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From Jest to Earnest

by Edward Payson Roe · English · Gutenberg #6102 · 738,761 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: From Jest to Earnest

Author: Edward Payson Roe


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6102]
                Most recently updated: September 8, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6102

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM JEST TO EARNEST ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo










The Works of E. P. ROE

FROM JEST TO EARNEST







DEDICATION.





This book is dedicated in fraternal affection to the friend of my
youth and maturer years--the REV. A. MOSS MERWIN, who, with every
avenue of earthly ambition open to him at home, and with every
motive urged upon him to remain at home, has been for years, and
is now, a faithful missionary in a foreign land.






CONTENTS





CHAPTER I. A PRACTICAL JOKE

CHAPTER II. THE VICTIM

CHAPTER III. PUZZLED AND INTERESTED

CHAPTER IV. A LITTLE PAGAN

CHAPTER V. PLAIN TALK

CHAPTER VI. A SLEIGH-RIDE AND SOMETHING MORE

CHAPTER VII. ANOTHER SPELL THAN BEAUTY'S

CHAPTER VIII. FINDING ONE'S LEVEL

CHAPTER IX. "THE OTHER SET"

CHAPTER X. HUMAN NATURE

CHAPTER XI. A POSSIBLE TRAGEDY

CHAPTER XII. MISS MARSDEN ASKS SOMBRE QUESTIONS

CHAPTER XIII. A LOVER QUENCHED

CHAPTER XIV. LOTTIE A MYSTERIOUS PROBLEM

CHAPTER XV. HEMSTEAD SEES "OUR SET"

CHAPTER XVI. HOW WOMAN MAKES OR MARS

CHAPTER XVII. MIDNIGHT VIGILS

CHAPTER XVIII. HEMSTEAD'S HEAVY GUN AND ITS RECOIL

CHAPTER XIX. THE PREACHER TAUGHT BY THE PAGAN

CHAPTER XX. THE DAWNING LIGHT

CHAPTER XXI. MISUNDERSTOOD

CHAPTER XXII. "YOU MUST WAIT AND SEE"

CHAPTER XXIII. A RATIONALIST OF THE OLD SCHOOL

CHAPTER XXIV. THE TERROR OF A GREAT FEAR

CHAPTER XXV. A TRUE KNIGHT

CHAPTER XXVI. ON A CRUMBLING ICE-FLOE

CHAPTER XXVII. THE MEETING AND GREETING

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE TRIAL OF LOVE

CHAPTER XXIX. HEMSTEAD'S ADVICE, AND LOTTIE'S COLORS

CHAPTER XXX. AROUND THE YULE-LOG

CHAPTER XXXI. UNDER THE MISTLETOE

CHAPTER XXXII. THE CHRISTMAS SUNDAY

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE END OF THE "JEST"

CHAPTER XXXIV. LOYAL

CHAPTER XXXV. MR. DIMMERLY CONCLUDES TO "MEDDLE"

CHAPTER XXXVI. A NIGHT IN THE SNOW

CHAPTER XXXVII. IN EARNEST






FROM JEST TO EARNEST.

CHAPTER I.

A PRACTICAL JOKE.





On a cloudy December morning a gentleman, two ladies, and a boy
stepped down from the express train at a station just above the
Highlands on the Hudson. A double sleigh, overflowing with luxurious
robes, stood near, and a portly coachman with difficulty restrained
his spirited horses while the little party arranged themselves for
a winter ride.  Both the ladies were young, and the gentleman's
anxious and almost tender solicitude for one of them seemed hardly
warranted by her blooming cheeks and sprightly movements.  A close
observer might soon suspect that his assiduous attentions  were
caused by a malady of his own rather than by indisposition on her
part.

The other young lady received but scant politeness, though seemingly
in greater need of it. But the words of Scripture applied to
her beautiful companion, "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given,
and he shall have more abundance." She had been surfeited all her
life with attention, and though she would certainly have felt its
absence, as she would the loss of wealth, life-long familiarity
with both led her to place no special value upon them.

Therefore during the half-hour's ride her spirits rose with the
rapid motion, and even the leaden sky and winter's bleakness could
not prevent the shifting landscape from being a source of pleasure
to her city eyes, while the devotion  of her admirer or lover was
received as a matter of course.

The frosty air brought color into her companion's usually pale
face, but not of an attractive kind, for the north-east wind that
deepened the vermilion in the beauty's cheek could only tinge that
of the other with a ghastly blue. The delicate creature shivered
and sighed.

"I wish we were there."

"Really, Bel, I sometimes think your veins are filled with water
instead of blood. It's not cold to-day, is it, Mr. De Forrest?"

"Well, all I can say with certainty," he replied, "is that I have
been in a glow for the last two hours. I thought it was chilly
before that."

"You are near to 'glory' then," cried the boy saucily, from his
perch on the driver's box.

"Of course I am," said Mr. De Forrest in a low tone, and leaning
towards the maiden.

"You are both nearer being silly," she replied, pettishly.  "Dan,
behave yourself, and speak when you are spoken to."

The boy announced his independence of sisterly control by beginning
to whistle, and the young lady addressed as "Bel" remarked, "Mr.
De Forrest is no judge of the weather under the circumstances. He
doubtless regards the day as bright and serene. But he was evidently
a correct  judge up to the time he joined you, Lottie."

"He joined you as much as he did me."

"O, pardon me; yes, I believe I was present."

"I hope I have failed in no act of politeness, Miss Bel," said De
Forrest, a little stiffly.

"I have no complaints to make. Indeed, I have fared well, considering
that one is sometimes worse than a crowd."

"Nonsense!" said Lottie, petulantly; and the young man tried not
to appear annoyed.

The sleigh now dashed in between rustic gate-posts  composed of rough
pillars of granite; and proceeding along an avenue that sometimes
skirted a wooded ravine, and again wound through picturesque groupings
of evergreens, they soon reached a mansion of considerable size,
which bore evidence of greater age than is usual with the homes in
our new world.

They had hardly crossed the threshold into the hall before they
were hospitably welcomed by a widowed lady, whose hair was slightly
tinged with gray, and by her eldest daughter.

The greetings were so cordial as to indicate ties of blood, and
the guests were shown to their rooms, and told to  prepare for an
early dinner.

In brief, Mrs. Marchmont, the mistress of the mansion, had gratified
her daughter's wish (as she did all her fancies) by permitting her
to invite a number of young friends for the Christmas holidays.
Both mother and daughter were fond of society, and it required no
hospitable effort to  welcome visitors at a season when a majority
of their friends had fled from the dreariness of winter to city
homes.  Indeed, they regarded it as almost an honor that so prominent
a belle as Charlotte Marsden had consented to spend a few weeks
with them at a time when country life is at a large discount with
the fashionable. They surmised that the presence of Mr. De Forrest,
a distant relative of both Miss Marsden and themselves, would be
agreeable to all  concerned, and were not mistaken; and to Miss
Lottie the presence of a few admirers--she would not entertain the
idea that they were lovers--had become an ordinary necessity  of
life. Mr. De Forrest was an unusually interesting specimen of the
genus,--handsome, an adept in the mode and etiquette of the hour,
attentive as her own shadow, and quite as subservient.

His love-making would equal his toilet in elegance. All would be
delicately suggested by touch of hand or glance of eye, and yet he
would keep pace with the wild and  wayward beauty in as desperate
a flirtation as she would permit.

Miss Lottie had left her city home with no self-sacrificing purpose
to become a martyr for the sake of country relatives.  She had
wearied of the familiar round of metropolitan gayety; but life on
the Hudson during midwinter was an entire novelty. Therefore, as
her little brother had been included in the invitation, they had
started on what was emphatically a frolic to both.

Bel Parton, her companion, was another city cousin of the Marchmonts,
with whom they were in the habit of  exchanging visits. She was
also an intimate of Lottie's, the two being drawn together by the
mysterious affinity of opposites.

She was indeed a very different girl from Lottie Marsden, and many
would regard her as a better one. Her face and character were of a
type only too familiar to close observers of society. She was the
beginning of several desirable things, but the pattern was in no
instance finished, and was always ravelling out on one side or the
other. She had the features of a pretty girl, but ill health and
the absence of a pleasing expression spoiled them. She had a fine
education, but did not know what to do with it; considerable talent,
but no energy; too much conscience, as she had not the resolution
to obey it. Her life was passed mainly in easy chairs, chronic
dyspepsia, and feeble protest against herself and all the world.

Lottie often half provoked but never roused her by saying: "Bel,
you are the most negative creature I ever knew.  Why don't you do
something or be something out and out?  Well, ''Tis an ill wind
that blows nobody any good.' You make an excellent foil for me."

And gloriously rich and tropical did Lottie appear against the
colorless background of her friend. Bel felt that she suffered
by the comparison so frankly indicated, but was too indolent and
irresolute to change for the better or avoid companionship with
one whose positive and full-blooded nature seemed to supplement
her own meagre life.

When all appeared in the dining-room the shades and contrasts in
character became more evident. At the head of the table sat a gentleman
as yet not introduced, Mr.  Dimmerly by name, a bachelor brother
of Mrs. Marchmont who resided with her. He was a quaint-appearing
little man, who in a greater degree than his age required seemed
to belong to a former generation. His manners were too stately for
his stature, and he was embarrassed by his elaborate efforts at
politeness as his movements might have been by too ample garments.

He and his sister were representatives of one of the "old families"
of the State, and, like their mansion, reminded one of the past.
Indeed, they seemed to cherish, as a matter of pride and choice,
their savor of antiquity, instinctively  recognizing that their
claims upon society were inherited rather than earned.

Old families do not always appear to accumulate the elements of
greatness to such a degree that there is an  increasing and almost
irresistible impetus of force and genius.  Successive generations
are not necessarily born to a richer dower of mind and morals.
Too often it would seem that the great qualities that in the first
place launched a family on a brilliant career expend themselves,
until the latest scion, like a spent arrow, drops into insignificance.

Mrs. Marchmont was regarded by society as an elegant woman, and
she was, in all externals. The controlling principle  of her life
was precedent. What had been customary, and still obtained among
the "good old families," had a flavor of divine right in it.

Alas for the Marchmont family, for the young lady of the house
seemed inclined to maintain and perpetuate nothing save her own
will, and had no special development in any respect, save a passion
for her own way. Still she was one of those girls whom society calls
a "pretty little thing," and was predestined to marry some large,
good-natured man who would imagine that she would make a nice
little pet, a household fairy, but who might learn to his dismay
that the fairy could be a tormenting elf. She would not marry
the young gentleman with whom her name was at present  associated
by the gossips, and who had driven over that morning to help her
entertain the expected guests. Mr. Harcourt and Miss Marchmont
understood each other. He was a distant relative of her mother's,
and so under the disguise of kinship could be very familiar.
The tie between them was composed of one part friendship and two
parts flirtation.  He had recently begun the practice of law in a
neighboring town, and found the Marchmont residence a very agreeable
place at which to spend his leisure. It was Miss Marchmont's
purpose that he should form one of the gay party that would make
the holiday season a prolonged frolic. He, nothing loath, accepted
the invitation, and appeared in time for dinner. To many he seemed
to possess a dual nature. He had a quick, keen intellect, and,
during business  hours, gave an absorbed attention to his profession.
At other times he was equally well known as a sporting man, with
tendencies somewhat fast.

Mrs. Marchmont's well-appointed dining-room was peculiarly  attractive
that wintry day. Finished off in some dark wood on which the ruddy
hickory fire glistened warmly, it made a pleasing contrast to the
cold whiteness of the snow without. A portly colored waiter in dress
coat seemed the appropriate presiding genius of the place, and in
his ebon hands the polished silver and crystal were doubly luminous.

And yet the family, with its lack of original force, its fading
traditions of past greatness, made rather a dim and neutral tint,
against which such a girl as Charlotte Marsden appeared as the
glowing embodiment of the vivid and  intense spirit of the present
age. Her naturally energetic and mercurial nature had been cradled
among the excitements of the gayest and giddiest city on the continent.
A phlegmatic  uncle had remarked to her, in view of inherited and
developed characteristics, "Lottie, what in ordinary girls is a
soul, in you is a flame of fire."

As she sat at the table, doing ample justice to the  substantial
viands, she did appear as warm and glowing as the coals of hard-wood,
which, ripened in the sunshine, lay upon the hearth opposite.

The bon-vivant, Julian De Forrest, found time for many admiring
glances, of which Lottie was as agreeably conscious as of the other
comforts and luxuries of the hour. They were all very much upon
the same level in her estimation.

But De Forrest would ask no better destiny than to bask in the light
and witchery of so glorious a creature. Little did he understand
himself or her, or the life before him. It would have been a woful
match for both. In a certain sense he would be like the ambitious
mouse that espoused the lioness. The polished and selfish idler,
with a career  devoted to elegant nothings, would fret and chafe
such a nature as hers into almost frenzy, had she no escape from
him.

There would be fewer unhappy marriages if the young, instead
of following impulses and passing fancies, would ask, How will
our lives accord when our present tendencies and temperaments are
fully developed? It would need no  prophetic eye to foresee in many
cases, not supplemental and helpful differences, but only hopeless
discord. Yet it is hard for a romantic youth to realize that the
smiling maiden before him, with a cheek of peach-bloom and eyes
full of mirth and tenderness, can become as shrewish as Xantippe
herself. And many a woman becomes stubborn and acid, rather than
sweet, by allowing herself to be persuaded into marrying the wrong
man, and then by not having the good sense to make the best of it.

Alas! experience also proves that, of all prosaic, selfish grumblers,
your over-gallant lover makes the worst. And yet, while the world
stands, multitudes will no doubt eagerly seek the privilege of
becoming mutual tormentors.

Lottie thought Mr. De Forrest "very nice." She liked him better than
any one else she had met and flirted with since her school-days,
during which period of sincerity and immaturity she had had several
acute attacks of what she imagined to be the "grand passion." But
as the objects were as absurd as her emotions, and the malady soon
ran, its course, she began to regard the whole subject as a jest,
and think, with her fashionable mother, that the heart was the last
organ to be consulted in the choice of a husband, as it was almost
sure to lead to folly. While her heart slept, it was easy to agree
with her mother's philosophy. But it would be a sad thing for
Charlotte Marsden if her heart should become awakened when her will
or duty was at variance with its cravings. She might act rightly,
she might suffer in patience, but it would require ten times the
effort that the majority of her sex would have to make.

Her mother thought that the elegant and wealthy Mr. De Forrest was
the very one of all the city for her beautiful daughter, and Lottie
gave a careless assent, for certainly he was "very nice." He would
answer, as well as any one she had ever seen, for the inevitable
adjunct of her life. He had always united agreeably the characters
of cousin, playmate,  and lover, and why might he not add that of
husband?  But for the latter relation she was in no haste. Time
enough for that in the indefinite future. She loved the liberty
and year-long frolic of her maiden life, though in truth she had no
idea of settling down on becoming a matron. In the mean time, while
she laughed at De Forrest's love-making, she did not discourage it,
and the young man felt that his clear understanding with the mother
was almost equal to an engagement to the daughter. He welcomed this
country visit with peculiar satisfaction, feeling that it would
bring matters to a crisis. He was not mistaken.

By the time they were sipping their coffee after dessert, the promise
of the leaden sky of the morning was fulfilled in a snow-storm, not
consisting of feathery flakes that  fluttered down as if undecided
where to alight, but of sharp, fine crystals that slanted steadily
from the north-east. The afternoon sleigh-ride must be given up,
and even the children looked ruefully and hopelessly out, and then
made the best of in-door amusements.

Miss Marchmont gathered her guests around the parlor fire, and fancy
work and city gossip were in order. The quiet flow and ripple of
small talk was suddenly interrupted by her petulant exclamation:

"Oh! I forgot to tell you a bit of unpleasant news.  Mother,
without consulting me, has invited a poor and poky cousin of ours
to spend the holidays with us also. He is from the West, green as
a gooseberry, and, what's far worse, he's studying for the ministry,
and no doubt will want to preach at us all the time. I don't know
when I've been more provoked, but mother said it was too late, she
had  invited him, and he was coming. I fear he will be a dreadful
restraint, a sort of wet blanket on all our fun, for one must be
polite, you know, in one's own house."

"I am under no special obligation to be polite," laughed Lottie.
"Mark my words. I will shock your pious and proper cousin till he
is ready to write a book on total depravity. It will be good sport
till I am tired of it."

"No, Lottie, you shall not give such a false impression of yourself,
even in a joke," said Bel. "I will tell him, if he can't see, that
you are not a sinner above all in Galilee."

"No, my matter-of-fact cousin, you shall not tell him  anything.
Why should I care what he thinks? Already in fancy I see his face
elongate, and his eyes dilate, in holy horror at my wickedness. If
there is one thing I love to do more than another, it is to shock
your eminently good and proper people."

"Why, Miss Lottie," chuckled De Forrest, "to hear you talk, one
would think you were past praying for."

"No, not till I am married."

"In that sense I am always at my devotions."

"Perhaps you had better read the fable of the Frogs and King Stork."

"Thank you. I had never dared to hope that you  regarded me as good
enough to eat."

"No, only to peck at."

"But listen to Miss Addie's proposal. If I mistake not, there is
no end of fun in it," said Mr. Harcourt.

"I've thought of something better than shocking him.  These Western
men are not easily shocked. They see all kinds out there. What I
suggest would be a better joke, and give us all a chance to enjoy
the sport. Suppose, Lottie, you assume to be the good and pious
one of our party, and in this character form his acquaintance. He
will soon be talking religion to you, and like enough, making love
and wanting you to go with him as a missionary to the Cannibal
Islands."

"If you go, O that I were king of them!" broke in De Forrest.

"You mean, you would have Lottie for dinner, I  suppose," continued
Miss Marchmont. "She would be served up properly as a tart."

"No," he retorted, "as sauce piquante. She could make a long life
a highly seasoned feast."

"You evidently are an Epicurean philosopher; all your thoughts seem
to run on eating," said Lottie, sharply.

"But what say you to my suggestion?" asked Addie Marchmont. "I think
it would be one of the best practical jokes I ever knew. The very
thought of such an incorrigible  witch as you palming yourself off
as a demure Puritan maiden is the climax of comical absurdity."

Even Lottie joined heartily in the general laugh at her expense,
and the preposterous imposition she was asked to attempt, but
said dubiously: "I fear I could not act successfully  the role of
Puritan maiden, when I have always been in reality just the opposite.
And yet it would be grand sport to make the attempt, and a decided
novelty. But surely your cousin cannot be so verdant but that he
would soon see through our mischief and detect the fraud."

"Well," replied Addie, "Frank, as I remember him, is a singularly
unsuspicious mortal. Even as a boy his head was always in the
clouds. He has not seen much society save that of his mother and
an old-maid sister. Moreover, he is so dreadfully pious, and life
with him such a solemn thing, that unless we are very bungling he
will not even imagine such frivolity, as he would call it, until
the truth is forced upon him. Then there will be a scene. You will
shock him then, Lottie, to your heart's content. He will probably
tell you that he is dumbfounded, and that he would not believe that
a young woman in this Christian land could trifle with such solemn
realities,--that is, himself and his feelings."

"But I don't think it would be quite right," protested Bel, feebly.

Mr. Harcourt lifted his eyebrows.

"Nonsense! Suppose it is not," said Lottie, impatiently.

"But, Addie," persisted Bel, "he will be your guest."

"No he won't. He's mother's guest, and I feel like punishing them
both."

"Very well," said Lottie, lightly; "if you have no scruples,  I
have none. It will be capital sport, and will do him good. It would
be an excellent thing for his whole  theological seminary if they
could have a thorough shaking up by the wicked world, which to him,
in this matter, I shall represent. They would then know what they
were preaching  about. What do you say, Julian?"

"When did I ever disagree with you?" he replied,  gallantly. "But
in this case I really think we owe Miss Addie a vote of thanks for
having hit upon a joke that may enliven the greater part of our
visit. This embryo parson seems a sort of a scriptural character;
and why should he not blindly, like Samson, make sport for us all?"

"I fear you do not understand your own scriptural  allusion,"
sneered Bel. "Like Samson, he may also pull  everything down about
our ears in a most uncomfortable manner."

"I hope you won't spoil everything by telling him or mother," said
Addie, petulantly.

"Oh, no! Since you are determined upon it, I will look on and see
the fun, if there is any. But, bah! He will find you all out in
a day. As for Lottie palming herself off as a goodish young woman
to whom any sane man would talk religion,--the very thought is
preposterous!"

"Don't be too confident, Miss Bel," said Lottie, put upon her mettle.
"If you all will only sustain me and not awaken his suspicions with
your by-play and giggling, I will deceive the ingenuous youth in
a way that will surprise you as well as him. Good acting must have
proper support.  This is something new,--out of the rut; and I am
bound to make it a brilliant jest that we can laugh over all our
lives.  So remember, Julian, you will disconcert me at your peril."

"No fears of me. So long as your jest remains a jest, I will be
the last one to spoil the sport."

With a chime of laughter that echoed to the attic of the old mansion,
Lottie exclaimed, "The idea that I could ever become in earnest!"

"But the young clergyman may become dead in earnest," said Bel, who
seemed the embodiment of a troublesome but weak conscience. "You
know well, Mr. De Forrest, that Lottie's blandishments may be fatal
to his peace."

"That is his affair," replied the confident youth, with a careless
shrug.

Having arranged the details of the plot and been emphatically
cautioned by Lottie, they awaited their victim.






CHAPTER II.

THE VICTIM.





Frank Hemstead was expected on the evening train from the north,
so the conspirators would not have long to wait. To pass the brief
intervening time Lottie went to the piano and gave them some music
like herself, brilliant, dashing, off-hand, but devoid of sentiment
and feeling.  Then she sprang up and began playing the maddest
pranks on languid Bel, and with Addie was soon engaged in a romp
with De Forrest and Harcourt, that would have amazed the most
festive Puritan that ever schooled or masked a frolicsome nature
under the sombre deportment required. The young men took their cue
from the ladies, and elegance and propriety were driven away in
shreds before the gale of their wild spirits. Poor Bel, buffeted
and helpless, half-enjoying, half-frightened, protested, cried,
and laughed at the tempest around her.

"I mean," said Lottie, panting after a desperate chase among the
furniture, "to have one more spree, like the topers before they
reform."

Though these velvety creatures with their habits of grace and elegance
could romp without roughness, and glide where others would tear
around, they could not keep their revel so quiet but that hurrying
steps were heard. Bel warned them, and, before Mrs. Marchmont could
enter, Lottie was playing a waltz, and the others appeared as if
they had been dancing. The lady of precedent smiled, whereas if
she had come a moment earlier she would have been horrified.

But the glow from the hearth, uncertain enough for their innocent
deeds of darkness, had now to fade before the chandelier, and Mrs.
Marchmont, somewhat surprised at the rumpled plumage of the young
ladies, and the fact that Mr.  De Forrest's neck-tie was awry,
suggested that they retire and prepare for supper, whereat they
retreated in literal  disorder. But without the door their old
frenzy seized them, and they nearly ran over the dilatory Bel upon
the stairs.  With sallies of nonsense, smothered laughter, a breezy
rustle of garments, and the rush of swift motion, they seemed to
die away in the upper halls like a summer gust. To Mrs.  Marchmont
their departure had seemed like a suppressed whirlwind.

"The young people of my day were more decorous," soliloquized the
lady, complacently. "But then the De Forrests have French blood in
them, and what else could you expect? It's he that sets them off."

The sound of approaching sleigh-bells hastened the young people's
toilets, and when they descended the stairs, this time like
a funeral procession, a tall figure, with one side that had been
to the windward well sifted over with snow, was just entering the
hall.

Mrs. Marchmont welcomed him with as much warmth as she ever permitted
herself to show. She was a good and kind lady at heart, only she
insisted upon covering the natural bloom and beauty of her nature
with the artificial enamel of mannerism and conventionality. During
the  unwrapping process the young people stood in the background,
but Lottie watched the emergence from overcoat and  muffler of the
predestined victim of her wiles with more than ordinary curiosity.

The first thing that impressed her was his unusual height, and
the next a certain awkwardness and angularity. When he came to
be formally presented, his diffidence and lack of ease were quite
marked. Bel greeted him with a distant inclination of her head,
De Forrest also vouchsafed merely one of his slightest bows, while
Harcourt stood so far away that he was scarcely introduced at
all; but Lottie went demurely forward and put her warm hand in his
great cold one, and said, looking up shyly, "I think we are sort
of cousins, are we not?"

He blushed to the roots of his hair and stammered that he hoped
so.

Indeed, this exquisite vision appearing from the shadows of the
hall, and claiming kinship, might have disconcerted a polished
society man; and the conspirators retired into the gloom to hide
their merriment.

As the stranger, in his bashful confusion, did not seem to know
for the moment what to do with her hand, and was inclined to keep
it, for in fact it was warming, or, rather, electrifying him, she
withdrew it, exclaiming, "How cold you are! You must come with me
to the fire at once."

He followed her with a rather bewildered expression, but his large
gray eyes were full of gratitude for her supposed kindness, even
if his unready tongue was slow in making graceful acknowledgment.

"Supper will be ready in a few moments, Frank," said his aunt,
approaching them and rather wondering at Lottie's friendliness.
"Perhaps you had better go at once to your room and prepare. You
will find it warm," and she glanced significantly at his rumpled
hair and general appearance of disorder, the natural results of a
long journey.

He started abruptly, blushed as if conscious of having forgotten
something, and timidly said to Lottie, "Will you excuse me?"

"Yes," she replied sweetly, "for a little while."

He again blushed deeply and for a second indulged in a shy glance
of curiosity at the "cousin" who spoke so kindly.  Then, as if
guilty of an impropriety, he seized a huge carpet-bag  as if it
were a lady's reticule. But remembering that her eyes were upon
him, he tried to cross the hall and mount the stairs with dignity.
The great leathern bag did not  conduce to this, and he succeeded
in appearing awkward in the extreme, and had a vague, uncomfortable
impression that such was the case.

Mrs. Marchmont having disappeared into the dining-room, the young
people went off into silent convulsions of laughter, in which even
Bel joined, though she said she knew it was wrong.

"He is just the one of all the world on whom to play such a joke,"
said Lottie, pirouetting into the parlor.

"It was capital!" chimed in De Forrest. "Lottie, you would make a
star actress."

"He has an intelligent eye," continued she, a little more thoughtfully.
"He may be able to see more than we think.  I insist that you all
be very careful. Aunt will suspect something, if he doesn't, and
may put him on his guard."

Mr. Hemstead soon returned, for it was plain that his toilets were
exceedingly simple. The elegance wanting in his manners was still
more clearly absent from his dress.  The material was good, but
had evidently been put together by a country tailor, who limped a
long way behind the latest mode. What was worse, his garments were
scarcely ample enough for his stalwart form. Altogether he made in
some externals a marked contrast to the city exquisite, who rather
enjoyed standing beside him that this contrast might be seen.

To Lottie he appeared excessively comical as he stalked in and around,
trying vainly to appear at ease. And yet the thought occurred to
her, "If he only knew what to do with his colossal proportions--knew
how to manage them--he would make an imposing-looking man." And when
De Forrest posed beside him just before they went out to tea, even
this thought flashed across her, "Julian, seems like an elegant
manikin beside a man." If De Forrest had only known it, the game
of contrasts was not wholly in his favor.

But poor Mr. Hemstead came to grief on his way to the supper-room.
Miss Marchmont tried to disguise her diminutive  stature by a long
trailing dress. Upon this he placed his by no means delicate foot,
as she was sweeping out with Mr. Harcourt. There was an ominous
sound of parting stitches, and an abrupt period in the young lady's
graceful progress. In his eager haste to remedy his awkwardness,
he bumped up against Mr. Dimmerly, who was advancing to speak to
him, with a force that nearly overthrew that dapper gentleman, and
rendered his greeting rather peculiar.  Hemstead felt, to his intense
annoyance, that the young people were at the point of exploding
with merriment at his expense, and was in a state of indignation
at himself and them. His aunt and Mr. Dimmerly, who soon recovered
himself, were endeavoring to look serenely unconscious, with but
partial success. All seemed to feel as if they were over a mine
of discourteous laughter. The unfortunate object looked nervously
around for the beautiful "cousin," and noted with a sigh of relief
that she had disappeared.

"I hope she did not see my meeting with uncle," he thought. "I
was always a gawk in society, and to-night seem possessed with the
very genius of awkwardness. She is the only one who has shown me
any real kindness, and I don't want her to think of me only as a
blundering, tongue-tied fool."

He would not have been re-assured had he known that Lottie, having
seen all, had darted back into the parlor and was leaning against
the piano, a quivering, and for the  moment a helpless subject of
suppressed mirth. Mr. Dimmerly was always a rather comical object
to her, and his flying arms and spectacles, as he tried to recover
himself from the rude shock of his nephew's burly form, made a
scene in which absurdity, which is said to be the chief cause of
laughter, was pre-eminent.

But, the paroxysm passing, she followed them and took a seat
opposite her victim, with a demure sweetness and repose of manner
well-nigh fatal to the conspirators.

As Mr. Hemstead was regarded as a clergyman, though not quite through
with his studies, his aunt looked to him for the saying of grace.
It was a trying ordeal for the young fellow under the circumstances.
He shot a quick glance at Lottie, which she returned with a look of
serious expectation,  then dropped her eyes and veiled a different
expression under the long lashes. But he was sorely embarrassed,
and stammered out he scarcely knew what. A suppressed titter from
Addie Marchmont and the young men was the only response he heard,
and it was not re-assuring. He heartily wished himself back in
Michigan, but was comforted by seeing Lottie looking gravely and
reproachfully at the irreverent gigglers.

"She is a good Christian girl," he thought, "and while the others
ridicule my wretched embarrassment, she sympathizes."

Hemstead was himself as open as the day and equally unsuspicious
of others. He believed just what he saw, and saw only what was
clearly apparent. Therefore Lottie, by tolerably fair acting, would
have no difficulty in deceiving him, and she was proving herself
equal to very skilful feigning.  Indeed she was one who could do
anything fairly that she heartily attempted.

A moment after "grace" Harcourt made a poor witticism,  at which
the majority laughed with an immoderateness quite disproportionate.
Mrs. Marchmont and her brother joined in the mirth, though evidently
vexed with themselves that they did. Even Hemstead saw that Harcourt's
remark was but the transparent excuse for the inevitable laugh at
his expense. Lottie looked around with an expression of mingled
surprise and displeasure, which nearly convulsed those in the
secret. But her aunt and uncle felt themselves justly rebuked, while
wondering greatly at Lottie's unwonted virtue. But there are times
when to laugh is a dreadful necessity, whatever be the consequences.

"Mr. Hemstead," said Lottie, gravely, beginning, as she supposed,
with the safe topic of the weather, "in journeying east have you
come to a colder or warmer climate?"

"Decidedly into a colder one," he answered, significantly.

"Indeed, that rather surprises me!"

"Well, I believe that the thermometer has marked lower with us,
but it has been said, and justly I think, that we do not feel the
cold at the West as at the East."

"No matter," she said, sweetly. "At the East, as in the West, the
cold is followed by thaws and spring."

He looked up quickly and gratefully, but only remarked, "It's a
change we all welcome."

"Not I, for one," said Mr. Harcourt. "Give me a clear, steady
cold. Thaws and spring are synonymous with the sloppy season or
sentimental stage."

"I, too, think steady cold is better in the season of it," remarked
Mr. Dimmerly, sententiously.

"But how about it out of season, uncle?" asked Lottie.

"Your hint, perhaps, is seasonable, Lottie," quietly  remarked her
aunt, though with somewhat heightened color.  "I trust we shall
keep the steady cold out of doors, and that ALL our guests will
find only summer warmth within."

"Really, auntie, you put me in quite a melting mood."

"No need of that, Lottie, for you are the month of June all the
year round," said her aunt.

"The month of April, rather," suggested Bel.

"I should say July or August," added Mr. Dimmerly, laughing.

"Would you not say November?" asked Lottie of Mr.  Hemstead.

"Yes, I think so," he replied, with a blush, "for  Thanksgiving
comes in that month."

There was a general laugh, and Mr. Dimmerly chuckled, "Very good,
you are getting even, Frank."

"I hardly understand your compliment, if it is one," said Lottie,
demurely. "Is it because you are so fond of sermons or dinners that
Thanksgiving glorifies the dreary month of November?"

"Neither a sermon nor a dinner is always a just cause for Thanksgiving,"
he replied, with a pleasant light in his gray eyes.

"Then where is the force of your allusion?" she said, with a face
innocently blank.

"Well," replied he, hesitatingly, and blushing deeply, "perhaps my
thought was that you might be an occasion for Thanksgiving if both
sermon and dinner were wanting."

Again there was a general laugh, but his aunt said, "Frank, Frank,
have you learned to flatter?"

Lottie shot a quick glance of pleased surprise at him, and was
much amused at his evident confusion and flaming cheeks. To be sure
his words were part of the old  complimentary tune that she knew
by heart, but his offering was like a flower that had upon it the
morning dew. She recognized  his grateful effort to repay her for
supposed kindness, and saw that, though ill at ease in society, he
was not a fool.

"Would it not be better to wait till in possession before keeping
a Thanksgiving?" said De Forrest, satirically.

"Not necessarily," retorted Hemstead, quickly, for the remark was
like the light touch of a spur. "I was grateful for the opportunity
of seeing a fine picture at Cleveland, on my way here, that I never
expect to own."

Lottie smiled. The victim was not helpless. But she turned, and
with a spice of coquetry said, "Still I think you are right, Mr.
De Forrest."

Then she noted that Mr. Hemstead's eyes were dancing with mirth at
her hint to one who was evidently anxious to keep "Thanksgiving"
over her any month in the year.

"I'm sure I am," remarked De Forrest. "I could never be satisfied
to admire at a distance. I could not join in a prayer I once heard,
'Lord, we thank thee for this and all other worlds.'"

"Could you?" asked Lottie of Hemstead.

"Why not?"

"That is no answer."

Hemstead was growing more at ease, and when he only had to use his
brains was not half so much at a loss as when he must also manage
his hands and feet, and he replied laughingly: "Well, not to put too
fine a point upon it, this world is quite useful to me at present.
I should be sorry to have it vanish and find myself whirling in
space, if I am a rather large body. But as I am soon to get through
with this world, though never through with life, I may have a chance
to enjoy a good many other worlds--perhaps all of them--before
eternity is over, and so be grateful that they exist and are in
waiting."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Lottie. "What a traveller you propose to
be. I should be satisfied with a trip to Europe."

"To Paris, you mean," said Bel.

"Yes," replied Mr. Hemstead, "until the trip was over."

"Then I trust she will be content with New York,"  insinuated De
Forrest; "for Mr. Hemstead speaks as if the stars were created for
his especial benefit."

"You are enjoying some honey, Mr. De Forrest?" said Hemstead,
quietly.

"Yes."

"Did the flowers grow and the bees gather for your especial benefit?"

"I admit I'm answered."

"But," said sceptical Mr. Harcourt, "when you've got through with
this world how do you know but that you will drop off into space?"

"Come," said Addie, rising from the table, "I protest against a
sermon before Sunday."

They now returned to the parlor, Hemstead making the transition in
safety, but with no little trepidation.






CHAPTER III.

PUZZLED AND INTERESTED.





On the way to the parlor Lottie hovered near Mr.  Hemstead. Unlike
Micawber, she was not one to wait, but purposed that something
SHOULD "turn up." The two other young ladies, and Harcourt and De
Forrest, sat down to a game of whist. In pursuance of instructions
from Lottie, De Forrest was not to be over-attentive, though it was
evident that he would give more thought to her than to his game.
Her demure mischief amused him vastly, and, knowing  what she was,
the novelty of her Puritan style had a double fascination. Making
personal enjoyment the object of his life, he felicitated himself
on soon possessing the beautiful and piquant creature, who, when she
came to  devote herself to him, would spice his days with endless
variety.  The thought that this high-spirited, positive, strong-minded
American girl might crave better and more important work than that
of an Eastern houri or a Queen Scheherezade, never occurred to
him. He blundered, with many other men, in supposing that, if once
married, the wayward belle would become subservient to his tastes
and modes as a matter of course. In his matrimonial creed all his
difficulty consisted in getting the noose finally around the fair
one's neck: this accomplished, she would become a ministering
captive.  Many a one has had a rude awakening from this dream.

Although from Addie Marchmont's description he believed that he
had little cause to fear a rival in Hemstead, still he awaited his
coming with a trace of anxiety. But when the seemingly overgrown,
awkward student stepped upon the scene, all his fears vanished. The
fastidious Lottie, whose eye had grown so nice and critical that
she could refuse the suit of many who from their wealth and position
thought it impossible  to sue in vain, could never look upon this
Western giant in a way other than she proposed,--the ridiculous
subject of a practical joke. True, he had proved himself no fool
in their table-talk, but mere intellectuality and moral excellence
counted for little in De Forrest's estimation when not  combined
with wealth and external elegance. The thought that the "giant"
might have a heart, and that Lottie's clever seeming might win it,
and the consequent mortification and suffering, did not occasion
a moment's care. Unconsciously De Forrest belonged to that lordly
class which has furnished our Neros, Napoleons, and tyrants of
less degree, even down to Pat who beats his wife. These, from their
throne of selfishness, view the pain and troubles of others with
perfect unconcern. Therefore, believing that his personal interests
were not endangered by so unpromising a man as Hemstead, even
Lottie did not look forward to the carrying out of the practical
joke with more zest than he. If the unsuspicious victim could only
be inveigled into something like love, its awkward display might
become comical in the extreme.  Therefore, he gave but careless
heed to his game, and keen glances to Lottie's side-play. But as
the other conspirators were acting in much the same manner he was
able to hold his own.

Hemstead looked grave, as cards were brought out, but without remark
he sat down with his aunt at a table on the opposite side of the
hearth. Lottie perched on a chair a little back of them, so that
while she saw their side faces they must turn somewhat to see her.
When they did so she was quietly stitching at her fancy-work, but
the rest of the time was telegraphing with her brilliant eyes all
sorts of funny messages to the party opposite, so that they were
in a state of perpetual giggle, not in keeping with whist.

Mr. Dimmerly soon bustled in, and, looking wistfully at the game
in progress, was about to propose that they form one likewise at
their table, for an evening without cards was to him a mild form
of purgatory. But Lottie anticipated him. Giving a signal to the
others and drawing down her face to portentous length, she said to
Hemstead, "I fear you do not approve of cards."

"You are correct, Miss Marsden," he replied, stiffly.

As he turned away, she glanced at the card-players with a look of
horror, as if they were committing sacrilege, and Harcourt had to
improvise another poor joke to account for their increasing merriment.

But Mr. Dimmerly looked at his nephew in dismay and some irritation.
"What under heaven can I now do, this long evening," he thought,
"but gape and talk theology?"

But Lottie, in the purpose to draw out and quiz her victim,
continued: "Really, Mr. Hemstead, you surprise me. Cards are the
staple amusement of a quiet evening in New York.  I fear I have
been doing wrong all my life without knowing it."

"If you did not know you were wrong, you were not very guilty," he
replied, smiling.

"Yes, but now I do know, or at least from one who will be an
authority on such matters--pardon me--who is one now, I am assured
that this old custom is wrong. In questions  of right and wrong,
I suppose a minister should guide."

"No, Miss Marsden, that is not Protestantism. Your conscience,
instructed by the Bible, should guide."

"But I see no more harm in whist than in a sleigh-ride."

"Perhaps your conscience needs instruction."

"O, certainly, that is it! Please instruct it."

He turned quickly, but saw a face serious enough for an anxious
seat in an old-time revival.

"Yes," said Mr. Dimmerly, testily. "My conscience needs instruction
also. What harm is there in a quiet game of whist?"

"Well, I do not know that there is anything wrong in a 'quiet game
of cards,' per se" commenced Hemstead, didactically.

"'Per' who?" asked Lottie, innocently.

Just then the party at the other table seemed to explode, but they
made it appear as if the cause came from themselves.

"Yes, yes, nephew, speak English. You may find some reasons in
Latin, but none in English, the only language of sound sense."

"Well," resumed Hemstead, somewhat confused, "I do not know that
a quiet game such as you would play here would be wrong in itself.
But the associations of the game are bad, and your example might
be injurious."

"The associations bad!" said Lottie, lifting her eyebrows.  "Cards
are associated in my mind with father, mother, and quiet home
evenings."

"I have chiefly seen them played by rough characters, and in
questionable places," he replied quickly.

"I'm sorry you visit such places," she replied in a tone of rebuke.

Even Mr. Dimmerly and his sister laughed at this remark, as coming
from Lottie, while the others were almost  convulsed. Bel managed
to gasp out, as a blind, "Mr.  Harcourt, if you don't behave yourself
and play fair, I'll throw down my hand."

But straightforward Hemstead increased difficulties by saying, a
little stiffly, "I hope, Miss Marsden, that you do not suppose that
one of my calling would frequent places of improper resort."

"No, indeed," she replied quickly, "and therefore I was the more
surprised when you spoke of witnessing something in 'questionable
places.'"

He turned to her with a look in which perplexity and annoyance
were mingled, and said hastily: "It is different with a man from a
lady. A man is more out in the world, and, no matter how careful,
cannot help catching glimpses of the evil substratum of society.
One cannot help passing through a smoking-car occasionally, or--"

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Lottie, as if startled. "Is a smoking-car
a 'questionable place'? Mr. De Forrest," she continued sharply,
"did you not spend half an hour in the smoking-car coming up?"

"Yes," he replied faintly.

"You surprise me, sir," she said severely. "Mr. Hemstead  declares
it is a 'questionable place.' I hope hereafter you will have more
regard for your reputation."

"Please do not mistake me," said Hemstead, with  increasing annoyance;
"I did not mean to assert any moral qualities of smoking-cars, though
with then filth and fumes there would be no question in your mind
about them whatever,  Miss Marsden. What I meant to say was, that
in such places as smoking-cars, hotel lobbies, and through the
open doors of saloons, are caught glimpses of a life which we all
should unite in condemning and loathing; and what I have seen has
always led me to connect cards with just that kind of life. Moreover,
gambling--that fearful and destructive vice--is almost inseparable
from cards."

"How experiences differ!" said Lottie, reflectively. "I have had
but few glimpses of the life you describe so graphically.  With
the bits of pasteboard that you have seen chiefly in coarse, grimy
hands, I associate our cosey sitting-room at home, with its glowing
grate and 'moon-light lamp,' as we call it, for father's eyes are
weak. Even now," she continued, assuming the look of a rapt and
beautiful sibyl, that was entrancing to Hemstead as well as De
Forrest--"even now I see papa and mamma and old-fashioned Auntie
Jane, and poor invalid Jennie, all gathered at home in our sacred
little snuggery where father permits no visitors to come."

The look she had assumed became genuine, and her eyes suddenly
moistened as the scene called up became real and present to her.
With all her faults she had a warm heart, and loved her kindred
sincerely.

But this touch of truth and feeling served her mischievous  purpose
better than she thought, for it convinced the honest-minded Hemstead
that she was just what she seemed, and his sympathy went out to
her at once as a well-meaning, true-hearted girl.

He was a little taken aback, however, when Lottie, ashamed of her
feeling, said brusquely, "As to gambling with cards, we no more
thought of it than sending to a corner  grocery for a bottle of
whiskey, and taking from it a drink all around between the games."

"O Lottie!" laughed her aunt, "what an absurd picture you suggest!
The idea of your stately mother taking a drink from a bottle of
whiskey!"

"It is no more strange to me," persisted Lottie, gravely, "than
Mr. Hemstead's associations. Of course I know that bad and vulgar
people play cards, but they also drive horses and walk the streets,
and do other things which it is perfectly proper for us to do."

"I admit, Miss Marsden, that education and custom make a great
difference. I have always been taught to look upon cards with great
abhorrence. What may be right for you would be wrong for me."

"No," said positive Lottie, "that will not satisfy me. A thing is
either right or wrong. If you can prove to me that a quiet game of
cards is wrong, I won't play any more--at least I ought not," she
added hastily. "Because some vulgar  and fast people gamble with
them is nothing. You will take a sleigh-ride with us to-morrow,
and yet loud jockeys bet and gamble over horses half the year."

Hemstead sprang up. His ungainliness disappeared, as was ever the
case when he forgot himself in excitement.

"Miss Marsden," he said, "what you say sounds plausible,  but years
ago I saw the mangled corpse of a young suicide. He was an adept
at cards, and for aught I know had learned the game as your brother
might, at home. But away among strangers at the West that knowledge
proved fatal. He was inveigled into playing by some gamblers, staked
all his own money, then that committed to his trust.  Having lost
everything but life, he threw that also down the abyss. He might
have been living to-day if he had known as little about cards as
I do."

His manner was so earnest, the picture called up so sad and tragic,
that even Lottie's red cheek paled a little, and the gigglers
became quiet. She only said, "He was very weak and foolish. I can't
understand such people."

"But the world is largely made up of the weak and foolish,  who
need safeguards rather than temptations. And history would seem
to prove that even the wisest and best are at times 'weak and
foolish.' I think the knowledge of card-playing can result in no
harm to you, shielded as you will be, but it might to your brother.
Miss Marsden," asked he, abruptly, "do you know how many professional
gamblers there are in the world?"

"No."

"I do not remember the estimated number accurately, but it is very
large. They often revel in wealth, but they do not make it out of
each other. It is from the unwary, the 'weak and foolish' who think
they can win money by playing  a fair game. They are permitted to
win just enough to turn their heads, and then are robbed. Remorse,
despair, and suicide too often follow. Cards are the usual means
employed in these great wrongs. I should be sorry to see a young
brother of mine, who was soon to face the temptations  of the world,
go away with a knowledge that has been the ruin of so many."

This was bringing the question home to Lottie in a way that she
did not expect. Her heedless, wilful, impulsive brother, the dear
torment of her life, was just the one an artful knave could mislead.
For a moment or two she sat silent and thoughtful. All awaited her
answer save Mr.  Dimmerly, who, without his whist, had dropped off
into a doze, as was his wont. Then her decided character asserted
itself, and she spoke sincerely for the moment.

"I do not believe in the safety of ignorance. If a young man is weak
and bad enough to gamble, he will do it with something else, if not
cards. From what I hear, men bet and gamble with all uncertainties.
The most innocent things are carried to vulgar and wicked excess.
You can't shield one from without if lacking the will and power to
say, No! I think it will be safer and wiser in the end, if a thing
is right fer se, as you say, to do it, and if wrong not to do it.
To me, a game of cards is no more than a game of checkers, or a
stroll in a garden."

In his eagerness to reply, Hemstead took a step forward and trod
upon, not a lady's dress this time, but the tail of Mrs. Marchmont's
pet dog. As may be imagined, his tread was not fairy-like, and there
was a yelp that awoke the echoes. Mr. Dimmerly started out of his
sleep, with a snort like the blast of a ram's hom before Jericho,
and, pushing his gold spectacles to the top of his bald head, stared
in bewilderment at the forms convulsed with merriment around him.

Even Hemstead joined in the laugh, though inwardly  inclined to
anathematize his big feet. Lottie retreated from further discussion
by saying:

"I have heard that theologians were inclined to be dogmatic  in
controversy, and I fear that you are no exception, Mr. Hemstead.
So, since I have had the last word, with your permission, I retire
'of the same opinion still.'"

"I submit," he rejoined, good-naturedly. "In any case my answer
would have been CURTAILED"

"Ha, ha!" chimed out Lottie's laugh. "That is better than your
logic."

"Frank! that you should call this dear little creature a cur!" said
Mrs. Marchmont, comforting her still whining pet.

"What DISCOURTESY!" said Lottie.

"What is the matter with you all?" asked Mr. Dimmerly, rising. "From
talking Latin you have got on something that I understand as well
as Choctaw. Lottie, I hope you are not argued out of one of our
best old English customs.  I have inherited whist from a dozen
generations. So, nephew, with your leave or your frown, I must have
my game."

"I cannot say, uncle, that Mr. Hemstead has argued very much, but
two very painful TALES have been presented in an imPRESSIVE manner.
You see how moved auntie and Fido are still over one of them. But
come, Mr. Hemstead, you have discharged your duty. If they play
whist all night and commit suicide in the morning, your skirts are
clear. Shake off the dust of your feet at them, and take a promenade
in the hall with me. Cousin Julian" (with emphasis on the word
cousin), "your conscience is as tough and elastic as Mr. Hemstead's
is tender. You haunt smoking-cars and other questionable places;
so, without serious moral harm, you can gratify uncle."

Mrs. Marchmont, who had listened with polite weariness to the latter
part of the discussion, now took part in the game as quietly as
she would pour tea at the head of the table. The aunt and nephew
had lived in such different atmospheres that they could scarcely
understand each other, and both harbored thoughts that were hardly
charitable, as is usually the case in regard to those actions which
have no moral qualities in themselves, and after all must be decided
by each one's conscience. To Mrs. Marchmont, with her antecedents,
a game of whist was one of the most innocent ants of her life.

But Hemstead was too well pleased with Lottie's arrangement  to
grieve deeply over what, to his conscience, was wrong, and soon
forgot uncle, aunt, and cousin, and even the unlucky lap-dog, whose
dismal howl had so discomfited him a moment before. Just such a
luminary as Lottie Marsden  had never appeared above his horizon, and
her orbit seemed so eccentric that as yet he could not calculate
it; but this element of uncertainty made observation all the
more interesting. The wide old hall, without the embarrassment  of
observant eyes, was just the place to learn something  more definite
of one who thus far had dazzled and puzzled, while she gained his
strong interest. True, Addie and Mr. Harcourt were walking before
them, but seemed so absorbed in each other as not to notice them.
He felt a curious thrill when a little hand lighted, like a
snow-flake, upon his arm, but soon increased its pressure with a
sort of cousinly confidence. He looked inquiringly into the face
turned up to him as they passed under the lamp, and thought, "In
its guileless beauty it reminds me of the clear mountain lakes that
I have seen in this region."

His figure was true, but not as he understood it; for Lottie's  face,
like the lake, would then reflect anything that happened upon the
margin of her thoughts, while her heart remained hidden. He thought he
saw herself, but in truth only false and vanishing images. Still,
like the mirroring water, her skilful feigning could make the
images seem very real. Hemstead, with his boundless faith in woman,
believed all he saw, and hoped still more.






CHAPTER IV.

A LITTLE PAGAN.





The joke had now taken a phase that De Forrest did not relish. While
Lottie's by-play was present, and she was telegraphing to him with
her brilliant eyes, it was excellent. But to sit with his back to
the door leading into the hall, vis-a-vis to Mr. Dimmerly's puckered
face, and give close attention to the game, was a trying ordeal to
one who only consulted his own pleasure. And yet he feared he would
offend Lottie, did he not remain at his post. She was a despotic
little sovereign, and he felt that he must use all address until she
was safely brought to the matrimonial altar. He comforted himself,
however, with the thought that she was generous, and when he acted
the role of martyr she usually rewarded him with a greater show of
kindness, and no got through an hour with indifferent grace.

But this purgatorial hour to him was keenly enjoyed by Lottie and
Hemstead, though by each for different reasons.

"I fear you think me a giddy, wayward girl," said Lottie gently.

"In frankness, I hardly know what to think," replied Hemstead.

"Frank is your name, is it not?"

"Yes."

"It seems appropriate. I hope you won't judge me too harshly."

"The danger is the other way, I fear," he said laughing.

"Well, one of your profession ought to be charitable.  But I might
naturally expect to be disapproved of by one so good and wise as
you are."

"Why do you think me 'good and wise'?"

"Because you are a minister, if for no other reason."

"I am also a man."

"Yes," she said innocently. "You are quite grown up."

He looked at her quickly; her demure face puzzled him, and he said,
"I fear you think I am overgrown."

"And I fear you don't care what I think. Men of your profession
are superior to the world."

"Really, I shall think you are sarcastic, if you talk in that way
any more." But she looked so serious that he half believed she was
in earnest.

"Are ministers like other men?" she asked, with a spice of genuine
curiosity in her question. The venerable pastor of the church which
she attended in New York had not seemed to belong to the same race
as herself. His hair was so white, his face so bloodless, his life
so saintly, and his sermons so utterly beyond her, that he appeared
as dim and unearthly as one of the Christian Fathers. A young
theologian  on the way to that same ghostly state was an object
of piquant interest. She had never had a flirtation with a man of
this character, therefore there was all the zest of novelty.  Had
she been less fearless, she would have shrunk from it, however, with
something of the superstitious dread that many have of jesting in
a church, or a graveyard. But there was a trace of hardihood in her
present course that just took her fancy. From lack of familiarity
with the class, she had a vague impression that ministers differed
widely from other men, and to bring one down out of the clouds as a
fluttering captive at her feet would be a triumph indeed. A little
awe mingled with her curiosity as she sought to penetrate the
scholastic and saintly atmosphere in which she supposed even an
embryo clergyman dwelt. She hardly knew what to say when, in reply
to her question, "Are ministers like other men?" he asked, "Why
not?"

"That is hardly a fair way to answer."

"You do not find me a mysterious being."

"I find you very different from other young men of my acquaintance.
What to me is a matter of course is dreadful to you. Then you ministers
have such strange theological ways of dividing the world up into
saints and sinners, and you coolly predict such awful things for
the sinners (though I confess the sinners take it quite as coolly).
The whole thing seems professional rather than true."

The tone of deep sadness in which the young man next spoke caused
her to look at him with a little surprise.

"I do not wonder that this mutual coolness perplexes you. If we
believe the Bible, it is the strangest mystery in existence."

"You may well put that in. Do the generality of people believe the
Bible? But as I was saying, from the very nature of your calling
you come to live far away from us. Our old minister knows more about
dead people than living. He knows all about the Jews and Greeks who
lived eighteen centuries ago, but next to nothing of the young of
his own church. My motives and temptations would be worse than
Sanscrit to him,--harder to understand than the unsolved problems
of mathematics. What does such a man know about the life of a young
lady in society? That which influences me would seem less than
nothing to him."

"I think you misjudge your pastor. If you became well acquainted
with him, you might find a heart overflowing with sympathy."

"I can no more get acquainted with him than if he dwelt on Mount
Olympus. If I were only a doctrine, he might study me up and know
something about me. But there is so much flesh and blood about me
that I fear I shall always be distasteful to ministers."

"I assure you, Miss Marsden, I find you more interesting than some
doctrines."

"But you are young. You are on a vacation, and can for a time descend
to trifles, but you will grow like the rest. As it is, you speak
very guardedly, and intimate that I would be as nothing compared
with other doctrines."

"What is a doctrine, Miss Marsden?"

"O, bless me, I don't know exactly; a sort of abstract summing up
of either our qualities or God's qualities. The only doctrine I
even half understand is that of 'total depravity,' and I sometimes
fear it's true."

"I think you are a great deal more interesting than the 'doctrine
of total depravity,'" said Hemstead, laughing.

"Perhaps you will come to think I am synonymous with it."

"No fear. I have seen too much of you for that already."

"What redeeming features have you seen?"

He looked at her earnestly for a moment, and she  sustained his
gaze with an expression of such innocent  sweetness that he said, a
little impulsively, "All your features redeem you from that charge."

"O, fie!" she exclaimed, "a pun and flattery in one breath!"

"I do not mean to flatter. Although in some respects you puzzle me,
I am very clear and positive as to my feeling of gratitude. While
my aunt feels kindly toward me, she is formal. It seemed to me when
I came out of the cold of the wintry night I found within a more
chilling coldness.  But when you gave me your warm hand and claimed
something like kindred, I was grateful for that which does not always
accompany kindred,--genuine kindness. This feeling  was greatly
increased when instead of making my diffidence  and awkwardness
a theme of ridicule, you evinced a delicate sympathy, and with
graceful tact suggested a better courtesy to others. Do you think
then, that, after this glimpse down such a beautiful vista in your
nature, I can associate you with 'total depravity'? It was plain
to you, Miss Marsden, that I had seen little of society, but you
acted as if that were my misfortune, not my fault. I think the
impulse that leads one to try to shield or protect another who for
the time may be weak or defenceless is always noble."

If Lottie had shown a little before that she had a heart, she now
became painfully aware that she had a conscience, and it gave her
some severe twinges during this speech.  For a moment she wished
she deserved his commendation.  But she was not one to do things
by halves, and so,  recklessly throwing aside her qualms, she said
laughingly, "I don't think a gentleman of your inches at all an
object of pity. You are big enough to take care of yourself."

"And I mean to as far as I can. But we all need help at times. You
know a mouse once served a lion."

"Thank you. Now you have counterbalanced all your fine speeches
and compliments. 'A mouse serving a lion!' Well, roar gently if
you please."

"I'm afraid I appear to you like another animal that once donned
a lion's skin, but whose ears, alas, protruded."

"That is rather a skilful retreat; but I imagine that you think
yourself a veritable lion."

"If you insist on my being a lion, I must refer you to ancient
mythology, where one of these overrated beasts is held a crouching
captive by Diana."

"Well, that is quite a transition. First compared to a mouse, and
then to the moon. I fear that if you have not visited 'questionable
places,' you have permitted your mind to dwell on the 'questionable'
myths of the past.

"O, that was in the regular order of things," he replied.  "Before
coming to the study of theology, we are put through mythology;
that is, under the guidance of reverend professors we make the
acquaintance of a set of imaginary beings who, had they veritably
lived, and in our day, would have soon found their way to the
penitentiary."

"At the door of which the 'lion' and 'Diana' would part company,
and so I should lose my gentle 'captive' and become as disconsolate
as auntie would have been had you trodden on the reverse extremity
of her pet."

"O, pardon me, but Diana was an exception to the rest."

"Better or worse?"

"Better, of course. She was a trifle cruel, though, was she not?"

"You have been proving me very tender-hearted."

"So every woman should be."

"I doubt whether you know much about us."

"I cannot imagine a being--not even an angel-more pure, unselfish,
and true than my mother; and she is a woman."

"Miss Lottie," here broke in De Forrest, "I've played whist to the
utmost limit of my conscience. You will not keep me on the rack
any longer."

"O, no, Cousin Julian," she replied, sotto voce, "only on the sofa
with our dear cousin Bel. See, she sits there alone.  Good-by," and
she swept past, with a malicious twinkle in her eyes at his blank
expression.

But Bel saw and understood the scene. With a cynical smile she
went to the piano, and commenced a brilliant waltz. Under its spell
Addie and Mr. Harcourt came whirling  up the hall, and Lottie, who
had been under restraint so long, could not resist the temptation
of letting De Forrest carry her off also.

"It's only with my cousin, you know," she whispered apologetically
to Hemstead.

He stood in the door-way for a few moments and watched her graceful
figure with a strange and growing interest Whether saint or sinner,
this being so emphatically of flesh and blood was exceedingly
fascinating. The transition from the cloister-like seclusion of his
seminary life to this suburb of the gay world was almost bewildering;
and Lottie Marsden was one to stir the thin blood and withered
heart of the coldest anchorite. The faint perfume which she seemed
to exhale like a red rosebush in June was a pleasing exchange for
the rather musty and scholastic atmosphere in which he so long
had dwelt. As she glanced by as lightly as a bird on the wing, she
occasionally beamed upon him with one of her dangerous smiles. She
then little thought or cared that his honest and unoccupied heart
was as ready to thaw and blossom into love as a violet bank facing
the south in spring. He soon had a vague consciousness that he was
not doing just the prudent thing, and therefore rejoined his aunt
and uncle. Soon after he pleaded the weariness of his journey and
retired. As he was about to mount the stairs Lottie whirled by and
whispered, "Don't think me past praying for."

The slang she used in jest came to him, with his tendencies  and
convictions, like an unconscious appeal and a divine suggestion.
He was utterly unconventional, and while readily  unbending into
mirthfulness, he regarded life as an exceedingly  serious thing.
As the eyes of artist and poet catch glimpses of beauty where to
others are only hard lines and plain surfaces, so strong religious
temperaments are quick to see providences, intimations, and leadings.

Hemstead went to his room with steps that deep thought rendered
slower and slower. He forgot his weariness, and sat down before
the fire to think of one known but a few brief hours. If there are
those who can coolly predict "awful things" of the faithless and
godless, Hemstead was not one of them. The young girl who thought
him a good subject for jest and ridicule, he regarded with profound
pity.  Her utter unconsciousness of danger had to him the elements
of deepest pathos.

While perplexed by contradictions in her manner and words, he
concluded that she was what she seemed, a girl of unusual force
of mind, frank and kindly, and full of noble impulses, but whose
religious nature was but slightly developed. He at that time would
have been shocked and indignant if he had known the truth. Her
natural tendencies  had been good. Her positive nature would never
waver weakly along the uncertain boundary of good and evil, as was
the case with Bel Parton. She was one who would be decided and
progressive in one direction or the other, but now was clearly
on the sinister side of truth and moral  loveliness. Surrounding
influences had been adverse. She had yielded to them, and they had
carried her farther astray than if she had been of a cautious and
less forceful temperament.  While therefore full of good impulses,
she was also passionate  and selfish. Much homage had made her
imperious, exacting, and had developed no small degree of vanity.
She exulted in the power and pre-eminence that beauty gave, and
often exerted the former cruelly, though it is due to her to state
that she did not realize the pain she caused.  While her own heart
slept, she could not understand the aching disquiet of others that
she toyed with. That it was good sport, high-spiced excitement, and
occupation for her restless, active mind, was all she considered.
As she would never be neutral in her moral character, so she was
one who would do much of either harm or good. Familiarity with
the insincerities of fashionable life had blurred her sense of
truthfulness in little things, and in matters of policy she could
hide her meaning or express another as well as her veteran mother.

And yet there were great possibilities of good in her  character.
She had a substratum of sound common sense; was wholesomely averse
to meanness, cowardice, and temporizing;  best of all, she was not
shallow and weak. She could appreciate noble action, and her mind
could kindle at great thoughts if presented clearly and strongly.

She could scarcely be blamed severely for being what she was, for
she had only responded to the influences that had ever surrounded
her, and been moulded by them. Her character was rapidly forming,
but not as yet fixed. Therefore  her best chance of escaping a moral
deformity as marked as her external beauty was the coming under an
entirely different class of influences.

However earthly parents may wrong their children by neglect, or
by permitting in themselves characters that  react ruinously upon
those sacredly intrusted to their training, the Divine Father seems
to give all a chance sometime in life for the achievement of the
grandest of all victories, the conquest of self. Whatever abstract
theories dreamers may evolve secluded from the world, those who observe
closely--who KNOW humanity from infancy to age--are compelled to
admit, however reluctantly, that the inner self of every heart is
tainted and poisoned by evil. The innocence of childhood is too
much like the harmlessness of the lion's whelps. However loftily and
plausibly some may assert the innate goodness and self-rectifying
power of humanity, as Tom Paine wrote against the Bible without
reading it, not having been able at the time to procure one in
infidel Paris, those who take the scientific course of getting the
facts first shake their heads despondingly. It is true that parents
discover diversities in their children. Some are sweeter-tempered
than others, and seem pointed  horizontally, if not heavenward,
in their natures. Many bid fair to stand high, measured by earthly
standards. But the approving  world can know nothing of the evil
thoughts that haunt the heart.

What mother has not been almost appalled as she has seen the face
of her still infant child inflamed with rage and the passionate
desire for revenge? The chubby hand is not always raised to caress,
but too often to strike. As mind and heart develop, darker and meaner
traits unfold with every natural grace. There is a canker-worm in
the bud, and unless it is taken out, there never can be a perfect
flower.

But Mr. and Mrs. Marsden thought of none of these things. The mother
received her estimate of life, and her duty, from current opinion
on the avenue. She complacently  felicitated herself that she kept
up with the changing mode quite as well as most women of wealth
and fashion, if not better. She managed so well that she excited
the admiration of some, and the envy of more; and so was content.
As for Mr. Marsden, what with his business, his newspaper, whist,
and an occasional evening at the club or some entertainment or public
meeting that he could not escape, his life was full and running
over. He never had time to give a thought to the fine theories about
his children, nor to the rather contradictory facts often reported
from the nursery. But as year after year he paid the enormous and
increasing bills for nurses, gouvernantes, Italian music masters,
and fashionable schools, he sincerely thought that few men did as
much for their children as he.

Of course, a lady from whom society expected so much as from Mrs.
Marsden could not give her time to her children.  In the impressible
period of infancy and early childhood,  Lottie and her brother, and
an invalid sister older than herself, had been left chiefly to the
charge of servants.  But Mrs. Marsden's conscience was at rest,
for she paid the highest prices for her French and German nurses
and governesses,  and of course "had the best," she said. Thus the
children lived in a semi-foreign atmosphere, and early caught a
"pretty foreign accent," which their mamma delighted to exhibit in
the parlor; and at the same time they became imbued with foreign
morals, which they also put on exhibition  disagreeably often. When
through glaring faults the stylish nursery-maid was dismissed, the
obliging keeper of the intelligence office around the corner had
another foreign waif just imported, who at a slightly increased sum
was ready to undertake the care, and he might add the corruption,
of the children in the most approved style. She was at once engaged,
and to this alien the children were committed  almost wholly, while
Mrs. Marsden would tell her afternoon visitors how fortunate she
had been in obtaining a new nurse with even a "purer accent." The
probabilities were that her doubtful accent was the purest thing
about her. Sometimes, as the results of this tutelage grew more
apparent, even Mrs. Marsden had misgivings. But then her wealthiest
and most fashionable neighbors were pursuing the same course with
precisely the same results; and so she must be right.

If Lottie had been born pellucid as a drop of dew, as some claim,
she would not have remained so long, even in the nursery, and as
she stepped out farther and faster in the widening sphere of her
life, surrounding influences did not improve.

Her extreme beauty and grace, and the consequent  admiration and
flattery, developed an unusual degree of vanity, which had strengthened
with years; though now she had too much sense and refinement to
display it publicly. While generous and naturally warm-hearted,
the elements of gentleness  and patient self-denial for the sake
of others at this time could scarcely have been discovered in her
character.

Indeed this beautiful girl, nurtured in a Christian land, a regular
attendant upon church, was a pagan and belonged to a pagan family.
Not one of her household worshipped God.  Mr. and Mrs. Marsden
would have been exceedingly shocked and angered if they had been
told they were heathens.  But at the time when Paul found among
the multitudinous altars of Athens one dedicated to the "Unknown
God," there were many Grecian men and women more highly  cultivated
than these two aristocrats of to-day. But in spite of external
devoutness at church, it could easily be shown that to this girl's
parents the God of the Bible was as "unknown" and unheeded as the
mysterious and unnamed deity  concerning whose claims the Apostle
so startled the luxurious Athenians. Like the ancient Greeks, all
had their favorite shrines that, to a greater or a less degree,
absorbed heart and brain.

Lottie was a votaress of pleasure: the first and about the only
article of her creed was to make everything and everybody  minister
to her enjoyment. She rarely entered on a day with a more definite
purpose than to have a "good time"; and in the attainment of this
end we have seen that she was by no means scrupulous.

She was as cruel a little pagan, too, as any of her remote Druidical
ancestors, and at her various shrines of vanity, pleasure, and
excitement, delighted in offering human sacrifices.  She had become
accustomed to the writhing of her victims, and soothed herself
with the belief that it did not hurt them so very much after all.
She considered no farther than that flirtation was one of the
recognized amusements of the fashionable. What the TON did was law
and gospel to her mother; and the same to Lottie, if agreeable. If
not, there was no law and no gospel for her.

She had no more scruple in making a victim of Hemstead than a Fiji
Island potentate would have in ordering a breakfast  according to
his depraved and barbarous taste. And when even society-men had
succumbed to her wiles, and in abject helplessness had permitted
her to place her imperious foot upon their necks, what chance had
a warm-hearted, unsophisticated fellow, with the most chivalric
ideas of womanhood?

Quick-witted Lottie, on seeing Hemstead and hearing his table-talk,
had modified Addie Marchmont's suggestion in her own mind. She saw
that, though unsuspicious and trusting  in his nature, he was too
intelligent to be imposed upon by broad farce. Therefore, a religious
mask would soon be known as such. Her aunt also would detect the
mischievous plot against her nephew and guest, and thwart it. By
appearing as a well-meaning unguided girl, who both needed and
wished an adviser, she might more safely keep this modern  Samson
blindly making sport for her and the others, and at the same time
not awaken the troublesome suspicions of her aunt and uncle. In the
character of one who was full of good impulses--who erred through
ignorance, and who wished to be led and helped to better things--she
was nearer the truth, and could act her part more successfully.

But what could Frank Hemstead, coming from a home in which he
had breathed the very atmosphere of truth and purity, know of all
this? To him Lottie was the most beautiful  creature he had ever
seen, and in his crystal integrity he would have deemed it a foul
insult to her to doubt that she was just what she seemed. To his
straightforward nature, believing a woman the opposite of what she
seemed was like saying to her, "Madam, you are a liar."

The world would be better if women did more to preserve this
chivalric trust.

"Past praying for!" His creed taught him to pray for all the world,
and already a subtile, unrecognized impulse of his heart led him
to plead before the Divine Father for one who seemed, in outward
grace, already fitted for heavenly surroundings.

When a block of unusually perfect marble falls under the eye of
a true sculptor, he is conscious of a strong impulse to bring out
the exquisite statue that is distinctly visible to his mind. Hemstead
was an enthusiast in the highest form of art and human effort, and
was developing, as the ruling motive of his life, a passion for
moulding the more enduring material of character into moral symmetry
and loveliness.  Humanity in its most forbidding guise interested
him, for his heart was warm and large and overflowed with a great
pity for the victims of evil. In this respect he was like his
Master, who had "compassion on the multitude." His anticipation
of his life-work was as non-professional as that of a mother who
yearns over the children she cannot help loving. Lottie appeared
strong and lovely by nature. It seemed to him that the half-effaced,
yet still lingering image of God rested upon her beautiful face
more distinctly than he had ever seen it elsewhere. The thought of
that image becoming gradually blurred and obliterated by sin--of
this seemingly exquisite and budding flower growing into a coarse,
rank weed--was revolting to his mind.






CHAPTER V.

PLAIN TALK.





At last the sound of mirth and laughter ceased, and the house became
quiet.

Lottie sat warming her feet at the glowing coals in her room,
before retiring. A dreamy smile played upon her face, coming and
going with passing thoughts, even as the firelight flickered upon
it.

She was in an unusually amiable mood, for this affair with Hemstead
promised richly. If he had been an ordinary and polished society-man,
the flirtation would have been humdrum,  like a score of others.
But he was so delightfully fresh and honest, and yet so clever
withal, that her eyes sparkled with anticipating mirth as she saw
him in various attitudes of awkward love-making, and then dropping
helplessly into the abyss of his own great, but empty heart, on
learning the vainness of his passion.

"He finds me 'more interesting than some doctrines,' indeed! I'll
put all his dry doctrines to rout in less than a week. I'll drive
text-books and professors out of his head, and everything else
(save myself) out of his heart, for a little while. But after he
gets back to Michigan, the doctrines will come creeping back into
their old place, and he will get comfortably over it like the rest.
In the mean while, as substantial and useful results, I will have
my rare bit of sport, and he will know more about the wicked world
against which he is to preach. By and by he will marry a pious Western
giantess, whose worst dissipation is a  Sunday-school picnic, and
will often petrify her soul with horror and wonder by describing
that awful little pagan, Lottie Marsden.

"And a heathen I am in very truth. Where are missionaries  needed
more than in Fifth Avenue? They had better not come, though; for
if we would not eat them, we would freeze them."

"What are you thinking about, Lottie, that you are smiling  so
sweetly?" asked her room-mate, Bel Parton.

"In truth, it was a sweet thought," said Lottie, her laugh awakening
sudden echoes in the still house, and sounding as oddly as a bird's
song at night. "I'm glad Frank Hemstead  doesn't know. If he did,
I should appall instead of fascinating him."

"I think your plot against him is very wrong,--wicked, indeed. He
is such a sincere, good young man, that I like it less and less.
I couldn't do such a thing."

"Still you can look on and enjoy the fun, and that is all you have
to do. Poor Bel, you are always in need of an M. D.'s or a D. D.'s
care. I have forsworn both."

So spoke Lottie in the arrogance of her perfect health and abounding
beauty, and then (such are the seeming  contradictions of character)
she knelt and appeared as a  white-robed saint at her devotions. But
the parrot-like prayer that she hastily mumbled was of no possible
value to any one.  She had continued the habit from childhood,
and it was mainly habit. The other motive was something like the
feeling  of a careless Catholic, who crosses himself, though he
cannot explain what good it does him.

A moment later she might have been taken as a model of sleeping
innocence.

This world is evidently sadly out of joint. We all know of the most
gentle, lovely, unselfish spirits, beautiful to Heaven's eye, that
are enshrined in painfully plain caskets.  In the instance of Lottie
Marsden, the casket was of nature's most exquisite workmanship,
but it held a tarnished jewel.

It was with some misgivings that Hemstead looked  forward to meeting
his "cousin," on the following morning.  Would she be as radiantly
beautiful, as piquant, and withal as kindly and frank as on the
previous evening? Even his limited experience of the world had shown
him that in the matter-of-fact and searching light of the morning
many of the illusions of the night vanish. He had noted with no
little surprise that ladies seemingly young and blooming had come
down to breakfast looking ten years older; so he had said to himself,
"She dazzled me last night. I shall see her as she is to-day."

Being an early riser he entered the cheerful breakfast-room
considerably before the others, and in a moment was entranced by
the view from the windows.

The severe north-east storm had expended itself during the night,
and its fine, sharp crystals had changed into  snowflakes. As an
angry man after many hard cutting words relents somewhat and speaks
calmly if still coldly, so nature, that had been stingingly severe
the evening before, was now quietly letting fall a few final hints
of the harsh mood that was passing away. Even while he looked, the
sun broke through a rift over the eastern mountains, and lighted up
the landscape as with genial smiles. It shone, not on an ordinary
and prosaic world, but rather on one that had been touched by magic
during the night and transformed into the wonder-land of dreams.

The trees that in the dusk of the previous night had writhed and
groaned and struck their frozen branches  together, gesticulating
like despairing anguish, now stood serene, and decked more daintily
than June would robe them. Whiter even than the pink-tinged blossoms
of May, was the soft wet snow that incased every twig, limb, and
spray. The more he looked, the more the beauty and the wonder of
the scene grew upon him. The sun was dispersing  the clouds and
adding the element of splendor to that of beauty. It became one of
the supreme moments of his life, and in the vanishing beauty of an
earthly scene he received an earnest of the perfect world beyond.

"With the exception of the broad dark river," he thought, "this
might be the Millennial morn, and nature standing decked in her
spotless ascension robes, waiting in breathless expectancy."

But his musings were unexpectedly interrupted, for just at this
moment Lottie Marsden put her hand lightly on his arm and said,
"Cousin Frank--pardon me--Mr. Hemstead, what is the matter? You
look as rapt as if you saw a vision."

He turned and seemed as startled as if he had, for standing  by
him and looking inquiringly into his face was a being that, with
her brilliant eyes and exquisitely clear and delicate complexion,
seemed as beautiful, and at the same time as frail and ready to
vanish, as the snow-wreaths without.

She saw the strong admiration and almost wonder depicted on his
open face, though she seemed so innocently oblivious of it, and for
a moment left him under the spell, then said, "Are you so resentful
at my desertion last evening that you won't speak to me?"

"Look there," he replied, and he pointed to the fairy-land without.

Lottie's wonder and delight were almost equal to his own, for she
had never witnessed such a scene before.

"I am so glad I came!" she said. "We see nothing like this in the
city. Look at those snowy mountains. How vast and white they are!"

"And look at that little tree with its red berries gleaming against
the snowy foil. They look like those rulsy ear-rings against the
whiteness of your neck."

She looked at him quickly and humorously, asking, "Where did you
learn the art of complimenting?"

"I had no thought of trivial compliment in the presence of a scene
like this," he answered gravely; "I was awed by the beauty I saw,
and it seemed as if the Great Artist must be near. I wished to
call your attention to the truth that, like all His work, the least
thing is perfect. That little tree with its red berries is beautiful
as well as the mountain. I now am glad too that you came, though
I dreaded any one's coming before, and the necessity of returning
to common-place  life. But suddenly, and as silently as one of those
snow-flakes, you appear, and I am startled to find you in keeping
with the scene, instead of an intrusion."

"And do I seem to you like a snow-flake--as pure and as cold?" she
asked, bending upon him her brilliant eyes.

"Not as cold, I trust, and if you were as pure you would not be
human. But your beauty seemed to me as marvellous  as that of the
scene I had been wondering at. I am not versed in society's disguises,
Miss Marsden, and can better express my thoughts than hide them.
You know you are very beautiful. Why should I not say so as well
as involuntarily express the fact in my face as I did a moment ago,
and as every one does, I suppose, who meets you.  There is nothing
brought to your attention more often, and more pressed upon you.
It must be so. Does not your beauty cause you much anxiety?"

"What a funny question!" laughed Lottie. "Your frankness  is
certainly as transparent as those snow-crystals there.  I cannot
say that it does. Why should it, even granting that it exists
independently of your disordered imagination?"

"It exposes you to a temptation very hard to resist. Such beauty
as yours should be but the reflex of character. I once saw, in an
art gallery of New York, a marble face so white, pure, and sweet,
that it has ever remained in my memory as an emblem of spiritual
beauty. Suppose every one that came in should touch that face, and
some with coarse and grimy fingers, what a smutched and tawdry look
it would soon have. You cannot help the admiring glances, flattering
words, and the homage that ever waits on beauty, any more than
the marble face the soiling touch of any Vandal  hand; but you can
prevent your soul from being stained and smirched with vanity and
pride."

"I never had any one to talk to me in this way," said Lottie, looking
demurely down. "Perhaps I should have been better if I had. I fear
you think me very vain and conceited."

"I should think it very strange if you were not somewhat vain. And
yet you do not act as if you were."

"Supposing I am vain. What difference does it make, if no one knows
it?" she asked abruptly.

"There are two who always will know it."

"Who?"

"God and yourself. And by and by all masks must be dropped, and
all the world see us as we are."

"Do you believe that?" she asked, a little startled at the thought.

"I know it," he replied, in a tone of quiet confidence that carries
more conviction than loud assertion. "Moreover, your beauty involves
a heavy burden of responsibility."

"Really, Mr. Hemstead, if you keep on you will prove beauty a great
misfortune, whether I possess it or not."

"Far from it."

"Granting for sake of argument your premise, how am I burdened with
responsibility?"

"Would it not almost break your heart, if your honorable father
were misappropriating money intrusted to his care?"

"Don't suggest such a thing."

"Only for the sake of illustration. Suppose he had the qualities
and position which led a great many to place their means in his
hands; would that not increase his responsibility?"

"Yes, if he accepted such trusts."

"Are there not more valuable possessions than dollars, stocks,
and bonds? Every one is more or less fascinated, drawn, and won by
beauty, and to the beautiful the most sacred thoughts and feelings
of the heart are continually intrusted.  History and biography show
that beautiful women, if true, gentle, and unselfish, have great
power with their own sex, and almost unbounded influence over men.
Your power, therefore, is subtle, penetrating, and reaches the inner
life, the very warp and woof of character. If a beautiful statue
can ennoble and refine, a beautiful woman can accomplish infinitely
more. She can be a constant inspiration, a suggestion  of the perfect
life beyond and an earnest of it. All power brings responsibility,
even that which a man achieves or buys; but surely, if one receives
Heaven's most exquisite gifts, bestowed as directly as this marvellous
beauty without, and so is made pre-eminent in power and influence,
she is under a double responsibility to use that power for good.
That a woman can take the royal gift of her own beauty, a divine
heritage, one of the most suggestive relics of Eden still left
among us, and daily sacrifice it on the poorest and meanest of
altars--her own vanity--is to me hard to understand.  It is scarcely
respectable heathenism. But to use her beauty as a lure is far
worse. Do we condemn wreckers, who place false, misleading lights
upon a dangerous  coast? What is every grace of a coquette, but a
false light, leading often to more sad and hopeless wreck?"

No man had ever told Lottie more plainly that she was beautiful,
than Hemstead, and yet she disliked his compliments  wofully. Her
face fairly grew pale under his words.  Had he learned of her plot?
Had he read her thoughts, and been informed of her past life? Did
quiet satire and denunciation lurk under this seeming frankness?
She was for the moment perplexed and troubled. Worse still, he
compelled her to see these things in a new light, and her conscience
echoed his words.

But her first impulse was to learn whether he was speaking  generally,
or pointedly at her; so she asked, in some little trepidation,
"Has any naughty girl tried to treat you badly, that you speak so
strongly?"

He laughed outright at this question. "No one has had a chance,"
he said; "and I do not think there are many who would take it.
Moreover, I imagine that one of your proud belles would not even
condescend to flirt with a poor awkward fellow like me. But I am
not a croaking philosopher,  and look on the bright side of the
world. It has always treated me quite as well as I deserved. I often
think the world is not so bad as described, and that it would be
better, if it had a chance."

"Have you seen much of it, Mr. Hemstead?"

"I cannot say that I have. I have read and thought about it far
more than I have seen. On account of my limited means and student
life, my excursions have been few and far between. I have already
proved to you what an awkward stranger I am to society. But in
thought and fancy I have been a great rambler, and like to picture
to myself all kinds of scenes, past and present, and to analyze
all kinds of character."

"I hope you won't analyze mine," she said, looking at him rather
distrustfully. "I should not like to be dissected before I was
dead."

"I wish all were as able to endure analysis as yourself, Miss
Marsden. In any case, you have no reason to fear a severe critic
in me."

"Why not?"

"Because you have been so lenient towards me. I have received more
kindness from you, a stranger, than from my own kindred."

"You are very grateful."

"Shakespeare declares ingratitude a 'marble-hearted fiend.'"

"You evidently are not 'marble-hearted.'"

"Though possibly a fiend. Thank you."

"I wish there were no worse to fear."

"You need not have occasion to fear any."

"Well, I can't say that I do very much. Perhaps it would be better
for me if I did."

"Why so?"

"Then I should be more afraid to do wrong. Miss Parton  cannot do
wrong with any comfort at all."

"Well, that would be a queer religion which consisted only in being
afraid of the devil and his imps."

"What is religion? I am foolish in asking such a question  however,
for I suppose it would take you a year to answer it, and they will
all be down to breakfast in a few moments."

"O, no, I can answer it in a sentence. True religion is worshipping
God in love and faith, and obeying Him."

"Is that all?" exclaimed Lottie, in unfeigned astonishment.

"That is a great deal."

"Perhaps it is. You theologians have a way of preaching  awfully
long and difficult sermons from simple texts.  But I never got as
simple an idea of religion as that from our minister."

"I fear you think I have been preaching for the last half-hour.
Perhaps I can best apologize for my long homilies this morning by
explaining. When an artist is in his best mood, he wishes to be
at his easel. The same is true of every one who does something con
amore. When I saw the transfigured world this morning, it was like
a glimpse into heaven, and--"

"And a naughty little sinner came in just at that moment, and
got the benefit of your mood," interrupted Lottie.  "Well, I have
listened to your sermon and understand it, and that is more than I
can say of many I have heard. It certainly was pointed, and seemed
pointed at me, and I have heard it said that it is proof of a good
sermon for each one to go away feeling that he has been distinctly
preached at. But permit me as a friend, Mr. Hemstead, to suggest that
this will not answer in our day. I fear, from my little foretaste,
that people will not be able to sit comfortably under your homilies,
and unless you intend to preach out in the back-woods, you must
modify your style."

"That is where I do intend to preach. At least upon the frontiers
of our great West."

"O, how dismal!" she exclaimed. "And can you, a young, and I suppose
an ambitious man, look forward to being buried alive, as it were,
in those remote regions?"

"I assure you I do not propose to be buried alive at the West, or
spiritually smothered, as you hinted, in a fashionable  church at
the East. I think the extreme West, where states and society are
forming with such marvellous rapidity, is just the place for a
young, and certainly for an ambitious man. Is it nothing to have
a part in founding and shaping an empire?"

"You admit that you are ambitious, then."

"Yes."

"Is that right?"

"I think so."

"Our minister inveighs against ambition, as if it were one of the
deadly sins."

"He means the ambition that is all for self. That is as wrong and
contemptible as the beauty that is miserable without  a looking-glass.
An ardent desire to obtain my Divine Master's approval, and to be
worthy of it--to be successful in serving a noble cause--cannot be
wrong."

She looked at his earnest face and eyes, that seemed to glow with
hidden fire, almost wistfully; and said with a tinge of sadness, "You
will feel very differently I fear, twenty years hence. Enthusiasm
is a rare thing in the city, and I imagine it is soon quenched
everywhere."

"So it is; it needs constant rekindling."

Just then Mrs. Marchmont and Mr. Dimmerly appeared, and soon after
they all sat down to a late breakfast.






CHAPTER VI.

A SLEIGH-RIDE AND SOMETHING MORE.





Lottie assumed an unusual degree of gayety during the early part
of the meal, but her flow of spirits seemed unequal, and to flag
towards the last. She had sudden fits of abstraction, during which
her jetty eyebrows contracted into unwonted frowns.

Her practical joke did not promise so well as on the evening
before. That unexpected half-hour's talk had shown some actions in
a new light. She did not mind doing wicked things that had a spice
of hardihood and venturesomeness in them. But to do what had been
made to appear mean and dishonorable was another thing, and she was
provoked enough at Hemstead for having unconsciously given that
aspect to her action and character, and still more annoyed and
perplexed that her conscience should so positively side with him.
Thus it will be seen that her conscience was unawakened, rather
than seared and deadened.

As she came to know Hemstead better, she found that he was different
from what she had expected. The conventional idea of a theological
student had dwelt in her mind; and she had expected to find a
rather narrow and spiritually  conceited man, full of the clerical
mannerisms which she had often heard laughed at. But she saw that
Hemstead's  awkwardness would wear away, through familiarity with
society, and that, when at ease, he was simple and manly in manner.
She also perceived that this seclusion from the world, which was
the cause of his diffidence, had been employed in training  and
richly storing his mind. Moreover, to one so accustomed  to the
insincerity of society, his perfect frankness of speech and manner
was a novelty, interesting, if not always pleasing. She read his
thoughts as she would an open page, and saw that he esteemed her
as a true, sincere girl, kind and womanly, and that he had for her
the strongest respect. She feared that when he discovered her true
self he would scorn her to loathing. Not that she cared, except
that her pride would be hurt. But as she was more proud than vain,
she feared this honest man's verdict.

But soon her old reckless self triumphed. "Of course what I am
doing will seem awful to him," she thought. "I knew that before I
commenced. He shall not preach me out of my fun in one half-hour.
If I could make him love me in spite of what I am, it would be the
greater triumph.  After all, I am only acting as all the girls in
my set do when they get a chance. It's not as bad as he makes out."

Still that was an eventful half-hour, when they looked out upon a
transfigured world together; and while she saw nature in her rarest
and purest beauty, she had also been given a glimpse into the more
beautiful world of truth, where God dwells.

But, as the morning advanced, good impulses and better feelings
and thoughts vanished, even as the snow-wreaths were dropping from
branch and spray, leaving them as bare as before. By the time the
sleigh drove up to the door she was as bent as ever upon victimizing
the "Western giant," as the conspirators had named him. She was
her old,  decided, resolute self; all the more resolute because
facing, to her, a new hindrance,--her own conscience, which Hemstead
had unwittingly awakened; and it said to its uncomfortable  possessor
some rather severe things that day.

If Lottie were Bel Parton, she would have been in a miserably
undecided state. But it was her nature to carry out what she had
begun, if for no other reason than that she had begun it, and she
was not one to give up a frolic at anyone's scolding,--even her
own.

As she tripped down the broad stairs in a rich cloak trimmed with
fur, she reminded Hemstead of some rare tropical bird, and De Forrest
indulged in many notes of  admiration. Lottie received these as a
matter of course, but looked at the student with genuine interest.
His expression seemed to satisfy her, for she turned away to hide
a smile that meant mischief.

It was quietly arranged that Hemstead should sit beside her, and
he felicitated himself over their artifice as if it were rare good
fortune.

Though the sun and the rising breeze had shaken off the clustering
snow to a great extent, the evergreens still bent beneath their
beautiful burdens, some straight cedars  reminding one of vigorous
age, where snowy hair and beard alone suggest the flight of years.

Though the face of nature was so white, it was not the face of
death. There was a sense of movement and life which was in accord
with their own spirits and rapid motion.  Snow-birds fluttered and
twittered in weedy thickets by the way-side, breakfasting on the
seeds that fell like black specks upon the snow. The bright sunlight
had lured the red squirrels from their moss-lined nests in hollow
trees, and their barking was sometimes heard above the chime of
the bells.

"There goes a parson crow," cried Addie Marchmont.  "How black and
solemn he looks against the snow!"

"Why are crows called parsons, Mr. Hemstead?" asked Lottie, as a
child might.

"Indeed, I don't know. For as good a reason, I suppose, as that
some girls are called witches."

She gave him a quick, keen look, and said, "I hope you mean nothing
personal."

"I should never charge you with being a witch, Miss Marsden, but
I might with witchery."

"A distinction without a difference," she said, seeking to lead
him on.

"He means," explained De Forrest, "that you might be bewitching if
you chose."

"Hush, Julian, you leave no room for the imagination," said Lottie,
frowningly.

"Look at that farm-yard, Miss Marsden," said Hemstead.  "The occupants
seem as glad that the storm is over as we are. What pictures of
placid content those ruminating cows are under that sunny shed. See
the pranks of that colt which the boy is trying to lead to water.
I wish I were on his back, with the prairie before me."

"Indeed, are you so anxious to escape present company?"

"Now I didn't say that. But we have passed by, and I fear you did
not see the pretty rural picture to which I called your attention.
Were I an artist I would know where to make a sketch to-day."

"I think you will find that Miss Marsden's taste differs very
widely from yours," said De Forrest; "that is, if you give us to
understand that you would seek your themes in a barn-yard, and set
your easel upon a muck-heap. Though your pictures might not rank
high they would still be very rank."

Even Lottie joined slightly in the general and not  complimentary
laugh at Hemstead which followed this thrust, but he, with heightened
color, said, "You cannot criticise my picture, Mr. De Forrest, for
it does not exist. Therefore  I must conclude that your satire is
directed against my choice of place and subjects."

"Yes, as with the offence of Denmark's king, they 'smell to heaven.'"

"I appeal to you, Miss Marsden, was not the scent of hay and the
breath of the cattle as we caught them passing, sweet and wholesome?"

"I cannot deny that they were."

"You have judicial fairness and shall be umpire in this question.
And now, Mr. De Forrest, there is a celebrated and greatly admired
picture in a certain gallery, representing a scene from the Roman
Saturnalia. You do not object to that, with its classic accessories,
as a work of art?"

"Not at all."

"And yet it portrays a corruption that does in truth 'offend heaven.'
Your muck-heap, which did not enter my thought at all, and would
not have been in my picture, could I paint one, would have been
wholesome in  comparison. Have I made a point, Judge Marsden?"

"I think you have."

"Finally, Mr. De Forrest, what are we to do with the fact that some
of the greatest painters in the world have  employed their brushes
upon just such scenes as these, which perhaps offend your nose
and taste more than they do heaven, and that pictures such as that
farm-yard would suggest adorn the best galleries of Europe?"

"What artists of note have painted barn-yard scenes?" asked De
Forrest, in some confusion.

"Well, there is Herring, the famous English artist, for one."

"'Herring' indeed. You are evidently telling a fish Story," said
De Forrest, contemptuously.

"No, he is not," said Lottie. "Herring is a famous painter, I am
told, and we have some engravings of his works."

"And I have read somewhere," continued Hemstead, "that his painting
of an English farm-yard is the most celebrated of his works.
Moreover, Judge Marsden, I must ask of you another decision as
to the evidence in this case.  I affirm that I did not call your
attention to the farm-yard itself, but to its occupants. Is not
that true?"

"I cannot deny that it is."

"We all know that many eminent artists have made the painting of
animals a specialty, and among them are such world-renowned names
as Landseer and Rosa Bonheur.  Moreover, in the numerous pictures
of the Nativity we often find the homely details of the stable
introduced. One of Rubens' paintings of this sacred and favorite
subject, which hangs in the gallery of the Louvre, represents two
oxen feeding at a rack."

"Come, Julian, hand over your sword. It won't do for you or any
one to sit in judgment on such painters as Mr.  Hemstead has named.
You are fairly beaten. I shall admire barn-yards in future, through
thick and thin."

"That is hardly a fair conclusion from any testimony of mine,"
said Hemstead. "A barn-yard may be all that Mr.  De Forrest says of
it, but I am sure you will always find pleasure in seeing a fine
frolicsome horse or a group of patient cattle. The homely accessories
may, and sometimes may not, add to the picture."

"How do you come to know so much about pictures?  Theology has
nothing to do with art."

"I dissent from Judge Marsden's decision now, most  emphatically,"
replied Hemstead. "Is not true art fidelity to nature?"

"Yes, so it is claimed."

"And where does nature come from? God is the Divine Artist, and
is furnishing themes for all other artists. God is the author of
landscapes, mountains, rivers, of scenes like that we saw this morning,
or of a fine face and a noble form, as truly as of a chapter in the
Bible. He manifests Himself in these things. Now fine paintings,
statuary, and music bring out the hidden meanings of nature,
and therefore more clearly God's thought. Theology, or knowledge
concerning our Creator, is a science to which everything can minister,
and surely the appreciation of the beautiful should be learned in
connection with the Author of all beauty."

"I never thought of God in that light before," said Lottie.  "He
has always seemed like one watching to catch me at something wrong.
Our solemn old Sunday-school teacher used to say to us children
just before we went home, 'Now during the week whenever you are
tempted to do anything wrong, remember the text, "Thou, God, seest
me."' When wasn't I tempted to do wrong? and I had for a long time
the uncomfortable feeling that two great eyes were always staring
at me. But this isn't sleigh-riding chit-chat," and she broke into
a merry little trill from a favorite opera.

Hemstead, with his strong love of the beautiful, could not help
watching her with deepening interest. The rapid motion, the music
of the bells, the novel scenery of the  sun-lighted, glittering
world around her, and, chief of all, her own abounding health and
animal life, combined to quicken her excitable nature into the
keenest enjoyment. From her red lips came ripples of laughter,
trills from operas, sallies of fun, that kept the entire party from
the thought of  heaviness, and to honest-minded Hemstead were the
evidences of a happy, innocent heart.

With secret exultation she saw how rapidly and unconsciously  the
unwary student was passing under the spell of her beauty and
witchery.

One must have been cursed with a sluggish, half-dead body and a
torpid soul, had he not responded to the  influences under which
our gay party spent the next few hours.  Innumerable snow-flakes
had carried down from the air every particle of impurity, and left
it sweet and wholesome enough to seem the elixir of immortal youth.
It was so tempered also, that it only braced and stimulated. The raw,
pinching coldness of the previous day was gone. The sun, undimmed
by a cloud, shone genially, and eaves facing the south were dripping,
the drops falling like glittering gems.

Now and then a breeze would career down upon them, and, catching
the light snow from the adjacent fence, would cast it into their
faces as a mischievous school-boy might.

"Stop that!" cried Lottie to one of these sportive zephyrs.  "De
you call that a gust of wind? I declare it was a viewless  sprite,
or a party of snow elves, playing their mad pranks upon us."

"I prefer fairies less cold and ethereal," said De Forrest, with
a meaning look at the speaker.

"What do you prefer, Mr. Hemstead?" she asked. "But where we people
of the world speak of fairies, sprites, and nymphs, I suppose you
permit yourself to think only of angels."

"Were it so," he replied, "I should still be of the same mind as
Mr. De Forrest, and be glad that you are not an angel."

"Why so?"

"You might use your wings and leave us."

"Were I one, I would not leave you after that speech.  But see how
far I am from it. I weigh one hundred and fifteen pounds."

"I wish you were no farther off than that."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not our weight in avoirdupois that drags us down.  But I am
not going to preach any more to-day. Listen to the bells--how they
echo from the hill-side!"

"Yes, Julian, listen to Bel," said Lottie to De Forrest, who was
about to speak. "I'm talking to Mr. Hemstead.  See those snow-crystals
on my muff. How can you account for so many odd and beautiful
shapes?"

"To me all the countless forms in nature," said Hemstead, "prove an
infinite mind gratifying itself. They are expressions  of creative
thought."

"Nonsense! God doesn't bother with such little things as these."

"We do not know what seems small or great to Him.  The microscope
reveals as much in one direction as the telescope in another, and
the common house-fly seems in size midway in animal life."

"And do you believe that the Divine hand is employed in forming
such trifles as these?"

"The Divine will is. But these trifles make the avalanche and the
winter's protection for next year's harvest."

"What is that?" asked Harcourt from the front seat, where he was
driving.

"Do you know," cried Lottie, "that Mr Hemstead thinks everything
we see, even to nature's smallest trifles, an  'expression of the
Divine creative thought.'"

"Is that scene such an expression?" asked Harcourt, with a sneering
laugh, in which the others joined.

By the road-side there was a small hovel, at the door of which a
half-fed, ill-conditioned pig was squealing. When they were just
opposite, a slatternly, carroty-headed woman opened the door, and
raised her foot to drive the clamorous beast away. Altogether, it
was as squalid and repulsive a picture as could well be imagined.

"Yes," replied Lottie, looking into his face with twinkling eyes,
"was that sweet pastoral scene an expression of creative thought?"

"The woman certainly was not," he answered, reddening.  "A thought
may be greatly perverted."

"Whatever moral qualities may be asserted of her manners,  costume,
and character," said Harcourt, "she is not to blame for the cast
of her features and the color of her hair. I scarcely know of
an artist who would express any such thought, unless he wished to
satirize humanity."

"You can call up before you the portrait of some beautiful  woman,
can you not, Mr. Harcourt?"

"Let me assist you," cried De Forrest, pulling from his inner pocket
a photograph of Lottie.

"Hush, Julian. I'm sorry you do not appreciate this grave argument
more; I'll take that picture from you, if you don't behave better."

"Well, I have a picture before me now, that satisfies me fully,"
said Mr. Harcourt, turning to Lottie with a smiling bow.

"Now, suppose that you had painted just such a likeness and finished
it. Suppose I should come afterwards, and, without destroying your
picture utterly, should blend with those features the forbidding
aspect of the woman we have just seen, would you not say that your
thought was greatly perverted?"

"I should think I would."

"Well, Mother Eve was the true expression of the Divine Artist's
creative thought, and the woman we saw was the perversion of it.
You can trace no evil thing to the source of all good. Perfection
is not the author of imperfection."

"Who does the perverting, then?" asked Lottie.

"Evil."

"I don't think it fair that one face and form should be perverted
into hideousness, and mother left with something of the first
perfection."

"Evil is never fair, Miss Marsden."

"But is it only evil? I have heard plain children told, when
resenting their ugliness, that it was wicked, for they were just
as God made them."

"Can you think of a better way to make a young girl hate God than
to tell her that?"

"But suppose it's true."

"I am sure it is not. Just the opposite is true. The ugly
and deformed are as evil has marred them, and not as God has made
them. By seeking the Divine Artist's aid more than humanity's first
perfection can be regained.  It is possible for even that wretched
creature we saw to attain an outward loveliness exceeding that of
any woman now living."

"That passes beyond the limit of my imagination," said Harcourt.

"Absurd!" muttered De Forrest.

"I fear you are not orthodox," said Bel.

"That means you do not agree with me. But please do not think that
because I am a minister you must talk upon subjects that are rather
grave and deep for a sleighing party."

"That's right, Cousin Frank," said Addie. "Dr. Beams will want you
to preach for him next Sunday. I advise you to reserve your thunder
till that occasion, when you may come out as strong as you please."

"'Chinese thunder' at best," whispered Harcourt to Addie; but all
heard him.

Hemstead bit his lip and said nothing, but Lottie spoke up quickly:
"No matter about the 'thunder,' Mr. Harcourt.  That is only noise
under any circumstances. But suppose there is the lightning of
truth in what Mr. Hemstead says?"

"And suppose there is not?" he replied, with a shrug.

Hemstead gave Lottie a quick, pleased look, which Bel and De Forrest
smilingly noted, and the conversation changed to lighter topics.

As they were passing through a small hamlet some miles back from
the river, a bare-headed man came running out from a country store
and beckoned them to stop, saying: "We're going to give our dominie
a donation party to-night.  Perhaps Mrs. Marehmont will do suthin'
for us, or likely you'll all like to drive over and help the young
folks enjoy themselves."

"Capital!" cried Lottie; "I've always wanted to attend a country
donation. Do you think we can come, Addie?"

"O, certainly, if you wish, but I fear you won't enjoy it.  You
will not meet any of our 'set' there."

"I don't wish to meet them. I want to meet the other 'set' and have
a frolic."

"It will be moonlight, and we will have the drive, which will be
the best part of it, you will find," said Harcourt.  "Yes, we will
come."

"Them folks thinks that they's made of different flesh and blood
from the other 'set,' as they call us, and that pretty young woman
wants to come as she would go to a menagerie," muttered the man
as he went back to the store.  "No matter, let 'em come, they will
help us make up the salary."

"Of course, Mr. Hemstead, you will enter upon this expedition with
great zeal, as it will be to the advantage of one of your fraternity."

"I think, with Mr. Harcourt, that the ride will be the best part
of it."

"O, for shame! Can it be true that two of even your trade can never
agree?"

"Long ages of controversy prove that," said Harcourt.

"I think your profession has done more to keep the world in hot
water than ours, Mr. Harcourt."

"We at least agree among ourselves."

"All the worse, perhaps, for the world."

"That's rather severe if you refer to the proverb, 'When rogues
fall out, honest men get their dues,'" said Lottie.

"I supposed we were talking in jest; I was."

"You evidently belong to the church militant, since you strike
back so hard even in jest," said Harcourt. "Very well, since you
are so able to take care of yourself I shall have no compunctions
in regard to your fate."

Hemstead did not understand this remark, but the others did,
and significant glances were exchanged. He turned inquiringly to
Lottie, feeling that in a certain sense he had an ally in her, but
she seemed looking away abstractedly as if she had not heeded the
remark. She was too quick to be caught easily, and the conviction
grew upon him that while the others from his calling and difference
in views and tastes had a natural aversion, she was inclined to be
friendly. And yet she puzzled him not a little at times, as now for
instance, when she turned and said, "I suppose there are a great
many nice young men at your seminary."

"I never heard them called' nice young men,'" he replied, looking
at her keenly.

"O, I beg your pardon,--good, pious, devotional young men, I mean."

"All ought to be that; do you not think so?"

"Well, yes, I think so, since they are to become ministers."

"But not otherwise?"

"I didn't say that. There's a hint for you, Julian."

De Forrest's reply was a contemptuous shrug and laugh.  It would
be anything but agreeable to him to be thought "good, pious, and
devotional,"--qualities not in demand at his club, nor insisted on
by Lottie, and entirely repugnant to his tastes.

"Do they all intend to be missionaries as well as yourself?"  she
continued.

"O, no; some no doubt will take city churches, and marry wealthy
wives."

"Would that be wrong?"

"I am not the judge. It's a matter of taste and conscience."

"Would you not marry a lady of wealth?"

"I would marry the woman I loved; that is, if I could get her."

"Well added," said De Forrest.

"Yes, sir, I agree with you. Every man had better add that."

"Indeed they had," said Lottie, with a mischievous twinkle in her
eyes.

"There is always a chance for a man who will never take 'no' for
an answer," said De Forrest with a light laugh.

"Do you think so?" she said, lifting her eyebrows  questioningly.
"I agree with Mr. Hemstead. It's a matter of taste and conscience."

"Do you intend to be a missionary, Mr. Hemstead?" asked Bel Parton.

"I hope so," he replied, quietly.

"Yes," said Lottie; "just think of it. He is going away out to
the jumping-off place at the West, where he will have the border
ruffians on one side and the scalping Indians on the other. You
said you would marry the woman you loved, if you could. Do you think
any real nice girl would go with you to such a horrible place?"

"I'm sure I don't know. If the one I want won't  venture, I can go
alone."

"Do you think she'll go?" asked Lottie, so innocently that the
others had no slight task in controlling their faces.

"Who will go?" said Hemstead, quickly.

"The one whom you said you wanted to."

"Now I'm sure I did not mention any one," said  Hemstead, blushing
and laughing.

"Well, you did not exactly speak her name."

"No, I should think not, since I don't know it myself."

"How provoking!" pouted Lottie. "I thought we were going to have
a nice little romance."

"It's a pity I've nothing to tell, in view of my sympathizing
audience," he replied, with a glance at the gigglers on the other
seats.

"But I have been told," said Lottie, "that in emergencies committees
have been appointed to select wives for missionaries,  and that
there are excellent women who are willing to sacrifice themselves
for the sake of the cause."

An explosion of laughter followed these words, but she looked at
the others in innocent surprise.

"That's a funny speech for you to make so gravely," said Hemstead.
"I fear you are quizzing me. Your missionary lore certainly exceeds
mine in regard to the 'committees.' But there will be no emergency
in my case, and I should be sorry to have any woman, excellent or
otherwise, sacrifice herself for me."

"I have certainly heard so," said Lottie, positively.

"I fear you have heard more to the prejudice of missionaries  and
their works than in their favor," he said somewhat gravely.

"But I am willing to hear the other side," she whispered in his
ear.

"Now I protest against that," said De Forrest.

"I'll give you the privilege of whispering to Bel," said Lottie,
sweetly.

"O, thank you," replied De Forrest, with a shrug.

"You can also help me out," she continued, as the sleigh stopped
at Mrs. Marchmont's door.

As he did so he whispered in her ear, "Capital, Lottie, you are a
star actress, and always my bright particular star."

"Don't be sentimental, Julian," was her only response.

At this moment Lottie's brother Dan fired a snow-ball that carried
off Mr. Hemstead's hat; at which all laughed, and expected to see
the young theologian assume a look of offended dignity. He disappointed
them by good-naturedly springing out after his hat, and was soon
romping with the boy and Mrs. Marchmont's two younger children.
This was too tempting to Lottie, who joined the frolic at once.

Hemstead laughingly allowed himself to be their victim, and skilfully
threw great snow-balls so as just to miss them, while they pelted
him till he was white, and, as if utterly defeated, he led them a
breathless chase up and down the broad path. Their cries and laughter
brought half the household to the doors and windows to watch the
sport.

De Forrest ventured down from the piazza, with the thought that
he could throw a spiteful ball or two at one he already disliked a
little, as well as despised. But Hemstead immediately showed what
a self-sacrificing victim he was to Lottie and the children by
almost demolishing De Forrest with a huge snow-ball that stung his
ear sharply, got down his neck, spoiling his collar, and necessitating
such a toilet that he was late for dinner.

His plight took Lottie out of the field also, for she sank on the
lower step of the piazza, her hand upon her side, helpless with
laughter.

Hemstead retreated to a side door, where he shook himself  after
the manner of a polar bear, and escaped to his room.






CHAPTER VII.

ANOTHER SPELL THAN BEAUTY'S.





De Forrest tried to laugh at his discomfiture when he appeared at
the dinner-table, but he was evidently annoyed and vexed with its
author.

"It was very nice of you, Mr. Hemstead," said Lottie, "to permit
youself to be pelted by us. You evidently did not think us worthy
of your steel. But I fear you gave Julian a strong compliment."

"I only returned one of his."

"But he did not hit you."

"He meant to. We form our most correct judgment of people sometimes
from what they intend, rather than what they do."

"Well, I thank you for my share of the sport."

"And I thank you for mine."

"What occasion have you to thank me, when I almost put your eyes
out with snow?"

"You did not so blind them but that I could see a face aglow with
exercise. That made a pleasing contrast to the cold white snow."

"Frank, Frank, you will make Lottie vain," said Mrs.  Marchmont.
"I did not know that complimenting was permitted to you."

"That is all right, sister," said Mr. Dimmerly. "That's where
he shows his good blood and connection with an old family. He is
gallant to the ladies. They can't get that out of him, even at a
theological seminary."

Hemstead's blushing confusion increased the laugh at this speech.

"O, mother," exclaimed Addie, "we are all going on a frolic to-night.
You know that poor, forlorn little minister at Scrub Oaks, who
has six children, and gets but six  hundred a year? Well, they are
going to give him a donation to-night, so a dilapidated pillar of
the church told us. We were invited to come, and Lottie wants to
go."

"Very well, my dear, since you and our guests wish it."

"Now, auntie, that's very sweet of you to answer so," said Lottie.
"I want to see the queer, awkward country people who go to such
places. They amuse me vastly; don't they you, Mr. Hemstead?"

"They interest me."

"O, it wouldn't be proper for you to say 'amuse.'"

"Nor would it be exactly true."

"Why, Lottie," said Addie, "you know that ministers only think of
people as a sad lot that must be saved."

"We'll help make a jolly lot there, to-night," said Lottie, with a
swift glance at Hemstead's contracting brows. "Moreover,  auntie,
I want to see what a minister that lives on six hundred a year
looks like. We give our pastor ten thousand."

"You need not go so far for that purpose, Miss Marsden," said
Hemstead, quietly: "that is all I shall get."

"What!" she exclaimed, dropping her knife and fork.

"That, in all probability, will be my salary at first. It may be
but five hundred."

"Is that all they pay you for going out among the border ruffians?"

"That is the average."

"I wouldn't go," she said indignantly,

"You may rest assured I would not, for the money."

"Frank will change his mind before spring," said his aunt; "or a
year at least among the 'border ruffians,' as you call them, will
cure him, and he will be glad to take a nice church at the East."

"What do you say to that, Mr. Hemstead?"

"Perhaps I would better answer by my actions," he replied.

"But I can see from the expression of your eyes and mouth a very
plain answer to the contrary. Mr. Hemstead, you could be a very
stubborn man if you chose."

"I hope I could be a very resolute one."

"Yes, so we explain ourselves when we will have our own way. I
think Aunt Marchmont's suggestion a very good one."

"If we go to the donation we shall have to take something,"  said
Bel.

"O, yes," exclaimed Addie; "I am told all sorts of queer things are
brought. Let us take the oddest and most  outlandish we can think
of. Uncle, there is your old blue  dresscoat; we will take that
for the minister. Wouldn't he look comical preaching in it? And,
mother, there is your funny low-necked satin dress that you wore
when a young lady. I will take that for his wife."

"I understand everybody brings pies to a donation," said Harcourt.
"I shall be more pious than any of them, and bring over fifty
from town this afternoon. I will buy all the bake-shops out, in my
zeal,--enough to give the parson and all his people the dyspepsia
for a month."

"If he lives on six hundred, nothing could give him the dyspepsia
save his own sermons, I imagine," said De Forrest. "My young lady
friends have half filled one of my bureau drawers with smoking-caps.
I have one with me, and will give it to the minister."

"You vain fellow," laughed Lottie. "I never gave you one."

"Rest assured, no minister--even were he a minister to the Court
of St. James--should get it, if you had."

"What will you take, Mr. Hemstead?" asked Lottie, noting his grave
face.

"I shall not go."

"Why not? You spoke as if you would, this morning."

"I cannot go under the circumstances."

"Why not?" asked Addie, rather sharply.

"Could we take such gifts to a gentleman and lady, Cousin Addie?"

"Well, I suppose not," she answered, reddening.

"I see no proof that this clergyman and his wife are not in the fact
that they are compelled to live on six hundred a year. Besides, I
have too much respect for the calling."

"Don't you see?" said De Forrest to Addie, in a loud whisper. "'Our
craft is in danger.'"

"Your explanation is more crafty than true, Mr. De  Forrest," said
Hemstead, looking him straight in the eyes.

"Come," cried Lottie, "my party is not to be broken up.  Mr.
Hemstead, you need not look so serious or take the matter so much
to heart. As you declared once before to-day, we were only 'talking
in jest.' You cannot think we would willingly hurt the feelings of
your brother clergyman.  Surely, if you thought they were serious,
it was good of you to stand up for him. We will all give money:
that must be the thing the poor man needs most sorely."

"I will give twenty-five dollars if you will, Mr. Hemstead," said
De Forrest, with a malicious twinkle in his eye.

"That's liberal of you, Julian. That's action in the right
direction," said Lottie; and she turned to Hemstead,  expecting a
prompt response. But the moment she saw his face she surmised the
truth and De Forrest's motive in making  the offer, and what had
appeared generous was now seen to be the reverse. But she determined
that Julian should give the money, nevertheless. Still she did not
at once interfere, but watched with no little curiosity, to see
how Hemstead would extricate himself.

The young man was much embarrassed. He had an innate horror of
seeming niggardly, and the course he had taken made his position
more delicate. But his simplicity and truthfulness came to his
aid, and he said firmly, although with a crimson face, "I am sorry
I cannot accept your  generous proposition, but I will give in
accordance with my ability. I can give only five dollars."

Mr. Dimmerly and Mrs. Marchmont looked annoyed, while Addie gave
utterance to an audible titter. Bel laughed, and then looked as if
she had done wrong.

But Lottie, with graceful tact, which was still only good acting,
said: "And that, I am sure, is all that can be asked of Mr. Hemstead
or of any one. But the poor man shall not lose the money, Julian,
for I will supply Mr. Hemstead with what is lacking."

"Pardon me, Miss Marsden, I cannot take it."

"Not even for this needy minister with his six children?"

"I cannot sacrifice my self-respect for any one," he said.  "Why
cannot Mr. De Forrest give what he wishes without imposing a
condition which leaves it doubtful whether he is to give at all?"

"O, yes, he is to give," said Lottie, promptly. "I take your offer,
Julian. It's delightful to have such a genuine object of charity
as a minister living on six hundred a year."

This was spoken very innocently, but was in reality a keen thrust
at Hemstead, who had so recently stated his prospective  income at
that sum. That the others understood it as such was shown by their
significant glances, as they rose from the table.

Hemstead could not discover from Lottie's face whether she meant
a covert allusion to himself or not.

Harcourt drove over to town, promising to be back in time. The
other young people said that the long drive had made them drowsy,
and retired to their rooms for a nap.  Hemstead went to the parlor and
tried to read, but his thoughts wandered strangely. The beautiful
face of Lottie Marsden haunted him, and the puzzling contradictions of
her words and manner kept rising in his mind for solution.  After
a prolonged revery, he came to the conclusion: "I have left nothing
ambiguous about myself. If she is friendly after this she knows
just who and what I am. It's plain the others think me no addition
to their company, and I'm almost sorry I accepted aunt's invitation.
However, I can shorten the visit if I choose;" and he turned
resolutely to his book.

Instead of donning her wrapper, as did Bel, Lottie sat down before
the fire, and, as was often her custom,  commenced half-talking to
her friend and familiar, and  half-thinking aloud to herself.

"Well, he is the frankest and most transparent man I ever saw. I
have been acquainted with him but a few hours, and I feel that I
know him better than I do Julian, with whom I have been intimate
so many years."

"He's sincerely, honestly good, too," said Bel. "I think it's too
bad, Lottie, that you all treat him so. It's really wicked."

"Yes," said Lottie, meditatively. "It's a good deal more wicked
than I thought it would be."

"Then you will give it up."

"No indeed. I haven't said that."

"How can you do it, Lottie, when you know it is wrong?"

"I knew it was wrong when I commenced. I only know now that it is
a little more wrong. Why should I give up my fun on that account?
I might as well die for an old black sheep as a speckled lamb."

Bel yawned at the rather peculiar and tragic ending that Lottie
suggested for herself, and was soon dozing on a lounge.  But
either a restless spirit of mischief, or a disturbed  conscience,
prevented Lottie from following her example.

It would at times seem true that, when engaged in something  that
conscience forbids, the very opposition incites and leads to
the evil. The conflict between inclination and the sense of right
creates a feverish unrest, in which one cannot settle down to
ordinary pursuits and duties. If principle holds the reins, and
the voice of conscience is clear and authoritative, the disturbed
mental and moral state will end in the firm choice of duty, and
consequent peace and rest.  But if, as in the case of Lottie Marsden,
impulse rules in the place of principle, and conscience is merely
like a  half-dreaded, reproachful face, this unrest is the very hour
and opportunity for temptation. Some escape from self and solitude
must be found; some immediate excitement must engross the thoughts;
and the very phase of evil against which conscience is vainly
protesting has at the same time the most dangerous fascination.

So Lottie escaped from her own self-reproaches as a naughty child
runs away from a scolding, and was soon at the parlor entrance with
a noiseless tread, a grace of motion, and a motive that suggested
the lithe panther stealing on its prey. The door was ajar, and
a hasty glance revealed that the object of her designs was alone.
Her stealthy manner changed instantly, and she sauntered into the
room with quiet indifference, humming an air from Faust.

"O, you are here!" she exclaimed, as if suddenly  becoming aware
of his presence. "Why do you not take a nap like the others? I hope
you are not troubled by a bad conscience."

"What suggested a bad conscience, Miss Marsden?"

"Your sleeplessness."

"I am glad it was not your own. Why are you not taking a nap? I
thought you started for one."

"So I did, but found I did not want it. But you are not a Yankee
that you must answer my question with another.  What are you reading?
Won't you read it to me?"

"I would rather not read this book to you; but I will any other
that you wish."

"You must learn human nature better, Mr. Hemstead.  Don't you know
that you have said just enough to make me wish that book and no
other? What is it about?"

"I feel sure that it will have no interest for you. It is one of
the latest infidel attacks upon the Bible."

"O, you are afraid to have me read it."

"Yes; but not for the reasons implied in your tone."

"Don't you see that you are taking the very course to awaken my
curiosity, and to make me wish to hear just that book? If you had
said, 'Certainly, I'll read it to you, but you won't like it, for
it's only a dry, heavy book upon a heavy subject,' I would never
have looked into it, but would have asked for something else."

"That would hardly be true, Miss Marsden. Though I regard it as an
evil and dangerous book, it is exceedingly clever, and well written,
and it is quite popular in some circles.  I suppose it has been
sent up to Aunt Marchmont with other new books of note."

"I must certainly read it, since you won't read it to me.  Forbid
a child to do a thing, you know, and you have given the strongest
motive for doing just that thing."

"You are not a child, Miss Marsden."

"What am I, then?"

"I hardly know; but you are capable of realizing one's best ideal,
almost."

"Almost! thank you."

"Perhaps my language is stronger than you realize. The woman who
could answer to my ideal would be nearly perfect."

"And do you think such a paragon would go out among the border
ruffians with you?"

"No, nor anywhere else with me. I was speaking of my ideal."

"You do not expect to marry your ideal, then?"

"I suppose love transfigures the one we love, and that this is the
only way we can ever meet our ideal in this life. But sometimes we
see one who it seems might approach even the ideal of our unbiased
fancy."

"It is well that you admire these exquisite creatures at a distance,"
she said, dryly. "I can't see why men will always be so foolish
as to think pretty women are good women.  But if I am not a child
why may I not read that book?  You intimate that it will not shake
my belief."

"I do not think it would,--at least I hope it would not."

"You are not sure."

"I'm sure it will not shake the Bible. Every age has teemed with
infidel books. Yet God's Word stands to-day as strong and serene
as that mountain yonder, to which the setting sun has given a crown
of light."

"Your figure is pretty, but unfortunate. The sun is indeed  'setting,'
and soon the mountain will lose its crown of light and vanish in
darkness."

"But does it vanish," he asked quickly, "in the transient darkness,
like a cloud tipped with light? Such a cloud is a fit emblem of
this brilliant book, and of multitudes like it that have preceded,
but which, like lurid vapors, have  vanished from men's thought and
memory. Even with my immature mind I can detect that this clever
work is but an airy castle, soon to fall. What infidel book has
ever gained or kept a lasting hold upon the popular heart? Let the
darkness swallow up the mountain there. If we go where it is at
midnight, we shall find it intact, and just as firm as when the
sun is shining upon it. The searching light of every day, from year
to year and age to age, will find it there just the same. The long
night of moral darkness which culminated in the fifteenth century,
though it hid the Bible, did not destroy it. Luther at last found
and brought it out into the broad light of general study and
criticism. For generations it has been assailed on every side, but
it stands in the calm, unchanging strength that yonder mountain
would maintain, were it surrounded by children shooting against it
with arrows. Believe me, I do not fear for the Bible. If all the
light of human knowledge were turned upon it in one burning focus,
its intrinsic truth would only be revealed more clearly; and if
superstition, as in the past, or infidelity, as was the case in
France, creates temporary darkness, the moment that, in the light
of returning reason, men look for the Bible, they find it like a
great solemn mountain, that cannot be moved while the world lasts,
just where God has placed it."

"Mr. Hemstead, don't you know that young gentlemen do not talk to
young ladies as you do to me?"

"You know very well that I am not a society man."

"O, I'm not complaining. I rather like to be talked to as if I
had some brains, and was not a doll. If you are so sure about the
Bible, why do you fear to have me read arguments against it?"

"I am not so sure about you. If I should listen to a plausible story
against you, without knowing you or giving you a fair hearing, I
might come to be prejudiced,--to  believe you very unworthy,--when
the reverse would be true.  So the minds of many, from reading books
of this nature, and not giving the Bible a fair hearing, become
poisoned and prejudiced."

"Then why do you read it?"

"For the same reason that would influence a physician to study a
disease,--not that he may catch it, but that he may understand and
know how to treat it. This book is a mental  and moral disease, and
I do not wish you to run the risk of catching it, though I do not
think it would prove fatal if you did. Your own heart and experience
would probably correct the error of your head. Such books as these
won't answer in times of illness or deep trouble. We turn from
them as instinctively and certainly as we do from noise, glare,
and gayety."

The mountain without was now in the shadow. The early twilight of
the December evening had darkened the wintry landscape; but the
ruddy glow of the hickory fire revealed how beautiful Lottie's face
could be, when composed into womanly truth and thoughtfulness.

"I have never had a serious sorrow or illness, and I wonder  what
I should do if I had?" she queried musingly, as these sombre events,
which sooner or later must come into every life, rose up before
her.

"I know well what you will do when they come, as come they will to
us all," said Hemstead, gently. "As surely as you would cling to
a strong arm were you sinking in deep waters, just so surely you
will turn to the Bible, and to Him who said, 'Let not your heart
be troubled, neither let it be afraid.'"

The truth, if given a hearing, is ever powerful,--the truths of
our own sad experience,--the answering and remedial truth of God.
Unexpectedly and unintentionally on her part, both these phases
of truth had gained the ear of Lottie Marsden. The sorrowful and
suffering days of the future threw back their shadows upon her,
and her heart sank at their prospect; and with the certainty of
intuition she recognized  the answering truth, and felt that she
would indeed be glad to cling to One who had the right and power
to utter such tender, reassuring words as Hemstead had quoted.

Of all spells, that of truth is the strongest. Under it the impulsive
girl buried her face in her hands and, with a quick sob, cried, "O
that I were better!"

Then, springing up, she gave Hemstead a strange, earnest look through
her tears, as if she would read his soul. But she saw only honest
sympathy.

He was about to speak again, but she abruptly left the room.






CHAPTER VIII.

FINDING ONE'S LEVEL.





Lottie met De Forrest on the stairs, and he was about to apologize
for his long sleep, but she rushed by him like a summer gust. A
moment later she burst into her room and startled indolent Bel out
of her last luxurious doze by dropping into a chair by the fire
and indulging in what girls call a "good cry."

"What is the matter?" asked Bel, anxiously.

Lottie's tears were the only answer.

"What has happened?" cried Bel, rising hastily. "Let me call auntie
or Julian."

"If you call either you are no friend of mine," said Lottie,
springing to the door, locking it, and taking the key.

"Why, Lottie, I don't understand--"

"There is no need that you should. Nothing is the matter--only
I'm blue--I've been thinking of awful things.  I was in one of my
moods this afternoon, now I'm in one of my tenses."

"Unusually intense, I should think. I have not seen you so moved
since Tom Wellesly threatened to blow out his brains for you."

"He hadn't any to blow out," snapped Lottie, "or he wouldn't have
thought of doing it for such a girl as I am."

"Well," sighed Bel, who at times was one of Job's  comforters,
"I've heard he has never been the same since."

"I hope he has been wiser, then. How can men be such stupid owls as
to fall in love with me! Can't they see I'm a wicked little heathen?"

"That is just the kind men like," sneered Bel, misanthropically.
"You expect to captivate (and of course you will) this sincere and
saintly young minister. He already thinks that you are by far the
best of our party, and has some of the first symptoms that your
victims usually manifest."

Lottie sprang up, dashed away her tears, and commenced restlessly
pacing the room.

"Bother on the men," she exclaimed. "Why will they be so silly!
The world's a perfect jumble, and we are all lunatics and fools,
crying for what is not good for us, and turning our backs upon
what is. I'm disgusted with everybody,  and myself in particular.
Now if this overgrown student  makes a fool of himself, like the
others, I shall lose faith in mankind, and I know there is nothing
to hope from woman-kind."

"I should think you were having a mood and a tense at the same time
this evening," said Bel, looking with some surprise at her friend.
"What has stirred you up so? Have you and Julian had a quarrel?"

"We shall have plenty more, I foresee," said Lottie, seizing  on
the suggestion to hide the truth. Bel smiled satirically.  All these
harsh words were but the harmless lightnings of a summer gust that
was passing away.

"It's only a lovers' tiff," she thought, "and now the billing  and
cooing are to come."

"O, well," said Bel, soothingly, "you and Julian will soon make
up, and then you and all the world will change for the better."

"We have made up," said Lottie faintly, finding, like many another
sinner in this line, that the first fib requires the second to
cover it up.

"Well, well; get over your mood quickly, for the supper-bell  will
ring in a moment, and you are not ready to come down."

What emergency of life can obliterate from the mind of a pretty
woman the necessity of a toilet? To Bel, Lottie seemed to come to
her senses at once as she sped to her bureau and commenced brushing
her rumpled hair. But the languid maiden was quite startled as
Lottie wheeled  suddenly upon her, declaring, while she brandished
the  hair-brush in the most tragic and impressive manner, "If that
Hemstead makes a fool of himself he may, but he shall do it with
his eyes open; I will not deceive him any more."

Thus conscience, that had been skirmishing all day,  appeared to
gain one point of advantage, and Lottie, having made this virtuous
resolve, gained in mental serenity, while the mirror that reflected
her fair face helped to bring back her complacency.

"Bel," said Lottie, as they were leaving their room, "not a whisper
of all this to any one, as you value my friendship."

But before they reached the supper-room her resolution failed, as
is often the case when one acts from impulse rather than principle.
She found that she could not so lightly throw away Hemstead's good
opinion. She had been  admired, loved, and flattered to her heart's
content, but the respect, esteem, and trust of a sincere, true man
formed a new offering, and it was so attractive that she could not
bring herself to turn from it at once. Then her strong pride cast
its weight into the scale, and she thought: "He talks to me and
treats me as if I were a woman of heart and mind, and I'm going
down to show him I'm a wicked fool. I shall not do it, at least
not now. Little fear but that the disagreeable truth will come out
soon enough."

"But it is wrong to deceive him," whispered conscience.

"Suppose it is," answered the wayward will, "I am all wrong myself
and always have been."

"You promised to show him your real self," still urged conscience.

"Well, I will, some other time."

With conscience thwarted and unsatisfied, serenity  vanished
again, and instead of being reckless and trivial at the table, as
she intended, she was rather silent, and a trifle sullen, as one
often is even when vexed with one's self.

Hemstead was expecting a subdued and thoughtful young lady to appear,
whose pensive manner would indicate a nature softened and receptive.
While her bearing was not what he anticipated, it was somewhat
akin, and showed, he thought, that the truth was not without effect.

De Forrest was still more puzzled; but soon concluded that Lottie
was provoked that he had slept so long instead of devoting himself
to her. True, she had just come from the parlor, where he found
Hemstead standing by the  window, looking out into the gloom,
but she had found him, no doubt, so heavy and stupid that she had
rushed to her room in a fit of vexation. This theory was entirely
reconcilable with his vanity, and therefore conclusive; and he tried
to make amends by excessive gallantry, which only annoyed Lottie.
This he ascribed to her resentment for his neglect, and only
redoubled his unwelcome attentions.

While Hemstead's heart was in a tumult of joy and  thankfulness
that so early in his acquaintance, and so unexpectedly, he had been
able to speak to her as he wished and with such seeming effectiveness,
he had the good taste and tact to indicate by no words or sign that
anything unusual had occurred between them. He sought to draw the
others, and even De Forrest, into general conversation, so that
Lottie might be left more to herself.

With a mingled smile and frown, she recognized his purpose,  and
with a reckless laugh in her own soul, thought; "He imagines I am
near conversion, when I never felt so wicked before in my life."

But catching a glimpse of Bel's surprised face, and seeing that
her abstraction was noted by the others, she speedily rallied, and
assumed the manner that she had maintained throughout the day.

"It is so delightful to see his large gray eyes turn towards me
wistfully and trustingly, that I cannot undeceive him yet"; and so
conscience was dismissed, as history records has been often the case
with some honest old counsellor in a foolish and reckless court.

The prospective sleigh-ride and donation party were the prominent
themes, and they hastened through the meal that they might start
early.

Upon this occasion De Forrest managed to get the seat by Lottie, in
his eagerness to make amends, and Hemstead sat opposite with Bel.
As far as he could gather in the uncertain moonlight, Hemstead
thought that De Forrest's attentions were not particularly welcome,
and, though he scarcely knew why, was glad. He would probably
explain by saying that De Forrest was not worthy of her.

Lottie's periods of depression never lasted long, and again
the frosty air and quick motion set her blood tingling with life.
In order to escape De Forrest's whispered  sentimentalities, she
began to sing. Her naturally good voice had been somewhat injured
by straining at difficult music, under superficial instruction,
instead of thorough training for it, but within a moderate compass,
and in simple music, was sweet and strong.

De Forrest was enthusiastic in his praise of selections that were
beyond her abilities. Though most of the airs were unfamiliar to
Hemstead, he was satisfied that they were incorrect, and certain
that the music was not over good.  Therefore he was silent. This
piqued Lottie, for one of her purposes in the choice of what she
sang was to impress him, from the barbarous West, with the idea of
her superior  culture. At last she said, "I fear you do not like
operatic and classical music very much, Mr. Hemstead?"

"We do not often hear such music very perfectly rendered  in our part
of the West. There are airs from the opera that are very pretty";
and he suggested one that was simple.

The truth began to dawn on the quick-witted girl, but De Forrest
said, patronizingly, "It requires a cultivated taste to appreciate
such music as you were singing, Miss Lottie."

"It is not with the music probably, but my rendering of it, that
Mr. Hemstead finds fault."

"Two of the airs were new to me, and the other I have heard but
seldom," said Hemstead, evasively.

"How about that one?" asked De Forrest.

"Well, in sincerity then, I think Miss Marsden does herself  injustice
by attempting music that would tax the powers of a prima donna."

"The boor!" whispered De Forrest to Lottie.

After a moment she said firmly, "Mr. Hemstead has only said plainly
what you thought, Julian."

"O Miss Lottie--" he began to protest.

"I'm not a fool," she continued, "so please don't waste your breath.
You have heard all the star singers, and know how ridiculously far
beneath them I fall, when I try to sing their music. I think you
might have told me. It would have been truer kindness than your
hollow applause. Why our teachers make us the laughing-stock of
society, by keeping us upon these absurd attempts at music beyond
us, to the exclusion of everything else, is something that I can't
understand. My ear is not over nice, but I have always had a suspicion
that I was executing, in the sense of murder, the difficult arias
that the old weazen-faced Italian professor kept me at till brother
Dan said, in truth, that I was turning into a screech-owl. But no
one, save he and Mr. Hemstead, has been honest enough to tell me
the truth. Thus, on many occasions, I have taxed the politeness of
people to the utmost, no doubt, and been the cause of innumerable
complimentary fibs, like those you have just been guilty of, Julian.
Perhaps, Mr. Hemstead, you think a style of music like this more
suited to my powers "; and she struck into a well-known plantation
song.

"No," said he, laughing, "I think you do yourself still greater
injustice."

"You probably think I cannot sing at all."

"On the contrary, I think you have an unusually good voice. I wish
you would sing that air that you were  humming when you came into
the parlor this afternoon. I liked that, and imagine it is suited
to your voice."

"What was it? O, I remember. An arr from Faust, that Marguerite
sings at her spinning-wheel. I think I can give that pretty decently."

She sang it sweetly, with taste and some power.  Hemstead's
appreciation was hearty, and she knew it was sincere.

"Now that you have done me such good service," she said laughing,
"and shown that mediocrity is my musical position, let us have some
old-fashioned ballads, and all sing them together in sleigh-riding
style."

"Pardon me, Miss Marsden, I assign you to mediocrity in nothing."

"O, no, not you; my own abilities place me there. But come, each
one sing"; and she commenced a ballad, well known to the others,
but not to him.

It sounded very well indeed, only Harcourt's bass was much too
light for the other voices.

"Why don't you sing?" asked Lottie of Hemstead.

"I do not know the air or words."

"Shall we try Old Hundred?" asked De Forrest. "Ahem!  The long
metre doxology.

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow."

Addie and Harcourt joined in laughingly. Bel began with them, but
stopped when she saw that Lottie did not sing.

"Do you believe that 'all blessings flow' from God?" asked Hemstead
of De Forrest.

"I suppose so, according to Old Hundred," he said lightly.

"You don't 'suppose so' at all, Julian. You know it, as we all do,
however we may act," said Lottie, with emphasis.

"With such a belief, I--would at least treat Him with  respect,"
said Hemstead, quietly. "I should be sorry to be under deep
and continued obligations to One toward whom I failed in ordinary
courtesy."

"I knew it was wrong," muttered Bel, "but--"

"I have no such belief," said Harcourt, "so your sharp homily does
not apply to me."

"Where do your blessings come from?" asked Hemstead.

"Well, those I don't get out of my clients, from where this snow
does,--the laws and forces of nature."

"Your faith is like the snow, I think,--very cold."

"If it's cold in winter, it's warm in summer," retorted he,
flippantly; and Addie giggled approvingly, for the reason that it
sounded flippant and smart.

They had now reached the hamlet of Scrub Oaks, in the centre of
which was a small house that seemed bursting with light and noise.
Whenever the door opened it appeared to fly open from a pressure
within.

De Forrest acted as escort to the ladies, while Hemstead accompanied
Harcourt in his effort to find a sheltered place for the horses.
This pleased the young lawyer, and he said, good-naturedly, "Don't
think, Mr. Hemstead, that I do not respect your honest convictions,
and I meant no slur upon them. You take things too seriously."

"I suppose we all ought to make more allowance for what is said in
mere sport and repartee," said Hemstead. "But what to you is law
and force is to me a personal Friend.  You know that there are some
names--like those of mother and wife--that are too sacred for jest."

"Thus people misjudge and misunderstand each other, simply because
they see things from different points of view," replied Harcourt.
"De Forrest provokes me,  however. He has no doubts worthy of the
name, for he reads nothing save the sporting news and fashionable
literature of the day, and yet he likes to give the impression that
he is in with us, who read books and think."

"If you will only read fairly, Mr. Harcourt, I have no fears but
that in time you will think rightly. An honest jury must hear both
sides and have no prejudices."

The young men now sought the rest of the party, who had squeezed
their way into the little parsonage. It was so replete with life and
bustle that it appeared like a social bombshell, with effervescing
human nature as an explosive material, and might burst into fragments
at any moment.






CHAPTER IX.

"THE OTHER SET."





The minister and his wife were scarcely host and hostess on this
occasion, as a self-appointed committee of ladies had taken upon
themselves the duty; but, like all corporations, this committee had
no soul and a very  indefinite body. No one knew just who they were,
or where to find them, and some of the members, in the bewilderment
of unaccustomed official position and honors, seemed to have lost
themselves, and bustled aimlessly all over the house. The more staid
and practical sisters of the  committee were down in the kitchen,
breathlessly setting tables which were almost as speedily cleared
by people whose appetites were as keen as the winter night without.

"I do declare," ejaculated Mrs. Gubling, as one devastating  tableful
rose lingeringly from the repast, and another flock began to gather
in hungry expectancy at the door,--"I do declare, I'm near beat
out. Is this a starvin'  community? At this rate they'll eat up
all there is in the house, and the minister and his wife and babies
into the bargain."

"Well," said Mrs. Rhamm, conveying the last bit of corned beef,
which had been reluctantly left upon the plate as "manners," to a
rather capacious mouth, "if they would eat up some of the babies
it wouldn't be so bad. I don't see why poor ministers will have so
many babies."

"The Lord takes care of 'em. We don't," suggested Mrs. Gubling.

"We all do our part, I s'pose. The worst of it is that it makes it
oncomfortable for a church to give a small salary."

"I wish our church was more uncomfortable then. It's a shame we
give Mr. Dlimm only six hundred. But come, if we don't git another
table set they'll eat us up."

"I'd like to see 'em," said Mrs. Rhamm, with a disdainful sniff.

"Well, you be a bit old and tough," chuckled Mrs.  Gubling.

With the solace of this sally, which seemed true, if not true wit,
these hard-featured mothers in Israel set about their tasks with
the deftness that long experience gives.

At the time De Forrest conveyed the ladies into the hall, the
upstairs members of the committee were buzzing around somewhere
else, for there was no one to receive them. They were gradually
hustled or carried into the parlor or main room, and here Hemstead
and Harcourt found them in characteristic conditions. Addie's and
De Forrest's elegant noses were decidedly retrousses; Bel appeared
both  disgusted and frightened; while Lottie's face wore an expression
of intense and amused curiosity. She was seeing "the other set" to
her heart's content, and all was as new and strange as if she had
visited another land.

Harcourt joined Addie, and they began to whisper satirical  criticisms
on the remarks and manners of those around.  Hemstead's interest
mainly centred in watching Lottie, and in noting the effect of her
contact with plain and uncultured people. He was glad he did not
see the repulsion of a little mind and a narrow nature, as was the
case with most of the others. Though it was evident that she had
no sympathy with them, or for them, there was intelligent interest
and wide-awake curiosity. While the others were incasing  themselves
in exclusive pride, she was eager to investigate and get en rapport
with this new phase of humanity. But trammailed  by her city ideas,
she felt that she could not speak to any one without the formality
of an introduction. But the ice was broken for her unexpectedly.
Feeling her dress pulled, she turned and found a very stout old
lady sitting near her, who asked in a loud whisper, "Been down to
supper yet?"

"No," said Lottie, "I don't wish any."

"I do, but I'm afeard I won't get none. You see I'm big and clumsy
anyway, and now I'm so lame with the rheumatiz that I kin hardly
move."

"It's too bad," said Lottie, pathetically, but with a swift comical
glance at the others.

"Yes, it's kinder orful to be so helpless," said the old woman,
with a complacent sigh, delighted at having a  sympathetic auditor.
"I'm dreadfully afeard I won't git no supper. I'm like the withered
man at the pool of Bethesdy.  Whenever they are ready for another
batch 'while I'm a-comin' another steppeth down before me.'"

"Well, you're not very much withered, that's one comfort to be
thankful for," said Lottie.

"I'd like to be thankful for my supper, if I could only git a
chance," persisted the old woman.

"You shall have a chance. When is the pool troubled?  When shall
we put you in?"

"There! now is the time," said her new acquaintance, dropping her
affected and pious tone, and speaking with sharp eagerness. "See,
one batch is comin' up, and 'nother is going down."

"Mr. Hemstead, will you assist me in escorting this old lady to
the supper-table?"

Hemstead's face was aglow with approval, and he instantly complied,
while the others, understanding Lottie better, were convulsed with
laughter.

It was no easy thing for them unitedly to manage the hobbling
mountain of flesh. When they came to the narrow stairway, matters
were still more serious.

"You shall go first," whispered Lottie to Hemstead, "for if she
should fall on me, good-by, Lottie Marsden."

Hemstead patiently, carefully, and with the utmost  deference,
assisted the helpless creature down the stairs.

"You're as polite to her as if she were a duchess," said Lottie,
in a low tone.

"She is more than a duchess. She is a woman," he replied.

Lottie gave him a quick, pleased look, but said, "Such old-fashioned
chivalry is out of date, Mr. Hemstead."

"He's right, miss," said the old woman, sharply. "I'm not Dutch."

Lottie dropped behind to hide her merriment at this speech, and
Hemstead appeared, with his charge clinging to his arm, at the
kitchen door, which her ample form nearly filled.

"My sakes alive! Auntie Lammer, how did you get down here?" said
Mrs. Gubling. "We hain't ready for you yet."

"No matter," said Mrs. Lammer, "I thank the marcies I've got down
safe, and I'm goin' to stay till I git my supper."

"Can I help you?" asked Lottie, glancing curiously around the room.

They looked with even more curiosity at her; and a strange contrast
she made, in her rich and tasteful costume and rare beauty, with
those plain, middle-aged, hard-working women, and the small, dingy
room.

For a moment they stared at her without reply, then gave each other
a few suggestive nudges; and Mrs. Rhamm was about to speak rather
slightingly, when good-natured Mrs.  Gubling said: "You are very
kind, miss, but you don't look cut out for our work. Besides, my
dear, it's an orful dangerous  place down here. I'm afraid we'll
git eat up ourselves before the evening is over. I'm sure you would
be, if you stayed. I wouldn't mind taking a bite myself"; and the
good woman and her assistants laughed heartily over this standing
joke of the evening, while Auntie Lammer, seeing that Mrs. Gubling
was the leading spirit of the supper-room, quivered in all her vast
proportions with politic and propitious mirth.

All this was inexpressibly funny to Lottie, who had the keenest
sense of the absurd, and with a sign to Hemstead she drew him away,
saying, "This exceeds any play I ever saw. I didn't know people
who were not acting could be so queer and comical."

"Well, Miss Lottie," he said, as they ascended the stairs, "I admit
that humanity everywhere often has its ridiculous side, but I have
been laughed at too much myself to enjoy laughing at others."

"And why should you be laughed at so much?"

"I suppose it is the fate of overgrown, awkward boys, who have a
tendency to blurt out the truth on all occasions."

"Such a tendency as that will always make you trouble, I assure
you."

"It hasn't with you, yet."

"Our acquaintance has been very brief."

"And yet I seem to know you so well! I would not have believed it
possible in one short day."

"I think you are mistaken. But you have ceased to be a stranger
to me. I have remarked before to-day, that I knew you better than
some I have seen from childhood."

"I am happy to say that I wish to conceal nothing."

"Few can say that."

"O, I don't mean that I am better than other people, only that
it's best to appear just what we are. People should be like coin,
worth their face--"

"I was in search of you," interrupted De Forrest, as they stood
talking a moment near the head of the stairs in the hall. "We did
not know but that the sylph you escorted away had made a supper
of Hemstead, with you as a relish.  Have you seen enough of this
bear-garden yet?"

"No, indeed," said Lottie; "I'm just beginning to enjoy myself."

From openly staring at and criticising the party from Mrs.
Marchmont's, the young people began to grow aggressive, and, from
class prejudices, were inclined to be hostile.  There were whispered
consultations, and finally one habitue of the store and tavern
thought he could cover himself with glory by a trick, and at the
same time secure a kiss from Lottie, the prettiest. The conspiracy
was soon formed. A kissing game in one of the upper rooms was
suspended for a moment, and one of the tall girls accompanied him
down as if they were a delegation, and on the principle that in
designs against a woman a female confederate is always helpful in
disarming suspicion.

He approached Lottie with the best manners he could assume, and
said, "We are having some games upstairs.  Perhaps you would like
to join us. We'd like to have you."

"Do come," added the tall girl; "they are real nice."

"Certainly," said Lottie, who was now ready for another adventure.
"Come; let us all go."

"The others needn't come unless they want to," said the young
man; for he didn't relish the lawyer's presence, whom he knew by
reputation, nor the searching look of the tall stranger whom he
did not know.

"Mr. Hemstead, you and Julian come," said Lottie, and as they
ascended the stairs she studied this new specimen of Scrub Oaks,
who was a loafer of the village as De Forrest was an idler of the
town. They both belonged to the same genus, though the latter would
have resented such a  statement as the foulest insult.

The manners and the smart finery of her new acquaintance  amused
Lottie very much. When they reached the room, they found it full
of whispering, giggling young people.

The tall girl, as instructed, said, "Now let us form a ring with
our hands on this rope."

This having been done, she said, "Now, Mr. Shabb, you must go
inside first"; and then, with a nudge to Lottie, she explained,
"He'll try to hit our hands with his, and if he hits your hands you
will have to go inside the ring."

What else he would do, she left to be disclosed by action.

Then he of the flaming neck-tie and bulging cheek took his place
with a twinkling eye that meant mischief. De Forrest and Hemstead
declined to play, but the latter slipped forward and stood near
Lottie. He was not sure, but dimly remembered seeing this game
before, when it was not played so innocently as the tall girl had
described.

The young rustic made extravagant but purposely vain efforts
to strike the hands of others, and Lottie watched the scene with
laughing curiosity. Suddenly he wheeled round and struck her hands
sharply; and to her horrified surprise it seemed but a second later
that his repulsive face was  almost against her own. But something
came between, and, starting back, she saw the baffled youth imprint
a fervent kiss on the back of Hemstead's hand.

There was a loud laugh at him from those who had  expected to laugh
with him. He swaggered up to Hemstead, and said threateningly,
"What do you mean?"

"What do YOU mean?" asked Lottie, confronting him with blazing
eyes. "It is well this gentleman interposed. If you had succeeded
in your insult I should have had you punished in a way that you
would not soon forget."

"It's only part of the game," muttered he, abashed by her manner.

"Part of the game?"

"Yes," giggled the tall girl, faintly; "it's a kissing game."

"Did you know it was such?" asked Lottie, indignantly, of De Forrest
and Hemstead.

"Indeed I did not," said De Forrest; "and if you say so I'll give
this fellow the flogging, anyway."

"Come right out, and do it now," was the pert response.

"All I can say is, Miss Marsden," explained Hemstead, "that I
suspected something wrong, and took means to  prevent it. How these
nice-looking girls can allow this fellow to kiss them is more than
I can understand."

"No lady would," said Lottie, as she swept disdainfully out; and under
the withering influence of these remarks kissing games languished
the rest of the evening; only young children, and a few of the
coarser-natured ones,  participating. But soon the absurdity of
the whole scene  overcame Lottie, and she laughed till the tears
stood in her eyes.

As they were slowly descending the stairs a faded little woman
said, "I'm glad to see you enjoying yourself, Miss Marchmont. It
was very kind of you and your party to come so far."

"I am not Miss Marchmont," said Lottie, "though I came with her."

"Well, as the minister's wife, I would like her and all her party
to know of our grateful appreciation."

"You thank us beyond our deserts. But are you the minister's wife?
I am glad to make your acquaintance"; and she held out her hand,
which Mrs. Dlimm seemed glad to take.

At this moment there came the cry of an infant from one of the
upper rooms.

"O, there goes my baby," said Mrs. Dlimm; "I thought I heard it
before"; and she was about to hasten on.

"May I not go with you and see the baby?" asked Lottie.

What mother ever refused such a request? In a moment Lottie was
in the one small room in which, on this portentous  occasion, the
three younger children were huddled, the others being old enough
to take part in what, to them, was the greatest excitement of their
lives, thus far.

Lottie looked curiously around, with the quick, appreciative  eye
by which ladies seem to gather accurately at a glance the effect
of a costume and the style and character of an apartment and its
occupants. But she politely, and from a certain innate interest,
gave such attention to the baby as to win the mother's heart. It
was but an ordinary baby, although the fattest and sturdiest member
of a rather pinched household; but Lottie wonderingly saw that to
the faded mother it was a cherub just from heaven.

Lottie could not understand it. A perfumed baby, in lace and
muslin, might be a nice pet if the nurse were always within call;
but the sole care of this chubby-cheeked Moloch, that would sacrifice
its mother as unconsciously and complacently as the plant absorbs
moisture, seemed almost as prosaic and dreadful as being devoured
alive.

"Does no one help you take care of that child?" asked she.

"Well, my husband and the elder children help some."

"Haven't you a nurse for all these children?"

"No, indeed. It's as much as we can do to clothe and feed them."

"Don't you keep any servants at all?"

"Yes, we have a girl in the kitchen, but she's almost as much bother
as she is worth."

"How do you get along?"

"I hardly know--somewhat as the birds do out of doors."

"Are you happy?"

"I've hardly time to think. I think I am, though,--happy as most
people. Some days bright, some days cloudy, and now and then a
storm. That's the way it is with all, I imagine. We all have our
crosses, you know, but by and by all will come right."

"I should be cross enough with all your crosses."

"They might make you patient. The crossest people I know are those
who shun all crosses."

"Now I think of it, I'm inclined to believe that's true," said
Lottie, reflectively. Then she whispered, as she walked softly to
the mother's side, "Baby is going to sleep, isn't it?"

With different expressions they both peered into the  full-moon
face, two features of which, the eyes, were becoming obliterated
by the white, drooping lids. Lottie looked as if she were examining
a zoological specimen. Mrs. Dlimm gazed with a smile of deep content
and tenderness.

The undisturbed rest of the child upon her bosom was a type of her
own mind at that moment. She was nature's child, God's child, and
the babe was hers.

To the true and simple children of nature, who, without thought of
self or the public eye, are quietly doing their duty in their own
little niches, these moments of peace with strange thrills of joy
are constantly coming. If this worn mother could look down upon
the child, and her plain, pale face grow beautiful with spiritual
light, how must the God who inspires all love--who is the source
of tenderness--have regarded her?

The expression of this woman's face puzzled Lottie beyond measure.
It was so incongruous, irreconcilable with the burdens, the weary
cares, and ceaseless toil and anxiety of her lot. It was so out of
keeping with the noisy throng and confused bustle that filled the
house, and it dimly suggested to the proud belle a condition of
mind before undreamt of in her philosophy.

Some new and curious thoughts stole into her heart as she watched
the mother slowly rocking backward and forward, uttering a low,
crooning lullaby,--the gentlest sound that ever falls on mortal
ears. For some reason there came into her soul a sudden loathing
of her own selfishness and callousness.

After the child had been laid in the cradle, she asked, "What did
you mean when you said, 'It will all come right some day'?"

"Well, I suppose I meant that God's little children often get
sorely perplexed with their cares and troubles in this world, but
when we get home and sit down to rest and think it all over, it
will then seem right."

"Home?"

"Yes, home in our Heavenly Father's house. That's the only real
home we have. We only 'stop,' as the Irish say, here and there for
a little while in this world."

"And do you think of heaven as a pleasant home and rest after what
seems to me your very hard life?"

"Certainly. How do you think of it?"

"Well, to tell the truth, I have not thought much about it."

Before Mrs. Dlimm could reply, there came anything but a heavenly
interruption. It was as if Moses and Aaron were within the cool and
shadowy tabernacle, feasting on spiritual manna, and there came a
delegation from the Hebrew camp, clamoring for the "leeks and onions
of Egypt."

Though the congregation often said, "It's a pity Mrs.  Dlimm is
such a meek and quiet little woman," and though the self-appointed
committee of ladies was so large, and the minister himself was
downstairs, yet when the first real  emergency of the evening arose,
the upstairs members of the committee were helpless, and the best
thing Mrs. Gubling, the leading spirit downstairs, could do, was to
"slick up," as she said, and "go tell the parson's wife." But seeing
Mr.  Dlimm on the way, she beckoned him aside with a portentous
nod. He, poor man, heard her tidings with dismay.  He had fallen
into the habit of taking all his difficulties either to the Lord
or to his wife, and in this case he felt that both must come to
his aid.

With Mrs. Gubling he at once hastened to the nursery, and entered
rather abruptly.

Mrs. Dlimm raised her finger impressively, then pointed to the
cradle.

"But, my dear--" began her husband, rather impatiently.

"Hush," said the wife, in a low tone; "whatever's the matter don't
wake the baby, for then I can't do anything."

"Mrs. Dlimm," said Mrs. Gubling, "they've eat up about everything
there is downstairs, 'cept me, and there's three tables yet It's
such a fine night, and the sleighing's so good, that lots more have
come than we expected. I don't know how much money they brought,
but they hain't brought  provisions enough."

"What shall we do?" asked Mr. Dlimm, nervously.

"If it takes the last penny we have in the world," said his wife,
with grave dignity, "no one shall leave our house hungry. You must
step over to the store, Mr. Dlimm, and buy enough to satisfy every
one."

"I feel just as you do, my dear," he said, with the air of one who
sees duty clearly, though it is far from being agree-able. "Just
give me our poor little hoard from your bureau drawer, and I'll go
at once."

Lottie witnessed the scene with mingled amusement and indignation,
and then, her face aglow with a sudden put pose, sped away also.






CHAPTER X

HUMAN NATURE.





The dismal tidings from the lower regions, that the larder had
been stripped and that scarcely even a pie  remained, soon became
an open secret, about which every one was whispering and commenting.
The supperless wore a defrauded and injured air. The eyes of many
who had not left so important a duty to the uncertainties of the
future, but, like Auntie Lammer, had availed themselves of the
first opportunity, now twinkled shrewdly and  complacently. They
had the comfortable consciousness of taking care of themselves. But
the greater number were honestly indignant and ashamed that such
a thing should have happened. This feeling of mortification was
increased when the committee reported but a small sum of money
handed in as yet. The majority were provoked at others, and a few
at themselves, for having brought so little. As the situation became
clearer, all began to act characteristically,  some preparing to
slink away and escape a disagreeable  state of things, and others
putting their heads together in the wish to remedy matters. Some
giggled, and others looked solemn. Some tried to appear resigned,
as if it were a dispensation of Providence, and others snarled
about "them mean Joneses and Rhamms."

Lottie hastily summoned her party together, and told them of the
dire emergency, as Mrs. Gubling had stated it.

"Now," said she, "if you gentlemen have got any wit worth the name,
you must hit on some way of helping the parson out of his scrape,
for I have taken a great interest in him, or rather his wife. She
is the queerest little woman I ever saw. I shouldn't wonder if she
were an angel in disguise."

"As you are undisguised," whispered De Forrest

"O, be still, Julian. That compliment is as delicate as Auntie
Lammer's appetite. But see, some of these mean 'locusts of Egypt,'
after eating their minister out of house and home, are preparing
to go. We must get a collection before a soul leaves the house.
Julian, you lock the back door, and, Mr. Hemstead, you stand by
the front door; and now, Mr. Harcourt, you are a lawyer, and know
how to talk sharply to people: you give these cormorants to understand
what we expect them to do before they leave."

Hemstead obeyed with alacrity; for the effort to help the overburdened
pastor of Scrub Oaks meet the rigors of winter  seemed about to
end in disastrous failure. He had noticed, with satisfaction, that
many of the people shared his regret, and wished to do something,
but through lack of leadership the gathering was about to break
up, each one blaming some one else, and all secretly mortified at
the result.

Harcourt thought a moment, and then, stepping to a position  where
he could be seen through open doors and heard from the upper story,
clapped his hands loudly to secure silence and draw attention to
himself.

"Do you know where your pastor has gone?" he asked.  "He is out
now buying provisions with his own money to feed a crowd who came
here under the false pretence of giving a donation, but, in truth,
seemingly to eat him out of house and home."

Flushes of shame and anger flashed into nearly every face at these
stinging words, but Harcourt continued remorselessly:  "You know
who I am, and I thought I knew something  about you. I had heard
that the people back in the country were large-handed, large-hearted,
and liberal, but we must be mistaken. I think this the quintessence
of meanness,  and if you break up to-night without a big collection
I will publish you throughout the land. I want you to understand
that your minister has nothing to do with what I say.  I speak on
my own responsibility."

"Capital!" whispered Lottie. "That was red-hot shot, and they
deserved it. If that don't drain their pockets, nothing will."

But she was not a little surprised and disgusted, when a Stalwart
young farmer stepped out, and with a face aflamed with anger, said
in harsh emphasis: "I was sorry and ashamed to have this affair end
as it promised to, and was going to come down handsomely myself,
and try to get some others to, but since that sprig of the law has
tried to bully and whip us into doing something, I won't give one
cent I want you to understand, Tom Harcourt, that whatever may be
true of the people back in the country, you, nor no other man, can
drive us with a horsewhip."

The young man's words seemed to meet with general approval, and
there were many confirmatory nods and  responses. They were eager
to find some one to blame, and upon whom they could vent their
vexation; and this aristocratic  young lawyer, whose words had cut
like knives, was like a spark in powder. Many could go away and
half persuade  themselves that if it had not been for him they might
have done something handsome, and even the best-disposed present
were indignant. It seemed that the party would break up, before
the minister returned, in a general tumult.

The young farmer stalked to the front door, and said threateningly
to Hemstead, "Open that door."

"No, don't you do it," whispered Lottie.

He threw the door open wide.

"O, for shame!" she said aloud; "I did not think that of you, Mr.
Hemstead."

Without heeding her he confronted the young farmer and asked, "Do
you believe in fair play?"

"Yes, and fair words, too."

"All right, sir. I listened quietly and politely to you.  Will you
now listen to me? I have not spoken yet."

"O, certainly," said the young farmer, squaring himself and folding
his arms on his ample chest. "Let every dog have his day."

Hemstead then raised his powerful voice, so that it could be heard
all through the house, and yet he spoke quietly and calmly.

"The gentleman who last addressed you now in the spirit of fair play
offers to listen to me. I ask all present, with the same spirit of
candor and politeness, to hear me for a few moments. But the door
is open wide, and if there are any who don't believe in fair play
and a fair hearing all around, they are at liberty to depart at
once."

No one moved. And the young farmer said, with the sternness of his
square face greatly relaxing, "You may shut the door, sir. We will
all listen when spoken to in that style. But we don't want to be
driven like cattle." Then, yielding farther to the influence of
Hemstead's courtesy, he stepped forward and shut the door himself.

"Thank you, sir," said Hemstead, heartily, and then  continued: "I
am a stranger among you, and am here to-night very unexpectedly.
My home is in the West, and, like  yourselves, I belong to that
class who, when they give, give not from their abundance, but out
of their poverty. There has been a mistake here to-night. I think
I understand you better than my friend Mr. Harcourt. From the
pleasantness  of the evening mote are present than you looked for.
There are many young people here who I suspect have come from
a distance, unexpectedly, for the sake of a ride and frolic, and
were not as well prepared as if their households had known of it
before. Long drives and the cold night have caused keen appetites.
When the result became known a few moments ago, I saw that many
felt that it was too bad, and that something ought to be done, and
no one was more decided in the expression of this feeling than the
gentleman who last spoke. All that was needed then, and all that is
needed now, is to consider the matter a moment and then act unitedly.
I ask you as Christian men and women, as humane, kind-hearted
people, to dismiss from your minds all considerations save one,--your
pastor's need. I understand  that he has six little children. A
long, cold winter is before him and his. He is dependent upon you
for the comforts of life. In return, he is serving the deepest and
most sacred needs of your natures, and in his poverty is leading
you to a faith that will enrich you forever. It is not charity that
is asked. A church is a family, and you are only providing for your
own. How could any of you be comfortable this winter if you knew
your minister was pinched and lacking? The Bible says that the
laborer is worthy of his hire. You have only to follow the impulse
of your consciences, your own better natures, and I have no fears.
A few moments ago your pastor had a painful surprise.  You can have
a very agreeable one awaiting him by the time he returns. You can
make his heart glad for months to come, and so make your own glad.
Though I am a stranger, as I said, and a poor man, yet I am willing
to give double what I proposed at first, and if some one will take
up a collection will hand in ten dollars."

"Give me your hand on that," said the young farmer, heartily; "and
there's ten dollars more to keep it  company. When a man talks like
that, I am with him, shoulder to shoulder. Will some one bring me
the dominie's hat?"

One was soon forthcoming.

"And now," said the young man, stepping up to Lottie, "you seem to
take a sight of interest in this matter, miss.  I think you can look
five dollars out of most of the young chaps here. I'll go around
with you, and see that each one comes down as he or she ought. If
anybody ain't got what they'd like to give, I'll lend it to 'em,
and collect it, too," he added, raising his strong, hearty voice.

Thus through Hemstead's words and action the aspect of the skies
changed, and where a desolating storm had  threatened there came
a refreshing shower. What he had said commended itself to so many
that the mean and crotchety found it politic to fall in with the
prevailing spirit.

Amid approving nods, whispered consultations, and the hauling out
of all sorts of queer receptacles for money, the graceful city belle
and the blunt, broad-shouldered farmer started on an expedition
that, to the six little Dlimms, would be more important than one
for the discovery of the North Pole.

"No coppers now!" shouted the young man.

Lottie, fairly bubbling over with fun and enjoyment, was all
graciousness, and with smiles long remembered by some of the rustic
youth, certainly did beguile them into generosity  at which they
wondered ever after.

The result was marvellous, and the crown of the old hat was becoming
a crown of joy indeed to the  impoverished owner, who now had the
promise of some royal good times.

That fast-filling hat meant nourishing beef occasionally, a few
books for the minister's famishing mind, a new dress or two for
the wife, and a warm suit for the children all round.

No one was permitted to escape, and in justice it could now be said
that few wished to, for all began to enjoy the luxury of doing a
good and generous deed.

When they had been to nearly all, Lottie said to her now beaming
companion, "Go and get Mrs. Dlimm, and seat her in the large
rocking-chair in the parlor."

The poor little woman, having witnessed all the earlier scenes from
the stairs with strong and varying feelings, had, during the last
few moments, seen Lottie pass with such a profusion of greenbacks
in her husband's hat that in a  bewildering sense of joy and
gratitude she had fled to the little nursery sanctuary, and when
found by some of the ladies was crying over the baby in the odd
contradictoriness of feminine action. She was hardly given time to
wipe her eyes before she was escorted on the arm of the now gallant
farmer, to the chair of state in the parlor.

Then Lottie advanced to make a little speech, but could think of
nothing but the old school-day formula; and so the stately introduction
ended abruptly but most effectively, as follows:

"As a token of our esteem and kindly feeling, and as an expression
of--of--I--we hereby present you with--with the reward of merit";
and she emptied the hat in the lady's lap.

Instead of graceful acknowledgment, and a neatly worded speech in
reply, Mrs. Dlimm burst into tears, and springing up threw her arms
around Lottie's neck and kissed her, while the greenbacks were
scattered round their feet like an emerald shower. Indeed the
grateful little woman, in her impulse, had stepped forward and upon
the money.

The city belle, to her great surprise and vexation, found that some
spring of her own nature had been touched, and that her eyes also
were overflowing. As she looked around deprecatingly, and half-ashamed,
she saw that there was a prospect of a general shower, and that many
of the women were sniffling audibly, and the brusque young farmer
stood near, looking as if he could more easily hold a span of
run-away horses than he could hold in himself.

At this moment Hemstead stepped forward, and said: "My friends,
we can learn a lesson from this scene, for it is true to our best
nature, and very suggestive. Your pastor's wife standing there
upon your gift that she may kiss the giver (for in this instance
Miss Marsden but represents you and your feeling and action) is
a beautiful proof that we value more and are more blessed by the
spirit of kindness which prompts the gift than by the gift itself.
See, she puts her foot on the gift, but takes the giver to her heart.
The needs of the heart--the soul--are ever greater than those of
the body, therefore she acknowledges your kindness first, because
with that you have supplied her chief need. She does not undervalue
your gift, but values your kindness more. Hereafter, as you supply
the temporal need of your pastor, as I believe you ever will, let
all be provided with the same honest kindness and sympathy. Let
us also all learn, from this lady's action, to think of the Divine
Giver of all good before his best earthly gifts."

Mrs. Dlimm had recovered herself sufficiently by this time to turn
to the people around her and say, with a gentle dignity that would
scarcely have been expected from her: "The gentleman has truly
interpreted to you my very heart.  I do value the kindness more
even than the money which we needed so sorely. Our Christian work
among you will be more full of hope and faith because of this scene,
and therefore more successful."

Then, as from a sudden impulse, she turned and spoke to Hemstead
with quaint earnestness: "You are a stranger, sir, but I perceive
from your noble courtesy and bearing--your power to appreciate and
bring out the best there is in us--that you belong to the royal
family of the Great King.  Your Master will reward you."

Poor Hemstead, who thus far had forgotten himself in his thought
for others, was now suddenly and painfully made conscious of his
own existence, and at once became the most helpless and awkward of
mortals, as he found all eyes turned toward him. He was trying to
escape from the room without stepping on two or three people--to
Lottie's  infinite amusement, though the tears stood in her eyes as
she laughed--when Mrs. Gubling, ignorant of all that had  happened,
appeared from the kitchen, and created a diversion in his favor.

The good woman looked as if pickles had been the only part of the
donation supper in which she had indulged, and in a tone of ancient
vinegar, said, "Them as hasn't eaten had better come and take what
they can git now."

A roar of laughter greeted this rather forbidding invitation.  But,
before any one could reply, Mr. Dlimm, red and breathless from his
exertions, also entered, and with a faint smile and with the best
courtesy he could master under the trying circumstances, added:
"I am sorry any of our friends should have been kept waiting for
supper. If they will now be so kind as to step down, we will do
the best we can for them."

The good man was as puzzled by a louder explosion of mirth as Mrs.
Gubling had been. The stout farmer whispered  something to Lottie,
and then, with an extravagant flourish, offered his arm to Mrs.
Gubling.

"Go 'long with you," she said, giving him a push; but he took her
along with him, while Lottie brought the parson to where his wife
stood surrounded by greenbacks like fallen leaves, which in the
hurry of events had not been picked up. The good man stared at his
wife with her tearful eyes, and Mrs. Gubling stared at the money,
and the people laughed and clapped their hands as only hearty
country people can. Lottie caught the contagion, and laughed with
them till she was ashamed of herself, while the rest of her party,
except Hemstead, laughed at them and the "whole absurd thing," as
they styled it, though Harcourt had a few better thoughts of his
own.

Mrs. Rhamm's lank figure and curious face now appeared from the
kitchen in the desire to solve the mystery of the strange sounds
she heard, and the unheard-of delay in  coming to supper. Lottie's
coadjutor at once pounced upon her, and escorted, or rather dragged
her to where she could see the money. She stared a moment, and
then, being  near-sighted, got down on her knees, that she might
look more closely.

"She is going to pray to it," cried the farmer; and the simple
people, aware of Mrs. Rhamm's devotion to this ancient god, laughed
as if Sydney Smith had launched his wittiest sally.

"Mrs. Gubling," continued the young man, "if you are not chairman
of the committee, you ought to be, for you are the best man of the
lot."

"I'd have you know I'm no man at all. It's no compliment  to tell
a woman she's like a man," interrupted Mrs.  Gubling, sharply.

"Well, you've been a ministering angel to us all, this evening;
you can't deny that; and I now move that you and the dominie be
appointed a committee to count this money and report."

It was carried by acclamation.

"Now, while the iron is hot, I'm going to strike again.  I move
that we raise the dominie's salary to a thousand a year. We all
know, who know anything, that he can't  support his family decently
on six hundred."

In the enthusiasm of the hour this was carried also by those who
at the same time were wondering at themselves and how it all came
about. Strong popular movements are generally surprises, but the
springs of united and generous action are ever within reach, if one
by skill or accident can touch them. Even perverted human nature
is capable of sweet and noble harmonies, if rightly played upon.






CHAPTER XI.

A POSSIBLE TRAGEDY.





While the money was being counted, Lottie led Mrs.  Dlimm into the
hall, and introduced her to  Hemstead, saying, "This is the magician
whose wand has  transformed us all."

"You are the wand then," he said, laughing.

"What is the wand without the magician?" she asked, shyly watching
the effect of her speech.

His quick flush bespoke the sensitive nature that it was becoming
her delight to play upon, but he said: "According  to legends, magic
power was exerted in two ways,--by a magician, as you suggested,
and by ordinary mortals who happened to find a wand or spell or
some potent secret by which they and any one could perform marvels.
Now I assure you that I am the most ordinary of mortals, and without
my wand I could not conjure at all."

Lottie gave him a look at this point which heightened his color,
but he continued: "Miss Marsden, in her generosity, shall not give
to me the credit for events which I trust will add a little sunlight
to your life this winter, Mrs. Dlimm.  It is to be shared chiefly
by herself and that manly young fellow there, who is a member of
your church, I suppose.  It was Miss Marsden who brought us the
tidings of the evil 

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