, and seated himself in an arbor on one of the
terraces, where he was seen once or twice to take out his handkerchief
and wipe his eyes, as if the dust troubled him.

The man up yonder, brave as he was, had rather evaded his gratitude; but
he knew that God would listen.

Then Caroline took one of the volumes her new teacher had brought, and
retreated to a latticed window, which had a cushioned seat in it large
enough for two, though I really do not believe she thought of that. At
any rate, he did not accuse her of it, even in his thoughts, but went
quietly to the window and took a seat by her side, at which she blushed
a little, but did not move.

Caroline was very well grounded in her Italian; so, instead of grammars,
these young people fell to reading the native poets, and began with
Tasso--a course of studies well calculated to produce more results than
one; but Brown did not understand Italian, though he was a splendid
musician, and repeated it like a parrot. Besides, what did Eliza know
about Tasso, Petrarch, Dante, or any of those wild fellows that
disseminate love-poison by the line?

When her teacher was ready to go, Brown asked his name. I have no idea
that Caroline had thought of it. The young man seemed quite taken aback
for a minute, but answered, after that, something that would have
sounded like an English name rendered in Italian, had a thorough
Italian scholar been present, which there was not.

Well, for three months those young people sat twice a week in the seat
in the lattice-window, and read the poets together. Need I say more
about that?

At the end of three months Olympia had an engagement in London, and sent
for Brown to join her there with his charge.




CHAPTER V.

THE MOTHER AND DAUGHTER IN OPPOSITION.


Of course there is no such thing as arousing all London into a fit of
enthusiasm, because millions of people are not moved at the same moment
by anything less than a revolution. But the West End, just then, wanted
an excitement, and found it in the coming of Olympia. Her style was new,
her action a little too free, perhaps, for the high-bred dames of the
aristocracy; but they all went, and were amused, shocked, fascinated,
and went again, but only to keep the young people, they said, from utter
demoralization--the creature really was irresistible.

At any rate, Olympia was the fashion, and drew famously, till a rival
novelty proclaimed itself. Then she was horror-stricken by seeing a few
empty seats in the house. To Olympia, an empty seat was desolation.

That night Olympia went to her daughter's room the moment she reached
her hotel after a late performance. The cloak which she had worn from
the theatre still hung about her shoulders. Her cheeks blazed with
rouge, her eyes were restless and anxious.

Caroline started up from her sweet sleep, disturbed and almost
terrified.

"What is it, mamma?" she said, holding back the hair from her lovely
face with both hands. "Is any one ill--Mr. Brown?"

Olympia sat down on her daughter's bed, and drew the cloak around her;
not that she was cold, but to show that her resolution was taken.

"No one is ill, Caroline; as for Brown, I know nothing about him. But I
come to prepare you; for this week we shall bring you out. In what opera
have you practiced most?"

"Bring me out? Oh, mamma!"

The girl fell back on her pillow, dismayed, and clasping both hands,
held them out imploringly.

"Oh! I thought you had given it up."

"Foolish child! I never give anything up. Ask Brown."

It was true; that woman never gave up her own will to any one. The
possibility of sacrifice or willing concession could not enter her mind.

"But I cannot, I cannot! Oh, mother! think how little I have seen of
crowds. To sing before one would _kill_ me!"

"Mother!" repeated Olympia, "how often must I tell you that I hate the
word!--an American vulgarism!"

"Forgive me, mamma; it was only because I was so frightened at the idea
of singing in public. But I know that you did not mean it."

The poor girl made a pitiful attempt at disbelief, and tried to win
acquiescence with a timid smile.

"I not only mean it, but will have no more evasion or protest. When we
left New York, you were dying to get on the stage."

"Oh, that was before I knew--before I dreamed--"

"Before you knew--before you dreamed what?"

"That it made one so--so--"

"Well, speak out!"

"So unhappy. Indeed, indeed, I cannot say what I mean; only, I would
rather die than put rouge on my face, and--oh, forgive me! I did not
mean to make you look so angry!"

But Olympia was angry. The prima donna of a company does not usually
bear much opposition, even in trifles, and here Olympia had great
interests at stake.

Through the young girl before her she intended to run a second career,
and thus crowd the enjoyment of two lives into one.

"This all comes of Brown," she said. "He would have you kept quiet, and
out of the world, pretending that society would distract attention from
your practice; but it was all an artful plan to keep you to himself. I
have not been so busy as not to understand that, let me tell him."

Caroline started up in bed, almost as much excited as the actress.

There was plenty of good honest character in the girl; and, if she
appeared timid, it was from delicacy, not weakness.

"You wrong Mr. Brown. There is not a selfish feeling in his heart. What
he does, is always done for my good."

"Yes; I suppose it is for your good when he drinks too much!"

There was a sneer on Olympia's lip, an evil spirit in her eye, which
destroyed all its beauty; but even this did not make the girl shrink;
she only put out both her hands, and turned her head away.

"Oh! how can you?" she cried. "I never saw him in my life when he was
not in all respects a gentleman."

"But I have! I have!"

"Ah, madam, it is cruel to say this. Mr. Brown was my friend, my only
friend, long before--before you came and took me away from my poor
little home. If you could make me think ill of him, would it be kind?"

"But he has been treacherous; he has taught you hatred of the profession
which you were so crazy for at one time."

"No, no; it was not Mr. Brown. I saw for myself."

"Yes, the dark side; never in its brightness or its glory. But you
shall, you shall."

Caroline lay back upon her pillow and covered her face with one hand.
The sight of that beautiful woman, so hard in her resolve, so completely
ignoring all feelings but her own, was hateful to her.

"Please let me rest to-night," she pleaded.

"To-night, yes. It is enough that you understand me now; but, after
this, I shall expect no opposition. If you are so stupidly ignorant of
the power which lies in your own beauty and genius, I am not. So try and
come to your senses before morning. Good-night."

The woman went out, with her head aloft, and her cloak trailing behind
her, for, in her excitement, she had flung it away from one shoulder,
that she might gesticulate with the arm that was free.

Caroline turned upon her pillow and cried bitterly till morning.

Olympia was right. The girl had been scrupulously kept from all society
that her freshness might be preserved, and her education completed.

She had been to the theatres, here and there, when some new piece was
presented, but it was rather as a study than an amusement; and after a
knowledge of the public idol in private life had slowly swept away all
the romance of their first meeting, the innate coarseness of this
beautiful, selfish woman was not long in revealing itself to the
pure-minded girl, who soon began to grieve that she could not love and
still admire the mother she had at first almost worshipped. Olympia, who
had found it easy enough to dictate to managers, and oppress
subordinates, had far different material to act upon when she broke in
upon the midnight sleep of the girl Daniel Yates had grounded in the
nobility of true womanhood.

The next day, being Sunday, was Olympia's great day of rest and
amusement. She slept till long after mid-day, ate an epicurean breakfast
in a little dressing-room with rose-tinted draperies, ran lazily over
the pages of some French novel, in the silken depths of a pretty Turkish
divan, heaped up with cushions, till long after dark; then threw herself
into the mysteries of a superb toilet, and came into her exquisite
little drawing-room like a princess--say Marguerite of Navarre--ready to
entertain the guests, invariably invited on that evening, in a fashion
that made her quite as popular in this particular social strata as she
was behind the footlights.

From these little suppers Caroline had been carefully excluded up to
this time; but the morning after she had left the young girl in tears
upon her pillow, Olympia broke into her day of luxurious repose by
sending for her agent, with whom she had a rather stormy interview in
the dressing-room, from which Brown came out pale as death, but with an
uprightness of the person, and an expression in the eyes that no one had
ever seen there before.

About an hour after he had departed, Olympia's French maid was seen
hurrying up stairs to the chamber which Caroline occupied, and where she
stood that moment, just as she had sprung from her chair, with a wild
and startled look; for every knock she heard seemed to come from her
mother, whose appearance she dreaded terribly that morning. But, instead
of Olympia, the French maid came in, with a creamy-white dress of India
gauze thrown over her arm, its whiteness broken up by the blue ripple of
a broad sash, with a purple tinge in it; and in her hands the woman
carried some half-open moss-roses, with a delicate perfume absolutely
breaking from their hearts, as if they were the outgrowth of a generous
soil--which they were not, however difficult it might be to decide from
a first or second look; these French are so like nature in everything
but themselves.

The French maid laid these things daintily on Caroline's bed, where the
roses glowed out, as if cast upon the crust of a snow-bank. Then,
looking upon the girl's magnificent hair, which was simply turned back
from her forehead and done in braids behind, she said, with pretty,
broken speech:

"I will do it in crimp and puffs, if mademoiselle pleases. With her
face, it will be charming."

Caroline drew a deep breath, and cast a half-frightened, half-pleased
glance at her maid, Eliza, who stood near by, looking grimly at
preparations she could not understand. This was not half so dreadful as
the presence she had expected, and the dress was so lovely that she
could not keep her eyes from it.

"What is it all about?" questioned staunch America, with a look at
France which was not altogether friendly.

"It is," answered the French maid, spreading out her little hands, "It
is that madame will have mademoiselle down to her little supper. The
evening will be very charming because of mademoiselle."

Caroline glanced at the blush-roses, and her eyes began to sparkle. Then
she caught a glimpse of Eliza's face, and turned her glance resolutely
away, looking penitent. Eliza knew something of madame's little suppers,
but Caroline did not. If bursts of laughter and a soft tangle of voices
sometimes came up to her room in the night, she had no means of knowing
that the noise was not from the servants' hall, and Eliza would have
died rather than enlighten her. Besides, she had nothing absolutely
wrong to tell, for some of the first young noblemen in England came to
Olympia's little entertainments; and when Eliza heard their names
announced she had not a word to say, having lived long enough to attain
a reverence for titles.

In fact, it is doubtful if she did not value her charge a little more
highly from the fact that she lived in a house where noblemen came and
went with such evident sociability.

At first Eliza had darted fiery glances at the robe of India gauze,
thinking it a theatrical costume; but when she learned that it was only
a dress which would introduce her darling into the best society, from
which a selfish mother had rigidly excluded her, she allowed her
features to relax, and absolutely smiled on the little French woman.

Then the smile, which had been struggling all the time about Caroline's
mouth, broke over her whole face. She could neither keep her hands from
the dress or the moss-roses, but touched them daintily, half doubtful,
indeed, if they were intended for her.

"If mademoiselle will please," said the little French woman, drawing a
low chair before the dressing-table, and taking an ivory brush, carved
at the back like a Chinese puzzle, in her hand.

Caroline sat down, smiling in spite of herself. Eliza stood a little on
one side, resolved to be upon her guard.

While she was looking, down came that abundant hair in a torrent, tress
upon tress, wave after wave, with tinges of gold rippling through and
through the brown. The little French woman held up both hands, brush and
all, in astonishment, and burst out in a noisy cataract of French, which
delighted Eliza all the more because she could not understand a word of
it.

But Caroline did understand, and this outburst of genuine admiration
pleased her so much that, in a moment, her face was glowing like a whole
thicket of roses, and she hadn't the courage to lift her eyes, from fear
that Eliza would see how foolish she was to care about what the little
French woman said.

Eliza saw all this, but it only made that grim smile broader and deeper
on her own face; and when the golden-brown hair was frizzed and rolled,
and dropped in two rich curls on that white shoulder, she turned her
face upon the French woman and said, "Very nice!" in a way that made the
little woman put her head on one side, and nod it half a dozen times,
while she answered:

"Yes, I tink so."

India gauze was dropped like a cloud over Caroline's head; the sash of
purplish blue was girded around her waist, and bunched up in superb bows
behind; then the cloudy stuff was gathered up in drapery from a silken
under-skirt, tinted like the sash, and fastened back with clusters of
the moss-roses.

This completed the toilet. No jewels were there, not even a string of
pearls, though Olympia had ropes of them; and Caroline rather sighed for
their completeness when she took a full-length view of herself in the
mirror, as foolish girls will, who never learn the value of simplicity
and freshness until both are lost.

Then the little French woman went away to Olympia, giving Caroline
plenty of time for reflection. The first thing the girl did was to look
shyly at Eliza, who pursed up her lips, and did her best to keep from
smiling. Then she took courage, and said:

"Eliza."

"I hear," answered the grim hand-maiden.

"Eliza, do you think _he_ would know me in this dress? Or, if so, would
he like it, as he did that dear Italian costume?"

"I don't know," answered Eliza. "Them Italians have queer notions about
dress. Now, for my part, them short skirts and low-necked waists did
well enough for common-sized girls; but you're too tall, and carry your
head too high, for anything but a skirt that sweeps out and puffs up
like that."

"Still, I shall always like the dear old costume, Eliza. Oh, what a
happy, happy life madame broke up when she sent for us!"

"Yes, I suppose so. You seemed to enjoy it; and as for that young
fellow, what with his boating on the river, his shooting birds--which I
hate--on the hills, and his lessons--well, really, he might about as
well have lived with us."

"Oh! Eliza, shall we ever be so happy again?" cried the girl, kindling
up with bright memories.

"Not just in the same way; real folks never are. But I suppose people
have a pretty equal share of the good and bad things of life, as they go
along. Now I haven't an idea but that the young fellow thought all was
up with him when he got the letter you left at the house."

"I should not wonder," said Caroline, and her bosom began to heave with
an after-swell of the indignation which had stormed it, when she left
Italy at an hour's notice. "It was a cruel thing. I never will forgive
you or Mr. Brown. A few hours would have made no difference, and he was
coming the next day."

"What then? If he was a teacher, Mr. Brown left his money, with two
months' overpay."

"His money!" repeated Caroline, with infinite scorn.

"If not money, what did he come for?" questioned the hand-maiden,
sharply.

"Eliza, you shall never think that--it degrades him and me. He never
touched--he never thought of money. If Mr. Brown left it, as you say, I
am sure he felt insulted."

"Then what did he come for?" inquired Eliza, with dry emphasis.

"Because--because he loved me, and could not live without seeing me,
because I--I--"

"Loved him," said the maid.

But Caroline had broken down wholly with this first passionate
confession. The poor girl sank to a couch, flushed all over with such
shame as only a woman of fine sensibilities can feel for that of which
she has no reason to be ashamed at all.

"Oh! Eliza, how can you be so cruel?" she exclaimed, dropping her hands,
and revealing a face of crimson, wet with tears. "I never meant to keep
it from you."

"Of course, you never meant it, and you didn't do it, which is more. You
supposed I didn't know. Men may be blind as bats--they usually are; and
our Brown is worse than the commonality. But trust an old maid for
spying out a love secret. It's like exploring a strange land for her,
you know. Lord! Miss Carry, you can't keep a secret from Eliza Casey;
but then, why should you? Isn't she bound to be your staunch friend
forever and ever?"

These words opened a new source of anxiety to the really unhappy girl,
who forgot her love-shame, and plunged at once into a new subject.

"Oh! Eliza, if you could help me. Madame is determined. That is, she
wishes me to go on the stage."

"Well, you have been told that from the first."

"I know--I know; but it seemed so far off then, like death, or any other
evil that you know will come, but cannot tell when. But now she says it
must be at once. Oh! Eliza, I never can do it. The very fear of it makes
me shudder."

"But why? I remember, when we first came out here, you had no other wish
but to be like her--your mother, I mean. Like her! I would rather see
you dead!"

Eliza muttered the last words under her breath, and Caroline only heard
the question.

"Yes, I know. Everything seemed so bright then--she brightest of all;
but I was getting to shrink from it before we went up to that dear
little villa, and since then it has seemed like death. Oh! tell her
this, Eliza, and beg of her to let me be as I am."

"But shall I tell her all, and say that is the reason?"

"No, no, no! You may think it. Mr. Brown may think it. That is like
myself having a secret; but do not tell her for the whole world."

"Tell her! Well, well, I aint likely to; but if she is set upon it, what
can I say? Madame is not a woman to give up her plans, and you have got
_such a voice_! Sometimes I think it would be splendid to see you taking
the wind out of her sails."

"But it would kill me!"

"Poor thing! Well, never mind--I will stand by you, right or wrong; but
this will be a tough battle. Tell me, though, did that young fellow have
anything to do with setting you against the profession?"

"There it is, Eliza. He never knew that I thought of it, and used to
speak of female performers with such careless contempt, as if they were
ten thousand degrees beneath him."

"And he only a teacher!" said Eliza, lifting her head in the air.

"And he only a teacher; but so proud, so sensitive, so regal in all he
said or did. Oh! Eliza, if he knew that Olympia, grand, beautiful, and
worshipped as she is, were my mother, I fear he would never care for me
again."

"Why, how on earth could you help that?"

"I could not, and it would be wicked to desire it. But, Eliza, I ought
to have had the courage to tell him, and I put it off. Every day I said
to myself, the very next time he comes, and at last you know how it was.
I had no chance, and now I may never see him again. He will always think
me Mr. Brown's daughter, and I shall feel like an impostor. I cannot
help this; but to go on the stage, when he has said so much against it,
that I will not do, unless forced there by my mother's authority."

"Well, as I said before, I will stand by you, right or wrong; and so
will Mr. Brown, I know. I only wish he was your father."

"He could not be kinder if he was," said Caroline.

Just then the door opened, and Olympia's French maid looked through.

"Madame is in the drawing-room, and waits for mademoiselle."

"I will come! I will come!" exclaimed Caroline, breathlessly, and she
hurried down stairs.




CHAPTER VI.

SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES GET INTO A CONJUGAL DIFFICULTY.


Lord Hope had a house in Belgravia, that could always be made ready for
the family at a day's notice. So Rachael, who could refuse nothing to
her brother, sent up her steward to make preparations one day, and
followed him the next with Lady Clara and Hepworth Closs; Margaret Casey
and other servants in attendance, of course.

These persons reached London on the very Saturday when Olympia was
stricken with dismay by finding an empty seat or two in her usually well
packed houses. When this discovery first broke upon the prima donna,
Hepworth Closs was sitting quietly in the pit, where he found himself,
as if by accident. They had reached town only in time for a late dinner,
when the ladies, being greatly fatigued, proclaimed their intention of
retiring early, which was, in fact, casting him adrift for the evening.
Being thus let loose upon the world, he very naturally brought up at the
opera, and was seated so near the stage that his eyes more than once
caught those of Olympia, who gave him one of those quick glances of
recognition, which seemed aimed at the whole audience, but hit only one
person.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but isn't she a stunner!" said a voice, as the
first act closed. Hepworth might not have recognized these words as
addressed to himself, but for the weight of a large hand which was laid
on his arm. As it was, he turned promptly, and encountered a stout,
heavy man, handsomely dressed, but for a massive gold chain which passed
across his bosom into his vest pocket, and drooped in glittering lengths
far down the rotundity of his capacious person, and a large diamond that
blazed on his plaited shirt bosom. From the chain and the diamond,
Hepworth's first thought was, that the person must be some Californian
or Australian acquaintance, belonging to his old mining days, but the
man soon set that idea aside.

"You don't happen to remember me, Mr. Hepworth, but I knew you at the
first sight. Ask my lady here. Didn't I say, Mrs. Stacy, that gentleman
with the coal-black mustacher, and them splendid eyes, is Mr. Hepworth,
if ever I set my two eyes on Mr. Hepworth, which I did many a time, when
he used to come to Forty-third street?"

Hepworth started. Forty-third street! Was he to be forever haunted by
the place and people connected with that awful tragedy? Why was this?
The guilt was not his, yet he could not feel himself near any person,
however remotely connected with it, without thrills of dread.

The man had been talking on, but Hepworth heard nothing at first, he had
been too painfully startled; when he did listen, these words fell on his
ear:

"That was an awful affair, Mr. Hepworth; most people was astonished, but
I never was; always had my suspicions of that old woman; believe she
robbed the house of lots and lots of things, after the lady was dead; in
fact, am sure of it. Mrs. Stacy here is of my opinion. There was a girl
in the house--perhaps you remember her, sir--Maggie we used to call her;
she and the old woman Yates was thick as thieves, and both laid their
heads together. It wasn't for nothing, let me tell you; their nests were
feathered, you may believe. There never was a sharper girl than Maggie
Casey."

"She was just a forerd, imperdent cretur as set her cap at you like a
fiery draggon," broke out the woman, who occupied a seat by the stout
man, and was evidently his wife; "a cretur as I wouldn't wipe my shoes
on, after a long walk--no, not if she'd give me fifty pair for doing of
it."

"I am not saying anything to the contrary, my dear, am I? That girl was
after me sharp enough, but I never encouraged her. Mr. Hepworth can
satisfy you on that point, my own Harriet, for I remember, as if it was
yesterday, he and I talking about it the very day afore that murder, and
we both agreed that her conduct was scandalous."

Hepworth shuddered. How well he remembered that artful conversation. How
hideous it appeared to him now.

"But I don't think Mr. Hepworth remembers us for positive, even now,"
said the woman; "just look in my face, young gent, and say if you do."

"Harriet, my dear, isn't that a little, just a little, promiscous?" said
the husband, as a broad, red face, with a pointed nose, turning up in
the centre, and two small leaden blue eyes looking across it, was bent
forward, and challenged Hepworth's inspection. "Remember, things have
changed since we knew this gentleman."

"In course they have changed, and I haven't no doubt that is just what
is a puzzling him now; but when I ask Mr. Hepworth if he remembers the
first punken-pie he ever eat in his born days, and who made it, he'll be
sure to remember Harriet, and I ain't ashamed to say that I am her, if I
do wear an Injur shawl, and if that diment in your bozzom is a flashing
right in his eyes. Self-made men, and women too, mayn't be of much
account in England, but in New York, the aristocracy are always a trying
to make out that they were born next door to the alms-house, and started
life with just twenty-five cents in their pockets, so you and I needn't
be ashamed."

Hepworth was not cosmopolitan, and managed to get the truth out of this
confusion of cockney, Irish, and Yankee dialect. In fact, at the first
moment, he had recognized Matthew Stacy and Harriet Long in the persons
who claimed his acquaintance, and they stung his memory like a nest of
serpents.

"You'll be glad to know," said Stacy, "that Harriet has been, in all
respects, up to the 'casion whenever I've made a rise in the world.
There's smartness in that woman, I can tell you. When I was elected
alderman of our ward, she just went into the saloon and dealt out licker
to my constituents with her own hand. There is no telling the number of
votes she got for me by that perseeding. You'd be astonished."

Here the curtain went up with a rush, and Stacy could only make himself
heard by sharp whispers, which reached Hepworth in fragments, when the
music sank lowest.

"Got into a first-rate thing. Mayor with us--street contracts--cut
through, widened--got hold of a dead charter--revived it--stock went up
like winking--kept the Irish vote of the ward in my fist--no counting
the presents that woman got. I never took one, of course; such a woman!"

Here Olympia's voice swept through the house, with an outpouring of
melody that brought the audience to its feet, but when the tumult
subsided, Hepworth found that the man had been talking on and on, with
an under-tow of political gossip, that reached him in words at last.

"They wanted the Legislature, which wasn't to be had without money, you
know; two or three men had been seen--nothing less than a hundred
thousand would do it. I was president of the board, went up myself, saw
the members, who sent me to their confidential men--jackals we call 'em,
ha! ha!--got it done for sixty thousand--said nothing, but divided the
rest--jackals got twenty, the other twenty--you understand. She got an
Inger shawl out of that operation, the very one she has on."

"No, it isn't nothing of the sort. This one was the other," whispered
Mrs. Stacy, holding up a corner of the magnificent shawl she wore.

Hepworth turned and gazed upon the shawl until his face grew white as
death, in the gaslight. The very sight of that rich garment made him
faint.

The mistake he had made had a silencing effect upon Stacy too. He had no
wish that the history of that garment should be produced, and when his
wife was about to speak, silenced her at once.

"My dear Harriet," he said, "how often have I told you that talking at a
theater or the operer is awfully vulgar. I wonder you can persist in
it, and Mr. Hepworth by. Just listen to that music! Haven't you no
taste? If you haven't, just take a look around the boxes. That young
feller there is the Prince of Wales."

Mrs. Stacy took a mother-of-pearl opera glass from her lap, and
obediently turned it upon the royal box.

Before the performance was over, and while Hepworth was drawn back, in
spite of himself, to the most painful scenes of his life, an usher came
down the nearest passage, and put a little twisted note into his hand.
It was from Olympia, inviting him to supper the next evening.

Hepworth crushed the pretty missive in his hand, while he turned to send
a verbal refusal, but the usher had withdrawn, and he had no other way
of sending a reply that night.

The opera was at its close now, and Hepworth left the house, irritated
and restless. Could he find no place in which this miserable past would
not haunt him? He had hardly made his way through the crowd when his arm
was seized, and Stacy almost wheeled him around on the pavement.

"My dear sir, this way. Mrs. Stacy is already in the carriage. Of course
we would not ride and let you go afoot. Have been a poor man myself
once--needn't deny that to you. Know what it is to keep up a show
without capital. But no old friend of mine shall go afoot while I have
the wherewith to pay for a carriage, and an empty seat in it. Shall set
in the back seat with Mrs. Stacy, upon my soul you shall, and that's an
honor I don't offer to every man. Now just tell me where you are putting
up."

Hepworth laughed, in spite of his annoyance. The patronizing fussiness
of the ex-alderman struck a keen sense of the ridiculous, which was
strong in his character.

"If you insist," he said. "But you are too generous."

"Not at all, not at all. When Alderman Stacy does a thing, he does it
handsomely. This way, this way!"

Hepworth seated himself in the carriage where Mrs. Stacy squeezed
herself in one corner, and gathered up her skirts to make room for him,
and Stacy had his foot on the step, when a new poster, just placed at
the door of the opera house, struck his attention, and he stepped back
to examine it.

"'First appearance of a young American, a protege of Olympia.' Just read
that poster, Mr. Hepworth, and tell me what you think of it," he said,
lifting himself into the carriage. "Mrs. Stacy, my dear, just look that
way, and tell me if you can guess who it is that will make a first
appearance Monday night? You know that young lady, and so does Mr.
Hepworth. Now, make a guess."

"How can you?" said Mrs. Stacy. "You know, Matthew, dear, I never was
good at conundrums and such like."

Matthew puffed himself out with a deep, long breath, and clasping two
huge hands encased in flame-colored gloves on his knee, leaned toward
Hepworth.

"You try, now."

Hepworth shook his head, and Stacy burst out with his mystery.

"It's the identical child that was brought up at the inquest in
Forty-third street--Daniel Yates' little daughter."

"No!" exclaimed Mrs. Stacy. "That little creature?"

"It ain't nobody else--you may bet high on that, Mrs. Stacy."

Hepworth kept perfectly still, but his heart fairly stopped beating.

"But how did you find out, Matthew, dear?"

"Oh! we aldermen find out everything. The girl was brought up in the
country, near Sing-Sing, in a cedar-post cottage that the executor
wanted to raise some money on. I went up to see it, and had a good look
at the girl. Yes, my dear, she was, to say, very handsome, but proud.
Daniel Yates had brought her up like a queen, and I give you my word she
looked it; but there was no mistake about it. The executor had just
gobbled up everything Yates left, and there was no one to look after
him, so that the girl was just nowhere financially. I found out that the
cottage could not be sold or mortgaged, nor let either, according to
law, though the executor tried it on hard, and came again and again
about it, especially after she left it. So I found out everything about
the girl. That primer donner took a fancy to her, and adopted her right
out of hand because of her voice, and to-morrow night you can both of
you see her, for I mean to have a box up among the British arrestocracy
that night, and I invite you both free gratis for nothing."

"Are you sure of this?" questioned Hepworth, who had not spoken till
now.

"Just as sure as I am that Alderman Stacy sits before you. But if you
don't believe it, ask the girl yourself. I mean to call on her, and Mrs.
Stacy will do likewise. You can go along. That is, we will call, if she
comes out first chop on Monday night."

"Mr. Stacy," said the superb matron in the back seat, drawing herself up
with wonderful dignity, "I don't mean to put on airs nor nothing because
I'm your lady and richer than some folks, or Mr. Hepworth wouldn't be an
honored guest in this here carriage; but I must set my foot square
aginst actresses and primmer donners--in short, theatre-clers in
general."

"Just you hear that," said Stacy, looking at Hepworth. "Isn't she coming
it down strong, and lifting of her head high?"

"It isn't that, Mr. Stacy, but because I am a wife and a--a woman--that
I feel called upon to stand between them creturs and the sect. Pay them
your money, Mr. Stacy--pay them any amount of money from the front--but
nothing beyond that, Mr. Stacy!"

"Oh, humbug," said Mr. Stacy; "that is putting it too strong,
Harriet--as if I couldn't pay money or not, just as I please."

"It isn't humbug, Mr. Stacy, but a question of benignant morality, which
it is every woman's duty to take up and hurl back, till she totters on
the brink, martyr-like, between heaven and earth! Don't you think so,
Mr. Hepworth?"

"Did you ever hear anything up to that?" exclaimed Stacy, swelling with
pompous satisfaction. "Harriet is the sort of woman that a man of
substance can depend on, morrerly, financierly, and--and--. Not that I'm
going to give in, you know; but it's satisfaction to know that your
money has lifted such a person into her proper spear."

"That's very kind of you, and I feel it, Stacy, dear; but when you speak
of lifting me up with _your_ money, who was it that owned the first five
hundred dollars you, or me, Mr. Stacy?"

"Harriet!"

"It's no use thundering out my baptismal name against me, Mr. Stacy, for
that's a thing I won't bear at no price! Truth is truth, Mr. Hepworth,
and rich as that man is, rolling over and over in gold, like a porpose
in salt water, it was my five hundred dollars that did it! Let him say
if I didn't own that much?"

"But didn't I marry you, and then didn't you own me? Would you set down
good looks, financial ability, and moral character A number one, at five
hundred dollars, and you--"

What was coming next Hepworth was destined never to learn, for Mrs.
Stacy, overcome by a fit of conjugal remorse, leaned forward and placed
one substantial hand in the flame-colored glove of her husband.

"Matthew, forgive me! I didn't mean it. That mention of the primmer
donner and her protager upset me; but I am your wife yet, Stacy,
dear--your true and lawful wife--just as ready to travel with you into
every tropical climate of Europe as I ever was."

Stacy would not clasp his flame-colored fingers around that hand, but
let it drop with ignominious looseness, while he drew a handkerchief
from his pocket and buried his face in it.

"Harriet! Harriet! you have hurt my feelings, mortified my--my manhood
before an old friend!"

It was in the night, the carriage was close, the lamps dim, and Hepworth
only knew that there a heap of drapery launched itself into the front
seat, that a voice came from the midst, saying:

"Oh, Matthew! Matthew!"

Then the white handkerchief dropped like a flag at half mast, and the
reconciliation was complete.




CHAPTER VII.

THE OPERATIC SUPPER.


"Indeed, Mr. Closs, I insist!"

"But, my dear child, I have no particular desire to go."

"That is because you think that I care about it. Why should I? In fact,
it is unbearable that you should have the idea."

Hepworth Closs had in all loyalty told Lady Clara of the invitation he
had received from Olympia, and, instead of resenting it as he expected,
she met his vague desire more than half-way--one of the wisest things
any woman can do, for half the sins in the world are committed because
they are forbidden; not that this young girl knew of the wisdom. With
her, it was half pride, half bravado; she was indignant that Hepworth
should think of going--more indignant that he should have refused the
invitation at once, without telling her of it.

The result was, she insisted on his accepting it, though her heart was
burning with jealousy all the time.

Closs, as I have said somewhere, had learned many things in his travels;
but in Japan and the frontier countries of America girls like Clara had
not often come under his observation, and he was far too deeply in love
for a cool examination of her character or actions.

So her impulse of unbounded generosity deceived him utterly, and having
some shrinking curiosity regarding Daniel Yates' daughter, he resolved
to accept Olympia's invitation.

Of course, Clara found a dozen absurd reasons for quarreling with him
that day, not one of which seemed to relate to Olympia; yet that
beautiful woman was the root of them all, if Hepworth could have
understood it.

But he only comprehended that every room in that sumptuous dwelling was
dull as a wilderness on that particular Sabbath day. Rachael kept her
room; Clara would not make herself agreeable; and he felt it a relief
when night came and took him to the little bijou of a mansion where
Olympia was waiting the advent of her guests.

Hepworth had seen this woman in New York, and knew something of the
fantastic elegance with which she could surround herself; but the house
he entered surpassed anything he had ever seen in that republican city.

Nothing sad or even grave in art or nature was ever permitted to visit
the Queen of Song in her own home. Her servants were expected to be
smiling and cheerful. There was not a sombre corner in her dwelling.

The very hall was a marvel of art; statuettes of snow-white marble, airy
and graceful as stone could be chiselled, seemed ready to escort the
guest into the unique drawing-room beyond.

Delicate bric-a-brac occupied gilded brackets on the walls, or crowded
the statuettes upon the floor; a laughing faun held back the silken
curtain that concealed the entrance to that inner room where the goddess
herself presided; a soft mellow light fell upon these treasures, making
their beauty still more exquisite.

A servant in silver and blue livery admitted Hepworth, and pointed to
the faun, who seemed inviting him forward with a fantastic gesture.

The servant disappeared, his duties ended when the outer door was
opened.

Those who visited Olympia were supposed to know their way to her
presence. Hepworth lingered a moment in the hall. Those beautiful marble
people seemed enticing him to stay, and, for the instant, he felt an
unaccountable reluctance to present himself before the actress; a
feeling of humiliation came upon him that he should be willing to visit
any woman whom the lady of his love could not meet on equal terms. What
right had he there?

This question was almost upon his lips, when a silken rustle made him
hold his breath. It was a young girl, tall, stately, beautiful, coming
down the marble stairs. He was standing near the centre of the floor,
but drew back, step by step, as the girl descended, turning white and
cold, as if there had been some wrong in his admiration of an antique
group in bronze, which occupied a bracket on the wall close by him.

The girl paused, looked toward him, and, after a little hesitation,
crossed the hall.

"Permit me to show you the way," she said. "The servant should not have
left you so."

Hepworth did not speak, but stood gazing upon her blankly. Her beauty
had struck him dumb.

She made a little gesture with her hand and moved on. He followed,
without a word, by the marble faun, through the lifted curtains, and
into the presence of Olympia, who was walking up and down the Gobelin
carpet, with the light of a Venetian chandelier falling over her.

She was becoming impatient for the arrival of her guests. Yet the room
seemed peopled fully; for, on every hand, mirrors that seemed framed in
a network of gold, threw back and duplicated the group that stood there,
the rich coloring of the draperies, two vases of Malachite and Sevres,
the gifts of emperors, and the carpet, where masses of blossoms seemed
starting into fresh bloom, wherever a footstep trod them down.

"Mr. Hepworth!" cried Olympia; "my good American friend! This is a
happiness!"

Hepworth bowed over the white hand she held out; but did not kiss it, as
she might have expected, being used to all sorts of homage.

She looked at him in pleasant astonishment, dropped her hand with a
faint laugh, and turned to the young girl.

"Caroline, you have never seen Mr. Hepworth, I think."

"Closs, Hepworth Closs, dear lady; you forget."

"Do I? Well, it is very likely, though, I am sure, we always called you
Hepworth; but that's nothing; in our Bohemian set we generally preferred
the given name, and sometimes only took half of that. Ah, ho! here come
our friends at last!"

The curtain was flung back, revealing what seemed a crowd in the hall,
which soon came forward, with little ceremony, and some rather riotous
noise.

Olympia was in her element now. Heart and soul she loved society, and
all these persons were picked people of her own choice--brilliant
persons in their various capacities, each bringing a store of wit or
some accomplishment to swell the general gaiety. Artists, dilettanti
noblemen, epicures, and persons who would have accompanied Orpheus in
all his explorations for the music he could give them.

Of course, there was high mirth and some sparkling wit among a group
like this, in which several females mingled brilliantly, and sang like
sirens after Olympia had set them the example. These were professional,
of course, but wonderfully clever, and talked charmingly, as women who
are reckless of criticism usually do; but in all that was said, a
certain vein of doubtful license sometimes brought the color to
Caroline's cheek. She could not thoroughly understand the conversation
of these people. They seemed to have come out of another world to
astonish and bewilder her. She knew that some of the men present were
noblemen, and saw that their manners, and even the tones of their
voices, changed when they addressed her.

From the secluded life she had led, this girl was incapable of making
quick comparisons. She only knew that none of these men possessed the
gentle tenderness or the proud bearing of the teacher, who had become to
her a beau-ideal of true manhood. Of all the men present she felt the
most sympathy with Hepworth Closs. He had been in America, had known the
places she loved so well, and could understand her loneliness in a scene
like that; but there was something even in this man that startled her a
little.

His fine eyes were frequently lifted to her face with a look that
troubled her, a look that seemed to go beyond her and far away into the
past or future. What was he thinking of? Why were his answers about
America so dreamy and vague? Why did he look so sad while the voice of
Olympia was filling the whole house with such glorious bursts of music?

Before she could answer any of these questions, Olympia arose from the
piano, and, with a light wave of her hand, said:

"Come, Caroline, let them hear what is in your voice."

How careless and natural it all seemed! What a tumult of smiles and
entreaties followed these few caressing words!

They were words of iron to that proud, shrinking girl. She knew how much
of stern, selfish power lay under the peach-like softness of that voice.
Her color went and came; her lips parted in absolute terror. She
understood now why she had been permitted to join her mother's guests
for the first time.

"Come, my darling!"

Olympia's voice grew softer, sweeter; but there was an undertone in it
that Caroline dared not disobey. She arose, white and cold, her limbs
trembling, her eyes turned upon Olympia like those of a hunted doe
appealing for its life; but there was no relenting in that beautiful
face--nothing but smiles.

Hepworth Closs saw how cruelly the proud girl suffered, and was by her
side in an instant. The firm clasp of his hand, as he led her to the
piano, gave her strength. She thanked him with a look, and those
frightened eyes implored him to stay by her, as if he were the only
friend she recognized in the room.

It must be a terrible fright that can entirely overcome real genius.

The first notes of Caroline's voice trembled out from her lips like the
cry of a young bird when it first tempts the air. The intense stillness
with which the little group listened, took away her breath. But all this
passed away; her voice gathered up its tones and swelled into a power of
music that Olympia, in her best days, had never reached. She forgot the
people around her--forgot everything but the glorious genius which
thrilled her whole being with ecstasies of harmony. The nightingale,
nested in clustering roses and bathed with moonlight, never poured forth
its song with a sweeter impulse.

At first it was the desperation of genius, but that soon merged itself
into an exquisite power that held her little audience in amazement.

Olympia grew restless. Had she, with her own hands, given her crown and
sceptre to another? How superbly beautiful the creature looked with that
glow of inspiration on her face! How her own devoted adorers crowded
around the piano, leaving her on the outskirts of the crowd quite alone!

The woman's self-love and most active vanity were disturbed; but above
that rose another passion that had of late years grown strong within
her--avarice. She recognized the sure ring of gold in those notes, and
exulted over it.

As Caroline turned from the piano flushed, and, as it were, inspired by
a new life, a little storm of bravos broke over her. Just then the
supper-room was thrown open; but even the exquisite picture it presented
failed to draw the crowd from its new idol.

But Caroline was falling back to her normal state, and all this
tumultuous admiration terrified her.

This annoyed Olympia, also. She made a signal to the servant who stood
waiting, and his announcement, in a loud voice, that supper was served,
broke up the crowd which held Caroline prisoner.

Olympia led the way into the most superb little supper-room that even an
artist could imagine. It was, in fact, a temple, connected only by one
compartment with the house.

A shallow dome, with ground glass, through which a tender light shone
like sunbeams through sifted snow, by a gilded network over ground
glass, which also reflected hidden lights like a chain of clouded stars.

This gallery was connected with the floor by slender marble shafts,
around which passion flowers, white jessamines, creeping dwarf roses,
and other clinging plants wove their blossoms up to the lighted gallery,
whence they fell in delicate spray, forming arches of flowers all around
the room.

The recesses thus garlanded in were lined with mirrors, in which the
crimson cushions of couch and chair, the splendid supper table, with all
its rich paraphernalia of frosted plate, sparkling glass, translucent
wines, and fruit in all its mellow gorgeousness of coloring were
reflected over and over again.

When that gay crowd came into the room, led by Olympia, every recess
seemed to fill with its own merry company, and in each that handsome
prima donna presided like a goddess; while the tall figure of a proud,
beautiful girl sat near, looking strangely wild and anxious as a loud,
bacchanalian spirit broke into the scene, and turned it into a revel.
Amid the gurgle of wine and the mellow crush of fruit, some one called
out:

"Fill up! fill up! A bumper to our new Queen of Song!"

With a half-suppressed shout and a waving of glasses, the party sprang
up, drops of amber and ruby wine rained down to the table from a
reckless overflow of the uplifted goblets.

Every recess gave back the picture with endless change of view; and then
the voice called out again:

"To-morrow night we will show her how England can receive American
genius and American beauty. Lady, we drink to you."

To-morrow night! Every vestige of color fled from that poor girl's face.
She attempted to rise, supported herself with one hand on the table a
moment, then in the midst of that riotous toast, sank back to her chair,
with her face turned imploringly on Hepworth Closs.

When the revellers had drained their glasses and turned to look for a
reward in the face they had pronounced divine, it had disappeared. Amid
the confusion, Hepworth had led Caroline from the room.

"It is too much for her," said Olympia, tossing half a dozen peaches on
the table in her search for the mellowest. "She is such a noble,
grateful creature, and has not yet learned how to receive homage."

"While our Olympia almost disdains it. Fill up for our goddess, The
Olympia!"

"Wait a minute!"

It was the young noble next the actress who spoke. He had taken some
grape-leaves from a crystal vase near him, and was weaving the smallest
amber-hued and purple clusters with them in a garland, with which he
crowned the goddess before her libation was poured out. She accepted the
homage, laughing almost boisterously, and when the grape-wreath was
settled in her golden hair, stood up, a Bacchante that Rubens would have
worshipped; for it made no difference to her in what form adulation
came, so long as she monopolized it.

That moment Caroline was lying upon her bed up-stairs, shaking in every
limb, and crying in bitterness of spirit.




CHAPTER VIII.

BEHIND THE SCENES.


Olympia had selected an auspicious time for the first appearance of her
protege, as she always persisted in calling Caroline.

It was the fashion just then to recognize American genius with something
like enthusiasm, and the very suddenness with which this young girl had
been brought forward operated in her favor.

A glowing account of her voice and beauty had reached the public just at
a time when no special excitement occupied it, and this served to draw a
crowd around the opera house long before the hour of opening.

On the outskirts of this crowd, the carriage which contained Olympia and
her victim--for such the heroine of the evening really was--made its way
toward the stage door. Olympia leaned out of the window, and cried
exultingly:

"Look, child, look! Hundreds of people waiting already!"

Caroline cast one frightened glance at the crowd, and shrank back with a
faint moan.

Just as the audience began to pour in through the opened doors the
carriage drove up to the stage entrance, and Olympia took a leap from
the steps and held the carriage door open with her own hand, while
Caroline descended more slowly. The light from a neighboring lamp fell
upon her face, and revealed the tears that stood upon her cheeks, and a
half rebellious look in the eyes, which Olympia saw, and met with angry
bitterness.

"Crying again? Shooting spiteful looks at me, as if I were a monster,
instead of a tender, considerate, self-sacrificing mother, ready to
share everything with you, even my glory! Was ever such ingratitude?"

Caroline did not answer, but walked into the narrow door, and stood upon
the dreary stage, panting for breath, like some superb animal from the
wild woods, hunted down, and without hopes of escape.

"This way--come this way," said Olympia, taking hold of her arm.
"Perhaps you will remember that we are late. The audience was crowding
in like a torrent when we passed the door. Come!"

Caroline allowed herself to be led along the stage, through yawning
vistas of scenery ready placed for use, and along dark passages, until
she came to Olympia's dressing-room, in which a blaze of light was
reflected by half-a-dozen mirrors, and fell like sunshine on a pile of
gorgeous vestments laid out for her use.

Caroline shrank back with a faint, sick feeling. Oh, how everything had
changed since she was so fascinated by a scene like that! Her delicate,
proud nature revolted from the splendid confusion. From her very heart
she loathed the sumptuous garments with which Olympia had hoped to tempt
her.

"Is there no hope?" she cried, desperately. "I would rather suffer
anything than undertake this part!"

"Hope? Yes, there is everything to hope. The house is crowded already.
There never was so fine an opening. Come, make ready!"

"Not if I have the power to resist."

She spoke in a low but resolute voice, which frightened Olympia, who
stood gazing at the pale young face turned upon her with a frown of
terrible anger gathering on her forehead.

"Caroline, you cannot resist. My word is given, the contract signed, my
honor pledged. Would you disgrace me forever?"

"Your honor pledged, and I belong to you," said the girl. "I see, I
see--there is no escaping! It is my miserable destiny!"

Caroline took off the cloak in which she was wrapped, flung down all her
magnificent hair, and seated herself before one of the mirrors.

"Do with me as you please," she said, turning a weary glance upon the
mirror. "It may be my death, but you _will_ have it so."

The next moment that unhappy girl found herself in the hands of a clever
French maid, who fairly revelled in her task, as she shook out that rich
mass of hair, and held it up for the light to shine through. But
Caroline took no heed. The toilet only reminded her of that most hideous
one when Marie Antoinette was prepared for the scaffold. For the moment
she almost wished it possible to change places with that unhappy woman.

But the French waiting-maid went on with her work, while Olympia stood
by, directing her.

Not till she felt a soft touch on her cheek did the girl rebel. Then she
started up, and, pushing the maid away, rubbed her cheek with a
handkerchief so resolutely that the maid clapped her hands, declaring
that it was enough--no roses could be more lovely.

Then she fell to her task again, muttering to herself:

"Oh, it will come in time! Youth is so satisfied with itself. But it all
ends in that."

Here the maid nodded toward a tiny jar of rouge, as if to encourage it,
and went on with her task.

"Now look at yourself!" said Olympia, tossing aside some garment that
had been flung over the swinging-glass. "What do you think of that?"

Caroline looked, and saw a beautiful woman, with sweeping garments of
rose-colored silk, and a cloud of frost-like lace flung over her head
and trailing down her shoulders. Splendid jewels--whether real or false,
she did not care to ask--twinkled like stars through the lace, both on
her head and bosom. The pictures thus reflected were beautiful, but
stormy.

Olympia saw that the rebellious spirit was but half subdued.

"What can I do?" she said, in her perplexity, addressing the maid, who
lifted up both hands and shook her head as she answered:

"Ah, madame! if a toilet like that fails, who can say?"

"I will send for Brown. She will listen to him," said Olympia, driven to
desperation. "With that spirit, she will never get the rollicking air
for her first act."

She went to the door, and found the teacher lingering near, restless and
anxious almost as herself.

"Brown--I say, Brown--come in! She is dressed, but so obstinate! If she
were about to play Norma, it would be worth everything, but in this
part--! Do come in, dear Brown, and get her up to the proper feeling."

Brown entered the room in absolute distress. He would gladly have kept
that young creature from the stage; but having no power to aid her in
avoiding it, was nervously anxious that she should make a success.

Caroline turned to him at once, and came forward with her hands held
out.

"Oh, Mr. Brown, help me! It is not too late. Let them say I am sick.
Indeed, indeed, it will be true! She can take the part, and leave me in
peace. Ask her, beg of her; say that I will go into her kitchen, be her
maid, go out as a teacher--anything on earth, if she will only spare me
this once! Ask her, Mr. Brown. Sometimes she will listen to you!"

Brown held both her hands. They were cold as ice, and he felt that she
was trembling all over.

"My dear, dear child! I have pleaded with her. I have done my best."

"But again--again! Oh, Mr. Brown, do!"

Brown drew Olympia on one side, and entreated her to give the unhappy
girl more time; but he knew well enough that he was asking almost an
impossibility--that the woman had no power to grant that which he
implored of her. In her arrogant power she had pledged that young
creature, body and soul, to the public. How could she draw back, when
the crowding rush of the audience might now be heard from the place
where they stood.

Still the man pleaded with her, for he loved the girl better than
anything on earth, and, knowing something of the feelings which made the
stage so repulsive to her, would have died to save her from the pain of
that night's experience.

Olympia was impatient, nervous, angry. What did the man think? Was she
to throw away the chances of a great success and a brilliant fortune,
because a romantic girl did not know her own mind? Was she to disgrace
herself before all London?

Brown had no answer. The whole thing was unreasonable--he knew that well
enough; but his heart ached for the poor girl. So he had done his best,
and failed miserably.

"Go back and cheer the foolish thing up," said Olympia. "You can do it.
She loves you better than any one in the world. Now, if you want to
oblige me, give her courage, soothe her. I never saw such a creature!
With the genius and voice of an angel, she has no ambition; but it will
come. Before the drinking song is over, she will forget herself. Go,
Brown, and give her courage."

Brown went back to the dressing-room, feeling like an executioner.

Caroline met him eagerly; but when she saw his face, her heart turned to
stone.

"I see! I see!" she said. "I am doomed! But, remember, I was forced into
this. Of my own choice, I would have died first; but she is my mother,
and, in my ignorance, I promised her. Tell _him_ this, if you should
ever see him. I never shall. After what he said of parts like this, I
should perish with shame. Ha! what's that?"

"They are calling you," faltered Brown.

She caught a sharp breath and sprang away from him, like a deer when the
hounds are in full cry.




CHAPTER IX.

THE FIRST PERFORMANCE.


The opera-house was full from floor to dome. A cheerful multitude
crowded the body of the house with smiling faces, and filled it with gay
colors, till it shone out gorgeously, like a thickly-planted
flower-garden. The boxes filled, more slowly; but, after half an hour of
soft, silken rustle and answering smiles, they, too, were crowded with
distinguished men and beautiful women of the British aristocracy, and
the whole arena was lighted up with the splendor of their garments and
the flaming brightness of their jewels. Then came a movement, and a low
murmur of discontent, which the grandest efforts of the orchestra could
not silence. The hour had arrived, but the curtain was still down. Was
there to be a disappointment, after all?

In the midst of this growing confusion a party entered one of the most
prominent boxes that drew the general attention in that part of the
house. A lady in crimson velvet, with some gossamer lace about her arms
and bosom, and a cobweb of the same rich material floating from the
thick braids of her coal-black hair, came into the box, followed by a
gentleman so like her that people exclaimed at once:

"It is her brother!"

These two persons were accompanied by a bright young girl, in white
muslin, with a blue ribbon drawn through her hair like a snood, and a
string of large pearls on her neck. The girl was beautiful as a Hebe,
and bright as a star--so bright and so beautiful that a whole battery of
glasses was turned on the box the moment she entered it. Then a murmur
ran from lip to lip.

"It is Lady Hope, that person who was once a governess, and the young
lady must be Hope's daughter by his first marriage--the future Lady
Carset, if the old countess ever dies, which she never will, if it is
only to spite that woman yonder, whom she hates. Beautiful!"

"You are speaking of Lady Hope? Yes, very; but strange! Night and
morning are not farther apart than those two. Yet I am told they are
devoted to each other."

"Not unlikely. See how the woman smiles when the Hebe speaks to her!
Wonderful fascination in that face. Just the person to carry away a man
like Hope."

Here the conversation was broken off by an impatient outburst of the
audience.

In obedience to it the curtain rolled up, and the first act of
"Traviata" commenced.

The tumult stopped instantly, and every face was turned with expectation
on the stage, ready to greet "the lost one" with a generous welcome.

She came in hurriedly, with her head erect, her hand clenching that
cloud of lace to her bosom, and her eyes bright as stars. A stag hunted
to desperation would have turned at bay with a look like that; and the
poor animal might have recoiled as she did, when that wild burst of
admiration stormed over her. For the outcry of the most vicious hounds
that ever ran could not have been more appalling to a victim than that
generous welcome was to her.

She did not bow or smile, but retreated slowly back, step by step, until
a voice from behind the scene startled her. Then she bent her tall
figure a little forward, her head drooped to her bosom, and her hands
were clenched passionately under the laces.

Again those who were nearest heard the voice, but did not understand it
as that poor girl did. In her panic the little acting that belonged to
the scene was utterly overlooked; but this proud indifference was
something new, and charmed the audience, which took her wounded pride
for superb disdain of a pampered beauty, and accepted it as a graceful
innovation; while she stood trembling from head to foot, conscious only
of a burning desire to break away from it all and hide herself forever.
She did once move swiftly toward the wing, but there stood Olympia, and
the first glimpse of that frowning face drove her back, panting for
breath.

The audience, seeing her panic, encouraged her with applause less stormy
and more sustaining.

She felt this kindness. The multitude were less her enemy than the
woman who stood in the shadows, hounding her on. Among all that sea of
faces she saw one--that of a young girl, leaning over the crimson
cushions of a box near the stage, so eager, so earnest, so bright with
generous sympathy, that youth answered back to youth; a smile broke over
her own face, and with it came her voice, fresh, pure, soaring like a
bird suddenly let loose on the air.

The audience listened in breathless sympathy, which encouraged her.
There was no doubt now; fear could not long hold such genius in thrall;
her movements became free, her features brightened. She flung the lace
back from her head, and gave herself up to the joyous riot of that
drinking song.

In the midst of this scene, when every one present, on and off the
stage, was lavishing homage upon her, she lifted her eyes to the young
girl who leaned forward, poising herself in the box, like a bird
preparing for flight, and clapped her little hand with the glee of a
delighted child.

Once more their smiles met. Then a deathly faintness came over the
debutante, and without a word or motion she sank upon the stage, like a
statue of snow which the sun had touched.

In the next box, leaning forward like that young girl--but oh! with what
a different expression--she had seen the Italian teacher, her lover.

The drinking-song was hushed in its most exultant swell--the revellers
drew around the fainting girl and carried her from the stage, helpless
as an infant, white as the lace that clouded her.

The audience watched them bear her away in silence; then it broke into
murmurs of regret and sympathy.

"The effort had been too much for her. Of course, such genius was
accompanied with corresponding sensitiveness, but she would speedily
recover. It was only a little interruption."

They were mistaken. The debutante did not return that night; but in her
place came Olympia, with a little tragedy in her face, and a touching
speech, which excited admiration for herself and unbounded sympathy for
her protege; after which, she entered into the character of Violette,
with a grace of action and a power of voice that carried the management
through what had threatened to be a serious dilemma.

The truth is, this woman, Olympia, was a remarkably clever person, and
knew how to manage her subjects a great deal better than some monarchs
of England have done. But she was in a raging passion that night, and
the excitement lent her force, which she exhausted in the part, while
her child lay moaning on the dressing-room sofa.

In the midst of the first confusion, that young girl in the box had
started up, and laid her hand on Hepworth Closs's arm.

"Go back to where they have taken her. You know the way. Tell my maid,
Margaret, to come to me at once. No, no; take me with you. I may be of
use. Poor girl! poor girl! They have almost killed her."

"But it is impossible," said Closs, looking toward Lady Hope, who was
leaning against the side of the box, with her face turned away. "She
would not permit it."

"She does not object. We need not be seen. No one will recognize us.
Come! come!"

She took Hepworth's arm, and almost forced him from the box.

"Which way? Come! come! I will go."

Hepworth had been too often behind the scenes not to know how to gain
admittance there on this occasion. He knew how resolute that young
creature was, when a generous or daring idea possessed her, and, after
waiting a moment for Lady Hope to speak, led Lady Clara away.

Clara was bewildered and almost terrified by the black darkness of the
passage, which was lighted only by fitful gleams from the stage; but
excitement kept up her courage, and she entered Olympia's dressing-room
with the air of a person born to the tragic purple.




CHAPTER X.

THE TWO FOSTER-CHILDREN MEET.


Caroline was lying upon a heap of rich garments piled on the sofa. She
was trembling still, and every few moments a burst of bitter sobs broke
from her. Three women were standing by--her own maid, Eliza, upon whose
sympathetic face tears were trembling; Margaret, her sister; and, most
conspicuous of all, Olympia's French maid, who bent over the poor girl,
with a bottle of perfume in each hand, with which she insisted on
assuaging the unhappy girl's anguish.

Lady Clara comprehended the scene at a glance, went up to the sofa, took
the French maid by the shoulders, and wheeled her away so swiftly that
the bottles jingled; then she fell upon her knees by the sofa, and flung
one arm over Caroline.

"Don't mind them; don't let them bother you. Just tell me what has come
over you, and I'll set it right, or know the reason why."

The voice, so sweet, so round and cheering, aroused Caroline.

She rose up on her elbow, and seeing the bright, honest face which had
bent toward her so kindly from the box, reached out her arms, and wound
them over Clara's neck.

"That's right; that's sisterly. I wish you were my sister; but what's
the use of wishing? There! kiss me again, for I mean to be a mother to
you--I do, indeed! Now tell me, what was it that struck you down so? It
was frightful; it took away my breath. Tell me all about it. My maid
here and yours were sisters, and I shouldn't wonder if we knew each
other in America. But that is so long ago, it wouldn't signify, but for
the maids, who love us so, that it makes a sort of tie. Don't you think
so?"

"Oh, if it could! if it could! I have no relative but one, and she will
not pity me!" cried Caroline, clinging to Lady Clara. "She will make me
go back to that hateful part! It was bad enough before, but now I should
die of shame!"

"Why? Why now more than at first?" inquired Clara.

"I will tell you. I know who you are, and how good every one thinks you.
I hate the stage!"

"How strange! I cannot understand it. You don't know how I envied you
when all those people started up, waving their handkerchiefs and
shouting--to see them so sorry and disappointed when you did not come
back. I could hardly keep myself from leaping over the box, and asking
the crowd to let me try!"

Caroline looked into that animated face with wonder. The tears stood
still on her cheeks, a faint smile crept into her eyes. Then she shook
her head.

"Ah! I understand. There was a time when I thought like you, but that
was before--before--"

"Before what? Margaret and the rest of you, just go outside. The room
isn't large enough for so many. There, we are alone now. Just tell me
all about it. You can trust me."

"I know it. Well, Lady Clara--you see I know your name--"

"Exactly. But just call me Clara--nothing more. I really don't care for
being a lady--at any rate, not much. That one thing is going to give me
any amount of trouble yet, you'll see. Well, now, having settled the
lady, tell me why and when you began to hate the stage so. I think it is
a glorious life. Just put me where you stand, without a sovereign to
help myself with, and I'd give up the ladyship to you in a minute."

"But that is because you own your life."

"Own my life? Of course I do. That is just what every soul must own."

"Not if--if she cares for some one more than her life."

"Oh-e! oh-e! That is the secret! And he don't like it? The heathen! I
wish he had seen you just now!"

"He did. He was standing in the box close by you. I saw his face, for
the first time in months. He was leaning forward; his eyes met mine.
They were full of reproach--contempt, perhaps. I could not tell, for the
house swam round, the lights seemed leaping toward me. Then I felt as if
the noise were putting them out, for everything grew dark."

"And you fainted dead away, poor dear! I know how to pity you. Not that
I have had trouble yet; but it is sure to come, and then, of course, you
will be sorry for me."

"I shall, indeed."

"Just as I am sorry for you now. But who is the man?"

"I hardly think I know. He gave me an Italian name, but I feel sure it
was not his."

"That accounts for his antipathy to the stage. If he had really been an
Italian, your singing would have entranced him. It was heavenly; but an
Englishman--. Well, well, we must see!"

That moment the door swung open, and Olympia came in, radiant with
jewels and fierce with anger. She saw Lady Clara, and stopped upon the
threshold in haughty astonishment. Caroline shrank from the stormy
expression of her face, but faltered out:

"Madame, it is Lady Clara, the daughter of Lord Hope."

Instantly the frown lost itself in a bland smile. Olympia was equal to
her part at all times. She did not often see a lady of rank in her
dressing-room, and the honor drove away the indignant wrath intended for
Caroline.

"Ah!" she said, "this poor child--it was so unfortunate! But she will
recover. In a day or two she will get back her courage. What a voice she
has, my lady! Did you hear? So fresh, so powerful, up to the very time
when she broke down. What could have occasioned it?"

"It is indeed a misfortune," said Clara, with some dignity; "because I
am sure she will never do for the stage. Her voice is superb, but so
uncertain! When we compare it with yours, madame, it is to regret that
she ever ventured so far."

Olympia seated herself. She had a few moments to spare before the
call-boy would summon her back to the stage.

"There you mistake, my lady. When I was her age no one ever dreamed that
I would succeed as a singer; but you see what resolution and study can
do."

"But you _had_ study; your guardians gave plenty of time. Let her have
that time; let her friends have an opportunity to think what is best for
her."

"Her friends? I did not know that she had any in England."

"Oh, yes! I am one; Lady Hope is another. Then there is Mr. Closs."

"Oh!" said Olympia. "It is to that gentleman we owe the honor of this
visit?"

"Yes," answered Clara. "He escorted me here. Being Lady Hope's brother,
it was proper, you understand."

Olympia was looking in Clara's face. The girl pleased her. The bright
mobility of her features, the graceful gestures with which she
emphasized her expressions, charmed the experienced actress.

"Ah, if my daughter had your abandon!" she exclaimed, with enthusiasm.

"Or if I had her sweet dignity. But fortune is sometimes very perverse.
Now I should glory in the applause which makes her faint away."

"Ah! she is sensitive as a child, proud as a duchess; but, where we have
plenty of genius, these things only serve to brighten it. I shall take
Caroline into my own training. When you come to hear her sing again, it
will be a different affair."

"Oh, madam, do not ask it!" cried Caroline, in a panic. "I never, never
can go on to that stage again!"

"We shall see," answered Olympia, blandly. "Here comes the call-boy; I
must say adieu, with many thanks for this visit."

"But I have a request to make. You will give her time?"

"Oh! yes, my lady. She shall have sufficient time."

Olympia went out smiling; but Caroline understood the craft that lay
under her soft words.

"You see that I have accomplished something," said Clara, delighted with
her success; "we have gained time."

"No, no! She will have her way."

"What! that soft, handsome creature?"

"Has a will of iron!"

"And so have I!" exclaimed the young girl, "and my will is that she
shall not force you into a life you do not like; but I wonder at it.
Upon my word, if it were not for one thing, I should like to change
places with you."

Caroline shook her head.

"You have no idea what the life is!"

"Oh! yes, I have; and it must be charming. No dignity to keep up, no
retinue of servants to pass every time you come and go; but all sorts of
homage, plenty of work, while everything you have brings in a swift
recompense. Talent, beauty, grace discounted every night. Oh! it must be
charming."

"I thought so once," answered Caroline, with a heavy sigh.

"Well, never trouble yourself to think about it again. If that lovely
woman has an iron will, you must get up one of steel; but here comes
Margaret. I suppose Mr. Closs is getting tired of staying out there in
the dark. Besides, Lady Hope will be frightened. Adieu, my friend; I
will manage to see you again."




CHAPTER XI.

LADY CLARA QUARRELS WITH HER STEPMOTHER.


Lady Hope had fainted, but with such deathly stillness that neither
Hepworth Closs nor Clara had been aware of it. She remained, after they
left the box, drooping sideways from her cushioned seat, with the cold
pallor of her face hid in the crimson shadows, and kept from falling by
the sides of the box, against which she leaned heavily.

No one observed this, for the whole audience was intensely occupied by
what was passing on the stage; and the pang of self-consciousness
returned to Rachael Closs in the utter solitude of a great crowd. She
opened her eyes wearily, as if the effort were a pain. Then a wild light
broke through their darkness. She cast a quick glance upon the stage and
over the crowd. Then turning to look for her companions, she found that
they were gone. A sense of relief came to the woman from a certainty
that she was alone. She leaned back against the side of the box in utter
depression. Her lips moved, her hands were tightly clasped--she seemed
in absolute terror.

What had Rachael Closs heard or seen to agitate her thus? That no one
could tell. The cause of those faint shudders that shook her from time
to time was known only to herself and her God.

When Hepworth and Lady Clara came back, Lady Hope rose, and gathering
her ermine cloak close to her throat, said that she was tired of the
confusion, and would go home, unless they very much wished to stay and
see Olympia.

They consented to go at once. The pallor of that beautiful face, as it
turned so imploringly upon them, was appeal enough.

On their way home Lady Clara told her stepmother of her visit behind the
scenes.

Rachael listened, and neither rebuked her for going nor asked questions;
but when Clara broke forth, in her impetuous way, exclaiming, "Oh, mamma
Rachael, you will help us! You will get this poor girl out of her
mother's power! You will let me ask her down to Oakhurst!" Rachael
almost sprang to her feet in the force of her sudden passion.

"What! I--I, Lady Hope of Oakhust, invite that girl to be your
companion, my guest! Clara, are you mad? or am I?"

The girl was struck dumb with amazement. Never in her existence had she
been so addressed before--for, with her, Rachael had been always kind
and delicately tender. Why had she broken forth now, when she asked the
first serious favor of her life?

"Mamma! mamma Rachael!" she cried. "What is the matter? What have I done
that you are so cross with me?"

"Nothing," said Rachael, sighing heavily, "only you ask an unreasonable
thing, and one your father would never forgive me for granting."

"But she is so lovely! papa would like her, I know. She is so unhappy,
too! I could feel her shudder when the stage was mentioned. Oh, mamma
Rachael, we might save her from that!"

"I cannot! Do not ask me; I cannot!"

"But I promised that you would be her friend."

"Make no promises for me, Clara, for I will redeem none. Drive this girl
from your thoughts. To-morrow morning we go back to Oakhurst."

"To-morrow morning! And I promised to see her again."

"It is impossible. Let this subject drop. In my wish to give you
pleasure, I have risked the anger of Lord Hope. He would never forgive
me if I permitted this entanglement."

Lady Clara turned to Hepworth Closs.

"Plead for me--plead for that poor girl!" she cried, with the
unreasoning persistence of a child; but, to her astonishment, Hepworth
answered even more resolutely than his sister.

"I cannot, Clara. There should be nothing in common between the daughter
of Olympia and Lord Hope's only child."

"Oh, how cruel! What is the use of having rank and power if one is not
to use it for the good of others?"

"We will not argue the matter, dear child."

"But I will argue it, and if I cannot convince, I will hate you,
Hepworth Closs, just as long as I live."

"Not quite so bad as that, I trust," answered Hepworth, sadly. "To own
the truth, Clara, I fear your mother will have enough to do in
reconciling Lord Hope to the position another person has assumed in his
household. Do not let us add new difficulties to her position."

Clara began to cry.

"I'm sure I never thought of troubling her or offending my father. It is
so natural for them to be good and kind, why should I doubt them now,
when the grandest, sweetest, most beautiful girl in the whole world
wants help--just the help they can give, too? Well, well, when papa
comes home, I will lay the whole case before him."

"Not for the world!" cried Rachael, suddenly. "I tell you, cast this
subject from your mind. I will not have my lord annoyed by it. For once,
Clara, I must and will be obeyed."

Clara sank back in her seat, aghast with surprise.

"Oh, mamma Rachael, you are getting to be awfully cruel."

"Cruel? No! In this I am acting kindly. It is you who are cruel in
pressing a distasteful and impossible thing upon me."

"I don't understand it; I can't believe it. You are always so free, so
generous, to those who need help. It is just because this poor girl is
my friend. Oh! I only wish old Lady Carset would just die, and leave me
everything! I would let the world see a specimen of independence--I
would! Don't speak to me, don't attempt to touch my hand, Mr. Closs! You
haven't a spark of human nature in you. I have a good mind to leave you
all, and go on the stage myself."

Again Lady Hope broke into a storm of impatience so unlike her usual
self-restraint, that Clara was really terrified.

"Hush, girl! Not another word of this. I will not endure it."

This severe reprimand took away Clara's breath for an instant; then she
burst into a passion of sobs and tears, huddling herself up into a
corner of the carriage, and utterly refused all consolation from
Hepworth, who was generously disturbed by her grief.

Lady Hope did nothing, but sat in silence, lost in thought, or perhaps
striving to subdue the tumult of feelings that had so suddenly broke
forth from her usual firm control.

Thus they drove home in distrust and excitement. A few low murmurs from
Hepworth, bursts of grief from Lady Clara, and dead silence on the part
of Rachael Closs, attended the first disagreement that had ever set the
stepmother and daughter in opposition.

When they reached home, Clara, her face all bathed in tears, and her
bosom heaving with sobs, ran up to her room, without the usual kiss or
"Good-night."

She was bitterly offended, and expressed the feeling in her own childish
fashion.

Rachael sat down in the hall, and watched the girl as she glided up the
broad staircase, perhaps hoping that she would look back, or, it may be,
regretting the course she had taken, for her face was unutterably sad,
and her attitude one of great despondency.

At last, when Clara was out of sight, she turned a wistful look on her
brother.

"She will hate me now."

Her voice was more plaintive than the words. The confidence of that
young girl was all the world to her; for, independent of everything
else, it was the one human link that bound her to the man she loved with
such passionate idolatry. Her kindness to his child was the silver cord
which even his strong will could not sunder, even if he should wish it.

Hepworth saw her anguish, and pitied it.

"Let her go," he said, stooping down and kissing his sister on the
forehead, which, with her neck and arms, was cold as marble. "She is
disappointed, vexed, and really indignant with us both; but a good
night's sleep will set her heart right again. I wish we had never
chanced to come here."

"Oh, Heavens! so do I."

"Rachael," said Hepworth, "what is it troubles you so?"

"What? Is it not enough that the child I have made a part of my own life
should quarrel with me and with you, because of me, for a stranger?"

"No; because her own generous nature assures us that the evil will die
of itself before morning. This is not enough to account for the fact
that you quiver as if with cold, and the very touch of your forehead
chills me."

"Do I?" questioned Rachael. "I did not know it. My cloak has fallen
off--that is all."

"Mamma Rachael!"

They both started, for leaning over the banisters was the sweet, tearful
face of Lady Clara.

"My own darling!" cried Rachael, lifting her arms.

Down the staircase sprang that generous young creature, her feet
scarcely touching the polished oak, her hair all unbound and rolling in
waves down her back. Struck with sweet compunctions, she had broken from
the hands of her maid, and left her with the blue ribbon fluttering in
her hand, while she ran back to make peace with the woman who was almost
dearer to her than a mother.

She fell upon her knees by Rachael, and shook the hair from her face,
which was glowing with sweet penitence.

"Kiss me, mamma Rachael, not on this saucy mouth of mine, but here upon
my forehead. I cannot sleep till you have kissed me good night."

Rachael laid one hand on that bright young head, but it was quivering
like a shot bird. She bent the face back a little, and pored over the
features with yearning scrutiny, as if she longed to engrave every line
on her heart.

Something in those black eyes disturbed the girl afresh. She reached up
her arms, and cried out:

"Don't be angry with me, mamma Rachael, but kiss me good night, and ask
God to make me a better girl."

Instead of kissing her, Rachael Closs fell upon her neck and broke into
a passion of tears such as Clara had never seen her shed before.




CHAPTER XII.

THE OLD PRISONER.


In America again. Yes, fate has swept most of the characters of our
story across the ocean; but one remains behind to whom the kind heart
must turn with more solemn interest than the young, the beautiful, or
the lordly can inspire.

No changes had fallen upon that bleak, gloomy prison, whose very shadow,
as it lay across the dusty road, streamed out like a pall. Human crime
brings human misery, and that, crowded together and stifled under the
heel of the law, is a terrible, most terrible thing.

In the midst of this desolation, that old woman had lived and suffered
fourteen years, without a complaint, without once asking for the
freedom, which would have been so sweet to her, even of her God. She had
sinned deeply--how far, she and the Almighty, who knows all things,
alone could tell; but she had borne her punishment with much humility;
in her quiet way, had made her presence in that dreary place a blessing
to those more wretched than herself.

During that long, weary time many a poor prisoner had felt the comfort
of her presence near her sick couch and her grave. Kind looks had
cheered other desponding souls when words of compassion were forbidden
to her lips.

One day this woman sat at her task sewing on some heavy prison garments.
A skein of coarse thread hung about her neck, and a steel thimble was
upon her long, slender finger, where it had worn a ring about the nail
with incessant use.

She did not look up when the matron entered the room, but worked on,
with steady purpose, not caring to see that strange gentleman who came
in with the matron, and stood looking kindly upon her.

"Mrs. Yates."

The old woman lifted her head with a suddenness that almost shook the
iron spectacles from her face. Her eyes encountered those of the
gentleman, and she stood up meekly, like a school-girl aroused from her
task, and remained, with her eyes bent on the floor, waiting for the man
to pass on. He did not move, however, but stood gazing upon her
snow-white hair, her thin old face, and the gentle stoop that had, at
last, bent her shoulders a little, with infinite compassion in his face.

"Mrs. Yates, why do you stand so motionless? How is it that your eyes
turn so steadily to the floor?"

The old woman lifted her eyes slowly to that calm, thin face. She did
not know it, had never seen it before in her life; but it was so seldom
any one spoke to her, that a soft glow of comfort stole to her heart as
she looked, and two great tears rolled from under her spectacles. Then
she remembered that he had asked something.

"In prison, here, we get a down look," she said, with pathetic
simplicity.

"But you will look in my face now."

She did gaze at him earnestly; but shook her head and dropped her eyes,
for the force of habit was still upon her.

"I do not know you," she murmured.

"Did you then expect some friend?" asked the gentleman.

"I have no friends," was the sad reply.

"Does no one come to see you?"

"Years ago my son used to come and his wife, too; but they are both
dead."

"Poor woman!"

She looked up again with a glance of earnest surprise. She was so unused
to pity that the compassionate voice brought a dry sob to her throat.

"Are you content here? Tell me."

"Yes, I am content."

Her voice was low, but inexpressibly mournful.

"I know the crime for which you were committed," said the gentleman,
"and have read the case over. Tell me, were you guilty?"

The old woman lifted her eyes slowly, and replied:

"Yes, I was a guilty woman."

"But were you, before God, guilty of murder?"

She met his eyes steadily. He saw a quiver of pain sweep over her
features, and the thin lips began to stir.

"He is dead, my innocent, my honest son. Nothing can harm him now. I
have not suffered in vain. Before God I was not guilty of murder, but
terribly guilty in taking this crime on myself: but it was to save him,
and I cannot repent, I cannot repent, and in that lies double guilt!"

The stranger searched her features keenly as she spoke. Perhaps he was
prepared for this answer; but the light that came over his face was full
of compassion.

"Have you done with me?" questioned the old woman, in the meek, sad
voice that had become habitual to her. "Perhaps you will not believe me;
but God knows!"

The man turned from her and stepped into the matron's room.

The old woman sat down upon the bench from which she had arisen, took
the coarse needle from the bosom of her dress, where she had fastened it
when spoken to, and threaded it again; but her hand shook a little, and
the thread baffled her confused vision. Then the strange gentleman came
back again, smiling, and with moisture in his eyes.

"My good woman," he said, "put up your work. You did not know it, but I
am the Governor of New York, and your pardon has just gone to the
warden."

The needle dropped from one quivering old hand--a thread fell from its
companion.

"Pardon for me!"

Her lips were white, and the words trembled from them one by one. She
did not comprehend that this man had given her back to the world.

"It is true," said the matron, weeping the glad, sweet tears of a
benevolent heart, "His Excellency has pardoned you. This very hour you
are free to leave the prison."

"God help me! Oh! God help me!" cried the poor old woman, looking around
at her rude work and seating herself among it. "Where can I go?"

The Governor took some money from his pocket and laid it in her lap.
Then he went hastily from the room.

The matron sat down upon the bench, and clasped the withered hand in
hers.

"Have you no friend?"

"None."

"No duties left undone?"

The old woman drew herself up. Duties last longer than friends. Yes, she
had duties, and God had taken the shackles from her limbs that she might
perform them. Freedom was before her and an object. She arose gently and
looked around a little wildly.

"I will go now."

The matron went out and returned with a bundle of clothes and a black
bonnet upon which was some rusty crape; a huge, old-fashioned thing that
framed in her silver-white hair like a pent-house. The very shape and
fashion of this bonnet was pathetic--it spoke of so long ago. The black
dress and soft shawl with which she had come to the prison were a little
moth-eaten, but not much, for they had been carefully hoarded; but the
poor old woman looked with a sigh on her prison-dress as it fell to the
floor, and wept bitterly before she went out, as if that gloomy mass of
stones had been a pleasant home to her.

Slowly, and with a downcast look, the old woman went out of the prison,
up through the rugged quarries, where a gang of men were at work,
dragging their weary limbs from stone to stone, with the listless,
haggard effort of forced labor. Some of these men looked up, as she
passed them, and watched her with bitter envy.

"There goes a pardon," they said to each other; "and that old woman with
one foot in the grave, while we are young and strong! Freedom would be
everything to us; but what good will it do to her?"

So the poor old prisoner passed on, sadly bewildered and afraid, like a
homeless child, but thanking God for a mercy she could not yet realize.

There was one place to which she must go. It might be empty and
desolate, but there her son had died, and she had seen the roof of his
dwelling from the graveyard when they let her come out from prison to
see him buried.

She knew the road, for her path led to the grave first, and after that
she could find the way, for every step, so far, had been marked by a
pang, to which her heart was answering back now.

At sunset, that day, some workmen, passing the village burying-place,
saw an old woman sitting by a grave that had been almost forgotten in
the neighborhood.

She was looking dreary and forlorn in the damp enclosure, for clouds
were drifting low in the sky, and a cold rain was beginning to fall; but
they did not know that this poor woman had a home-feeling by that grave,
even with the rain falling, which belonged to no other place on earth.

A little later, when the gray darkness was creeping on, this same tall
figure might have been discovered moving through the rough cedar pillars
of the Yates cottage. There was no light in the house, for no human soul
lived beneath its roof; but a door was so lightly fastened that she got
it open with some effort, and entered what seemed to her like the
kitchen; for the last tenant had left some kindling-wood in the
fireplace, and two or three worn-out cooking utensils stood near the
hearth, where they were beginning to rust.

When she left the prison, the matron had, with many kind words, thrust a
parcel into the old woman's hand. Knowing her helplessness, she had
provided food for a meal or two, and to this had added some matches and
candles.

In the gray light which came through one of the windows, she untied this
parcel and found the candles. It seemed to the forlorn creature as if a
merciful God had sent them directly to her, and she fell upon her
knees, thanking Him. The light which she struck gave her the first gleam
of hope that her freedom had yet brought. She was at liberty to build a
fire on that dark hearth, and to sit there just as long as she pleased,
enjoying its warmth. The rain that began to rattle down on the low roof
made her shelter more pleasant. She began to realize that even in such
desolation liberty was sweet.

She built a fire with the dry wood, and its blaze soon filled the
kitchen with a golden glow. Her garments were wet, and a soft steam
arose from them as she sat, enveloping her in a gray cloud. The
loneliness might have been terrible to another person, but she had been
so long accustomed to the darkness and gloom of a prison cell, that this
illuminated space seemed broad as the universe to her.

After her clothes were dry, the old woman lighted her candle and began
to examine the house. The parlor was almost empty, and a gust of wind
took her candle as she opened the door, flaring back the flame into her
face. The wind came from a broken pane of glass in the oriel window,
through which a branch of ivy, and the long tendril of a Virginia
creeper had penetrated, and woven themselves in a garland along the
wall. A wren had followed the creeping greenness and built her nest in
the cornice, from which she flew frightened, when a light entered the
room.

The old woman went out disappointed. The thing she sought was not there;
perhaps it had been utterly destroyed. The man who had promised to keep
it sacred, lay sleeping up yonder in the graveyard. How could she expect
strangers to take up his trust? But if the object she sought could not
be found, what was the use of liberty to her. The one aim of her life
would be extinguished. She took up the candle and mounted a flight of
narrow stairs which led to the chambers.

They were all empty except one small room, where she found an iron
bedstead, on which some old quilts and refuse blankets were heaped.
Behind this bed, pressed into a corner, was an old chair, covered with
dust.

When she saw this, the light shook in her hand. She sat down upon the
bedstead, and reaching the candle out, examined the old chair, through
its veil of cobwebs. It was the same. How well she remembered that night
when her own hands had put on that green cover.

The chair was broken. One of its castors dropped to the floor as Mrs.
Yates drew it from the corner, and the carved wood-work came off in her
hand; the cushion was stained and torn in places, but this dilapidation
she knew had not reached her secret.

She took the chair in her arms and carried it down to the kitchen. Some
of the brass nails dropped loose on the stairs, but she took no heed of
them. All she wanted was some instrument with which she could turn the
ricketty thing into a complete wreck. In the drawer of a broken kitchen
table she found an old knife, with the blade half ground away. This she
whetted to an edge on the hearth, and directly the little brass nails
flew right and left, a mass of twisted fringe lay on the hearth, when
the old woman stood in a cloud of dust, holding the torn rep in her
hand. It dropped in a heap with the fringe, then the inner lining was
torn away, handsful of hair were pulled out from among the springs, and
that casket with a package of papers rustled and shook in the old
woman's hands.

Mrs. Yates trembled from head to foot. It was many long years since she
had touched heavy work like that, and it shocked her whole frame.

The dull monotony of sewing upon prison garments had undermined all her
great natural strength. She sat there panting for breath, and white to
the lips. The excitement had been too much for this poor prison woman.

She sat like a dazed creature, looking down into the casket which lay
open in her lap, with ten thousand rainbow fires leaping out of it, as
the blaze in the chimney quivered and danced and blazed over the
diamonds. That morning the old woman had crept out of prison in her
moth-eaten garments, and a little charity money in her bosom. Now a
fortune blazed up from her lap.

There was money, too, a purse heavy with sovereigns, dropped there from
the gold contained in that malachite box, from which all her awful
sorrows had sprung. She gathered up these things in the skirt of her
dress and sat brooding over them a long time, while the fire rose and
crackled, and shed warm floods of light all around her, and the rain
poured down in torrents. She was completely worn out at last, and
thought itself became a burden; then her head fell back upon the ruined
cushions of the chair, which held her in a half-sitting position, as the
heaviest sleep that ever came to mortal eyes fell upon her.

Still the rain poured down continually upon the roof and overran the
gutters in torrents. Up from the darkness of a hollow near by, the rush
and roar of a stream, swollen into a torrent, came through the beating
storm like a heavy bass voice pouring its low thunders through a strain
of music. The great elm tree at the end of the house tossed its
streaming branches, and beat them upon the roof, till a host of warriors
seemed breaking their way through, while the old vines were seized by
the wind and ripped from the sides of the house, as the storm seizes
upon the cords of a vessel, and tears them up into a net work of tangled
floss.

The old woman who had left her stone cell in the prison for the first
time in fourteen years, heard nothing of this, but lay half upon the
floor half on the broken chair, with the broad blaze of the fire
flashing over her white hair, and kindling up the diamonds in her lap to
a bed of living coals. She was perfectly safe with those treasures, even
in that lonely house, for in the pouring rain no human being was likely
to go about from his own free will. But one poor fellow, whose child was
desperately sick, did pass the house, and saw the blaze of a fire
breaking through a window, where the shutters were dashing to and fro on
their hinges, and found breath to say, as he sped on in search of a
doctor:

"So the cedar cottage has got another tenant at last. I wonder who it
is?"

When the man went by to his work, the next morning, he saw the shutters
swaying to and fro yet, and wondering at it, went into the enclosure, in
hopes of meeting some of the new inmates; but everything was still, the
doors were fastened, and through the kitchen window he saw nothing but a
heap of ashes on the hearth, and an old chair, torn to pieces, standing
before it.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE OLD COUNTESS.


When the old countess of Carset threw out her flag from the battlements
of Houghton castle, it could be seen from all the country around, for
the grim old pile was built upon the uplands, and the gray towers rose
up from the groves of the park like the peaks of a mountain.

For many a long year that broad flag had streamed like a meteor over the
intense greenness of oaks and chestnuts; for, when the head of the house
was at home, the crimson pennant was always to be seen floating against
the sky, and over that sea of billowy foliage. The old lady of Houghton
had not been absent from the castle in many years, for she was a
childless woman, and so aged, that a home among her own people was most
befitting her infirmities and her pride.

One day, as the sun was going down behind those massive castle towers,
filling the sky so richly with gold and crimson, that the red flag was
lost among its fiery billows, an old woman stood on the highway, with a
hand uplifted to shade her eyes, as she searched for the old flag.

There was dust upon her leathern shoes and on the black folds of her
alpaca dress, for she had walked from the railway station, and the roads
were dry.

"Ah, how the trees have grown!" she said, mournfully, dropping her hand.
"I never, never thought to be so near Houghton and not see the flag. Is
my lady dead?"

The old woman was so distressed by the thought, that she sat down on a
bank by the wayside, and over her came that dry, hard foreboding, which
forbids tears to old eyes, but holds the worn heart like a vise. Thus,
with her eyes fixed on the dusty road, she sat till all those bright
clouds melted into the coming night; then she looked up and saw the
great red flag streaming out against a sea of purplish gray, as it had
done when she was a girl, seventy years ago.

"My lady is alive. She is there. Oh! my God! make me thankful!" she
exclaimed, standing up in the road. "Through all, I shall see her
again."

So she moved on, carrying a leathern travelling bag, worn and rusty, in
her feeble hand. Along the highway, up to the gates of that noble park,
she travelled with the slow, toilsome step of old age; but when she came
to the gates they were closed, and her voice was so feeble that it
failed to reach the lodge, from which she could see lights gleaming
through the twinkling ivy leaves.

In patient disappointment the old woman turned from the gate, and walked
on half a mile farther, for she knew of a small public house where a
night's lodging could be obtained. She reached this low stone building
after dark, and entered it quietly, like a gray ghost.

It was a strange guest to enter that tap-room, with her dusty garments
and her old satchel. The villagers, who were taking their beer
comfortably, lifted their eyes in astonishment at her sudden appearance,
and they rounded with wonder, as she passed through the room and entered
the kitchen naturally, as if she had belonged to the premises all her
life.

No one in the house remembered the old woman. A curly-headed girl named
Susan, had flitted like a bird about that kitchen the last time she had
entered it, and now, when a man's voice called out "Susan!" she started
and looked around in a dazed way, expecting the bright eyed girl would
come dancing through the door. But instead appeared an elderly woman,
with quantities of coarse black hair, smoothed under her cap. A linen
apron, large and ample, protected her stuff dress, and a steel
chatelaine, to which were suspended scissors, a needle case and tiny
money box rattled at her side.

"Well, what is to do now, Stephen?" said the landlady, brushing some
crumbs from her apron, for she had been cutting bread.

"Not much, only look sharp. Here is an old body just come off the tramp.
Ah, there she sits. See to her while I mind the bar, for she seems a
little above the common, and is quiet."

The landlord sank his voice as he made the communication, and, after a
glance at the old woman, went back to his guests, while the matron
addressed Mrs. Yates.

"Ye will be wanting something, no doubt. Will it be tea or a cup of ale
posset?"

The old heart in that bosom stirred with a tender recollection of long
ago, as this almost forgotten dish was mentioned, a dish so purely
English, that she had never once heard it mentioned in her American
life.

"I will thank you for a posset," she said, taking off her bonnet and
smoothing her milk-white hair with both hands. "It is long since I have
tasted one."

"Yes," answered the landlady, "there is more refreshment in a cup of
warm posset, than in quarts of tea from China. Wait a bit and you shall
have one of my own making; the maids never will learn how to curdle the
milk properly, but I am a rare hand at it, as was my mother before me."

"Aye, a good housewife was your mother," said the old woman, as tender
recollections stirred in her bosom, "for now I see that it is little
Susan."

"Little Susan, and you know of her? That was what they used to call me
when I was a lass, so high."

"But now, what is the name you go by?"

"What name should a woman go by but that of her own husband? You have
just seen the master. The neighbors call him Stephen Burke."

"What, the son of James Burke, gamekeeper at the castle?"

"Why, did you know him, too?"

"Aye, that did I. A brave young fellow he was, and every one at the
castle up yonder--"

The old woman checked herself. She had not intended to make herself
known, but old recollections had thronged upon her so warmly, that it
seemed impossible to keep silent.

"You speak of the castle as if you knew about it," said the landlady,
eyeing her askance.

"And no wonder," answered the old woman; "people have told me about it,
and I was in the neighborhood years ago, when you were a slip of a
lass."

It was strange, but this old woman, since her entrance to that room, had
fallen back upon phrases and words familiar to her lips once, but which
had not made any part of her speech for years. There was a home sound in
them that warmed her heart.

"Did ye ever know any of them up yonder?" asked the landlady, as she
placed a broad porringer before the fire, and poured some milk into it.

"Yes. I have seen the countess, but it was long ago."

"May-be it was when the young lady was at home. Oh! them were blithe
times, when young Lord Hope came a courting, and we could see them
driving like turtle doves through the park and down the village; or,
walking along by the hedges and gathering hyacinths and violets. It was
a sorry time, though, when he took her away for good and all."

"Is the young lady living near this?" inquired Mrs. Yates, with an
effort.

"Near this, my good woman! Why, she has been dead these many years, and
Lord Hope had been married to his second wife ten years, when my first
lass was born; but he lives at Oakhurst, and never comes here now. No
one, in these parts, has seen his second lady, for the countess was
sadly put out with the marriage, and all her household was forbidden to
mention Lord Hope's name before her. She never got over the death of our
own young lady in foreign parts, off in America among the red Indians,
who tomahawk people, and no one asks why. This was where Lord Hope took
his wife and child. Can any one wonder that our countess could not
forgive him, especially when he came back home with a new wife, and
stood out that his daughter should never come to Houghton, till our old
lady up yonder was ready to be gracious to the new woman."

"So the child was never at the castle?" inquired the old woman.

"No one hereabouts has ever seen her, though we are told that she is a
beautiful young lady, sweet and pleasant, but with a will of her own.
The old countess sent for her once, for she must be heiress of Houghton,
you know; but she sent back word that nothing could entice her into a
house where her stepmother was forbidden to come, and this so offended
our countess, that she has taken no notice of her since."

While she was talking, the landlady poured a measure of frothing ale
into the porringer, and became all at once silent. The delicate art of
curding the milk into whey took up all her attention. Thus the old lady
was allowed to drop into a fit of thought, from which she was aroused,
with a start, when the hostess poured the warm posset into a china bowl
and began stirring it with a heavy silver spoon, as she called out:

"Come to the table, grandame, and sup the posset while it is hot. You'll
not get its fellow till I turn my hand to another for ye. Come, come!"

Mrs. Yates drew her chair to the table, and took up the silver spoon,
eagerly. Poor woman! She had travelled all day without tasting food, and
the posset took her from a very painful train of thought.

The hostess sat down at one end of the table, smiling blandly over the
keen appetite of her guest. With her arms folded on the white cloth, and
her ruddy face bending forward, she went on with her talk. But this
time she turned from the castle, and began to ask questions, for the
presence of this singular old woman in her house had fully aroused her
curiosity.

But the traveller was on her guard now, and escaped these blunt
questions with quiet adroitness. When they became oppressive, she arose
from the table and asked permission to seek her bed, as the day's travel
had left her tired beyond anything.

The hostess took a candle from the table and led the way up stairs,
somewhat baffled, but full of kindly feeling. There was something about
the manner and speech of this old woman that set all her warm-hearted
interest afloat. Who was she? From what part of England had she
travelled with that rusty little bag and those thick-soled shoes? That
quiet manner and gentle voice might have belonged to any lady of the
land.

In the midst of these conjectures the quiet old woman reached out her
hand for the candle, and with a soft "good-night," closed the
chamber-door.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE OLD COUNTESS AND HER SERVANT.


The next morning Mrs. Yates was early at the park-gate. She found no
trouble in passing through now, and was soon in the avenue, making slow
progress toward the castle, under the shade of those vast oaks and
chestnuts. The way was long, and the avenue swept upward with what, to
the old woman, was a toilsome ascent. The bag, which she carried in her
hand, was of some weight, too, and the cramped inaction of so many years
had rendered walking a slow and painful process.

At last she stood in full view of that grand old building--a castle of
the olden times--kept, so far as possible to elegance or comfort, in its
ponderous mediæval grandeur. But Madam Art had softened all its ruder
features. Plate-glass was sunk into those thick walls; circular rooms in
those twin towers, commanded a splendid view of the valley, over which
the castle was built. The broad stone terrace connecting the towers, and
fronting the main building was connected with a velvet lawn by a forest
of hot-house plants, that clung around the stone parapet in a sumptuous
garland of vines and flowers, that shed a soft and delicious fragrance
over everything in and around the building.

Across this lawn and over the stone terrace the old woman toiled toward
the main entrance. She was beginning to tremble now with something
beside weariness. Her satchel bore down the feeble hand that carried it,
till it dragged along the stones with a low, rasping sound, as she
climbed the terrace-steps. She lifted the ponderous bronze knocker, and
let it fall from her shaking hand with a crash that startled herself,
and brought a man, all glittering in silver gray and scarlet, to the
door, where he stood, with his insolent lips ajar, waiting to know what
miracle had brought that forlorn creature to the grand entrance of
Houghton Castle.

"I wish to speak with the countess."

That sweet old voice could not counteract the effect of her dress and
worn satchel. The parted lips of the man in scarlet fell together, and
drooped scornfully down at the corners.

"There is a proper entrance for servants and village-people," said this
high functionary, with his powdered head thrown back.

"I know," answered the woman, quietly; "but I wish to see my lady, and
do not care to seek her from the servants' hall. Go to her and say that
Hannah Yates, an old servant of the family, is below, waiting to see
her."

The man hesitated. Then the old woman stepped softly into the hall,
passing him so suddenly that he drew back aghast.

"If you will not go, I must find the way for myself," she said, still in
a voice so gentle that he could take little offence at it.

Her composure rather disturbed the man, who gave his powdered head a
toss, and mounted the broad oaken staircase, with an indignant swell of
the chest. Through a long passage, carpeted with the thickness of forest
turf, he went, giving forth no sound till he opened a door in one of the
lower chambers, and, sweeping a curtain of crimson silk back with his
arm, announced the name that old woman had given him at the door.

Something lying under the rich colors of a great India shawl moved
quickly; the shawl dropped to the floor, and a little old woman sat up
on the couch where she had been resting.

"Yates--Hannah Yates? Did you say Yates, Henry?"

"That was the name, my lady."

"An old woman like me?"

"Old enough, my lady; but Heaven forbid I should say like your ladyship.
I could not force myself to do it."

"Bring her here, Henry."

The door closed, and the old countess drew herself gradually upright.

She was a pale, little woman, with hair as soft and white as the
delicate lace that fell like a spider's web over it. The child-like
hands, which lay in relief among the folds of her black-satin dress,
were withered in their whiteness, like the leaves of a frost-bitten
lily. They were quivering, too; and now that she was alone, you might
have seen that delicate head begin to vibrate with a slow, perpetual
motion, which had been stopped a moment by the surprise which had fallen
upon her. She sat with her eyes on the curtain, which shut the door from
view. The trembling of her head extended to her whole body, and her
small feet pattered freely on the carpet, like those of a child in the
impotence of sickness.

As she looked the red curtain was lifted, and into the luxurious
splendor of that room came a tall, old woman, who was trembling like
herself, and stood in her presence, apparently afraid to look up.

The old countess arose from her couch, trampling the India shawl under
her feet, and moved with feeble slowness toward her strange visitor.

"Hannah Yates!"

At these words the down prison-look that had fallen upon Hannah was
lifted from her, and those large gray eyes were bent on the little
patrician with a look of intense mournfulness.

"My mistress!"

"Hannah Yates, I never expected to see you again on this earth, and now
you come before me like a ghost."

"Ah, my mistress," answered the old servant, with pathetic humility. "I
am a ghost of the woman who once loved and served you."

"And I? Look upon me, Yates. How have God and time dealt with your
mistress? Has my head been respected more than yours?"

They stood for a moment looking solemnly at each other--that tall,
stately woman, born a peasant, and the delicate, proud, sensitive
peeress, whose blue blood rolled through a series of dead greatness back
to the Conqueror. The contrast was touching. Both had begun to stoop at
the shoulders, both had suffered, and they were as far apart in station
as social power could place them; but a host of memories linked them
together, and the common sympathies of humanity thrilled in the hearts
of both with such pain and pleasure that, unconsciously, the little
withered hand of the countess clasped that of her old servant.

"Come in, Yates, and sit down. You are trembling, poor old soul! The
world must have gone hard with you when the touch of my hand makes you
shiver so. Sit down. We are both old women now, and may rest ourselves
together."

So the woman, whose last home had been a convict's cell, and the lady
whose head had always been sheltered beneath the roofs of a palace, sat
down and looked, with sad timidity, at each other. Still the feeling of
caste was strong in the servant. She had drawn an ottoman up to the
couch, and placed herself on that; but not until she had taken the shawl
from the carpet, and placed it around her mistress, did she thus sit
down, as it were, at her feet.

"Where did you come from, Hannah Yates?"

"From America. I came from the ship three days ago."

At the word America the old countess shrank back, and held out her
hands, as if to avoid a blow. After a little she spoke again, but it was
now with a voice sharp with pain.

"Yates, did you in America ever know anything of my child?"

The anguish in that voice startled Hannah Yates, and her old face
whitened. How much did the mistress know? If little, perfect candor
might kill her. She had not come there to wound an old woman with the
horrors that had darkened her life; so she answered, cautiously:

"Yes, I saw Lady Hope more than once after she came to America."

"Thank God!" exclaimed the countess. "I may now learn how and when she
died."

"I was not with her when she died," answered the servant, in a low
voice.

"But you saw her before?"

"Yes, I saw her often."

"And the child?"

"Yes; the child was with me a good deal."

"Yates, was my child happy in that strange land?"

"How can I answer that, my lady?"

"Did you see Hope there?"

"Once, only once, and that for a moment."

"And you can tell me no particulars. You have no information to give me
with regard to the woman who is Lord Hope's wife?"

"Of her I know but little. Remember, my lady, I am but a servant."

"You were my child's nurse. I never looked on you as a common servant,
but rather as a faithful friend. So did my poor child. When I learned
she was in the same country with you and her foster-brother, my heart
was somewhat at rest. But her letters were so studied, so
unsatisfactory; yet there was nothing in them of sadness or complaint.
Only this, Yates, she never mentioned her husband, not once! I should
hardly have known that he was with her but for the letter in which he
told me that I was a childless old woman."

Mrs. Yates drew a long, heavy sigh. She understood now that the secret
of that awful tragedy in New York had been kept from her old mistress,
and resolved that it never should reach her--never while her will could
keep back the horrible truth.

"My lady," she said, with an effort, "there is one thing which
our--which my young mistress bade me bring to you if--if she should not
live to place them in your own hands herself. It is this which brought
me across the ocean."

As she spoke, Mrs. Yates took up the leathern satchel, which lay against
her feet, and opened its rusty clasp with her trembling hands. She drew
forth a casket from the scant garments it contained, and, still kneeling
on the floor, opened it. A blaze of diamonds broke up from the box. The
old countess uttered a feeble cry, and clasped two quivering hands over
her eyes.

"She was troubled about bringing them out of England, and sent them to
her foster-mother with this letter."

"Is there a letter? Yates, give it to me!"

Mrs. Yates reached forth the letter, which had begun to turn yellow with
age.

The countess took it, and attempted to open her glasses; but those
little hands trembled so fearfully that she could not loosen the gold
which clasped them in.

"Read it for me. I cannot! I cannot!"

Two great tears trembled out of the pain in that aged heart, and fell
upon her cheeks like frost upon the white leaves of a withered rose.

Hannah Yates read the letter--a sweet, touching epistle, full of
mournful affection, which that murdered lady had written only a few days
before her death, when some presentiment of coming evil was no doubt
upon her. The diamonds were her mother's, she wrote, and had only
crossed the ocean with her because of the haste with which the voyage to
America had been arranged. Fearing for their safety, she was about to
intrust them to her foster-mother, who had promised to bring them back
to England with her own hands, if any evil should fall upon her, or if
her sojourn in America was protracted.

"The jewels which belong to the Carset estate, and the child, which will
inherit them, I entrust to my dear foster-mother, when I am gone, and I
sometimes think that we may never meet again, my mother. This good woman
will bring the diamonds, which I will not have endangered, and will tell
you about the child, dearer to me than my own life, nay, than my own
soul! Tell Lord Hope, if he should seek to take her, that it was the
dying wish of his wife that her child should pass at once into the
protection of her own most beloved mother, when Hannah Yates brings her
to England. I think he will not deny this to a woman who has loved him
better, oh! how much better! than herself--who would die, if she could,
rather than be in the way of his happiness. Give him this letter. I
think he will not deny the last request I may ever make of him. I will
not say farewell, my mother, because the gloom that is upon me in this
strange land may be only the homesickness of a heart separated from
those it loves. But, if this is given to you by my foster-mother, know
that a cloud of gloom has settled down upon me forever."

This much fell upon the ears of the countess as she held her breath and
listened.

When Hannah Yates folded the letter, she felt that a gleam of angry fire
broke into the eyes bent upon her.

"Yates," said the countess, sharply, "read the date of that letter."

The old servant read the date.

"Fourteen years and more! Why was that letter kept from me so long?"

"I could not bring it."

"I know you were not young even then, Yates; but your son, my own
protege! Surely, when my poor child gave you this charge, she gave money
also? Why was the child kept from me and sent to that man?"

"Yes, there was money; but my son could not come. We had no power to
bring her."

"Then Hope took her from you by force?" questioned the countess. "Where
is your son, Yates? He was wrong to permit it!"

"With my young lady."

"Dead! Then you, also, are childless?"

Hannah Yates remembered how the news of her bereavement had reached her
in that stone cell which was cold as a grave, and shuddered while the
lady in her palace questioned her. Then the old prison-look fell upon
her, and she sat motionless, with her eyes upon the floor, saying
nothing. How could she explain to that proud lady the bondage in which
she had been held?

"Ah! if you had come earlier," said the countess, "the child of my child
might have been here! That man would not have dared to keep her! She
would not have been taught to return my advances with insolence by his
evil wife."

"I _could_ not come before," repeated the old woman, humbly.

"And now it may be too late."

"God forbid!" said the old woman. "No! no! He will show me how to
complete my task. It is for that I have been kept alive."

"Yates, you are brave and faithful. I was wrong to question you so.
Forgive me, old servant."

Mrs. Yates took the child-like hand held out to her and pressed it to
her lips.

"I have tried, dear mistress."

"Go, now, old friend, and let me have time to think. Only this is
certain, we do not part again."

"Mistress, that cannot be. I have yet a task to perform. It may be many,
many miles to travel. When that is done, I will come back and spend the
few days left to me here. Oh, it seems like home--it seems like Heaven
to sit within the sound of your voice once more! But I must depart at
once."

"Where, old friend?"

"I do not know yet; but God will direct me."

"As I trust that He will direct me," answered the countess, lifting her
eyes in momentary prayer. "Yates, you will never know what fearful
suspicions have haunted me--how hard and bitter they have made me. Oh,
had this letter come earlier!"

"I could not! I could not!"

"I know that, knowing you."

Hannah Yates lifted her grateful eyes for a moment, and dropped them
again.

"Now that I am free from the weight of these," she said, lifting the
casket in her hands, "the toil of my errand will be less."

The countess looked wistfully into the box, and shook her head.

"I have been unjust. I have accused that woman falsely. Until this
moment, Yates, I have not hesitated to proclaim my belief that the woman
they call Lady Hope had possessed herself of these diamonds as she had
won my daughter's husband. This is a wrong which wounds me to the soul.
It must be atoned for."

Hannah Yates moved toward the door, but heavily, and with the reluctance
of a woman whose strength had been overtasked. The old countess sat
gazing upon the jewels. How trivial and worthless they seemed to her
now! Yet the retention of these very diamonds had been a great cause of
offence against Lord Hope's second wife. How unjust, how cruel she had
been in this! Was it possible that, in other things, she had been
equally mistaken? She took up her daughter's letter and read it over.
The first shock of its reception had passed away, and nothing but the
quivering of the head remained of the fearful agitation that had shook
her little form like a reed.

Hannah Yates stood near the curtain, regarding her with a look of
yearning sympathy. How much she had suffered--how terribly she had
struggled to save that delicate creature from deeper sorrow--no human
being but herself would ever know; but the thought filled her heart with
infinite tenderness. She stepped back to the couch, took the hand which
lay in the lap of her old mistress, and kissed it.

The old lady lifted her eyes from the letter. They were full of
tears--those painful, cold tears which come in such scant drops to the
aged.

"Your hands are cold; you look tired. Ring for some wine and biscuit.
That poor, white face is a reproach to your mistress, Yates."

"Yes, I will take some wine and bread before I go--it will make me
strong; but not here! not here!"

Again the old countess turned to that letter, motioning with her hand
that Yates should stay; but the old woman did not see that gentle motion
of the hand--her eyes, also, were full of tears.

When the Countess of Carset had thrice perused her daughter's letter,
she laid it down, and resting her hand tenderly upon it, fell into
thought.

She was a proud but just woman, on whose haughty power old age had
fallen like dew, softening all that was imperious, and shading down
strong personal pride into thoughtful mercy.

But for some injustice that she had to repent of, this simple,
affectionate letter, coming as it were from the grave, would have
aroused nothing but tender grief. It contained no complaint of the man
she had married--did not even mention the governess, who now filled her
place; and the possibility that she had terribly wronged these two
persons dawned steadily upon her.

She looked up at last, and spoke to Hannah Yates; but there was no
answer. The old woman was on her road to the railroad station, burdened
only with a secret she dared not reveal, and the gold which had been
saved with the diamonds.




CHAPTER XV.

THE EARL'S RETURN.


Days passed, and Caroline heard nothing of the new friend she had made;
but one day Eliza brought her a letter which had come, inclosed in one
from Margaret, who had left town with her mistress so suddenly that she
found no time to say farewell.

This was the letter which broke down so many hopes for the unhappy girl:

    "MY DEAR, DEAR FRIEND--

    "For that you always will be, so long as I have a pulse in my
    heart or a purpose in my brain! It does not require an eternity
    for two young girls like us to become firm friends; but it will
    take more than that to destroy the faith and love we feel for
    each other. I know that you will believe every word that I say,
    though I may be compelled to seem cruel and faithless. I cannot
    come to see you. They tell me it might offend my father. I
    cannot ask you to his house, because it _is_ his, and I have no
    authority in it. But the time will come when I shall have a
    house of my own, and then no guest shall be so honored. Why do
    I love you so? Is it that I remember something? Or has any
    person told me that you and I have slept in each other's arms,
    and breathed upon the same pillow, with an old woman bending
    over us--a noble-faced old woman, with gray hair, and a queenly
    way of carrying the head? Have you any remembrance of a woman
    like that? Do you remember a hot, red fire, streams of water
    gushing over it, a ladder, a crowd, and great pipes coiling like
    a tangle of huge snakes along a street full of people? I do--and
    this no one has ever told me.

    "I want to ask all these things in person. You are from America.
    I was there once, and after that fire I remember the ocean and a
    great black ship, which sent banners of smoke over us day after
    day.

    "Then Oakhurst. I was not four years old then, but my life began
    in America, so far as I know of it.

    "I cannot help you now; but if you hate the stage so much, be
    firm, and madame cannot force you upon it. Besides, I am
    determined to redeem my pledge; so, if it can be done in no
    other way, I will just have an early time set for my marriage
    with Mr. Closs, and then you shall come to us if any one
    attempts to oppress you.

    "Pray do not suppose that any one here dislikes you. On the
    contrary, Lady Hope admits that you are charming. The trouble is
    that here, in England, there is so much prejudice against the
    stage. I cannot advise you, having broken down so miserably in
    my promises; but I shall not be helpless forever, and when I
    have power you shall share it.

    "If she insists, if the worst comes to the worst, run away, and
    come down here--I mean into the neighborhood. I have plenty of
    pocket-money, and drive my ponies just where I please. Margaret
    will help us.

    "I am sure you will forgive me that I cannot do all I promised.
    It does not grieve you more than it humiliates me. To think that
    I should offer so much and perform nothing! But it is not my
    fault, nor is it the fault of any one here.

    "Believe in me, trust me, and love me, for I will deserve it
    all.

        "Yours affectionately,
                "CLARA."

Lady Clara wrote this letter on the very night of her return to
Oakhurst. That much she insisted on doing. Less, she said, would be
cruel treachery.

Neither Lady Hope nor her brother were disposed to interfere, and so the
little missive went, carrying both hope and pain with it.

It was some days before Hepworth Closs was able to make his entire peace
with the young lady. She could not find it in her heart to oppose her
stepmother, whose sad, heavy eyes touched her sympathy; but it was
pleasant to tyrannize over a man so much older than herself, whom love
had made her slave.

With him quarreling was delicious, and she was in no haste to cut her
enjoyment short. But even the pleasure of tormenting one's lover has its
reaction; so one day, as the sun went down, pouring a flood of crimson
into the bosom of that old cedar of Lebanon, Clara relented a little,
and allowed Hepworth to kiss her hand. It was impossible to hold out
longer, with all the leaves quivering in that soft air, and the little
birds hiding away among them, chirping to each other, and setting a
sweet example to the lovers.

Of course an ardent man, very much in love, is not likely to rest
content with the touch of his lady-love's hand after he has been kept
in quarantine four or five days. Hepworth was ardent, and desperately in
love; so he took advantage of her soft relenting, and drew her close to
his side, laid her head against his heart, and, with his cheek touching
the thick waves of her hair, began to talk of the future, when they
would be all in all to each other.

Clara shut her eyes, and allowed her head to rest so close to her
lover's heart that it rose and fell with its strong beating. She loved
the music of that full, warm pulse, and a smile parted her lips as she
listened.

Thus they rested awhile in silence, she, carried into a dreamy elysium
by the swell of those full heart-beats; he, calmed by the stir of the
cedar-leaves, looking into her face, and wondering, in the humility of
true affection, how that bright young creature had ever been won to love
him. He bent his head down softly, and kissed the blue veins on her
temple.

"Are you sure, very, very sure, that you love me, Clara?"

She reached up one arm, wound it about his neck, laid her cheek against
his, and whispered:

"Don't you think so?"

"Lady Clara! Mr. Hepworth Closs!"

It was a man's voice, stern and clear as the clash of bells. Both the
lover and the girl sprang to their feet.

"Father!"

"Lord Hope!"

For a moment the two men stood face to face. They had changed since
their last parting; still that was but dimly seen in the light of a
young moon, which was rising over the trees as the rich crimson faded
away.

Hepworth saw that all the wild passion of those times had died out of
that face, leaving it calm and hard; but other change was concealed by
the silvery quiver of light that fell upon it through the leaves.

Hepworth was the first to speak.

"My lord, you have received my letter, I trust?"

"Yes--and came at once to answer it."

"By your tone, by your manner, I should fear--"

"While this young lady is by, we will not speak of your fears," said the
earl, with a slow motion of the hand. "Clara, you will find your--Lady
Hope. She will, perhaps, be glad to hear that I have returned."

"Not while you meet me and--and Hepworth in this fashion, papa. I don't
like it. One would think you intended to make trouble."

"Foolish child! Go as I tell you."

"Not while you look at me like that. Do you know, papa, that you have
forgotten to kiss me, or even shake hands; and that is a thing I never
saw you guilty of before."

Clara drew close to the haughty man, and turning her mouth into a
half-open apple-blossom, held it up to be kissed.

The earl put her aside gently, but with firmness.

"Go to Lady Hope, as I bade you," he said. "This is no hour for
trifling."

Clara stood motionless. All the color had left her face, even to the
lips.

"Papa, are you in earnest?"

"In earnest? Yes."

"And you mean to refuse this gentleman?"

"Undoubtedly I mean to refuse that gentleman."

There was an emphasis of fine irony laid on the last word, which
Hepworth felt with a sting of indignation; but he controlled himself, in
respect to Clara's presence, and stood aloof, pale and stern as the man
before him.

"I will go," said Clara; "but, before I leave you, let me say one
thing: I love this gentleman. But for that, he never would have spoken
to me or written to you. It was not his fault, or of his seeking. He had
not been here a day before I loved him without knowing it. Now, all the
world may know it for aught I care, for I never will marry any other
man!"

Lord Hope did not reply to her, but turned to Hepworth.

"You have done honorable work, and in a short time!" he said. "I was not
aware that Lady Hope would entertain her relatives in my absence, and
with this result."

Hepworth did not answer then, but turning to Lady Clara, reached out his
hand.

"Let me lead you to the house," he said. "After that I can meet Lord
Hope on more equal terms."

Clara took his arm; but her father interposed.

"I will take charge of the lady," he said, with haughty coldness,
drawing her arm within his, and leading her to the terrace, where he
left her and returned to the cedar.

"Now, sir, let us conclude this matter at once. You ask the hand of my
daughter in marriage. I refuse it. You are here under my roof an
unexpected and unbidden guest. From this hour you cease to be welcome."

"My lord, had I never known you in the past, never served you in an
unlawful desire, you would not have dared to address me in this fashion.
If you and I meet to bandy insults, it is because the past has left no
mutual respect between us; but I have this advantage over you; the sins
which have drawn on me even your contempt have been long since repented
of, while yours, compared to which mine fade into innocence, seem but to
have hardened into pride."

Lord Hope smiled.

"Of what crime does Mr. Hepworth Closs charge me?"

"I make no special charge, Lord Hope; but there is an old woman in
America suffering the penalty of a crime which she never
committed--which you know she never committed."

"The law decided otherwise, if I remember rightly," answered the earl,
in a quiet, calm voice. "But even if it did not, does that relate to the
question in hand?"

"No, no, and I am to blame in mentioning it--Heaven knows I wish to
think the best! I admit, my lord, your prejudices against me would have
been just when we knew each other so well; but I was very young then and
can fairly claim to have worked out an honorable redemption from the
faults of my youth. Believe me, I have won more than a respectable
position among men; have wealth from my own exertions enough to satisfy
even your wishes. True, I have not the rank to match yours; but there
was a time when you thought it no disgrace to mate with my family."

Lord Hope was moved out of his proud calm now. He lifted his hand with a
suddenness that was threatening, and cried out:

"Peace, sir! I have heard enough of this!"

"But I must remind you again that Lady Hope is my only sister, and in
these insults you degrade her."

"Degrade her, when she is my wife!"

These words were drawn out with proud emphasis that stung Hepworth like
a wasp.

"My lord," he said, "I will bear much from you, because I once loved
you, but more from the fact that you are my sister's husband and _her_
father; but I warn you not even by a tone to cast reproach or slur upon
your wife. She became such against my wishes and in spite of my protest.
That lady has all the elements of greatness within herself."

"What right had you to wish or protest?"

"The self-same right that you have to drive me from your daughter. You
did not heed my wishes, why expect me to prove more delicate?"

"Because I can enforce what I wish, and you could not."

"How?"

"By asking Mr. Hepworth Closs to leave Oakhurst at once, and by
providing against all chance of his coming here again."

Closs turned very white, and his hand clenched and unclenched itself
with passionate force.

"My lord, this is a cruel insult, which I have not deserved!"

All at once the earl turned, with some show of feeling, and looked
Hepworth steadily in the face.

"Hepworth Closs, listen to me. If I seem cruel and unmanly, it is
because I wish to be kind. The hand which sweeps a moth from its
circling around a candle, must seem very cruel to the poor insect. I
tell you, fairly, Hepworth Closs, it is not so much pride of birth or
personal dislike that prompts me to deny my daughter to you. But she is
heiress in entail to the Carset title and Houghton Castle, a noble
title, without support, unless the old countess makes her heiress, by
will, of her personal estates. By marrying your sister, I mortally
offended this old lady. Rachael has been, from first to last, the
special object of her dislike. Lady Clara has added to this by refusing
to visit Houghton unless her stepmother is received there also. This
quarrel may throw one of the richest inheritances in England out of my
family, and all from my unfortunate marriage."

"Your unfortunate marriage!" exclaimed Closs, hotly.

"How could it be otherwise?" answered Lord Hope, sadly.

There was something in Hope's voice that touched Hepworth Closs with
feelings akin to those he had felt for the proud young man years ago.

"This was the language I used to my sister the night before she became
your wife," he said.

"Oh, my God! if she had but listened--if she had but listened!"

"Lord Hope! do I understand? Has your marriage with Rachael Closs come
to this?"

"Hepworth, we will not discuss this subject. It is one which belongs
exclusively to Lady Hope and myself."

"But she is my sister!"

"Between a husband and wife no relative has claims."

"Lord Hope, I was once your friend."

"I have not forgotten it. Unfortunately for us both, you were. I do not
say this ungratefully. On the contrary, I am about to appeal to that old
friendship once more. You ask for my daughter. To give her to a brother
of Rachael Closs would be the bitterest insult I could offer the old
lady at Houghton. It would close our last hopes of a reconciliation. The
estates, in doubt now, would be eternally lost. I cannot afford this.
Oakhurst is strictly entailed; I am heavily in debt, so heavily, that we
are compelled to practise the most harassing economy. From me Clara will
inherit nothing; from her grandmother worse than nothing if she dies
offended with us. I am told that she is relenting--that she has been
heard to speak kindly of Clara. Can you ask me to insult her over again,
knowing all the wrong I have done her, all the ruin it would bring on my
child?"

"What can I do?" exclaimed Closs, who felt the reason of this appeal.
"How can I act generously to you--fairly to her?"

"Go away. She is young, volatile, capricious, but generous as the day.
Be open with her; tell her why you leave Oakhurst and how impossible it
is to return."

"But there is one wild hope for me--the possibility of gaining this old
lady's consent."

Lord Hope smiled in pity of the forlorn idea.

"You may as well ask the stars of heaven to fall."

"But it may chance that I can plead my cause with her."

"Then your best argument will be that I have driven you ignominiously
from Oakhurst," said Lord Hope, with fine irony in his smile. "She will
forgive much to any man I am known to dislike."

"My lord, I love your daughter so entirely, that it is impossible for me
to give up all hope. Leave me this one gleam, or, failing in that, give
me such chance

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