NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES
3 3433 10690 8167
SS





Pirkis
New






Pirkis
MON











ET
Pirkis
Ncul





DONATED BY THE 420167
MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATIOŠ
A
WORK CITY
DATELESS BARGAIN
A NOVEL
Tharine
PIRKIS
LADY LOVELACE, * JUDITH WYNNE,
Louisa
AUTHOR OF
ETC.
И
280190

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1887


1.
THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LISTY
ASTOR, LENOX AI')
TILBEN FOUNDATI
1927 L


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
CHAPTER I.
**
"Lock the door, Mab, then we can begin to turn things upside
down in comfort. Now what room in the house is most unlike a
study?"
“Is it a conundrum," laughed Mab; or do you wish for a
straightforward answer? It wants thinking over. A house-
keeper's room, perhaps, or a kitchen—"
“Oh, what unrefined notions you have! If you had asked me,
I should have said a lady's boudoir. You get your inspiration from
your brown holland sleeves and apron. Look at yourself in the
glass. What a splendid housemaid was lost in you!”
These two young people gossiping so gaily on a bright May
morning were Mabel and Joscelyn Shenstone, only children of Irv-
ing Shenstone, one of the largest landowners in the county of
Gloucestershire. He was expected home on this day from a ten
days' visit to London, and his daughters were preparing a welcome
for him in his sanctum by turning things generally upside down.
“We want to leave the mark of our presence in the room,” Jos-
celyn had informed her mother over the breakfast-table that morn-
ing, “so that when father sits down and kicks off his boots-as he
always does in his study-he will say, 'Mab did that, I'll swear, and
Joyce made that other lovely arrangement.”'
These sisters, in appearance, were like and unlike each other as
only sisters can be. They were each of them tall, slender girls,
with well-shaped heads, a profusion of dark brown hair, and large
hazel-gray eyes. But here all likeness ended; for the truth must be
told, Joyce was one of the handsomest girls the county could boast
of, while Mab stood close upon the border of plainness. Joyce's
complexion was that of a brilliant brunette, while Mab was unmis-
1


4
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
takably sallow. Joyce had the straightest and prettiest of Grecian
noses, a small mouth all dimples and curves; Mab's nose was some-
what aquiline, her mouth wide and innocent of dimples and curves.
Joyce's general expression was one of buoyant happiness; Mab, as
a rule, wore so deep a look of intellectual thought as to amount al-
most to melancholy, or, to speak exactly, of anxious apprehension.
It was characteristic of these sisters that while Mab was attired
in the neatest of black gowns, which she had furthermore essayed
to protect from dust by thoroughly congruous holland apron and
housemaid's sleeves, Joyce's sole preparation for her morning's
mimic housewifery had been to pin back her pretty cambric skirt
into one graceful fold behind, thereby disclosing in front her dainty
slippers and slender ankles.
Mab took a long, steady look at herself in the mirror.
“I think I must be a born housemaid ; I always feel so thor-
oughly at home with a dusting-brush in my hand,” she began, mus-
ingly.
But Joyce was not at all in a mood for either musing or attitudi-
nizing that morning.
“Well, then, begin and use it, my dear, as if you were to the
manner born,'” she replied, laughingly, giving Mab a little push in
the direction of the writing-table, which stood at right-angles to the
glass. “You set to work on the ink-bottles; empty them every one
-you know I'm going to turn them all into flower-vases—while I
attack the book-shelves.”
Mab made a little demur.
“ It doesn't seem the right thing to do with ink-bottles, and
where--where shall I throw the ink ?"
"Oh, you want so much telling! You a housemaid, indeed !
Why, out of the window, of course; never mind about the flowers
underneath. Now, a clever maid would have jumped at that idea
before I could have spoken.”
Mab made another demur, muttering something to the effect
" that it wasn't exactly the sort of work a housemaid would have
given to her.” It was, however, a very little demur, for, although
Joyce was nearly two years younger than Mab, she invariably acted
the elder sister, and Mab was, so to speak, completely “under her
thumb."
So splash, splash, went bottle after bottle of ink from the window
on the flower-bed beneath.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
5
" It will dye those pansies a magnificent blue-black," laughed
Joyce, hard at work at her book-shelves. “Old Donovan will
throw up his hands in admiration when he comes round next with
his watering-pot. Look here, Mab, here's a whole row of books on
farming, cattle-rearing, and such like nonsense. Shall I turn them
all the wrong way-upside down, that is--or with their backs to the
wall?”
"I think you might let the books alone, Joyce.”
“Good gracious! What for? Why, books are the first thing
to be thought of in a study. If I let the books alone, what may I
touch? Ah, I've an idea! I'll rummage about for some poetry-
books; there are sure to be a lot behind somewhere, or on the
upper shelves, and I'll push back all the dreadfully useful books and
put all the poetry in front. Now, won't that be splendid? Oh,
good gracious, good gracious!” This in an utterly surprised tone.
“Here are heaps upon heaps of poetry-books! Why, there's Shel-
ley, Keats, Coleridge, Shakespeare! Oh, no end of Shakespeare; a
dozen volumes at least. Who would have thought that father had
ever in his whole life been an admirer of the poets? These books
have every one of them his name on the fly-leaf in his own writing!"
Mab left her writing-table all in a hurry.
“I thought it! I knew it !” she said, excitedly. “I felt certain
father had been all but a poet before he went in so much for farm-
ing and that sort of thing; and I know I'm right in never opening a
book of poetry,” she stopped herself abruptly.
Joyce turned upon her amazed.
'Why--why shouldn't you read poetry, if you like?” she cried.
“That's it! I know you're acting up to some funny notion you've
taken into your head. You've given up music, you've given up
painting, you are always doing plain needlework, or poring over
housekeeping books. What does it mean? What's the idea,
Mab?"
Mab went back to her writing-table.
“Look, Joyce,” she said, quietly, “I've emptied all the ink-bot-
tles. Now, don't you think we ought to begin getting the flowers ?
Shall I go and ask Donovan to cut a basket-full ?” Which remark,
it will be seen, was in no sort an answer to Joyce's question.
It served, however, to divert her attention.
“Ask Donovan ?" she cried. “Are you out of your mind ?
Why, if we went down on our knees to him he wouldn't give us


6
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
few very
more than a handful of the commonest garden-flowers and just a
full-blown azaleas, with very short stalks, out of one of the
hot-houses. No, thank you; I'm going out to help myself this time,
and I shall come back with armfuls of everything-tulips, hyacinths
-everything that's spring-like and delicious. Oh, the dust!” Here
a fit of sneezing prevented further exclamation.
Whereupon Mab volunteered her services.
“Let me finish those book-shelves while you get the flowers.
You only want all the poetry in front, and the farming-books pushed
back, so that father won't be able to lay his hand upon anything he
wants. Isn't that it?" she asked, setting to work briskly on the
volumes.
A door opening off this little study led, by a flight of steps,
straight into the garden, now, thanks to a singularly sunny month
of May, in the full glory of its spring blossoming.
Down these steps went Joyce with the biggest pair of scissors
she could find. Back again in something under five minutes she
came, with a nosegay so huge she was compelled to hold her dress-
skirt in either hand to help carry it into the room.
She deposited the flowers in a heap on the floor-snowy haw-
thorn boughs, “deep tulips dashed with fiery dew, laburnums, drop-
ping-wells of fire."
“There's a lot more coming,” she cried, gleefully. “I came
upon Kathleen just now, and told her to bring all the hyacinths in
pots she could lay her hands upon. Ah, here she is !” This added
as a remarkably pretty and, for her station, daintily-attired damsel
appeared upon the scene burdened with two full-flowering hyacinths
in pots.
This was Kathleen Donovan, the gardener's daughter, who acted
as maid to the two young ladies. Hers was a face that in another
sphere of life might have won for her a ducal coronet, or at least a
dangerous reputation as a successful beauty. Not a faultlessly
beautiful face, but a face so full of sparkle, of betwitching bright-
ness, and changeful coquetry that one looked at it, and looked again,
without having the remotest notion of what shape or size were the
features, what color were eyes and hair. It was a typical Irish face,
not the face one is accustomed to associate with orange baskets and
green-and-red shawls, but rather with the harps and the Irish melo-
dies, the breeze-blown Norah Creinas, and the sweet vales “where
the bright waters meet.” Her manner was Irish too-soſt, arch,


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
7
betwitching—though with an English veneer upon it, caught from
constant daily contact with her young mistresses.
“Ever so many more, Kathleen,” cried Joyce. “I am going to
fill the fireplace with hyacinths. I want this room to be as unlike
a study and as much like a bower as we can make it. Never mind
what your father says, bring everything you can get hold of that has
leaves and flowers."
Off went Kathleen; down went the two girls on their knees,
breaking branchlets from the boughs of laburnum and hawthorn,
arranging the big, yellow tulips against a plumed background of
lilac, doing, in fact, their very utmost to convert this chosen seat of
Minerva into a shrine fit for Flora herself.
“ It's like desecration,” murmured Mab, looking remorsefully to-
ward the book-shelves, where the topsy-turvied volumes showed
mournfully through a bowery arrangement of bright-tinted posies.
“It's consecration, you mean," cried Joyce. “These dry old
walls have never held so much beauty before;" and on went her
fingers faster than ever.
Her eyes sparkled, her curly hair strayed across her forehead,
she sang merry little snatches of old-world ballads which a modern
fashion has revived. Assuredly the May sun, after climbing the
Mendips that morning, turning the forgotten battle-fields of old
Gloucestershire into fields of “cloth of gold” with buttercups and
celandine, could find no daintier work for its mid-day hours than
throwing its light and its shadow on this blithe picture of Joyce
Shenstone on the floor amid her bright, spring flowers.
Mab lifted up a finger.
“ Hush! There's a step on the gravel,” she said, not inaptly, in
the middle of Joyce's carol that-
“Every fair has a sweetheart there,
And the fiddler's standing by.”
Down went all Joyce's posies in a moment.
“It's Frank!" she cried, jumping to her feet.
And, before Mab could have counted ten on her fingers, she had
fung down the garden steps, and might have been seen out there
in the sunshine talking and laughing with a tall, dark young man of
about six or eight-and-twenty. Now looking up into his face, now
looking down at the pebbles at her feet, with bright, quick, happy
glances and smiles that left no doubt as to the footing on which the
two stood toward each other,


8
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
For of course she had a lover-this gay, beautiful girland of
course (equally as beseemed a gay, beautiful girl) he paired well
with her. He was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and, if a little thin,
yet withal it was not a thịnness that implied want of bodily vigor,
but rather an extreme of nervous energy, and a sufficiency of muscle.
Joyce dashed at once into a glowing description of her morning's
performance.
“We have had such a delightful morning, Mab and I," she be-
gan; no end of fun in father's study."
“Fun in a study? Oh!” This in a voice of comic horror.
“Well, why not? We've only turned everything as nearly up-
side down as possible. If you'd been there we should have done it
in half the time.”
“Is it likely I should have aided and abetted ? I'm only sur-
prised that Mab should have allowed such iniquity to be perpe-
trated."
She couldn't help it. You know I'm the ruling spirit in the
house. Come in at once, Frank, and pronounce an opinion on our
handiwork. From your first exclamation we shall be able to judge
what father's will be when he walks into the room."
But Frank demurred vigorously to this proposal.
“You know it's my last day with you. I'm off to London by
the first train to-morrow morning. I've no end to say to you.
Two are company; three, begging Mab's pardon, are not. Come
into the orchard, and let us see how the fruit-blossoms are getting
on!”
Meantime, Mab and Kathleen, indoors, were bringing their work
of decoration to a close, Mab, with a sudden diminution of energy,
which told either of a decrease of interest in her task now that the
ruling spirit had departed, or else of headache and languor, brought
on probably by the heavy odor of the masses of sweet-scented flow-
ers they had packed into such a small space. An atmosphere com-
pounded of the scents of hyacinth, hawthorn, narcissus, and lilac
would be assuredly more likely to suit the organs of bee or butter-
fly than those of a supersensitive human being.
More than once Mab put her hand to her head. Kathleen, flit-
ting in and out of the garden, could not possibly have felt overpowered
by the fragrance, but, nevertheless, she had suddenly grown silent,
and an expression somewhat akin to sullenness had chased away
the smiles and sunshine from her pretty face.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
9
At the foot of the garden-steps, with a final pair of hyacinth-
pots in her arms, she stood still, looking after Joyce and her lover
on their way toward the orchard-gate.
“You're no prettier than I am ; you're taller, maybe-a trifle,
that's all-but that's no reason why—" she began muttering.
“Kathleen, I'm waiting,” called Mab from within. “Put those
two flower-pots just within the fireplace-so. Now, I don't be-
lieve we could find room for any more, if we tried our hardest.
Don't go away, I want to ask you about your brother. Has he
really made up his mind to go to London-will nothing make him
give up the idea ?”
“ Nothing, Miss Mab, I'm sure. He has as good as said good-
bye to all of us, and means, I know, to set off some time to-day,"
answered Kathleen, evidently with an effort bringing back her
thoughts to answer her young mistress's questions.
“But he has not said good-bye to me, Kathleen. He must come
in and see me, I've something special to say to him.”
“ I told him so, miss, only this morning. I told him how good
you had been to him, lending him books and all that ; but he said
he shouldn't dream of coming up to the house, unless you sent for
him.”
• Well, then, I'll send for him. You must go down to the cot-
tage, and tell him I'm waiting in here to see him. I want to know
exactly what he is going to do in London, and I want to make him
give me a solemn promise that he won't join any of those dreadful
secret societies."
Kathleen's face brightened.
“Ah, if you could make him do that, miss, it's a heavy load
you'd be lifting from mother's heart,” she said, in her excitement
unconsciously drifting into her father's brogue—a feat she did not
often accomplish, for her mother, being a thoroughbred cockney,
had impressed upon her daughter from her earliest years that all
such eccentricities of speech were to be avoided, as indicative of
kinship with an inferior race of people.
Mab began to fear she had been indiscreet.
“Don't tell Ned what I want him here for," she said, “ or per-
haps he won't come. Only say I want to say good-bye to him.”
· Do
you
think he'd refuse anything to you, Miss Mab?” cried
Kathleen, as she departed on her mission, “why he worships the
very ground you walk on.”
66


Ιο
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
Kathleen shut the glass door as she went down the steps into
the garden. The room seem to grow more and more stifling.
Mab's head went round. She sank into her father's easy-chair be-
side his writing-table, feeling drowsy and stupid. Her eyes closed,
she would get up in a minute, she thought, unlock the door leading
into the hall, open the opposite window and let a full current of fresh
air sweep through the room, and then straightway her head dropped
upon her hand, she leaned backward in her chair, falling into a deep,
dreamless sleep.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and there came the sound of a
foot-fall on the garden steps, a face looked in through the glass
door, the handle turned, and a man entered the room.
It was Ned Donovan, the gardener's son. His face, like his sis-
ter's, proclaimed his nationality. He was the beau-ideal of an
Irishman of the heroic, enthusiastic type, the type one can not bear
to think of as priest-ridden or demagogue-driven, and yet which so
frequently falls into the trammels of either priest or demagogue.
He had the bluest of eyes, curly chestnut hair, a woman's mouth
and chin, and a carriage of head and shoulders such as one sees in
the soldier-Irishman, and in no one else. Under his arm he carried
a couple of volumes of Carlyle's “Frederick the Great,” and, if
one had opened the first volume, Mab's name would have been seen
on the title-page.
He gave a great start of surprise when he caught sight of the
sleeping girl. Then he too became conscious of the oppressive at-
mosphere.
It's enough to suffocate her," he muttered, doing what Mab
had proposed to do, opening both doors and letting a free current
of air pass through.
Mab stirred in her sleep as the sweet, feesh breeze swept over
her face. Something of color came into her pale cheeks, her lips
half parted, as though about to smile. In sleep Mab always looked
an idealized likeness of the Mab who went about the house with
cupboard keys, or else knitting-pins, in her fingers. It was so now.
The look of anxious, troubled thought had disappeared, in its
stead there was an expression of serenity and peace, which brought
out a latent beauty never seen in the Mab of waking life.
Ned's expression as he gazed down upon her was first one of
admiration, next one of sharp, sudden pain.
“Those cursed walls which rank and wealth set up!” he mut-
66


12
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
dividuality. Her nature was too superficial, too slightly cut, as it
were, to impress itself upon anything, even her own children.
Physically, even, they were at opposite poles. Their one point
of resemblance to her was their long, slender figures. Her face
might have been molded in another planet for all likeness it bore to
theirs. It was colorless, trifling in feature, devoid of expression.
Any child with four pricks of a pencil within a round O might have
drawn it on a slate. But, trivial and uninteresting though it might
be, to its possessor it was a mine of wealth, for it gave her subject
for thought, and occupation for every one of her waking hours.
Only her looking-glass could have rendered an account of the num-
ber of admiring glances Mrs. Shenstone bestowed upon herself be-
tween sunrise and sunset. Now, after her first hasty look round
the transformed study and exclamation of surprise, she walked as
naturally to the mirror above the fireplace as the duck walks to the
pond. Midway, however, between the door and the mantel-piece,
she came upon Mab asleep in the easy-chair, and stopped with
another exclamation upon her lips.
“How extraordinary ! Another whim, is it ! Are they going to
turn this room into a sleeping-apartment, or what have they in their
heads now ?"
She broke off for a moment, then her thoughts went zigzagging
into exclamations of surprise as before.
“Dear me, dear me! How remarkably plain and odd-looking
the child is getting! I declare, she looks years older than I do!
Now, if she were only a little more like me in the face” (here a
complacent side-glance toward the mirror) "people might think she
was my elder sister! Oh, dear, what's this on the floor ?"
The last sentence was added with a little accession of energy as
her foot caught in the volumes which Ned Donovan, in his haste
to open door and windows, had deposited on the floor at Mab's
feet.
Mab opened her eyes with a start. For an instant she looked
about her confusedly, then an expression of amazement went sweep-
ing over her face.
“Why—why,” she stammered, looking well over Mrs. Shen-
stone's head with wide-opened yet unseeing eyes, “when did you
come home, papa? Why didn't I hear you come in ?"
She jumped up from her chair, then suddenly paused, passing
her hand vaguely over her forehead and eyes.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
13
“Oh-h, what is it. Where has he gone?” she asked, in a be-
wildered tone, looking about her uncertainly.
Mrs. Shenstone went to her and took her hand.
“Why, Mab, you must be dreaming !" she cried.
Wake up!
you look uncanny and bewildered.”
Mab drew the deep breath of an awakening sleeper.
“I
suppose I must have been dreaming,” she said, slowly, “but
I could have declared that my father stood there just in front of me,
looking, oh, so terribly sad."
Mrs. Shenstone pointed to the clock.
Five minutes to twelve,” she said, “your father has just a min-
ute ago stepped out of the train onto the platform, and, I should
imagine, was looking anything but sad at the prospect of seeing us
all again.”
66
CHAPTER II.
We measure time by its loss. Two years out of the very
middle
of a girl's girlhood, looked forward to with the girl's eyes, seems, no
doubt, to fall but little short of an eternity; looked back upon, which,
after all, must be the only way to gauge its minutes, it seems but a
wave-beat on a shore, the flight of a bird from north to south across
the sky-nothing more.
So at least it seemed to Mab and Joyce, as, exactly two years
from the day on which, with blithe hearts, they had decorated and
generally turned upside-down their father's study, they stood in the
same room talking over what had been, what was, what was to be.
Not with such light-tripping tongues as heretofore, for this quiet,
unpretending little room has grown to seem-to Mab, at any rate-
a solemn and holy place; a place, that is, sacred to solemn and holy
memories, ever since that terrible day on which, as she stood on the
threshold awaiting her father's return, his dead body had been
brought past her into the house and laid upon the sofa in this room.
Mr. Shenstone's sudden and awful death had been a great shock
to his family. He was in the very prime of his manhood, his health,
his wealth; he might have said with the fool of old time, had he
been in the habit of indulging in frivolous soliloquies: "Soul, thou
has much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink,
and be merry,” when lo! on a sudden, alighting from his train, at


14
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
the end of a short, pleasant journey, he took a false step, he fell
heavily upon the platform, he struck his temple against an iron pillar
as he fell, and headlong into eternity he went.
Mrs. Shenstone's grief was of the vehement, hysteric kind. Its
outward form of expression was the insistance upon the constant
daily attendance of a local doctor, the constant daily communication
with a London or Parisian dressmaker, an increased subscription to
Mudie's library, and incessant appeals for sympathy to everyone
who went near her.
Mab's grief was of the silent, undemonstrative kind. Its outward
expression was nil.
Joyce's grief was of the healthy, vigorous kind common to girls
of a healthy, vigorous nature, who know that fate, as it crosses their
path, will come to them with both hands full--one of sorrows, one
of joys—and are prepared to take heartily whichever hand she offers ;
to weep with a will if she holds out her left, to laugh with a will if
she holds out her right. Joyce knew nothing of half measures;
“thorough or nothing had ever been her motto. Only next to her
sunny good temper was her aptitude for deciding momentous ques-
tions at a glance. “That is why they are called “momentous,' they
are to be decided in a moment,” she had once quaintly informed
Frank Ledyard, when he had on one occasion slightly demurred to
her rapid decision on a matter of importance.
Somehow this habit of Joyce's inspired people with confidence,
not only in her capacity for arranging mundane affairs, but also in
the mundane affairs themselves. Things certainly could not be in
a very desperate state, so people ere apt to reason, when they ad-
mitted of such simple and easy solutions.
Even now, as she and Mab stood together in the dead father's
study discussing a serious question, Mab's nervous frown slightly
relaxed and her deep-set eyes looked less cavernous under the influ-
ence of Joyce's cheery decisiveness of voice and manner.
“It can't be helped, Mab, so we'll just make the best of it.
Mother's heart is set upon going to London, and getting into the
vortex-whatever that means—and go she will. You have tried
your hardest to keep her here, so also has Uncle Archie, so also
Aunt Bell; very well, you see it can't be prevented. So we must
just look the thing well in the face, and make the best of it.”
Mab sighed heavily.
“If papa were here," she began, but broke off abruptly.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
15
06
it.
“If papa were here he would hold the reins and keep things
straight," said Joyce, taking up the broken sentence and completing
• He is not here"-here her voice hushed reverently—“so I will
hold the reins instead, and keep mother out of mischief.”
“Oh, Joyce!”
"I mean it. I know what I'm saying. Some one must do it.
You think it beyond your capabilities; I don't feel it beyond mine"
At this moment the door opened, and Uncle Archie entered. He
was elder brother to Joyce's and Mab's father-a small, thin, wiry-
looking old gentleman on the down side of sixty. He had a perpet-
ual frown on his forehead, and a perpetual grumble in his eye; his
voice was grating, irritating. It recalled the sense of grains of sand
'under the eyelids, 'thorns up the side of one's finger-nail, or the
stinging nettle-rash of one's juvenile legs.
“ If there's one thing in the world I detest more than another,"
he said, raspingly, “it's the overweening confidence of very young
people—of very young people.” The last sentence repeated with a
pointed emphasis.
Joyce looked up at him saucily.
“Poor Uncle Archie,” she said, pityingły, “what has put you out
now?"
“What has put me out! Is there anything in this house that
doesn't put me out, I should like to know? First one thing, then
another. Nothing goes as it ought. I've been talking with your
mother for the last half-hour."
“ Ah-h-h!”
Reasoning with her, I should have said, if anyone in this house
had been capable of such a thing as reasoning; but, at any rate,
talking to her of her folly in breaking up her home here and setting
up an establishment in London, where she knows no one with an
ounce of common-sense in their heads."
* But, Uncle Archie, no one has more than a pinch of that pre-
cious quality here. You know you said so only yesterday.”
• No one, in fact, who can put two and two together with a cer-
tain 'result,” went on Uncle Archie, heedless of the interruption.
“But there, I might as well have tried to reason with a skein of silk.
Anything more limp, more tangly than a woman's brain I can't im-
agine.”
“Poor old Uncle Archie!" again ejaculated Joyce, softly. “What
a life Aunt Bell must have of it sometimes !”
60


16
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“I repeat-"
“Oh, don't!"
Anything more limp and tangly than a skein of silk-
• You said a woman's brain just now."
“Than a skein of silk and a woman's brain is beyond my con-
ception. And now, on top of it all, comes this letter still further
to worry me."
Here the old gentleman put his hand into his pocket and drew
out a letter.
Why, that's from Frank! Give it me, uncle,” cried Joyce.
“Don't be in such a hurry; it's addressed to me. But I want
to talk it over with you. Come, sit down at this table.”
Here Uncle Archie drew a chair close to the table, and sat down.
Mab crept out of her corner, and left the room without a word.
Uncle Archie had taken the dead father's chair. To her way
of
thinking, it should be kept empty and sacred to his memory for ever
more.
99
But Joyce, without demur, kneeled on the floor beside the old
gentleman, looking up in his face.
“What can Frank have to say to you ? Really, he might have
told me beforehand that he was going to write to you."
"Really, I see no necessity for his so doing," said Uncle Archie,
snappishly. “This letter comes in consequence of a remark made
by your mother in Mr. Ledyard's presence."
“ Addressed to Frank, was it?”
This was asked with a little show of nervous apprehen-
sion.
“Really, I'm not prepared to say to whom the remark was ad-
dressed. Your mother is in the habit—you may have noticed it
before nowmof speaking out whatever comes into her mind, irre-
spective of the person or persons she may be addressing. No doubt
it is a charmingly ingenuous and juvenile habit, and worthy of culti-
vation; at the same time it is apt to be slightly embarrassing to
those on whose behalf it is exercised.”
“Uncle Archie, please tell me, word for word, what my
mother
said to Frank about me.'nie
“No, I couldn't undertake to tax my memory so far; I will give
you the general idea of her meaning. My own words you must
allow me to use."
“Oh, don't take a hundred years over it.”


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
17
66
To this remark Uncle Archie only raised his eyebrows. It hur-
ried him on, though, a little.
“Your mother intended to imply that you two girls were a very
great anxiety to her (what she said doesn't in the least matter).
She was confident Mab would some day degrade the family, by
starting a school for cookery at Shadwell-as though they had any-
thing to cook there bey red herrings !-or teach domestic econ-
omy in one of the Board Schools. And, as for you, you were bound
to make shipwreck of your life by some undesirable marriage, when,
with your fortune and good looks, you might be a reigning beauty
for a season, and a duchess at the end of it."
“Did my mother say that? And before Frank? Two nights
ago, I suppose; when he was staying here!”
Do you imagine I'm telling lies, young lady?”
And did he hear her ? Do you think he could have heard her,
Uncle Archie?"
“Not a doubt. To make sure that he should hear her, she said
it twice over, and I dare say would have gone over to his side, and
said it a third time right in his ear, if he had not shown he had heard
it, by taking his hat and saying good-by at once."
“That was why, then, he went off in such a hurry that night to
Cheltenham-and that is why he has written such short, unusual
letters, I suppose! Uncle Archie, let me have that letter, and read
it all to myself, will you?"
Here Joyce made a desperate effort to get possession of the
letter.
“Stop a bit, stop a bit !” said Uncle Archie, laying his hand flat
upon the paper. “I don't hand over my correspondence unan-
swered in that fashion. I'll give you the gist of it. In the letters
of a young fellow at his time of life there's always a lot to leave out
that won't be missed. Now, don't jog my elbow like that; you'll
give me the jumps. I'm coming to it fast enough.”
Uncle Archie adjusted his glasses, spread the letter in front of
him, humm'd and haw'd a little bit more, and then proceeded to con-
dense and expound it for Joyce's benefit. It may be remarked in
passing that Joyce contrived to secure a bit's-eye-view for herself
of the said letter between the lapel of the old gentleman's coat and
the inside curve of his elbow, scrupulously verifying his condensa-
tions sentence by sentence as he read them.
•Trusts I will pardon'-h’m, h’m— with respect to the remark
2


18
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
made by Mrs. Shenstone the other evening. Is quite willing to ad-
mit she had a perfect right to make it, that in fact it is a remark that
nine mothers out of ten might, in the circumstances, feel disposed
to make; but nevertheless it is a remark which he can not with dig-
nity pass over.' H'm, yes, dignity is the word he uses. On his
high horse, do you see, Joyce."
“Go on Uncle Archie, I'm taking it all in."
“Don't be in a hurry. I shall get paralysis in my elbow-joint if
you lean on me in that way-nine stone on a few inches of muscle
is a little too much. Yes, well, 'with dignity,' as I said before, ‘he
would like to direct my attention to the fact that his engagement
to my niece had Mr. Shenstone's entire approval, that there was a
distinct understanding between him and Mr. Shenstone that so soon
as he’ (Frank, that is) 'could secure by his profession an income of
five hundred pounds per annum, Mr. Shenstone was to add another
five hundred pounds to it, and the marriage was to take place.' Is
that true, Joyce?”
"Perfectly so. Go on."
“I am not a locomotive! Well, this arrangement he is per-
fectly willing to consider annulled by Mr. Shenstone's death; he is
also willing to admit that you are now through your father's death
in a very different position to what you were in when this arrange-
ment was made.' Well, of course, there he's right. I suppose you
and Mab will have each of you a steady income of a thousand a-year
when some of the leases fall in next year?”
Joyce left off jogging his elbow to utter an exclamation of aston-
ishment.
“You don't mean to say Frank suggests our waiting till he earns
a thousand a-year by his profession ?” she asked, jumping to the
conclusion, which showed on the upturned side of the paper.
“That is exactly what he does suggest, and he puts it on grounds
which makes it difficult for us to resist. He says he makes this pro-
posal not alone on the score of personal dignity' (high horse again !)
.but because he conceives that by deferring the marriage till he can
double your income with his own, he best carries out the spirit of
the arrangement made with your father at the time he was accepted
by him as your future husband.
Joyce drew a long breath, and got up from her knees.
"It's preposterous; it's ridiculous; it's Quixotic !” she cried,
her face flushing crimson.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
19
“Hump. I call it sensible, matter-of-fact, judicious. I shall
tell the young man when I answer his letter that I thoroughly ap-
prove the idea.”
“And I shall tell him, when I write, exactly what I think of it !
Why, he won't earn a thousand a year at his profession for another
ten years to come at the earliest. And now I'm twenty-one-why,
that would make me thirty-one! Fancy a bride at thirty-one! Oh,
how dreadful!"
“How's this, young lady? I'd no idea you were in such a tre- ,
mendous hurry to get married ! ”
“I'm not the least bit in a hurry to get married, and if I were
turned thirty-one I should be still less in a hurry; in fact, I wouldn't
marry at all at that ridiculous age. But I'm surprised at you, Uncle
Archie, encouraging any one in such far-fetched, high-flown folly; I
should have thought you would have put your foot at once on any-
thing in the shape of romance.”
"In my young days young women were not in the habit of throw-
ing themselves at the heads of young men,” said Uncle Archie, purs-
ing his lips and looking as sour as possible. Defense with him
always took the form of aggression.
• You had post-horses and Gretna Green, notwithstanding."
“ I'm not an antediluvian. That was twenty years before my
time.”
“As if twenty years, more or less, mattered on the other side
of sixty! Good-bye for the present, Uncle Archie, I want to save
this post. It is not of the least consequence what you say to Frank,
I shall tell him right out what I think of the whole thing."
Uncle Archie wheeled round in his chair and faced her.
“This is the young lady who felt confident she could hold the
reins and keep others out of mischief,” he said, taking off his
glasses so that she might feel the irony of his eye as well as of his
tongue.
Joyce paused with her hand on the door-handle.
*Exactly, Uncle Archie; that is what I'm bent on doing now.
I won't let you, or Mab, or mother, or Frank, make yourselves
ridiculous—any one of you-try as hard as you will.”.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
21
66
“ In future I will have nothing-nothing to do with society !'”
began Mrs. Shenstone, semi-hysterically.
“Don't, except with the society you have a right to command,
interjected Uncle Archie.
“There is an aristocracy of intellect, I'll cultivate that ; I'll
gather about me the élite of the worlds of art and literature. My
house in London shall be renowned as the meeting-place of art,
science, and letters. I'll choose its locality, irrespective of rank and
fashion."
“Oh, the locality must be close to the British Museum ; of
course that must be the seat of the Muses,” said Joyce, with a
merry laugh, and throwing a saucy, challenging look at Uncle
Archie, meant to be interpreted.
He was quick enough to catch its meaning.
“Let me see," he cogitated, rubbing his chin, “ isn't it in close
proximity to the British Museum that a certain young barrister has
his quarters ?”
“Ah, Frank has my letter by this time. Such a letter!”
laughed Joyce, accepting the counter challenge with alacrity.
· Mother,” said Mab, abruptly rising from the table, “will you
mind going through the housekeeping books with me this morning ?
There are one or two items I can't quite make out.”
Mrs. Shenstone sighed.
"I am so tired of housekeeping,” she said, plaintively.
To hear her speak one might think her days were passed in the
supervision of her establishment-her nights made wakeful by
plans for the comfort of her family. The fact of the matter was
that Mab was the Atlas of the household, and bore its burden on
her shoulders.
For once, however, she deemed it necessary to insist that her
mother's shoulders should bear an ounce or two of the weight; so.
the two left the room together, to spend a happy half-hour over
account-books.
Uncle Archie dropped his banter, and turned to Joyce directly
he found himself alone with her.
I want you to explain that sister of yours to me, Joyce,” he
said. “ You I can understand easily enough—any one can under-
stand you—but she is always a mystery to me. I can't penetrate
her.”
Joyce grew serious in a moment.
66


22
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
66
asm.
“She is a mystery to me, too, in some things,” she answered,
gravely, “ Here we are always together; we read each other's let-
ters; we haven't a secret from each other; yet sometimes I feel as
though, slowly but surely, a brick wall were being built up between
us, and that, by-and-by, I should only hear her voice far away on
the other side of it.”
“Is she over-studying, do you think-going in for philosophy or
mathematics? Girls often muddle their brains by attempting things
they've no real capacity for."
“ I'm certain she is not. She never opens a book, unless it is a
cookery-book, or one of dear papa's old 'Farmers' Guides 'or Agri-
cultural Gazettes.' She is dropping all her accomplishments, too-
never touches a pencil nor opens the piano."
She played decently, too, didn't she?”
· Decently! Brilliantly, you mean,” cried Joyce, with enthusi-
Yet she hasn't touched a note since one day-about six
months ago—I went into the drawing-room, to listen to her playing
one of Beethoven's sonatas. It was between the lights—too dark
to see the keyboard even, much less the music. Yet she was play-
ing deliciously, as though she had every one of the modulations by
heart. I knew she hadn't had the piece long enough to be playing
from memory, and, when I went close to her, I saw that her eyes,
though wide open, seemed looking nowhere, seeing nothing. Of
course I spoke to her, and asked if she wouldn't like candles, and
she jumped up with such a terrified start, and clutched at me. I
am so thankful you have come in, Joyce,' she said ; 'the room
seemed full of shadows.' And from that day she has never touched
a note.”
Uncle Archie frowned heavily, and shook his head.
"Your mother ought to have advice for her-something must be
wrong with her nerves. It's just as well, after all, that you're going
up to London; the best of medical advice can only be had in the
big cities. I remember your
father—".
He stopped short, as though his reminiscences were not of the
sort or kind for the daughter's ear.
But Joyce caught at his meaning-snapped at it, like a spaniel
at flies.
“Uncle Archie," she queried, peremptorily, “was my father at
any time like Mab in his ways ?”
“What do you mean? Afraid to sit alone in a room after dark,


DATELESS BARGAIN.
23
or for ever bringing out his words with a jerk, or stopping short in
the middle of every other sentence he uttered ?"
“ No. I mean, did he seem to be like Mab, always forcing him-
self to act up to some preconceived ideas? Of course, I mean as
a young man, I know very well what he was later on in life.”
“ He was very fond of poetry at one time--used to sit reading
Shakespeare, Milton, and that other fellow-what's his name? Shelley
-all day long. Then he suddenly dropped it all, took to farming
as a science, settled down here and married.”
“Ah-h!” said Joyce, “ I see.”
But she did not say what she saw. How could she? when the
fact suddenly made intelligible to her understanding was how her
father with his strong, clear intellect came to marry a woman whose
brains might have been put into a nutshell without the slightest in-
convenience to the kernel. “Here am I-I shall drown in the Ideal,
only the rock Common-place can keep me high and dry," must have
been the cry of his heart when he did the deed.
Uncle Archie possibly followed in the track of her thoughts.
“ The truth of it is,” he said, with the air of a man accustomed
to deal out panaceas to the women of a previous generation, “ Mab
ought to be married. She is old enough-three-and-twenty nearly
-nothing gets the maggots out of a girl's brain so effectually as
marriage."
Joyce begged the question.
" I like that, Uncle Archie! You would like to marry Mab right
off at once, but me you would keep single for another ten years, if
you could !”
“You and Mab are two different beings. If you were an old
maid for another twenty years you'd developed no eccentricities.
You'd just be comfortable and commonplace, and-and-help to
keep other people the same."
But it was not unlovingly said.
“Thank you, Uncle Archie. I'm sure you mean it for a com-
pliment though it is not a remarkably well-turned one. Well, I
promise you, when mother's establishment in London is set up-
somewhere in the vicinity of the British Museum it will be, I'm con-
fident-I'll look out for a husband for Mab. I daresay there will be
plenty of young men about the house-mother always did like young
men about, didn't she ?"
“Ay, there's the mischief,” groaned Uncle Archie, bringing his


24
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
hand down on the table with an energy that made Joyce start,
“you'll get young fools about the house in swarms-impecunious
idiots, incapable of making their way in life, anxious to tack them-
selves to a woman's skirts and be dragged into competence. There's
your mother not pastmarrying-large income-Mab-you! all with
independent fortunes, and no one to look after you.”
“You come up and do the jailor, why not ? Take it in turns
with me; turn and turn about."
In turns with you! Great Heavens !" ejaculated Uncle Archie,
with a keen upward look over his glasses, taking stock of Joyce's
exceedingly youthful graces. Why, Mab would do the chaperon
better than you, or might if she chose to exert herself. What's the
world coming to?"
“Why, to common-sense, I hope, now that young ladies of one-
and-twenty are so well able to take care of themselves and other
people also," laughed Joyce. “As if you didn't know I had chap-
eroned my mother and Mab ever since I was out of the nursery.
Why, Uncle Archie, you dear old thing">here she went up to the
old gentleman and gave him one, two, three good kisses—“I'd chap-
eron you if you were a bachelor and had no one to look after you!”
60
CHAPTER IV.
UNCLE ARCHIE was right when he said that any one could
read and understand Joyce Shenstone's character. Truly there
were no hieroglyphics in it, although many contradictions met
there. For instance, her sunny good-humor was a thing not often
found in company with keen powers of observation and a quick
sense of the ludicrous. How, too, it was that her frank plain-
speaking ran in couples with her power to make and keep friends
was a puzzle to not a few. “ If I see a spade I feel bound to say
it's a spade and not a teaspoon,” she had often said to Mab, when
the latter had stood open-eyed at her sister's combined fearlessness
and truthfulness.
Joyce had plenty of opportunities for saying spades were spades
and teaspoons teaspoons, as likewise had Mab of standing open-eyed
Imiring when, in due course, Mrs. Shenstone's London es-
hent was set up.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
25
It was not until the season was well advanced that Mrs. Shen-
stone succeeded in finding a house to her liking. Eventually one of
the roomy, comfortable houses in Eaton Square fixed her fancy.
Joyce wrote saucily enough to Uncle Archie from the hotel
where they were temporarily located.
“I allowed mother to decide upon Eaton Square instead of the
vicinity of the British Museum, because I knew it really didn't mat-
ter two straws, for wherever we went Frank would be sure to re-
pitch his tent within a stone's-throw of us. He has already made
preparations for so doing, and next week we may be able to kiss
the tips of our fingers to each other across the mews at the back
of the house. The thought is an inspiring one for both of us to
carry about, and may serve to enliven our ten years' penal servi-
tude.”
“ Ten years' penal servitude,” was the form of expression she
frequently adopted to designate her matrimonial engagement, since
it had become a received notion in the family that no marriage was
to be thought of until Frank's income equaled her own.
The phrase jarred terribly upon Frank's ears at times.
“ It is too near the truth to be pleasant hearing,” he would oc-
casionally say to her, when he called at Eaton Square in the even-
ing, looking white and tired from a heavy day's work in the Law
Courts. “Do you know, Joyce, sometimes I feel I am doing you a
positive wrong in keeping you tied down to a poor beggar like me,
when not a doubt, from a worldly point of view, you might do so
much better?"
But this would be only after a very hard day's work at some in-
significant and unprofitable case, when it seemed as though the
harder he wooed Fortune, the colder her face grew toward him.
At other times, when Fortune showed in a little better tem-
per, itwould be
"I don't believe there ever was such a lucky fellow—no one
ever had such an incentive to hard work as I have. Everything is
going on oiled wheels now. I shall soon be-well, if not on the
top step of the ladder, at least half-way up, and then – and
then-"
Joyce knew how to be cheery and comforting to the first mood,
merry and teasing to the second.
· And then and then,'” she finished his sentence for him.
“People will say what an intolerably conceited, altogether insuffer-


26
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
co
able young man that Frank Leydard is! How he plumes himself
on his success, and looks down on every one who comes near him!
and what a dear, patient girl that Joyce Shenstone must be to put
up with him as she does, falling in with his whims and humoring
his pride!”
"Joyce, if you had not humored my pride in this way I don't
know what would have become of me."
“It was Uncle Archie who insisted that your pride should be
humored, not I.”
"You were particeps criminis '-"
Oh, keep that for the Law Courts !"
"Joyce," Frank went on, speaking as seriously as though he
were already seated on that bench toward which his ambition
tended, “when your mother spoke those careless words that night,
all in a flash I seemed to see myself as I stood before the eyes of
the world, and to hear the verdict which the world would pass on
me."
· Law Courts again !” murmured Joyce, “but why lay so much
stress on mother's words? No one" she broke off all in a hurry.
If she had finished her sentence it would have been:
“No one ever pays any attention to what mother says. If Mab
and I did so, we should be in perpetual hot water.”
But there are certain things one can not in good taste say, even
to one's lover, second self though he may be.
Frank seemed to read her unspoken thoughts easily enough.
“There are some words which a man can not pass over with
dignity," he said, somewhat doggedly.
Dignity! I have heard that word before. If I hear it often I
shall fall into the habit of adopting it for my own personal use.
wonder how much you thought of my dignity when you wrote so
bluntly to Uncle Archie : Whatever you say, I'm not going to
marry that niece of yours for another ten years.'”
“ Did I make use of that expression ? But you see, Joyce, a lady
with an independent income of a thousand a-year does not need to
lay the stress upon her dignity that a poor beggar with less than
half that sum does."
I wish you would forget the thousand a-year."
"I wish I could. But somehow it seems before my eyes and in
my thoughts all day long. I say to myself when I get up in the
morning—"
I
66


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
27
Joyce laid her finger on his lips.
“I don't in the least want to hear what you say when you get
up in the morning. Spoken thoughts always sound so ridiculous
when they're repeated-like dreams, which bore other people to
listen to. Do you know, Mab has lately taken to speaking her
thoughts out loud?. It sounds so funny.”
She was evidently in a great hurry to lead the talk away from
her thousand a-year.
“ Mab's soliloquies ought to be worth hearing. She opens her
mouth so seldom to the outer world, her brain must be packed with
ideas," said Frank, following the decoy simply enough.
“If you could hear them! She comes out of her room in the
morning counting on her fingers all the things she has to get through
before lunch. “Let me see,' she says, touching finger number one,
there is Mrs. Gibbs's baby wants new flannel! and Smith, the
chimney-sweep, burnt his brush last week, and must have a new
one,' and so on till she gets to finger number five. I must tell you
that Mab, the last few days, has not been quite so keen about her
housekeeping duties, but has taken up with . Practical Beneficence,'
as the newspaper biographies say."
“Does that mean she has turned Ritualist, and goes about visit-
ing the slums in company with a fellow in a black night-gown, with
a cord round his waist ?"
“As if I would let her! No; it simply means that she is work-
ing very hard at schools and district-visiting, and has given up the
parish church to attend a Non-conformist chapel.”
“Good heavens! I hope she won't be taking up with concer-
tinas and the Salvation Army, or those semi-hysterical things called
revivals! The truth of it is, Mab ought to get married."
"There! Exactly what Uncle Archie said! You men seem to
think marriage is the cure for all earthly ills. If a girl goes in for
high art, and dresses like a saint in a church window, you say imme-
diately, ‘She ought to get married.' If she takes up with horses,
and talks like a groom, you repeat the same thing; and here, be-
cause poor Mab, as I said just now, has embarked upon a career of
practical beneficence,' you pull a face like a consulting doctor, and
say, 'She ought to get married !' I've no patience."
Frank grew grave-people generally grew grave in talking of
Mab.
“ You don't understand, dear. It's not with Mab's practical
?


28
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
beneficence I'm finding fault; I honor her for it. But, you see,
these are self-imposed duties, and can be laid down at any time.
Before another month is over our heads, she may have found an-
other outlet for herself not quite so desirable.”
“Do you mean that before another month is over our heads I
am to find an outlet for Mab's eccentricities in the shape of a mat-
rimonial engagement?”
“I did not even hint at such a thing,” began Frank, indignantly.
But Joyce was bent on teasing, and rattled on inconsequently.
Oh, the awful responsibility! Oh, the crowds of young men
I shall gather about me so soon as I make known the fact that one
of the family is wanting a husband !”
“Well, let it be clearly known which of the family is wanting
a husband, or I may be called upon to enter a protest.”
“Could you, 'with dignity?'” laughed Joyce. “Well, come in
next Friday evening when we shall be at home'to our friends, and
you shall see me set the ball rolling. By-the-by, did I tell you that
Friday evenings are to be an institution weekly throughout the sea-
son? Such Fridays they will be! Something quite-quite out of
the common! They will have to be seen to be appreciated!"
CHAPTER V.
FRANK was too quick-witted not to know what Joyce meant
when she said, with that look of fun in her eyes, that her mother's
receptions “must be seen to be appreciated." To him, with his
knowledge of Mrs. Shenstone's weakness of character, and its in-
herent silliness, but one inference was possible, viz., that she had
thrown open her doors to all sorts and conditions of men, without
criticising their passports to respectable society, probably without so
much as inquiring whether they had passports to criticise.
It filled him with apprehension, most of all on Mab's account.
Joyce, he naturally felt, was safe enough. He had a right to say a
word as to her comings and goings, her sayings and doings, the
friendships she accepted or refused. But Mab, with her odd, re-
served ways, her sudden, unaccountable impulses, seemed to him
beset with pitfalls right and left.
In his apprehension, he wrote a long letter to Uncle Archie, out-


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
29
lining the “situation” as delicately as possible, but stating most em-
phatically his own opinion that, if the old gentleman could make his
annual visit to London tally with Mrs. Shenstone's stay in the me-
tropolis, it would be an amazingly good thing for all persons con-
cerned.
Uncle Archie, though at one with the young man in spirit on the
matter, was yet disposed to resent his out-spoken frankness as some-
thing of an impertinence. Accordingly he wrote curtly enough in
reply:
“I rely upon the common-sense and discretion of my younger
niece to keep me informed of any matters that may require my pres-
ence in town. My investments do not need looking after just now
(a likelihood you so kindly suggest), and I have the gout.”
Frank groaned over this letter.
“Talk about the emancipation of women," he said; “nine-tenths
of them want protection, not emancipation."
By a coincidence, the word he used so disparagingly was just
then more frequently on Mrs. Shenstone's lips than any other. She
said it to herself very often in those days. Every time, in fact, she
took out her check-book, and enjoyed the privilege she had never
tasted in her husband's life-time, of drawing large sums of money
for foolish or unnecessary purposes; whenever she selected het
youthful and ultra-fashionable costumes from her Parisian dress-
maker; and lastly, but not least emphatically, when she gave carte
blanche to her acquaintances in London to bring to her house any-
one upon whom was set a seal of distinction, no matter of what sort
or kind.
“ For I am determined to gather about me the notabilities of my
time," she confidentially informed Joyce, as she planned her first
evening reception. “My house shall be a representative house, so
far as I can make it one; the meeting-place of the leading spirits of
art, literature, and science."
Ever since the one snub Mrs. Shenstone had received from the
aristocratic hand of the Countess of Cranbury, this had been her
ambition.
“Ah,” murmured Joyce, in response, “I hope it won't be a case
of Glendower calling spirits from the vasty deep.'
Mrs. Shenstone wisely passed over the allusion.
"These Friday evenings will be a momentous undertaking. I
expect to sink or swim by them. I am told that any one can give


30
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
afternoons in London, and make them 'go' passably; but to fill
your rooms one evening every week requires talent of a high order.”
Joyce pursed her lips and said nothing.
“I rely upon you and Mab to act as my coadjutors. You are
handsome, and will make the house attractive; Mab, though plain,
might be picturesque if she chose-"
Like flame to tinder was this slighting allusion to Mab's appear-
ance.
<<
66
Mab plain!” Joyce cried. “Why, she has a beauty all her
own if people had only eyes to see it.”
• Yes, so your father used to say, but I never had eyes to see it.
Don't look at me like that, Joyce; there is nothing to get red and
excited over. The one thing I want to do is to make my rooms
picturesque and attractive, and I rely upon you two girls to help me."
Oh, I'll help you, mother!" answered Joyce, catching scent of
the fun of the thing, and ready to run it down. “ We must do the
thing well, or not at all. We must give thought, time, energy to the
work.”
“Exactly, Joyce,” exclaimed Mrs. Shenstone, delighted at the
prospect of sympathetic help. “Thought, as you say, must be given
to the undertaking. Very well, I have given endless thought to the
manner in which people entertain in London, and it seems to me
that the first thing to do is to make the house distinguished. In
every house, if you notice it, there is a feature"
"Two, three, more I should say.”
“ Well, no, not as a rule. In some houses religion is a feature,
in some politics, in some science, in some art, in some bearity-"
Oh, mother, let's go in for beauty here! You, I, Mab! Let's
make our features a feature, and the thing's done."
Mrs. Shenstone shook her head.
You and I would do, Joyce,” she said, complacently, “but Mab
would spoil it all. No; I have thought it well over, and have come
to the conclusion that picturesqueness is the thing we can best ac-
complish. As I said before, Mab can be made to look picturesque,
though beautiful, never. As for you and me, it is quite unimportant
which rôle we adopt.”
The bland manner in which she, a woman on the other side of
forty, with colorless face and expressionless features, bracketed her-
self with the youthful and handsome Joyce, was proof of vanity
swollen almost to the verge of fatuity.


32
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
culinary point of view, were, so far as decoration were concerned, a
profitless investment.
Only two days before her first reception took place, Mrs. Shen-
stone came driving home from her morning calls at a tremendous
pace, breathless in her eagerness to consult with Joyce over another
form of display for the originality that was in her, and which was
destined shortly to dazzle the eyes of the world.
“I have just been calling on Mrs. O'Halloran,” she began, go-
ing hurriedly into the room where Joyce, at the piano, was getting
through some storms and whirlwinds of preludes and scales.
“She is the wife of the Irish member, you know, whom we met at
Bournemouth last year, and she said to me, with that lovely, rolling
accent of hers, “And it's in the fashion you ought to be, Mrs.
Shenstone ; whatever else you're out of, be in that. You ought to
catch what's in the air, ride on the top of the times, if you'd like to
be one of the women of the day.” Well, Joyce, I stayed with
her nearly two hours, and all that time people came in and out,
and they talked of nothing, absolutely nothing, but Irish politics,
and the dreadful manner in which Ireland had been ground to the
dust by the Saxons."
Oh, my poor tomatoes !" sighed Joyce, feeling they would be
doomed to the saucepan now, and the dark corners of the drawing-
room be begrudged to them.
And, by-the-way, Joyce, there were, among others, two such
charming people calling, a brother and sister. He was a splendid-
looking man, tall, with fine features, and a grand defiant air, be-
tween forty and fifty years of age, I should think ;—and the sister
-oh, so sweet and gentle, and soft-speaking, all smiles and curls."
“ Irish both ?”
“No, American. His name is George Ritchie Buckingham.
Captain Buckingham, I think they called him. He writes for the
press, and does ever so many things besides. I asked them both a
great many questions about themselves; they answered every one."
Joyce could fancy her mother asking a great many questions.
And you should have heard him talk about poor Ireland's
wrongs. It was grand beyond anything. He was defiant, furious.
I never heard finer declamation."
Joyce shrugged her shoulders.
“I suppose he forgot he was addressing an English lady?”
“ No; that was the point of it all. He kept repeating over and


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
33
over again, 'I don't forget, madam, that you are a daughter of the
conquering race, of the race that delights to quench nationalities,
to uproot trees of liberty.' No, I think it was standards he said.”
“ It doesn't matter which. Trees often are standards-rose-
trees, that is. Have a cup of tea, mother?”
Mrs. Shenstone was thankful for a cup of tea. Her lips were
dry, and there was yet a good deal remaining for them to do.
She nibbled a biscuit, and went on with her talk at inter-
vals.
“So I was thinking, Joyce, as the topic of Ireland's wrongs is
on every one's lips just now, we might as well take up with the
Irish question hotly, and"
"Combining originality with fashion," suggested Joyce.
“Exactly-gather about us distinguished politicians and men of
letters of all nationalities."
"In rooms appropriately decorated with shamrocks, infernal
machines, floating banners with stars and stripes upon them,” con-
tinued Joyce.
“Become at once envied and popular among our friends"
“ And end with seeing our names mentioned with due honor in
the police reports of the daily papers.” And here Joyce, with a
right-down merry laugh, sank back in her chair, hiding her face in
her hands.
The laugh disconcerted Mrs. Shenstone a little.
“I thought you were going to help me, Joyce. I relied upon
you. You know I always do," she began, complainingly.
The real plaintiveness in her voice recalled Joyce to seriousness.
“So I will help you, mother. Choose your
dress for
you
if
you
like. Of course you'll be all in green, with Limerick lace !”
“Yes; green is becoming to delicate complexions. But the
lace! I can't endure Limerick lace. We'll think over that. And
the shamrocks! they'll be the difficulty. Now, where can we get
shamrocks in London-in large quantities, I mean, of course, for I
should want big bunches all over the house?”
“Wouldn't clover do? it's wonderfully like shamrock."
“Ah, it might! That's a 'good idea. Now there's something
else. That little maid of yours, Kathleen, will come in most use-
fully. She has a thoroughly Irish face and manner, and, if we dress
her up and impress it upon her that she must try and pick up her
father's way of speaking and drop her mother's Cockney twang, we
60
3


34
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
00
can make a feature of her in the entertainment. She can hand re-
freshments, or wait on the ladies."
"Oh, we can easily get features of that sort, mother, if you want
them. In Covent Garden, the other day, every other woman I met
with a basket was Irish to the backbone.”
And there's Ned, too! I wonder what has become of him?
He is a fine Irish-looking fellow. He might slip into livery and open
the door."
“Green, with silver harps on the collar. The theatrical cos-
tumers in the Strand might supply it for the evening."
“Ring the bell, Joyce, and send for Kathleen, and we'll see if
we can get Ned here as footman. It was ridiculous of him to be
in such a hurry to quit our service. My own belief is that Mab half
turned his brain with the books she would persist in lending him,
and quite unfitted him for his station in life.”
Kathleen, summoned and interrogated by Mrs. Shenstone, stated
rather doggedly that she felt certain Ned would never consent to act
as footman, even for an evening—"No, not even if Miss Mab were
to ask him to."
The easy familiar way in which the girl spoke her last sentence
made Joyce turn round and look at her.
Mrs. Shenstone, not quick in detecting shades of expression, went
on calmly putting her questions.
“Where was Ned now? What was he doing? Earning so
much
money she supposed that he could afford to scorn the idea of
service?"
Mab, coming into the room at this moment, stood an interested
listener waiting for the answer.
“He is at Woolwich, ma'am, working at the Arsenal. He gets
a pound a week; I don't suppose he saves on that.”
“ How long has he been there? asked Mab, in surprise.
• When he wrote to me last, about three months ago, he was just
starting for America. He said he had an offer of steady work over
there in some factory at New York.”
“He altered his mind, miss, and took other work that offered."
Kathleen,” interrupted Mrs. Shenstone, “how is it you've
dropped your pretty brogue? you talked just now exactly like an
English girl.”
“ You should roll your ér's' along for a yard-and-a-half before
you let them go, Kathleen," interposed Joyce.


36
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
Either" a carricature is as much like a portrait as you are like
your mother.”
Or, “If I thought even in fifty years' time you would grow into
your mother's counterpart, I should put a bullet through my brain
at once."
Mrs. Shenstone had not succeeded in filling her rooms to over-
flowing, as she had purposed when she first started her weekly
gatherings. So far her evenings were to be pronounced failures.
But she had certainly succeeded in collecting, in that small sprink-
ling of people who surrounded her, enough of eccentricity, if not of
originality, to have kept the comic journals supplied with models for
their character sketches for a whole year.
Everyone in the room, it was evident, was some one, and did
something, or had been some one, and had done something. Here,
in a corner near the window, sat a fair, moderately young woman,
dressed in cærulean blue, with a silver cresent worn above her left
ear, and a châtelaine of silver stars hanging from her right side.
Under the nom de guerre of “Incuba,” she had published a bulky
volume of poems addressed to “earth's green fields and heaven's
radiant blue.” In converse with her sat an ancient demoiselle, pow-
der-puffed, rouged, bewigged, befrilled, who had once been a prima
donna, but who had been compelled, after a short season, now some
forty years past, to subside into obscurity on account of the sudden
failure of her voice. She delighted to expatiate on that one season,
the bouquets, the bracelets that had been showered upon her, the
eager eyes that used to follow her up the steps of the orchestra, the
distinguished arms that had assisted her down.
Replicas of this type, with deviations, abounded in the room.
The men, also speaking generally, were of much the same caliber.
The drama was represented by some half-dozen inferior actors; poli-
tics by about as many youthful scribblers for the lower-class press.
There was no mistaking them. A trifle débonnair, a trifle jaunty
they were, and thoroughly good-natured every one, with any amount
of “rattling good stories " oozing from their finger-tips.
Thoroughly at home among these, yet standing out distinctly.
from them, like a cray-fish among prawns, was the Captain Buck-
ingham whom Mrs. Shenstone had painted in such glowing colors
to Joyce. He stood half-a-head taller than most men there, his self-
assertiveness and generally lofty bearing possibly giving him credit
for three-quarters of an inch beyond what Nature had endowed him


38
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
weekly high-class Conservative paper, of “the candle, the bell, and
the book” order. It presented to its readers, on the following morn-
ing, a biting article on the Irish question, in which the fingers of
American agitators, who dipped them unasked into this far from
savory squab-pie, were freely rapped.
CHAPTER VII.
“A FOE in chains is a living, not a slain foe.” These words
which Joyce, with her dangerous aptitude for swift, trenchant
speech, had uttered so lightly kept persistently repeating themselves
in Mab's ears. They paraphrased themselves in her mind somewhat
as follows : “Here you are content to have got your enemy into chains
-chains, by-the-way, whose links might snap at any moment-
when you might wrestle it out with him, and put your foot upon
his neck at once and forever."
The words grew to be a sort of war-cry in her ears at lasta
fanfaronade of trumpets calling her to her duty. Mab had ever
been a slave to her sense of duty. Convince her that duty called
upon her to give her life inch by inch, and she would take good care
never to give two at a time. So now, when conscience took to
playing the echo to Joyce's haphazard words, she did not try to si-
lence it with other voices having less of iron in them, but met it
with the simply-put question :
“How, where, when, shall I begin the tussle ? "
A straightforward question enough, one would think, and
bound to have a point-blank answer given to it. Yet a circum-
stance occurring at this time not only at once and forever put it un-
answered to silence, but forced upon her the unwelcome conviction
that her sense of duty must have been warped, her conscience per-
verted, to have so much as whispered it into her ear.
In this fashion. She had been, according to her custom, act-
ing the perambulating librarian among her poor people one after-
noon; she came in hot and tired with a big packet of books under
her arm, ran straight up into the drawing-room, hoping to find there
two refreshing stimulants—Joyce and a cup of tea—and discovered
instead Captain Buckingham alone, seated in an arm-chair.
Mrs. Shenstone has not yet come in-I am waiting to see


A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
39
her," he explained, as he shook hands; "and Miss Joyce has, I
was sorry to hear, gone up-stairs to lie down, with a bad headache.”
Mab wondered whether Joyce's headache was born of Captain
Buckingham's afternoon call. Joyce had never, from the first day
of their intimacy with the Buckingham's, attempted to throw more
than the flimsiest veil of politeness over her dislike for brother and
sister.
Mab's feelings were something less defined toward the pair.
They were antipathetic to her senses, rather than to her feelings.
Silvia's semi-satirical smile, her low-toned, sleepy drawl, the broth-
er's bold stare and loud, domineering voice equally jarred upon
her, and, so to speak, set her teeth on edge; but given certain con-
ditions-close companionship, favors conferred—it might have been
possible for her teeth to lose the sense of a rough acidity.
“Let me relieve you of your books, Miss Shenstone," Bucking-
ham went on, as he noted how heavily Mab was laden ; “ah, this
is the good work your mother was elling me about. May I read
the titles of your lending library? “History of England," "The
Jews in Spain," " Lectures for the People,” Sanitation and
Health.” Why these are not the books for the hard-working
classes. You would give toil to the toilers, mental labor to those
who know not mental ease. You should deal out fiction to them,
bright, sparkling, merry fiction, and deal it out right liberally too."
Of course he must lay down the law on every subject, small or
great, that came within his cognizance. The words, “Don't you
think,” or “ It seems to me,” would have come strangely from his
lips.
Mab rang the bell for the tea-tray.
" I haven't a single volume of fiction among my books," she
said, and the minute after regretted she had said so. Question and
controversy must follow now. She was very tired with her tramp
through the by-ways of Westminster. She wished the man would
go and let her enjoy her tea and talk up-stairs with Joyce in peace.
“Not a volume of fiction !” he repeated ; are you afraid of
fiction? Does that mean that poetry is a terra incognita to you?
Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Swinburne, names to you and noth-
ing more."
“I never read poetry.”
Then she threw off her light summer mantle and busied her-
self over the tea-table; fussed over the sugar, the tea, the urn, the


40
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
cream, all the time feeling that Buckingham's large dark eyes were
fixed full upon her face with that, bold questioning, searching stare,
which, as a rule, affronted her, but which now seemed rather to dis-
concert her. She made the servant stay in the room, handing the
tea, the cake, the biscuits; kept him with excuses waiting at her el-
how, then, when there could be no further possible reason for the
man to remain, walked to the window, raised the blind, wondered
what had detained her mother so long, made jerky little tirades
against the uncomfortable weather, the scorching heat, the blinding
dust.
Captain Buckingham's eyes followed her round the room.
Miss Shenstone,” he said, in the same loud dogmatic tone as
before, “ you are resisting influence.”
Mab gave a great start. These were the words she had felt
through long years past would some day be spoken to her by some
one's lips, and now they had been spoken by this man’s.
She answered calmly enough, though with an effort :
“If influence is bad, it is well to resist it.”
“But if good, what then? Do you know the first day I saw
you I detected in you a something that cut you off from the rest of
the world, but I could not tell what it was. I see it now; the
'something’ is organic, therefore permanent and unalterable. You
are made of the stuff of which the seers of old times were made,
the
augurs, the prophets, the poets, if you like. Pound yourself in
a mortar, you won't get rid of it. Go atom by atom to dust, it will
cry aloud in the ashes."
Fancy burying a secret a hundred feet deep in the earth, putting
a marble slab over it, building a wall round it, with an iron door, a
bolt, a bar, and then imagine it to be suddenly shouted aloud from
the house-tops !
Mab's face went from white to red, from red to white. She
clasped her hands tightly together, and turned facing him, staring
blankly.
He went on calmly, yet loudly as before :
“In all my life I have only met one person at all to compare with
you. She was a young Vermont girl of French parentage, Marie
St. Clair by name, a born seer, clairvoyante, and of the finest suscepti-
bilities. And her parents had sent her to sell stockings and calico
in a draper's shop! Her sense of touch was so fine she could
distinguish the quality and price of any article by the touch of her


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
41
“ I'll lend you
finger-tip. Ah," here his voice dropped a note or two, “ through
want of knowledge one may burn oil in an Aladdin's lamp!"
“What became of her?” asked Mab under her breath, and
drawing a step nearer.
“I rescued her. I induced her to throw up the miserable drudg-
ery in the draper's shop, and put herself under tutelage at Boston.
She developed rapidly enough, had a brilliant career ; in fact, at one
time was more talked about than any other person in the States.
The odd part with her was that, though she could do some remark-
able things in a state of trance, her best moment was the moment
of awaking from deep sleep, before her senses were aroused. Then
it was all in a flash that she saw the person, or had the thing re-
vealed to her, on which her mind was set.”
Mab gave a painful start. Her memory flew back to that bright
spring morning, when, to her fancy, her dead father had stood before
her.
"You seem interested,” Buckingham went on.
her autobiography, if you like. All the Boston people went mad
over her. Three years of a most brilliant career she had.”
“And then?” asked Mab, again under her breath, and drawing
another step nearer to him.
“Oh, she died—at twenty-six years of age. Overdid it, lost con-
trol over herself, and died in an asylum.”
" Ah-h!”
“But it doesn't follow from that that other people are to go and
do likewise. Supposing that I, an English nobleman, defrauded of
my rights, were to claim and get back my birthright, and then run
riot in my inheritance, and die a pauper! Would you argue from
that fact that therefore no one to the end of time is to venture to
claim a lost birthright?”
Mab yet stood silent, and with clasped hands, before him, her
thoughts all one surging, storm-tossed mass. Had any one asked
her afterward to give a detailed account of her conversation with
Buckingham, all she could have said succinctly would have been :
“He told me to claim my birthright. Nothing else.”
It was a relief at this moment to hear a voice outside the door,
which suggested common-place morning calls, evening receptions,
tea-gowns, and small talk in a pre-eminent degree.
It said, evidently addressing a servant :
"I am tired to death, absolutely; with listening, nothing


42
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
else. I haven't opened my lips since I left the house two hours
ago!”
Then the door opened, and Mrs. Shenstone, in a costume that
might have suited a modern youthful Lydia Languish, made her
appearance.
“ I knew you were here, Captain Buckingham," she said, smiling
affably, “ before I was told. I heard your voice all the way up-stairs.
Now will you tell me why it is that you and your sister do not talk
the least bit in the world like any other Americans I have ever
heard ?"
“ It is because we are cosmopolitan, I suppose,” laughed Buck-
ingham. “Nevertheless, you mustn't imagine that the English ac-
cent is a monopoly for which you've taken out a patent. Some of
us Yankees talk every whit as broad as your Englishmen!"
CHAPTER VIII.
JOYCE's headache turned out a more serious affair than was ex-
pected. The next day found her in bed with a crimson face and
ice-cold hands. The day after found the doctor in the house, with
his watch in his hand and the terrible word “ typhoid " on his lips.
“Is it catching, doctor?" moaned Mrs. Shenstone.
“ Shall we
all take it one after the other? Oh, dear, dear! Just as we were
all going to start for Dieppe, like the rest of the world! This comes
of Mab diving into all the holes and corners of London. She has
brought it into the house, somehow or other, depend upon it."
The doctor stared at her.
“Well, I've seen women blessed with next to no sense, but this
one beats all !” he thought. Aloud he said: “In which case it is
rather remarkable that Miss Mab was not the first to fall victim.
You had better look for the cause within your own four walls,
madam, and see to your drains and water-pipes.”
It may be conjectured that he had but the slenderest acquaint-
ance with Mrs. Shenstone. The old family doctor down in Glouces-
tershire would have nodded to her complacently and said nothing.
Three weeks packed with anxiety, with alternating hopes and
fears, followed.
During those three weeks all the household wheels ran down.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
43
Mrs. Shenstone was ordered out of the house by the doctor, and
rooms were found for her within easy distance.
“She'll just frighten herself into the fever and double your
trouble," he explained to Mab. And, to himself, he added: “And
if it's all the same to every one else, I would rather not have such a
patient as that on my hands."
“My poor, darling Joyce,” Mrs. Shenstone said, as she sobbed
a good-by on Mab's shoulder, “such a mercy it isn't small-pox!
such a mercy, too, that you are such a thoughtful, careful nurse,
Mab. If you had been a beauty instead of a dear, domestic treasure
you wouldn't have done half so much good in the world.' Good-by,
darling; I wish I could be of use to you."
Mab, as might have been expected, at once took up her post in
the sick-room as head nurse. Helter-skelter out of her head went
all thoughts of claiming any birthright save that of watching over
her fever-stricken sister, morning, noon, and night. No one knew
when she slep nor when she had her meals. Other nurses were
there in attendance from the hospital; but no matter, Mab must
superintend them and the general routine of the sick-room, so that
her darling Joyce should lack nothing.
Up came Uncle Archie from the wilds of Gloucestershire, with
fat, placid Aunt Bell in attendance. The old gentleman was still
suffering sharp twinges of intermittent gout, and his views of the
situation were colored accordingly.
He attacked the doctor first.
“Typhoid,” he said, “ I don't believe in such a thing. There
was no typhoid when I was a boy. We called a thing typhus-a
disease every one could understand, or we called a thing gastric fever,
something quite different. Now, I don't believe she has what you
are pleased to called typhoid fever, and if you let her die through
improper treatment you'll be guilty of manslaughter, sir, man-
slaughter."
The doctor was at first naturally enough disposed to grow irate,
and to stand upon his dignity under such treatment; but, when he
heard the old gentleman go into the next room and rate Mab in pre-
cisely the same fashion, he shrugged his shoulders, and came to the
conclusion that after all it was nothing more than family idiosyncra-
cies coming to the front again.
“ Look here, Mab," said Uncle Archie, "you've undertaken the
sick-nursing. Very well, you'll break down under it; any one can


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
45
6
gratulation that they were not. There was a smoldering fire of
antagonism between these two men, which frequent intercourse
must have stirred into flame.
“Why is he here at all? What concern is it of his whether
Joyce is better or worse ?” Frank once asked savagely of Mab.
“He comes on my mother's account. He takes her a report of
Joyce three times a day," was Mab's reply.
Good heavens !” cried Frank, “I forgot all about your mother.
Now, Mab, I can undertake that mission, and give this man to un-
derstand that his services are not required.”
Mab, anxious to keep the peace, shook her head.
“ It wouldn't do at all,” she explained. “My mother has asked
him to do it. Don't you see she likes him ? and—"
“Doesn't like me,” finished Frank. “I know it. I only hope-"
But here he broke off. Naturally enough he felt shy of hoping
to Mab that her mother “wasn't going to make a fool of herself
over the man Buckingham.”
The day of crisis came at length. They all knew what the doc-
tor meant when, after staying in the sick-room about double the
usual time, he came out, saying:
“Come, cheer up, my young friends, she has everything in her
favor-youth, a strong constitution, good nursing. We must hope
for the best.”
And when he announced his intention of coming in again at
midnight, and resuming his watch, they all knew that day-dawn
most probably meant life or death for their darling.
Joyce's dressing-room, opening off her bedroom, had been im-
provised into a temporary sitting-room, and here Frank passed the
whole of that lagging night of suspense, getting about every quarter-
of-an-hour a brief report from Mab through the half-opened door,
and feeling his heart go up and down with a bound every time he
heard her touch upon the handle.
The feverish mutterings and tossings of the patient came to him
through the thin partition. The sounds of London night-life died
down in the street, giving place to those of the young day. Frank
felt his hopes sinking low, lower, like that flame of his night-lamp
just burning itself out. A great numbness and stillness seemed to
fall upon him. He sank upon his knees beside the table, hiding his
face in his cold, trembling hands. He felt as though he were
wrestling with death for her.


46
A DATELESS BARGAIN,
“God.” he moaned, " be merciful, be merciful!” They were all
the words he had at command, and even these seemed to freeze and
die
upon
his lips of their own despair and agony.
Five o'clock of that August morning found the cool daylight
flowing into the little room through the half-turned Venetian blinds.
Mab, opening softly the door of the inner room, let out a stream of
lurid light which met and quenched it. Frank started, and lifted
up his wan face inquiringly.
She sleeps; she has taken a turn. The doctor says all will be
well now," was all she found voice to say. And then their hands
clasped, their tears flowed together, and their hearts sent up the
thanksgiving their lips lacked power to utter.
Some one came tapping at the door--a sleepy servant saying a
person was below wishing to see Miss Mab.
Mab, all tottering from excess of grateful joy, went down-stairs
to find Ned Donovan standing in the hall.
He started back when he saw her.
“They told me it was Miss Joyce who was ill, but surely—” he
began, hesitatingly.
Mab could see in his startled gaze the reflection of her own
ghastly, haggard face.
“It was Miss Joyce,” she answered. “It is, rather, for she is
not yet out of danger. It is very good of you to come. Oh, it is
only anxiety that has made me look so wretched. I shall soon be
all right again, now she has taken a turn."
Ned's eyes seemed riveted.
“Miss Mab, you will be ill if you don't take care. Is any one
looking after you? I only heard late last night of Miss Joyce's ill-
I could only get a train one station up the line. I've walked
the rest of the way. No, thank you, Miss Mab; I'm not tired now
I've seen you and know the worst of your trouble is over.”
Mab made him come into the dining-room, and fetched him
wine and biscuits from the sideboard, making him eat and drink,
and asking him questions meantime of himself, of his work, and
how he liked it.
"I have only five minutes to give you,” she said. “I must get
back quickly to the sick-room. But you must tell me all you can
about yourself. Now, why is it you so seldom write to me?"
If the light had not been so gray and uncertain, she might have
seen his face flush a deep red.
ness.


48
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
of expression about the mouth-which startled her, and made her
think of her sick-room duties, and that the sooner she got back to
them the better.
She made a step toward the door.
“I must go-I am sure I must be wanted up-stairs,” she began.
Then she came back irresolutely. After all the interest she had
taken in this man she did not feel inclined to let him go down the
hill, when a word from her might perhaps save him. “Ned," she
said, speaking up bravely, “ I want you to make me a promise—a
very solemn promise."
Ned hesitated.
“If it's about any of our national societies, Miss Mab, I would
rather not make it,” he answered, slowly.
“I will have nothing to do with you to the end of time if you
join any one of those societies,” she interrupted, dashing nervously
into the very middle of her subject. “They are secret, detestable,
formed for murder and assassination."
A noise of door opening at that moment made her turn her
head. It was the sleepy servant who had announced Ned, showing
in Captain Buckingham. There seemed an amused look in his eye
as he looked from Mab to Ned. Of course he must have heard her
concluding words.
“I have come for my morning's report. I promised Mrs. Shen-
stone she should have it before six," he said, blandly enough.
Mab gleefully gave him the glad news.
Ned, with a respectful “Good-morning, Miss Mab," took up
his hat and left the room.
Mab went one step over the threshold, bent on making a final
effort.
“ You must think over what I have said. Pray, pray do not
forget what I have asked of you,” she said, gently.
Miss Mab," was Ned's reply, as respectfully as before, " I am
not likely to forget one single word you have ever spoken to me."
Then he went.
Buckingham cross-questioned her as to who was Ned, what
were his surroundings, what was his occupation ?
“ Irish of course, he is,” he said, " although his brogue is fairly
enough hidden. I could swear to the Irish blue eye among a thou-
sand."
Mab, with her foot on the first step of the stairs, all anxiety to
60
66
1)


50
A DATELESS BARGAINARGAIN.
.
Of course the question could be put in a hundred different fash-
ions. As thus : “Was not the sacrifice he had made to his pride
compounded in part of her happiness?"
Or thus : “Was it not rather like straining at a gnat and swal-
lowing a camel, in the circumstances, to sacrifice to his pride at all?
Supposing even by dint of strenuous exertion he could match
Joyce's income in a few year's time with his own, he certainly could
not hope to the end of his life, let him work as he might, to acca-
mulate an equivalent to the large fortune that would accrue to her
on her mother's death, when the whole of Mr. Shenstone's property
came to be divided between her and Mab."
A man of Frank Ledyard's energetic temperament can not ad-
mit into his career anything that savors of ambiguity or vacillation
of purpose. “If you have got into the wrong path the sooner you
get out of it the better," is the decision with which such men gen-
erally cut sharply enough all knotty points.
This was the conclusion at which Frank, in due course, was to
arrive. In his character, as in Joyce's, all sorts of contradictions
met. An old school-fellow of Frank's, describing him about this
time, had said, “He is the most impetuous plodder that ever came
into the world. He was so at Eton. See him begin a foot-race,
no one would bet on him, unless they knew him. He'd start with
a spurt, and every one would say, with a chuckle, “that fellow
won't keep up that pace long." But, hang it! he would, and did,
and always came in the first and the freshest at the end.
The anecdote was typical of Frank's conduct of life. In early
youth he had been given to understand that his future was in his
own hands to make or mar, that, from economic and other reasons,
the Bar was the only career open to him, and his proclivities in
other directions were sharply nipped in the bud. His father had
been a man of fair fortune, had died young, leaving his property at
the sole disposal of his widow. She soon wearied of the widowed
state, entered the bonds of matrimony again, and in her turn died,
leaving the boy Frank on his step-father's hands. The step-father
repeated his wife's career—with a difference; he speedily re-mar-
ried, but, instead of dying, brought into the world a large family.
In these circumstances, it was not surprising that Frank's patri-
mony had dwindled. Land had to be mortgaged to cover his
school and college expenses, and, to meet the mortgage, had event-
ually to be sold. Subsequently the wreck of the property had been


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
51
handed over to him, a sum amounting to something under two
thousand pounds. On this, he was duly informed, he was ex-
pected to thrive, and be content, or else to build up for himself a
· fortune in life. He chose to attempt the latter, and set to work
at the mill with a vast energy. No incentive to hard striving was
needed by a man of his large ambitions and strong will; but nat-
urally, when he came upon his fate in the form of Joyce Shenstone,
his interest in his work doubled and trebled itself, and straight
ahead of other men he went with a sure-footed swiftness that was
bound to win the race.
“That is a rising man," had been the comment freely passed
upon him by his seniors in the profession, as they noted the steady
grasp of his intellect, his clear eye for an outline, legal or otherwise.
And " he'll make himself a name before he has done,” had been
more than once said of him by his colleagues on the press, as they
marked the sure-handed vehemence with which he struck at his
nails, and the straight, steady fashion in which every one of them
went home.
But, coupled with these essentially masculine traits were others,
which some would consider of less robust growth—a sense of honor
so fine as to be superfine, a pride so wire-drawn as to be all but at-
tenuated. Under the dictates of this pride, he had taken fire at
foolish Mrs. Shenstone's foolish words, and had done his utmost to
retard Joyce's happiness and his own. The pride, however, tempo-
rarily quenched by a stronger, deeper feeling-a terror lest, by re-
tarding his happiness, he had lost his chance of it altogether-he
saw matters in a clearer light, and lost no time in coming to a new
resolution upon them.
He took the first opportunity that presented itself to explain to
Mab the change which had come over his views; how that instead
of wishing to postpone his marriage with Joyce he hoped he
might now be allowed to press matters forward as much as pos-
sible.
“Of course it costs me something to put my pride into my
pocket, I won't say it doesn't, and I expect (and deserve) to be made
to eat humble pie all'round,” he went on to say; "but you will un-
derstand, I know, Mab, whoever else makes mistakes on the matter,
that Joyce's happiness is my first thought; that if I thought I could
not make her happiness for her, I would step out of her path at
once and make way for some one who could."


52
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
Mab was deliciously sympathetic.
“Of course it will be a terrible wrench for me to part with Joyce,”
she said, with a sigh, “but I know it will be for her happiness. I
am going round to mamma's rooms this afternoon; I will tell her,
if you like, what you have said to me."
“ Thank you, Mab, that is kind; I am afraid your mother, how-
ever, will not take my petition quite so graciously as you have,” said
Frank, a little doubtfully.
“Oh, but I am sure she will,” was Mab's ready reply; "only
yesterday she said to me, 'I shan't believe in Frank's devotion to
Joyce if he prolongs their engagement much longer.' I'll undertake
to manage mother right enough if you can undertake Uncle Archie.
He'll be the one to give you trouble, I'm afraid.”
Frank in silent wonder apostrophised his own folly that he had
ever attached the slightest importance to words spoken by -so
feather-brained a woman as Mrs. Shenstone.
He took the earliest opportunity also of hinting to Joyce from
which quarter blew the wind of his wishes now.
Joyce, looking fragile enough from her sharp illness, but withal
as coquettishly beautiful as ever, turned her deep shining eyes upon
him. At heart she was triumphantly glad, but she did not intend
yet awhile to show him the gladness, only the triumph.
Ah,” she said, smiling up at him from the pillows of the couch
whereon she rested, “this is the man who meant to serve ten years
of Egyptian bondage before he entered Canaan, and he hasn't had
the
courage to serve out one!”
“I know I deserve to be laughed at,” said Frank, humbly; "and
I don't mind your laughing at me one bit, dear. But oh, what will
Uncle Archie say?”
“What will you say to Uncle Archie?” That's the point, I
think,” laughed Joyce. · How will you begin your letter, how end
it? What will you put in the middle of it?"
“You shall see it, Joyce; you shall dictate it, if you like-you
shall tell me word for word what to put down."
Shall I? Then take out your pencil and begin to write at
once.” Frank obeyed her immediately.
“Now begin: ‘Dear Mr. Shenstone, I feel so small as to be
absolutely microscopic, and I sincerely hope you won't overlook me
together with the request I have to make.' That is to be by way of
making a beginning. Your request is to be sent when you get Uncle
60


A DATELESS BARGAIN,
53
Archie's reply; that is, if you dare send it at all after the crushing
answer you will be sure to get.”
“I deserve 'crushing,' I admit,” said Frank, sharply rapping his
knuckles with his pencil. “But I don't believe any reply of Uncle
Archie's will crush me, let it be never so ponderous. Just now, with
you given back to me, dear, I am in the seventh heaven, and it would
take an army of Uncle Archies to bring me down from it!”
“ Ah, but fancy such an answer as this : “Sir, remain the infini-
tesimal atom that you are, and keep your request unspoken.' I
assure you, I have known Uncle Archie go farther even than that in
a letter."
Strange to say, when Uncle Archie's answer to Frank's petition
for an early wedding-day came, it was something quite other than
Joyce or Frank could have pictured in their most sanguine moments.
It was the heartiest of complacent consents given with the most
thorough good-will.
“To say truth," wrote the old gentleman, “I have been very ill
since my trip to London, though I have not liked to lay stress upon
my illness for fear of causing you all needless anxiety. I am, how-
ever, beginning to feel I am getting near the end of the race, and I
should like to see my dead brother's children in safe keeping before
I drop out of it. What you told me when you wrote some little
time ago, and what I have heard from other friends in London as
to the sort of people my sister-in-law is gathering about her, has
filled me with anxiety on my nieces' behalf. Joyce married to you
is safe, of course (you are made of sterling stuff, though you have
your whims and your cranks like other people), and there will be
always a haven for Mab should anything arise to make her feel the
need of one. So, my dear fellow, all I say to you is, make all ar-
rangements for as early a date as is admissible, and the sooner it is
the better I shall be pleased.”
CHAPTER X.
AFTER her illness, Joyce, accompanied by Mab, went for a month
of sea air to some old friends in Wales; Mrs. Shenstone, for reasons
best known to herself, refusing just then to take flight anywhere.
Her quarters seemed very much to her liking, and she appeared
extremely loth to be dislodged from them. It was possible that


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
55
room.
heard Joyce's last sentence, for her small mouth always wore that
semi-satirical smile; but, nevertheless, Joyce felt sure that she had
done so, and that, in due course, she would acknowledge her in-
debtedness for it.
Mrs. Shenstone gave a sigh of relief. There could be no more
cross-questionings from Joyce so long as Sylvia remained in the
She would do her best to keep her there.
“Sylvia darling," she began, “what do you advise about that
black lace dress of mine? Must I condemn it, or shall I get it re-
trimmed with blush-rose tints ?"
But “Sylvia darling" had something else on her mind at that
moment.
“In a minute, Tiny,” she answered.
Joyce looked up at her. Her mother s name was Ernestine, but
even her father had never made a diminutive of it.
Miss Buckingham laid a bunch of keys on the table.
“ I have much pleasure in resigning my post, now you have re-
turned; but it has been an equally great pleasure to keep the keys
in your absence, and so lighten Mrs. Shenstone's housekeeping
cares," she said, addressing Joyce in that patronizingly amiable
manner of hers, which Joyce said always made her want to open
the windows to avoid suffocation.
“It was more than kind of you," answered Joyce, getting on
her stilts at once, and laying a conspicuous emphasis on the word
“more."
But, though Sylvia resigned the keys, she did not bring her visit
to a close, and the privy purse still remained in her keeping.
So at least Joyce surmised, from the manner in which Mrs.
Shenstone constantly appealed to her on various matters of ex-
penditure. “Was she running ahead in dress expenses ? Could
she afford this or that luxury or piece of extravagance?"
It was very irritating: but an even more potent cause for annoy-
ance was to follow. Captain Buckingham, who had been on a few
days' visit to Ireland, returning, made himself quite as much at
home in the house as his sister.
Joyce flew for sympathy to Mab, and, for the very first time in
her life, strange to say, did not get it.
Mab, scratching away with her pen at answers to a pile of her
mother's letters which had been left unattended to, looked up
nervously for a moment.


56. -
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
66
I don't like to hear you call them adventurers, Joyce. I think
you are rather hard upon Captain Buckingham. I'm sure he's hon-
est and straightforward.” Then her face drooped over her note-
paper again.
Joyce for one moment thought her ears must have deceived her.
“What!” she exclaimed, staring blankly at her sister. «•Hon-
est and straightforward,' did you say?"
Mab grew confused. She never seemed able to stick to her
opinions if Joyce stared her full in the face and asked her to repeat
them.
“I mean," she began, hesitatingly, " he has ideas, and does not
mind giving other people the benefit of them.”
To this Joyce agreed with a nod.
“And the ideas are always worth listening to."
Here Joyce shook her head vehemently.
"Well, at any rate, they are opinions that have been well
thought over. I should say he never speaks until he has given
careful thought to what he has to say.”
* What of that?” cried Joyce, scornfully. “Heaps of people
never speak without thinking beforehand what they are going to
say. The wonder is to find a person who says the right thing all
in a moment without thinking about it. Talk about second
thoughts being best, I would alter it to sudden thoughts are best.
All my best thoughts come to me in flashes, Oh, Mab!"
Here she abruptly broke off. A sudden thought had that
moment come to her, which the next found her giving utterance to.
“What if the subject of the man's meditations at the present
moment is to get round mother and make her marry him? Oh, it
would be too dreadful !”
Mab's color went to a russet-red. She did not flush so becom-
ingly as Joyce did. She was lighting a candle at the moment to
seal a letter by, and her hand shook so much that the lighted match
fell to the ground.
Joyce put her foot on it.
“Well, there's one comfort,” she went on, “I know how to put
a stop to that little game very quickly, by a reference to dear papa's
will.” She gave a second energetic stamp on the extinguished
match, adding, “ I wish that were Captain Buckingham. I should
like to stamp on him and put him out in exactly the same fashion."
She had not heard the door open, and a light step across the


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
57
room, or she might have slightly modified her expression. Sylvia
Buckingham had a very quiet way of opening doors, and her foot-
fall might have been that of a beetle for all the noise it made upon
the carpet.
Once more Joyce came to the conclusion that her words had
been heard, and registered on the debtor's side of Sylvia's memo-
randum book, although the fair, immobile face made no sign.
“How dare she come creeping into rooms in this way? This is
the second time!” thought the girl; and she looked across at Syl-
via and gave another emphatic stamp on the defunct match.
“Am I intruding?” Sylvia asked, patronizingly and amiably as
usual.
Joyce made her manner as much a reflection of the other's as
possible.
"Not in the least,” she answered, coolly; " Mab and I always
lock the door when we wish to be alone."
Sylvia lifted her large steely blue eyes, giving Joyce one steady
look. Translated into speech it might have run somewhat as fol-
lows:
“The time for paying off debts has not yet come. When it
does, you may trust to the goodness of my memory.”
Aloud she said: “I'm looking for a book to read to Mrs. Shen-
stone. Now, can you recommend one?"
Joyce pointed to the bookshelves.
“If you want to read mother to sleep, there are no end of books
there admirable for the purpose. Darwin, Tyndall-ever so many.
But, if you want really to interest her, I should recommend one of
the society journals.” Then she turned to Mab, and, à propos of
nothing, brought out the following surprising remark: “Mab, I do
think our dear father was the best and wisest man that ever lived.
He couldn't have taken better care of mother if he had tried. It
was so sensible of him only. to leave her a life-interest in all his
property. Only fancy, on the day she gets married again she will
have nothing left her but a paltry five hundred a year for her life!”
Her words launched themselves like a thunderbolt on her two
listeners. Mab's face was a picture of confusion and distress. Syl-
via suddenly found the volume she wanted and left the room.
“Oh, Joyce ! how could you ?” cried Mab, her eyes filling with
tears, her cheeks aflame.
“How could I what, dear? " asked Joyce, calmly. "I have said
1


58
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
nothing Miss Buckingham need take to herself or convey to her
brother unless she is so disposed. I have only done my best to
take care of mother on the lines dear father laid down."
"I do do believe you are mistaken," cried Mab, excitedly, clasp-
ing her hands together."
“ Perhaps.”
“I'm sure you are hard on them, hard on mother, too!" Mab
went on, vehemently. “Why shouldn't she choose what friends
she pleases for herself? We left her so much alone, you and I
being always together, no wonder she felt dull and thought she
would like some nice companionable person to be in the house with
her."
Joyce ended the discussion with a reminiscence of their recent
sea-side trip.
“Do you remember the hermit-crabs we used to catch at Rhyl,
Mab?" she asked, They were a delightful study. Such vora-
cious creatures ! And so thoroughly at home in their friends'
houses."
Mab thought it wiser to say no more.
67
CHAPTER XI.
“MOTHER is actually developing a will of her own," said Joyce
to Frank, as they sat in the back drawing-room, confidentially
talking over the small details of the wedding-day. “When I said
to her, the other day, how much I should like to be married from
our dear old home in Gloucestershire, she said, right out, that noth-
ing would induce her to go back to that “hole of a place ; 'she
loved dear London, and would like to live and die in it."
Frank's lips formed to the name that was in Joyce's thoughts at
the moment.
“The Buckingham's," he said ; "it's all their doing. I fear
mischief will come of this intimacy before we succeed in getting
rid of them."
" I've done my best,” said Joyce, looking toward the larger
room, where Sylvia sat embroidering by the fire, while her brother
played an energetic game of bézique with Mrs. Shenstone. “Is it
bravado, or thick-skinnedness on their part; or did I dream that I


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
59
had spoken out plainly, and shown unmistakably how unwelcome
they are in the house?”
Change your seat, dear, for this sofa. I can't sit facing that
man without wishing to-well, never mind, perhaps I may have the
chance some day. What does Mab say to it all ? "
But Mab, after that one morning of vehement championship
had never once opened her lips on the matter. A new phase of
thought was evidently beginning to take possession of her now.
Her“ practical beneficence " had come to a halt, her housekeeping
duties were laid on one side If Joyce had not contrived to step
into her sister's shoes just then, domestic arrangements would
have run down generally, for morning, noon, and night found the
girl shut up in her own room poring over books.
Joyce considered this a subject for congratulation, and wrote
gleefully to Uncle Archie that Mab was at last growing into what
Nature had evidently meant for her to be-a student. She had
taken up with literature, and she felt sure would, sooner or later,
blossom into an author.
Had Joyce known what sort of literature was occupying Mab,
and who was supplying it, she might have told a different tale.
But, one way or another, Joyce had her hands very full at that time,
What with interviewing dressmakers, milliners, sempstresses, regu-
lating the household, and, as far as lay in her power, keeping
her mother within the borders of sanity, Joyce had no spare mo-
ments for peeping over Mab's shoulder at her books.
Then, too, there were Frank's leading articles for the St.
George's Gazette which he always insisted she should glance over
and criticise freely before he sent in.
The St. George's just then was making for itself a fine repu-
tation for old-fashioned, red-hot Toryism, by the high-handed ve-
hemence with which it discussed various leading topics of the day
in certain of its articles.
These articles were signed “Stentor.” People were beginning
to ask who this man was; what right he had to lay down the law
in that vigorously audacious fashion, as though from another alti-
tude he looked down upon the miserable, groveling crowd, and saw
panaceas for mundane ills that were hidden from their limited
vision.
The question of women's suffrage was discussed ; Stentor
laughed it to scorn.


60
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“Give women votes—no,” he wrote ; “I would take them away
from nine hundred and ninety-nine of every thousand of the men,
and the country would be all the better for the freedom from the
clamor of ignorant tongues, for the silence in which men could take
in the situation, reason, and act upon it. I would vote in the
voters, and so simplify the whole machinery of electioneering. Let
every town in the country return one voter for every thousand of
its inhabitants, then we might expect intellectuality and common-
sense to be brought to bear upon the return of members. To sup-
pose that one person in a thousand is competent to have a voice in
the election of a member is a generous computation."
This was bad enough. The Liberal papers poured vials of
wrath upon the unlucky Stentor's head. But when Irish politics
in their turn came on for discussion in the St. George's columns,
the vials were turned into buckets. Weak hands have held the
reins too long,” he wrote ; now is the time to show sinew and
muscle.” Then he gave his absolute and final panacea for trouble-
some Ireland in three words : “Colonize the country. Reconquer
it, if need be, but let the conquest and the colonization go hand in
hand. England has unbounded resources, and overflowing popula-
tion; let them both find their outlet in Ireland. Pour wealth,
trade, soldiers, farmers, fighting-men, workingmen, in a flood into
Ireland, from ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred, if need be, cen-
ters at once. In a word, colonize and civilize it: the terms should
be synonymous in the nineteenth century."
This was like throwing a match among gunpowder to the Irish
press. The journal was burned in solemn procession in Cork and
Dublin, and the Saxon writer freely anathematized. Threats of
dynamite and other disagreeable things began to find their way into
the office of the St. George's Gazette.
A word of warning came from Scotland Yard, advising that the
incognito of Stentor should be strictly preserved.
Frank laughed the warning to scorn.
“If they'd let me, I'd sign my name and address in full to the
next dose I give them," he said, with a ringing contempt, to Joyce;
“this is the liberty the democrats advocate— freedom of speech for
me, my friend, but a gag for you and every one who differs.''
Joyce grew timorous, and counseled prudence. Her thoughts
flew to her mother.
“I wish you hadn't scribbled your name to that one article you
20


62
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
Joyce began to lose a little of that confidence in herself and her
own resources which Uncle Archie had so severely reprimanded.
The dogged obstinacy that a shallow-brained person can develop
under certain conditions came to her as a positive revelation. Not
so very long ago she would have laughed to scorn the idea of her
mother having a single name on her visiting-list through which shə
- Joyce—had decided to put her pen. But here was she compelled
to stand a silent and helpless witness to an intimacy not only dis-
tasteful, but absolutely repugnant, to her.
She made up her mind that, before her wedding-day came round
and she said her good-by to her home, she would take Uncle Archie
fully into her confidence. The little interest that Mab appeared to
take in what went on about her just then made it doubly necessary
some one should come forward and look after her happiness in life.
Uncle Archie had written a short letter to Joyce, grumbling over
the ills of life generally, but stating his intention of coming up to
London the first week in December, so as to have a word to say
respecting the wedding arrangements.
“Why I'm to be dragged up to town at this uncomfortable time
of year is more than I can understand," he wrote, bluntly enough.
“ Your father's wish would have been that you should have married
from your old home in Gloucestershire, and I certainly think his
wishes on the matter should be respected. Don't ask me to stay in
your house, I would as lief have lodgings in the County Asylum at
once. Besides, Aunt Bell wants to be as near as can be to the big
West-End shops so that she can get rid of her money as fast as
possible, and if I don't humor her I shall have a life of it, so I'm
bound to go to our old quarters in Clarges Street.”
“Poor Aunt Bell, it's she who has the life of it,' I'm thinking,"
said Joyce, as, with the letter in her hand, she made her way to her
mother's sitting-room, intending to found another appeal for a re-
turn to Gloucestershire upon Uncle Archie's blunt statement of her
father's wishes.
For a wonder she found her mother alone. Mrs. Shenstone
gave a great start at Joyce's approach, and looked nervously toward
the door. No doubt she thought that a lecture was impending, and
that it would be very much better to go shares in it with Sylvia.
Joyce noticed her nervous apprehension, and felt indignant,
sorry, and pitiful all in a breath, to think that any one should dare
in this way to come between her mother and herself. Those odious


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
63
Buckinghams, to set such a condition of things going! That poor
mother to allow it! Her thoughts flew to Frank's rashly-signed
leading article, and she saw what seemed to her a better way of
utilizing a five minutes' talk with her mother, than by reading aloud
Uncle Archie's letter.
“ Mother,” she asked, “ have you any spare numbers of the St.
George's Gazette ? I'm collecting the year's issue for reference.
I'm looking for one dated September 15th; do you happen to have
it?”
Mrs. Shenstone breathed again. It was not to be a lecture, then,
after all.
There are ever so many, Joyce, at the bottom of that cup-
board,” she answered, pleasantly. “Look them out for yourself.”
Joyce went down on her knees and rummaged among the news-
papers at the bottom of the cupboard.
She counted them up carefully, number by number. The one
for the date September 15th was missing.
“Do you remember one that Frank signed in pencil, mother,
and sent to you while we were away at the sea?" she asked, a little
anxiously.
“What was it about, dear? Politics, you know, I never read.
I'm not sensible and clever like you and Mab.”
Oddly enough, following some inverted process of reasoning,
Mrs. Shenstone, ever since her daughters had arrived at years of
discretion, had been in the habit of founding a claim to distinction
among her friends upon the plea: “They are so sensible and clever,
I am such a goose," as though it were a disgrace to own to a fair
amount of brain-power.
"Have you lent or given away any of the papers, mother?"
asked Joyce, her thoughts flying naturally enough to the dear friend
and alter ego.
• Ah, yes, dear, now you remind me, I did lend one number to
Sylvia, with an article by Frank in it. It was all about Fenianism
in America, I think. I didn't read it through, but I remember
thinking it would be sure to interest Sylvia, as it was all about her
own country.”
“Did Miss Buckingham return it?” Joyce asked, feeling the
farthest limit of silliness had been reached now.
“No. She asked me if she might send it to her brother. She
said she felt sure he would be deeply interested in what a very


64
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
young Englishman thought of their national character. Dear me,
Joyce, how you stare at one! I'm sure she meant it as a compli-
ment to Frank. She laid such an emphasis on the word 'young.'
Forty-five naturally welcomes a compliment that twenty-five
turns its back upon.
Joyce got up from her knees, and hastily left the room. The
mischief, whatever it was, had been done. There was no use mak-
ing a moan over it. In fact, more harm than good might be
wrought by laying stress upon the circumstance. She could only
hope that the Buckinghams had by this time forgotten all about the
unlucky article, or, at any rate, had not associated its writer with
the “Stentor” of aggressive politics.
She would keep her eyes open, however, she resolved, to all that
was going on about her, and endeavor to ascertain a few particulars
about these all but strangers. What was their position in their own
country? What was their occupation, if any, in life? Above all,
what was their object in thus making themselves free of a house
where they had more than once been made to understand they were
unwelcome?
No one but a mere baby in worldly knowledge could have sup-
posed that their conduct in this respect was dictated by personal
liking for Mrs. Shenstone. Joyce was no baby, but a woman, with
a clear head and a fair amount of common-sense. Both refused to
be satisfied with such a supposition. At one time she had been in-
clined to think that a comfortable income and an easily-ruled wife
had been the object of Captain Buckingham's endeavor, and that
his sister, so to speak, held the ground for him to make his advance.
As time went on, however-notably, after her frank statement of
the provisions of her father's will—she was compelled to dismiss
this idea, though she could find no other to replace it.
Sylvia Buckingham had now been for about two months an in-
mate of the house. The brother, on an average, spent three or four
hours out of every twenty-four in Mrs. Shenstone's society. If he
did not lunch with her, he dined, or vice versa ; if he did neither,
he walked or drove with her, or chatted away his mornings, or even
on occasions wrote his letters in some quiet nook in the house.
The smaller drawing-room had been all but converted into Syl-
via's sitting-room. Here she transacted her correspondence, re-
ceived
any friends who might chance to call upon her, or read Mrs.
Shenstone to sleep after luncheon or dinner.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
65
In spite of that lady's openly-expressed liking, Sylvia and her
brother must have felt their intimacy with this family stood on an
oddly-strained footing.
Joyce, after her first daring attempt to dislodge the pair, had
subsided into a freezing politeness. Mab's attitude toward them
was that of a nervously repressed interest. It was a matter for
congratulation that Frank's occupations at that period prevented
his passing much of his time under Mrs. Shenstone's roof. His
professional work was rapidly growing upon him; his hours at his
chambers were proportionately lengthening. In addition there were
sundry visits to be paid to his own people in Gloucestershire relative
to certain business transactions that required settlement.
The selection and the furnishing of the London house which he
and Joyce were to occupy after their marriage naturally enough was
the occasion for many pleasant meetings and excursions together.
Had things been otherwise, and he had spent as much of his time
as formerly in Mrs. Shenstone's household, the chances were that
the smoldering animosity between Captain Buckingham and him-
self must have been fanned into a flame. As it was, by tacit con-
sent the two men, when they occasionally met, ignored each other
as much as possible. Joyce could only hope that this condition of
things might continue until Uncle Archie came upon the scene,
and, speaking with authority, might induce her mother to put her
household on a more comfortable footing.
CHAPTER XII.
1 MAB, with three quarters of her senses absorbed by her books,
only got at what went on around her in glimpses and whispers.
Those books appeared to have an altogether magnetic attraction
for her.; morning, noon, and night found her shut up in their com-
pany.
Joyce-accustomed to her spasmodically enthusiastic fashion of
following now one pursuit, now another—was in no wise surprised
at her sudden, eager passion for study at a time when most young
girls would have thrown themselves heart and soul into the prepara-
tions for the approaching wedding-day. Perhaps if she had
chanced to follow her sister into her room, and had noted the
5


66
A DATELESS BARGAIN,
method of their study, she might have found food for astonishment.
She would have seen Mab first carefully lock her door, to secure
herself from intruders, take invariably one book from her shelves,
Aling herself on the hearthrug, open her book, read one or two lines,
then sit motionless with clasped hands gazing into the fire for
hours, until, in fact, the clanging of the dinner-bell or the summons
of her maid aroused her to the consciousness of the commonplace
routine of life.
And had Joyce taken up the book lying open on Mab's knee,
she would have seen that it was the autobiography of Marie St. Clair,
the Boston seer, and that the name of George Ritchie Bucking-
man figured on the title-page.
The book was a small, cheap edition of one that had appeared in
America in more pretentious form. It was written in the form of
a diary, and bore distinct marks of abridgment, and a not too artist-
ic editing. The early days of the girl, her home surroundings,
and term of service in the draper's shop, were told in curt, bald lan-
guage, but with a straightforward simplicity that vouched for the
truth of the narrative. The latter portion of the story, that dealing
with her public career as a professional clairvoyante, had a touch
of artificiality in it, a straining for effect, and expanded here and
there into transports which fell little short of hysteria. A critical
eye would have detected in this portion of the narrative distinct
marks of interpolation by another and a coarser pen.
Mab's eye, however, was not critical, but illuminating. It trans-
formed hysteric flights of fancy into high-souled enthusiasm, sup-
plied links to shallow logic, filled in misty outlines with grand
truths born of her own spirituality.
One page had a strange fascination for her. The book opened
at it with a touch now. It recounted the manner in which Marie
St. Clair had had what she believed to be the secret of clairvoyante
trance revealed to her.
It was a wierd and fantastic story, told in evident good faith, of
a certain luminous appearance seen by her, which she hastily, but
honestly, concluded to be that of a girl-friend asleep in her bed at
the time.
“ Astral doubles were not talked about at that time, or at any
rate were unheard of by Marie St. Clair. She christened her ap-
parition “a luminous replica," and honestly believed she had struck
the keynote of a great truth by starting the theory that every human


A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
67
body owned to "a luminous replica ” of itself, possessing similar but
more finely-developed senses and powers of motion. She followed
up this theory with another, namely, that the soul, the “ I,” the "me,"
had the prerogative of dwelling either in the material or in the
spiritual body, making use of the senses of that body, provided that,
for the time being, the senses of the body out of use were sealed
either in sleep or trance; but furthermore that this prerogative
could not be exercised at will until after a long course of training
in self-mesmerism had been gone through.
At this point the writer broke off from her narrative to give
many and minute instructions as to the system of training to be
adopted by the aspirant to honors in clairvoyance.
These were the pages on which, day after day, Mab's eyes were
riveted.
Away from the solid earth, over the mountain-tops into cloud-
land, they carried her; men and women, with their trivial, every-
day round of occupation, seeming to grow remote and dwindle in
the distance.
Fancy a born musician shut up in some wilderness, knowing
nothing of music save what the bird's notes gave him, and totally
ignorant of all mechanical mediums for harmony. Imagine him
suddenly transported to a concert-room where the violin is being
played by a master's hand : imagine the instrument transferred to
him with the message that by dint of study and practice he might
create these sweet sounds for himself!
Mab felt herself in much such a case, as she sat there beside
the fire with Marie St. Clair's book upon her knee.
“Claim your birthright,” had been Captain Buckingham's coun-
sel to her. The words seemed to have a deeper and larger mean-
ing in them now. She coupled with them another sentence of his :
“Through want of knowledge one may burn oil in an Aladdin's lamp."
In it she seemed to read the record of her past life, her struggles
against the ideal, the spiritual; her snatchings at the common-
place, the actual, which somehow had always managed sooner or
later to slip through her fingers.


68
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
CHAPTER XIII.
JOYCE, returning home with her mother and Miss Buckingham
from a tedious afternoon's shopping, was met by a circumstance
which startled and pained her.
She was getting through a prodigious amount of shopping just
then. Naturally enough she would have liked Mab's opinion on
the yards of Valenciennes lace and cambric she was buying. Mab,
however, had cried off, and retreated to her solitude and her
books.
Failing Mab, Joyce had begged her mother to make the circuit
of Piccadilly, Bond Street, and Regent Street with her. Mrs. Shen-
stone jumped at the idea, shook her little fluffy poodle out of her lap,
and rang the bell at once to order the carriage.
I'm wanting everything myself, I'm almost destitute of evening
dresses,” she said ; "and, you know, Joyce, I'm so glad to get your
opinion whenever I can. I'm such a goose about choosing things
for myself."
This was like the sunshiny old days before the Buckinghams
had set up a prickly hedge between the mother and daughter
Joyce at once expanded into cheerfulness and animation. She as
speedily relapsed into silence and gloom when she descended the
stairs to find Mrs. Shenstone and Sylvia seated side by side in the
carriage awaiting her.
“Sylvia is kindly going to show me where I can buy some lovely
walking-boots; boots are always such a trouble to me," murmured
Mrs. Shenstone, insinuating an apology.
“Boots always must be a trouble to any one with such a tiny
ankle and high instep as you have,” murmured Sylvia, insinuating a
compliment.
Joyce sank back in the carriage, registering a vow that next time
she went shopping, if she could not tear Mab away from her. books
she would choose her Valenciennes lace and cambric muslin alone.
So she sat confronted with Sylvia's flaxen head in her violet vel-
vet bonnet, her steely blue eyes, her semi-satirical conversation or
semi-satirical silence for the space of three solid hours, returned
home in a state of mind in which a grasshopper would have been a
burden, and was met by an annoyance by many ounces heavier than
a grasshopper.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
71
Mab walked away toward the fire.
“Do, do let me alone, Joyce," she pleaded ; "I can't explain-
you couldn't understand even if I did."
And then she sighed again. Joyce followed.
“Darling, you know I always did hate mysteries !" she said,
putting her arm lovingly round Mab's waist. “I wish you would
tell me all your thoughts, no matter whether I can understand
them or not; but, anyhow, tell me just this: why, if you must go
out, did you let Captain Buckingham go with you better by far
have gone alone."
“He is a friend of mother's. Why should he not go out with
me?"
“ Mab, darling!” This in a voice full of pain. “ If father
were alive, do you think he would have allowed any of us to call
such a man as that, friend?"
Mab's answer struck her dumb on the spot.
“Yes, I do, Joyce,” she said, steadying her nerves, and looking
her sister full in the face; “I think, if father were alive now, Cap-
tain Buckingham is the man he would choose before any one else in
the world to be his own friend, and mother's, and yours, and mine."
Then, evidently to end a discussion for which she had no incli-
nation, she freed herself from Joyce's arm and left the room.
Joyce followed, speechless, bewildered, feeling that another
brick had been added to the wall which was gradually being built
up between Mab and herself.
CHAPTER XIV.
Joyce had made a hasty resolve that she would take Frank as
little as possible into her confidence concerning the Buckinghams,
fearing lest a declaration of open war between the two men might
be the result.
On the day after her bewildering talk with Mab she broke this
resolve, telling Frank fully all that had passed.
It was the night of one of Mrs. Shenstone's receptions; it might
be more correct to say of Sylvia's, judging from the Irish “r's" and
American "n's " which bayoneted the queen's English in all direc-
tions.


72
À DA TELESS BARGAIN.
Frank had endured the atmosphere of the drawing-room for a
dreary ten minutes, then had fled for an ecstatic ten minutes to the
deserted dining-room, whither Joyce had somehow managed to
find her way before him.
“One thing is clear,” she said, speaking with a fine air of de-
cision, but nevertheless quaking in her black satin slippers at her
won temerity, our wedding-day must be put off ; I can't go away
with you thinking only of my own happiness, and leave Mab here
to the mercy of a pair of adventurers.”
Frank's answer did not surprise her.
"No," he said, and not a doubt he meant it, “I'll stake my life
we won't do that. I tried that game once, we won't start it again.
"I'll undertake to say our marriage will come off on the 21st, not a
day later."
“ But, Frank, be reasonable. What is to be done? We must
do something. What are we to do?".
Give me time to think, dear. I confess I was not prepared for
such a thing as this. Your mother, you see, is sufficiently pro-
tected by your father's will ; but Mab, unless we can take care of
her, is at the mercy of any fortune-hunter who comes along."
Joyce's conscience here asked the unpleasant question, what if
it were to her plain-speaking on the matter of her father's will that
Captain Buckingham's attentions had been transferred from her
mother to Mab?
“ I will talk to Mab again,” she said; "she is difficult to manage
in some things. In small matters she always lets me rule her, but
on some things she won't listen even to a suggestion, and of late
her manner has puzzled me more than I can say. I'll talk to my
mother too, and tell her she must-must drop those people, and at
once
“Talk to whom you please, dear, but never again speak a word
about putting off our wedding by so much as an hour," interrupted
Frank, vigorously.
“And I'll talk to Sylvia, and tell her she must prevent her
brother coming to the house. And I'll talk to the brother and tell
him-"
" Wha-at!”
"I mean it. I'll tell him he must consider himself on strictly
formal terms with us, and not presume to put himself upon the
footing of a friend."


A DATELESS BARGAIN,
73
12
“You'll do nothing of the sort. If there's any talking to be
done to that man, you'll leave me to do it, please.”
“Ah, but you'll do it unpleasantly, and there'll be a scene.”
“I'm bound to do it unpleasantly sooner or later, and I'd as
soon do it to-morrow as any other day, if any good could come of
it. But it would do more mischief than anything else just now.
Between your mother and me the present condition of things is an
armed truce, nothing more. If it came to a question between me
and that man, she'd side with him, not a doubt, and forbid me the
house."
“Mab, too, isn't å log-she will have something to say if it
comes to open war.”
“ You might talk to your mother to-night, Joyce, when all the
people have gone—I've heard you speak very effectively to her more
than once," said Frank, after a moment's pause; "and you can
write to Uncle Archie, telling him he must come up at once, and
take Mab back with him into Gloucestershire while we are away in
Paris. When we return, of course she'll be with us, and we can
shut our door upon all undesirable intimacies."
There could be no mistaking the under-note of pride in his
voice as the young man alluded to their joint possession of a front
door. Joyce's fun-loving ear detected it.
“ Ah! with what an air of authority we will draw the bolts
against the dubious," she said, mischievously.
“Won't we! and I'll back up your letter to Uncle Archie with
one by the next post; but in any case leave the Buckinghams to
me. I'll speak to the man before long, but I will choose the mo-
ment for speaking, not allow him to do so."
There came the sound of doors opening, and movement along
the hall outside.
Joyce gave a start.
"I must go back to the drawing-room at once. How dreadful!
I've been talking here with you for half an hour instead of ten
minutes—that was all the time I promised you—"
"Oh! these good-bys," groaned Frank, taking his farewell—a
long, slow, sweet one, “thank Heaven they are nearly at an end
now.”
Joyce went with him to the front door, and picked out his hat
from forty or fifty others of all sorts and sizes.
“Ah! the heads those hats represent,” she said, with a lively


76
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
Ah, did you notice it, Joyce?” said Mrs. Shenstone, looking
pleased and flattered. “Sylvia said it was so. But I've such a
horror of seeming vain that I told her it was all her imagination.
That was old General Bullen.”
Joyce stifled her annoyance at finding herself for once in her life
running in couples with Sylvia by asking another rapid question.
“And that tall, thin man, bald and bearded, with eyes like a fer-
ret's and ears like a bat's, who was he?”
“How you describe people, Joyce! He was another friend of
Sylvia's, also an American. I've forgotten his name."
“And that beautiful girl all in blue, with a dove's eyes and the
walk of a peacock ?"
"I didn't see her, Joyce. To my way of thinking, all the girls
in the room to-night were remarkably plain, not to say ugly."
“Didn't see her!. Why, I saw you write down her address and
promise to call on her.”
“ That woman! You call her a girl! Why, she looked years
older than I do, and as for good looks—"
"Was she a friend of Sylvia's, and also an American ? ” inter-
rupted Joyce, anxious to get to the subject she had at heart, and
feeling she had introduced it very diplomatically.
“Yes, dear, she was. But as for beauty! Dear me, you couldn't
have looked at her very closely to describe her in that fashion. She
hadn't a good feature in her face."
“I daresay you're right, mother; I didn't study her much, I'll
admit. But, do you know, it seems to me there were a great deal
too many American who were • friends of Sylvia's' in the room to-
night."
Mrs. Shenstone's reply to this for the moment made Joyce think
she must be hearing with another person's ears, and after all did
not understand her own mother tongue, so totally unprepared was
she for the sentence.
"Well, dear, that is exactly what occurred to me, and, between
ourselves, I'm beginning to think I've had nearly enough of Sylvia
and her brother, too."
Joyce felt as if she must jump up, clap her hands, and sing as
loud as any skylark. She answered, however, tranquilly enough, as
though from its very beginning she had foreseen this satisfactory
ending to the intimacy.
"I felt sure, mother, you'd sooner or later get tired of the pair


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
77
of them. Sylvia may be all very well for a day, but for two whole
months-oh-h!"
And the shudder which accompanied her “oh was suggestive
of east winds and a black frost, at least.
“Well, between ourselves, Joyce," said Mrs. Shenstone, unclasp-
ing her bracelets and pulling off her gloves, “I think she has pre-
sumed a little on my kindness to her. It is true I gave her permis-
sion to invite one or two of her friends to my evenings, but I did
not expect to find the room full of them.”
" And the brother is every whit as bad as the sister," Joyce went
on; waxing bold in her attack. “I'm sure, when you told him you'd
be pleased to see him now and then, you didn't expect to have him
morning, noon, and night in the house.”
“ Captain Buckingham has annoyed me once or twice lately, and
I've spoken of it to Sylvia"; here Mrs. Shenstone fell into a slightly
aggrieved tone. “At one time he showed me marked and unmisa
takable attention, but of late I have noticed he seems to have eyes
and ears only for Mab.”
The thought flashed through Joyce's mind that here lay the
secret of Mrs. Shenstone's change of feeling toward her friends.
Solicitude for Mab chased this thought away.
She caught her mother's hand in hers.
“Mother, dear, how long have you noticed this ? Tell me."
“I really can't. Two, or three, or four times I have remarked
when you have been out with Frank, and Captain Buckingham has
come in, that he has shown Mab a good deal of attention. Oh,
Joyce, how red your hand looks, and how fat, too, beside mine!”
Here Mrs. Shenstone spread out her small fingers advantageously
beside Joyce's, which had caught a glow from the fire-heat.
Mother, yours are the whitest and prettiest hands I have ever
seén," cried Joyce, delighted to be able to pay a truthful compli-
ment. Then she went back to the danger threatening Mab. “Of
course, now you see so clearly what the man's intentions are, you'll
end the intimacy at once, won't you?" she queried.
"Well, no, dear; I don't see how I can very well. Mab is quite
welcome to Captain Buckingham's attentions so far as I am con-
cerned,” she said, not intending sarcasm. It's really time she
thought of getting married. She's older than you, and when you are
gone she'll be for ever moping in corners or breaking out into new
eccentricities."
66


78
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
And if she had spoken out all the thoughts in her heart Mrs.
Shenstone would have added, “ And, with both my daughters mar-
ried and gone, how delightfully free and unfettered my own move-
ments will be !"
Joyce jumped up from the opossum rug horror-stricken.
“You don't mean to say, mother, that anything would induce
you to consent to Mab's marrying that man!” she cried. “An ad-
venturer we know nothing at all about, except that his manners are
domineering, and objectionable, and insufferable, and that there is
nothing whatever of the gentleman about him.”
“Well, Joyce, if you are going to lecture as usual, I shall go to
bed; I'm dreadfully tired. I declare you never come in for a quiet
talk but what you end it in a lecture."
But Joyce was not lecturing now, simply storming; walking
hurriedly up and down the room meantime, just exactly as Uncle
Archie did when things went crookedly and a fit of gout was com-
ing on.
“I would sooner see her laid in the grave at once-a hundred
thousand times sooner," she said, in one corner of the room. “My
dear, darling Mab to be sacrificed to a man of that sort !" she said,
in another. Mother, you must turn Sylvia out of the house to-
morrow, and tell the brother we will none of us ever speak to him
again," she said, finally, going close to her mother, and taking her
hands in hers once more.
“I can't very well, Joyce,” said her mother, a little nervously.
“I've asked Sylvia to stay on over your wedding-day, and I've asked
Captain Buckingham to come to the evening party I intend to give
the night before the wedding. You see, they are great friends of
the O'Hallorans and the Kearneys and ever so many other people
I'm on pleasant terms with, and you can't expect me to quarrel all
round.”
"I'll quarrel all round for Mab's sake," said Joyce, desperately.
"I'll tell Captain Buckingham he sha'n't make love to Mabhe
sha'n't even look at her. I'll tell Mab she sha'n't ever speak to him
again. I'll tell Sylvia and the O'Hallorans and the Kearneys and
ever so many other people' that we don't want their friendship or
their friends' friendship. Yes, mother, I will, if you can't get your
courage together to do it.”
Mrs. Shenstone somehow managed to release herself from Joyce's
tight fingers, and made straight for her bedroom door.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
79
60
Well, Joyce, tell anybody anything you like, so long as you don't
expect me to do it and make myself ridiculous in the eyes of my
friends. Dear me, what fiery tempers you two girls have!"
Then she got the other side of her bedroom door, and made
sure her retreat by bolting it.
Joyce felt the time had come for action.
CHAPTER XVI.
It was a relief when, two days after this, crusty Uncle Archie
and placid Aunt Bell made their joint appearance in the family
circle, bringing common-sense with them as a welcome third.
"Told you so,” said the old gentleman, sitting in conclave with
Joyce and Frank over the library fire. “From the first day that I
heard of your harum-scarum plan of a year in London, I prognos-
ticated that mischief would come of it; and here's about as much
mischief as three women with thirty idle fingers could manage to
set going.”
Mab had retired early to her room that night. Mrs. Shenstone,
Sylvia, and Aunt Bell were at the play. Aunt Bell, among other
harmless proclivities adored the pantomime, and never missed
a chance of seeing Whittington and his Cat,” or “Mother
Goose."
“Thirty idle fingers, that includes thumbs,” said Joyce, saucily,
taking up the challenge thrown down. “In my young days elderly
gentlemen used to express themselves with exactness, and knew the
difference between fingers and thumbs." This in a manner fairly
imitative of Uncle Archie in his aphoristic mood.
“In my young days, retorted Uncle Archie, raspingly, “young
women were accustomed to treat their elders with marked respect,
not to say reverence."
• Ah, but what elders they were !” This said softly, by way of
interjection.
“And let me tell you, young lady, and you too, young man,"
here he jerked a sideways nod at Frank, " that, instead of spending
all your time making eyes at each other, I think you might have
troubled yourselves to use your common-sense to look after those
who had none.


80
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
66
“ Poor Uncle Archie !” said Joyce, patting his hand soothingly,
every one knows he doesn't mean half he says."
After this they fell to discussing “ the situation " amicably and
frankly.
“It's not mother I'm afraid of now,” said Joyce, taking the lead
in the talk; "she's bound, sooner or later, to get tired of the whole
set—the O'Hallorans, and the Kearneys, and the Buckinghams, and
all the rest. She always gets tired of people she sees much of.
Then they quarrel, and don't speak, and everything settles down
all right. But it's Mab, my darling Mab, I'm trembling for. If
once she falls in love with a man of that sort, it'll be something
awful; she is so true and steadfast in her likings.”
“But things can't have gone so far as all that, surely? She doesn't
see him on the sly, does she? ” interrogated Uncle Archie, sharply.
* Oh, no; she has not exchanged two words with him since the
day she went out walking with him. Whenever he comes in, I
jump up and sit next to her, put my arm round her waist, and when
he speaks to her I answer him, and-look at him. But that sort of
thing can't last, you know.”
“No, that can't last," assented Frank, vigorously, thinking how
near the 21st of December was.
“ But it's she herself who troubles me most of all-her manner,
her ways, her looks even. It was bad enough in the old days to
have her doing housekeeping and district-visiting in that feverish,
defiant sort of way, as if she did it to spite herself; it is far worse
now to have her shut up in her own room for hours at a time, and
then, when she is dragged out of it, to have no thoughts for any-
thing about her."
“You told me she was growing into a student, and you were de-
lighted at it."
“Yes, but I made a mistake ; she isn't. There is not a single
book to be seen in her room. I looked yesterday."
“She's scribbling, perhaps. One can expect any amount of ec-
centricity from a scribbler."
“No, nor that either. She has not a pen nor ink in her room.
It is altogether inexplicable. I haven't an idea as to what she does
with her time when she's shut up."
Here she looked inquiringly at Frank, as though to get at his
idea. But Frank, though he had an idea, and a strong one, on the
matter, did not choose to give it to her. Instead, he said :


82
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
06
whisper of such a possibility sent her creeping back to Mab's room
in a state of nervous apprehension as soon as Frank had said his
good-night and departed.
On her way up-stairs she had to pass the door of a small room
given up to Kathleen and her dress-making. Voices from within
fell upon her ear.
• Do you think I would marry an O'Shea ?” said Kathleen's
voice. “No, not if I had promised a hundred thousand times over.”
“ You shouldn't make promises you don't mean to keep,” said a
man's voice, which Joyce readily identified as Ned Donovan's. “And
let me tell you I've found out your secret, and know well enough
why you are breaking your promise to Brian O'Shea. Let me give
you—"
“Secret-I've no secret!” interrupted Kathleen, shrilly.
Let me give you a word of warning," Ned went on.
“ Brian
is beginning to have an inkling of the truth, and it'll go hard with
the man--you know who I mean—if he crosses Brian in his love-
making."
Joyce went on to Mab's room.
“The foolish little flirt," was her mental comment on Kathleen's
conduct.
Later on she read Ned's words by a fuller light.
CHAPTER XVII.
1
"MAB darling, only three more weeks and I shall be gone,”
said Joyce, kneeling beside Mab's chair and putting her arm round
her waist. “ I'm going to ask you to do ever so many things for
me before I vanish from the scene. In fact, I'm making my last
will and testament this morning, and leaving commissions to be ex-
ecuted all round.”
“What things do you want me to do, Joyce ?" asked Mab, look-
ing down with troubled eyes into Joyce's sunshiny brown ones.
“ Well, dear, first and foremost I want you to promise that on
the very day after my wedding you'll go back with Uncle Archie
into Gloucestershire, and stay with him there the whole time I am-
away."
Oh, that was all settled yesterday. I told Uncle Archie I
60


A DATELESS BARGAIN83
GAIN.
.
would, and mother is going to stay with the Wheelers at Brighton
meanwhile. Didn't you know ?”
Joyce drew a long breath of relief and said a mental thanksgiv-
ing. Then she went on to request number two.
“And I want you, dear, during the short time I shall be at
home, to take up with some occupation. Go into housekeeping
again, or take some music lessons and practice hard."
“ Joyce, I daren't touch music.”
“Well, then, take up with something else--painting, embroidery :
occupation of some sort you ought to have."
Mab grew nervous and distressed.
“I don't feel fit for anything just now, Joyce,” she pleaded.
Joyce looked at her anxiously.
“You ought to see a doctor. Uncle Archie_" she began.
But Mab interrupted her vehemently.
No, I will not see a doctor. There, my mind is made up.
It is of no use you or any one else talking of such a thing.”
“Dear, if you won't see a doctor you must let your friends pre-
scribe for you. Now my prescription is occupation, steady, regular
occupation from morning till night.”
Mab sighed.
“What am I to do, Joyce? Will you tell me that ?"
"Well, dear, why not re-commence your district visiting ?
Don't
you
remember how interested you were in those poor people
at Pimlico, in the streets leading off the Embankment, I mean.”
Mab shuddered, as though mentally she shrank from “ those
poor people at Pimlico in the streets leading off the Embankment."
Joyce went on.
" It always seemed to me a little-yes, a little unkind, dear, for
you to take up so hotly with them, lavish flannel and babies' clothes
and books and coals on them, and then suddenly to drop them alto-
gether and never go near them.”
Mab grew thoughtful.
“I suppose it was unkind. Yes, Joyce, I'll go and see them all
to-morrow, and make a point of calling upon them at least once a
week till I go away with Uncle Archie,” she answered, resolutely.
Once more Joyce sent up a mental thanksgiving. After all,
things were arranging themselves far better than she had at one
time thought possible. Here was Mab meeting her wishes as soon
as they were uttered; and, as for her mother, ever since Uncle


84
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
Archie had been in the house the shadow of his common-sense ap-
peared to have fallen upon her, and nine-tenths of her whims and
vagaries had retired into the background.
With regard to the Buckinghams a compromise had been ef-
fected. Sylvia still remained in the house as Mrs. Shenstone's
guest; but it was an understood thing that on the morning of the
wedding-day she was to depart to other friends across the Irish
Channel.
Joyce had stipulated for a quiet wedding-day.
“Mother,” she had said, “ ask crowds and crowds of people
over-night to the house, and I'll kiss them all round, and exhibit
myself and my presents to your heart's content, but I won't have a
soul at the church to see me married, except you, Uncle Archie,
Aunt Bell, and Mab.”
Mrs. Shenstone had fallen in with Joyce's wish; the party on
the eve of the wedding was planned on an ambitious scale. Joyce,
thankful to have secured a general peace, gave hearty and willing
assistance. Sylvia also lent a more gracious aid than was her wont
in matters where Joyce was concerned. Uncle Archie looked on,
grumbling and austere, while placid Aunt Bell smiled serenely on
every one generally.
Captain Buckingham seemed a little shy of the house now that
Uncle Archie had taken up his abode in it. He and Mab never
met, save in the society of others; and then Joyce took care that
they should not exchange half-a-dozen words together. Sylvia's
demeanor toward the family was that of formal politeness. To-
ward Mrs. Shenstone it was affability, slightly colored with re-
serve. Joyce, in her own mind, translated her manner into words
somewhat as follows:
Now, you foolish woman, that I have got all I want out of
you and your surroundings, I mean, quietly and without any fuss,
to drop you."
Mab was as good as her word. Each of the three weeks that
elapsed between her talk with Joyce and the wedding-day found her
making her rounds among the “poor people in the streets leading
off the Embankment." Right glad they were to see her shy,
thoughtful face among them again. They gave to it every whit as
hearty a welcome as they accorded to her yards of flannel and
tickets for coal.
Even the day before the wedding found her, with a packet of


• A DATELESS BARGAIN.
- 85
books in her hand, rapping with her knuckles at knockerless doors,
and climbing ladder-like staircases that seemed expressly contrived
for thinning the population. She worked very hard that day out of
doors, just as hard as Joyce was working within doors at writing
letters of thanks for her numerous presents, and arranging the de-
tails of her “packing up" with Kathleen.
Those two sisters had not dared trust themselves alone together
for three consecutive minutes, lest their self-control, already strained
to its limit, should utterly collapse. Joyce dashed off feverish, brill-
iant little notes of thanks, telling all her friends how light her heart
was, and how sunshiny was everything about her. And Mab
worked away with a will among her squalid, slatternly poor, staying
out till long after luncheon-time, until, indeed, the gray winter twi-
light hid the sunless sky, and a light, drizzling rain began to
fall.
Coming out of the narrowest and dirtiest of the streets she had
been visiting, she was met by a woman who importuned her to go
at once to see a neighbor of hers, who, she said, was lying danger-
ously ill in a blind alley—“Chandler's Alley,” she called it, pointing
in its direction with her forefinger.
Mab hesitated only a moment. It was late, it was damp and
cold; but still, if a half-crown of hers and a five-minutes' cheery
talk could lighten a fellow-creature's sufferings, she felt bound to
run the gauntlet of dampness, late hours, or any other personal in-
convenience.
So, refusing the woman's proffered aid as guide, she retraced
her steps, feeling confident she knew exactly in which direction ºlay
Chandler's Alley.
She had been too hasty in her reckoning, however. So, at least,
she concluded when, as she took the narrow turning which was the
only blind alley she knew of in the neighborhood, she found that it
consisted of some twelve or fourteen neglected-looking houses
which had evidently been condemned to be pulled down in order to
make way for the large and handsome buildings which were just
then springing up in all directions.
One only was tenanted--the last house on her left hand. It ex-
hibited a sign over its blistered and battered door, informing the
public that “ John Johnson, plasterer," had therein taken his abode.
It somewhat retrieved its generally dingy appearance by a trim
muslin curtain and a row of flower-pots at the parlor-window.


86
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
me you
“Was it worth while,” Mab asked herself, “ to knock at the
door, and inquire whether the sick woman lived there, and if this
were Chandler's Alley?".
She lifted the door-knocker. Some one turned the corner of the
alley at this moment, and, with rapid strides, came toward her. It
was Ned Donovan. She recognized him immediately. He, how-
ever, did not see her till he was within a yard or so. Then he
stopped abruptly.
“Miss Mab!” he exclaimed, in tones of blank surprise.
She met surprise with surprise.
“ Have you friends in this place?" she asked. “Kathleen told
had
gone back to your work at Woolwich.”
The man's face darkened.
“They gave me my dismissal there, Miss Mab, and from an-
other place afterward; because I am an Irishman, I suppose.” His
voice was not pleasant as he said the words. It altered as he added,
respectfully: “This is not a place for you to be in, Miss Mab, at this
time of day at any rate; if you'll allow me, I'll see you through these
streets to your own door, or will call a cab for you at the corner?"
Mab chose the latter. She must, she felt, give up her errand of
charity for that day. The rain was coming down briskly now, she
was rapidly getting drenched, and felt generally tired and out of
sorts.
Nevertheless, dreary and depressing as her morning had been,
it was blue sky and sunshine itself by comparison with the one she
could picture passed in Joyce's company, with the shadow of the
morrow's farewells deepening upon them.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Every one decided that Mrs. Shenstone's reception on the eve
of Joyce's wedding was more brilliant than any to which they had
before been summoned by that lady. It had been planned on a
more ambitious scale, and had had more time, thought, and energy
bestowed upon it.
Mrs. Shenstone, in the most elaborate of blush-rose tinted robes
that a Parisian modiste could contrive, surveyed herself in succession
in four full-length mirrors, and came to the conclusion that every


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
87
one's first exclamation on entering her drawing-room would be,
“Dear me, she looks young enough to be the bride herself.”
Joyce acted as maid to Mab, and helped to attire her in a dress
as dead white as her own. Then she arranged her thick brown
hair so to shadow her anxious, thoughtful face, and so crowned and
bedecked her with jewels that people saw in the girl a dignity and
beauty they had never before noted.
As for Joyce herself, she decided that for that night at least she
would be radiant; and radiant she was.
“To-morrow," she confided to Uncle Archie, “Frank and I will
creep into church silently and demurely to the sound of muffled
drums, but to-night, at any rate, the drums shall not be muffled.”
Uncle Archie muttered something to the effect that in his young
days weddings and funerals alike were conducted decorously and
without ostentation.
People didn't make such fools of themselves then as they do
now," he grumbled.
" Then it was by special interposition of Providence," laughed
Joyce, patting the old gentleman's shoulder as if he were some big
Newfoundland dog, to be kept for a given time from snarling and
showing his teeth.
Sylvia comported herself with a good deal of unobtrusive tact
that evening. She put on dark colors, and placed herself at Mrs.
Shenstone's elbow as that lady received her arriving guests.
“ You look as though you needed a chaperon, Tiny," she whis-
pered, insinuatingly, into her ear.
And Tiny was instantly mollified, and every one of Sylvia's mis-
deeds was pardoned on the spot.
Frank felt himself to be on the very pinnacle of happinness that
night.
“ It's more than I deserve, a hundred thousand times more," he
soliloquized, over and over again thanking Heaven that he had had
the common-sense to make his pride give place to his happiness. It
made him giddy to think of the years of bliss of which he seemed
at the moment able to command a bird's-eye view.
He stood a little way apart from Joyce, watching her in her
bright beauty so prettily humoring old Uncle Archie, so protective
to Mah, so forbearing to all her mother's follies and affectations.
" It's worth living on prison diet all one's days to get such a
night as this,” he thought, “and to think that my whole life will be


88
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
a succession of such nights, or rather of something infinitely bet-
ter!"
Then somehow he felt his eyes were wet. He threw himself with
energy into the stream of guests, found occupation by volunteering
to bring ices to some elderly dowagers, who, ensconced in a quiet
corner, did not feel equal to daring the crowded staircase to procure
them for themselves.
The refreshment buffet was in the dining-room. As Frank en-
tered only two persons were in the room-a maid who had come in
for a gossip, and the man who was serving the ices. The former
fluttered away at Frank's approach ; the latter, an elderly, serious-
looking man, to all appearance of the respectable butler class, held
up a warning finger and whispered:
“ Not a word, sir, if you please. I knew you would recognize
me, so I've been waiting here to have a word with you on the
quiet."
Then Frank, to his amazement, recognized in the serious-looking
butler a detective, a man of a superior and thoroughly confidential
stamp, with whom of late he had had dealings in connection with
some intricate law business.
“ Morton !” he cried, indignantly, “what in the name of fortune
are you doing here? I've a great mind to"
“Not a word, sir,” said the man, again. " I've had my orders
from Scotland Yard. There's a lot been going on here that you
know
nothing at all about. All sorts of dubious people have been mak-
ing free of this house."
“Good heavens! But, whatever your information may be. I'm
sure it isn't necessary for me to tell you that the lady of the house
is perfectly ignorant of their dubiousness.”
Naturally all his suspicions fastened at once upon the Bucking-
hams and their Irish intimates.
“Ah !” said Morton, confidentially. “A nice lot the lady of
the house has surrounded herself with! Fenians, sir! The house
is getting quite a reputation as a sort of head-center. Appointments
have been made, meetings called at the lady's receptions-under her
very nose, I might say. Hush, sir! Here ey come for ices. Rasp-
berry, or strawberry, or vanilla did you say, sir ? "
Frank had only time to whisper a word.
“Come to my rooms direct when you leave here, I shall be up
I've a great deal to say.”
all night.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
89
Then he took his ices and departed, but by this time all recol-
lection of the personality of the elderly dowagers had faded from his
memory. Whether they were attired in cærulean blue or sulphur-
ous yellow he could not for the life of him have said. He only knew
they looked very hot and red in the face, and were making a perfect
gale with their fans. But, possibly, that by this time was the con-
dition of every elderly dowager present.
With an ice in either hand he went peering into all the corners
of the room, so far, at least, as he could approach them for the crush.
He pushed on one side the curtain which half-draped the small con-
servatory leading off the drawing-room, thinking the ladies might
have retreated thither for a pleasanter atmosphere.
But there he saw a sight which made him start back a step in
astonishment, and put down his ices on a small table briskly enough
-nothing less than Mab and Captain Buckingham seated side by
side in confidential talk.
You should make the attempt daily, spasmodic effort is useless.
The habit should be steadily persevered in,” Buckingham was say-
ing, in an authoritative tone that set Frank's blood boiling. As
for Mab's face, it looked thoughtful, spiritual, dead white as her
dress.
“ Mab,” said Frank, taking her hand, “will you go at once to
Joyce? She is looking for you. She is in the music-room."
Mab rose instantly. Captain Buckingham rose also.
“Won't you put your cloak on?” he asked; "you pass a win-
dow on your way to the music-room. Here is a wrap some one has
left behind.”
Frank had to stand still and see Mab wrapped in an Indian shawl
by Captain Buckingham.
Good-night,” she said to him, softly, when the operation was
“ I shall remember."
Then, without so much as a look at Frank, who stood there
steadily watching her, she went straight out of the room. She
made no attempt to seek her sister. Straight up the stairs to her
own room she went.
Mab's bedroom was large, and luxuriously furnished. It
looked comfortable enough as she entered. Candles were lighted
on the toilet-table, a big, blazing fire crackled up the chimney, and
threw a lurid light on the figure of a girl kneeling on the hearth-
rug, with her head buried in Mab's easy-chair.
over.


90
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
"Why, Kathleen, what is it?" cried Mab in wonder, for muf-
fled sobs seemed to come from out the cushions of the chair.
Kathleen's pretty, pouting face was all red and tear-stained, as
she jumped up from her knees to answer her young mistress's
questions.
“Oh, it's nothing-nothing-nothing-Miss Mab,” she cried,
vehemently, finding occupation meantime for her fingers in making
up the fire, getting out brushes, lighting superfluous candles.
“But there must be something to make you sob like that," in-
sisted Mab, going to the girl, and laying her hands kindly on her
shoulder. “Come, tell me; I may be able to help you.”
Kathleen stood still, with the match-box in her hand. She did
not like to say that her tears arose from the fact that Ned had
given her another terrible scolding, and had vowed he would have
nothing more to do with her to the end of her life, unless she kept
her promise and married Brian O'Shea. No, that would not do at
all; disagreeable cross-questioning might follow.
“It's about Ned, Miss Mab," she answered, steadying her voice,
but not looking Mab in the face; " he has changed so lately. He's
in with a lot of people who are no good at all to him, and he'll end
with getting into the hands of the police, I'm afraid."
Ah-h! Do you know the names of any of these people ?"
asked Mab, recollecting her unexpected meeting with Ned that
morning on John Johnson the plasterer's door-step.
Oh! there are ever so many, Miss Mab, all Fenians or Na-
tionalists. A bad set they are," answered Kathleen, still busying
herself at the toilet-table.
Mab sighed. Thoughts came in a rush to her mind. After all
the time, all the thought she had bestowed on this man, it was piti-
ful to think that he should thus determine to rush headlong to
ruin. What could be goading him on to such mad folly? Here
there came a conscious flush to her face, a stab of pain at her
heart.
She knew his secret, it would have been folly to pretend even
to herself that she did not. What if, instead of being the good
angel she had intended to to him, she had been his evil one, and
had darkened and cursed his life for him! What if it were his
desperate love for her that was driving him to throw his life away
in this reckless fashion ? Could she do nothing, absolutely nothing,
to save him?
60


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
91
She clasped her hands together and sank into the chair into
which Kathleen had wept out her sorrows.
“ Leave me, Kathleen; put out every light in the room. I want
to think," she said, leaning back in her chair and covering her eyes
with her clasped hands.
Kathleen did as she was bidden. At the door of the room she
paused giving one backward look at her young mistress. It
seem to her that she had suddenly fallen into a sweet, sound sleep.
66
For one instant the two men in the drawing-room below faced
each other.
“ Is this intended for an insult ? ” asked Captain Buckingham,
his boots almost touching Frank's, their eyes on a level.
“You may take it so, if you like," answered Frank, carelessly
turning on his heel, and with a look on his face that has ere this cost
a man his life.
The place is not convenient, or -" began Buckingham, but
broke off abruptly. He made a moment as if about to pull out his
watch, but checked himself. “I leave here at one"
Frank's temper broke its bounds now.
“Do you want to know what time it is ?” he said, his low,
strained tones showing that he was at white heat. “It's a ques-
tion, I believe, you are rather fond of asking. Well, I will tell
you: time to give adventurers and conspirators a word of warning,
and, if they don't take it, to hand them over to be dealt with by the
law."
His temper had fairly vanquished his common-sense, or he
would never have spoken such words as these. The instant they
were out of his lips, common-sense asserting itself told him he had
as good as sounded a reveillé in the man's ears which would give
him and his possible confederates the start of the police, and render
their detection and capture proportionately difficult.
Captain Buckingham, to all appearance, left him master of the
situation. He grew ashen white, his eyes flashed.
You may find another answer given to the question before
long," he said, in a tone so low that the elderly dowager who stood
at his elbow gesticulating to Frank for her ice did not hear a syl-
lable.
Then he made straight for the door, and the sound of the front
door closing a minute after told Frank he had quitted the house.
66


92
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“What a consummate fool I've made of myself !” thought
Frank. “I had better find Morton, and confess to him at once."
But though he hunted high and low for the man, and questioned
every servant he came upon as to his whereabouts, he could not
light upon him. He had disappeared, possibly to report to Scot-
land Yard certain proceedings which had excited his suspicions, or
-Frank could only hope so—it might be that he had departed on
the traces of Captain Buckingham.
Frank stood thoughtfully for a moment at the head of the stairs,
just outside the music-room door. What had he better do ? Slip
away quietly, take a cab to Scotland Yard, and find out how much
mischief it was likely his hot temper had wrought ? He took out
his watch; the hands pointed to a quarter to one. People would
soon be leaving now; his absence would not be noted. He had
better possibly frame some word of excuse to Joyce.
There was she radiant still, just within the music-room, which
had for the evening been converted into a show-room for the brill-
iant silver and jewelry, which had been presented to her under the
guise of wedding-presents.
Her clear, joyous tones came to him over the heads of the guests
pressing in or out of the room.
“Now, this is the treasure cave, you must say your 'open sesame'
before I let you in. This is it— Joyce, my dear, I think you're the
happiest girl alive.'"
With red lips parted, cheeks flushing, eyes brilliant, bright hair
gleaming in rivalry with the jewels that crowned it, the long trail-
ing white robe throwing all into bold relief, no artist who ever held
pencil would have scorned Joyce Shenstone that night as the imper-
sonation of his ideal Hebe.
She caught a glimpse of Frank as he paused irresolutely outside,
and whispered the hurried question:
“Have you seen Mab anywhere? She has not been near me all
the evening."
Frank's answer was intercepted by the appearance of Mab her-
self, descending the staircase from the upper floor. She still had on
the Indian shawl which Captain Buckingham had wrapped around
her. Her face was white as before, her eyes looked fixed and un-
seeing.
Joyce made sure she would come straight into the music-room
for a passing word, and drew back a little into the room to make


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
93
way for her. To her surprise she passed on and down the second
flight of stairs. People were beginning to depart; a stream soon
flowed in between Joyce, Frank, and the staircase. A sudden ter-
ror seized Joyce. She caught at Frank's arm.
Oh, follow her ;, what is she going to do ?" she whispered, for
the look on Mab's face had fallen like a chill shadow upon her.
It was easy to say, " follow her; a bird's wings over the heads
of the departing guests might have done it easily enough. Nothing
else.
Frank dived in and out, with and against the stream, as best he
could. He got somehow to the drawing-room, had a tolerably fair
view of it, thanks to two inches more of stature than most of the
people there owned to. Mab was not there. Sylvia Buckingham
was standing in her dark dress at Mrs. Shenstone's elbow, and that
lady, looking a little tired and jaded in her blush-rose garments,
serenely smiled her good-bys to her departing guests.
On to the dining-room, thence to the supper-room, Frank went.
Not a sign of Mab anywhere. Thence out into the hall, on to the
doorstep even, where stood a crowd of great-coated footmen, wait-
ing for their respective masters and mistresses.
“ Are you looking for any one, sir?" asked one of these, seeing
"where has she gone?" plainly written on Frank's face.
in an Indian shawl came out five minutes ago. We thought she
was making for one of the carriages, but she passed them all and
took the first turning to the night.
Mechanically Frank took a hat, which some thoughtful hand
held out to him, and dashed out into the darkness. The bright,
htful lamps of the line of carriages, which reached from the door to
the corner of the square, made patches of shifting light on the damp
pavement. Beyond the line the dingy vista of the street which ran
off the square showed dimly through the gloom. Down the turn-
ing the man had indicated Frank went at the top of his speed. It
seemed to him, as he turned the corner, that a figure resembling
Mab's disappeared at the further end. Faster and faster few his
feet over the ground. This by-street leading down to the river was
deserted and silent. A crawling cab, two slip-shod girls, a belated
street-minstrel were the only representatives of the bustling life
which tided along the wider thoroughfare.
He turned sharply round the narrow street where it seemed to
him Mab had disappeared. A gas-lamp at the corner of an alley
“ A lady


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
95
CHAPTER XIX.
THE slowly-breaking dawn of the winter's day that was to have
heard the wedding-bells of Joyce Shenstone, found her standing
beside Mab as she lay on her bed, chafing her hands, bathing her
ice-cold forehead, trying to force wine between her colorless lips.
Mab had been brought back to the house, about half an hour
after she had quitted it, in a cab. The cabman had stated that he
was on his way to Mrs. Shenstone's house, on the chance of picking
up a fare, when a man standing with the lady at the corner of a by-
street had hailed him, telling him the lady's address and bidding him
drive carefully. The lady appeared to be in a half-fainting condi-
tion, and had to be almost liſted into the cab.
She had altogether fainted when they opened the cab door, and
had had to be carried up the stairs to her own room. There she
lay inert, lifeless, on her bed, her features, ashen gray against her
white pillows, mocked by the glister of the jewels which still hung
about her brown plaits and sparkled on her arms.
Joyce's face was only by one degree less deathlike in its pallor
as she bent over her. It was by many degrees more anxious and
bewildered. Wonder and anxiety halved her heart between them.
By-and-by Mab might awaken to both, but for the nonce blessed
unconsciousness held her.
Joyce had at first, naturally enough, imagined that the man who
had called the cab and lifted Mab into it must have been Frank, and
had, also naturally enough, wondered greatly why he had not jumped
into it after her, and himself brought her safely home.
A few questions addressed by Uncle Archie to the cabman
quickly proved the surmise incorrect.
“ Did the gentleman give any reason for not driving home with
the young lady?” he asked.
The man answered, with a knowing look:
" He wasn't a gentleman, nohow, sir. Whatever he was, he
wasn't that. It was too dark to see what his face was like, or what
his clothes were either. But I haven't druv a cab for fifteen years
not to know a gentleman's 'hi' from a workingman's 'hi.'”
The speech wanted translating. Uncle Archie was at first in-
clined to believe that the organ of sight was referred to. Little by
little, however, the man's meaning made itself plain to him. The


96
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
old gentleman grew suddenly abrupt and abstracted. He gave
short, sharp answers to Joyce, bidding her be off and look after Mab,
and not bother him. Then he dispatched one of the servants to
Frank's rooms to see if he had returned there, another to the near-
est police-station to request the immediate attendance of the super-
intendent.
The candles had burned low, the gray dawn had deepened into
the dun yellow of a London sky before the faintest sign of returning
life showed in Mab's face. Her heavy lids lifted a moment, drooped
again, lifted once more, and the deep, wondering eyes fixed them-
selves on Joyce's face.
"Joyce, tell me what has happened," she whispered, faintly.
But the doctor interposed. He would not have so much as a
word exchanged between the sisters till half an hour of rest had
intervened, till tonics or food had been taken, and the patient's re-
covery assured.
So Joyce had to endure half an hour of bewildering suspense
with the unanswered question, " Where is Frank? what occurred to
separate you two ?” held back with difficulty, and her sense of hear-
ing straining to its utmost limit to detect the sound of Frank's ring
at the door, his step on the stairs.
When at length the weary half-hour had counted out its thirtieth
minute, and Mab, still with that white, puzzled look on her face, had
repeated the request, “ Joyce, Joyce, tell me what has happened,"
Joyce met it with the counter-question, “ Mab, darling, tell me, first of
all, what has become of Frank? Where did he and you separate ? "
Mab stared blankly.
“ Frank! Frank!” she repeated, “I have not been with him,
have not seen him ever since-since" here she broke off, putting
her hand to her head as though the effort to think pained her-
“since the night of the party, that was, oh! I don't know how long
ago."
At this moment the doctor was summoned by a message from
Uncle Archie to attend on Mrs. Shenstone, who had been running
the gamut from hysterics to swoons, and back from swoons to hys-
terics for the past hour and a half.
Joyce, left alone with Mab, did her best to help her collect her
scattered senses.
“Yes, dear, the party was last night, you know. You left the
drawing-room rather suddenly. Kathleen says you went up to your


A DATELESS BARGAIN,
97
room and fell asleep in your easy-chair. After a time you came
down again, and"
A sudden gleam of renewed recollection swept over Mab's face.
She caught eagerly at Joyce's hand.
“ Did he come back with me-Ned Donovan, I mean?" she
asked, excitedly.
No one came back with you, dear, not even Frank, who fol-
lowed you out of the house to look after you. Where did you go,
Mab? Try and think. We are all anxiety to send and inquire about
Frank, whether he has met with an accident, or what has detained
him."
Again Mab's hand went to her head.
“ Joyce, I will try to tell you everything; but so much is misty
to me I don't know how to get hold of it. I came up-stairs; yes, I
remember, and found Kathleen sobbing because Ned had joined
some dreadful secret society. I thought I would try to get him to
give it up, and sat down in my chair to think ho I could best
get hold of him. He always used to listen to me, you know, when
his father could do nothing with him,"
•Go on, dear; you sat down in your chair.”
“Yes." Here Mab grew painfully confused, and her words be-
"I sat down in my chair; I don't know how to tell
you—you wouldn't understand, Joyce.”
“You fell asleep, dear.”
“ Ye-es, you would think it sleep, I daresay, and I don't know
indeed where sleep ended, and—and vision began—"
“ Mab!”
“It's true, I can't help it-it's true. I saw-yes, I saw, but I
could hear nothing. I saw Ned Donovan going up the steps of a
house outside of which I had seen him in the morning. I saw him
seat himself at a table with two other men, but who they were I
did not know. And. I thought “ That is their secret place of meet-
ing—that is where their wicked plots are laid. Ned must shake
himself - free of them at once.” But, after this, everything is con-
fusion to me.
Whether I went really and tried to make him leave
the house, or whether I think I did and only fainted on the bed, I
have not the vaguest idea."
Joyce's bewilderment vanished now, swamped in an agony of
apprehension for Frank's safety, in what might prove to be a nest
of Irish conspirators.
gan to halt.
7


98
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“You know the house, darling, outside which you saw Ned
Donovan yesterday morning!" she cried, breathlessly, trying to
piece together Mab's facts, so oddly coherent in their incoherence,
that they recalled the "stuff that dreams are made off.”
“Yes, I know the house," answered Mab; " but I can't tell
you the name of the street or the number of the house. I could
take you to it easily. Give me your hand, Joyce; help me to get
up at once."
But the mere effort to lift her head from her pillows threw her
back into heavy, death-like unconsciousness once more.
CHAPTER XX.
SILENCE and darkness seemed to fall upon the house that day.
In the early morning the wind had sharply changed to the north;
the heavy rain-clouds came down in soft, sleepily-floating snow. It
heaped itself on the door-ways and window-ledges; it put distance
between the street-voices and Mrs. Shenstone's warm, yet, withal,
desolate rooms. For all the world it seemed to Joyce like the day
of a funeral—the day on which one sees carried out of the house
all that one holds most precious in life, coffined and ready for buri-
al. From room to room she wandered restlessly. Now she would
be bending over Mab, anon she would make her way into the
library to consult Uncle Archie as to what was next to be done, or
would stand staring blankly from the drawing-room windows at
the rapidly-whitening streets. That soft, sleepily-whirling snow
cut a notch in her memory sharper than any that graver's tool
could have made. In after years Joyce never saw a snow-cloud
thickening and rounding in a dun sky without a shudder.
Uncle Archie, although he had quickly enough communicated
with the police, expressed his opinion stoutly and loudly that Frank
would“ turn up right enough before the day was over.”
Mr. Morton, the solemn-looking detective, with large, expressive
eyes, small nose, and mouth with drawn-down corners, who had
ladled the ices of over-night, responded promptly to Uncle Archie's
He was frank and communicative as to the undesirable
circle of friends with which Mrs. Shenstone had surrounded herself.
“If she'd been O'Donovan Rossa himself she couldn't have
summons.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
99
00
“ Of
made a better center for the dynamiters and Fenians. There's
nearly a dozen of the fine ladies and gentlemen who were here last
night we shall keep a strict eye on for the next twelve months or
so," he said.
Uncle Archie alluded to the Buckinghams.
“Of course they're about the worst of the whole lot?" he
queried.
Morton shook his head.
We know all about that pair,” he answered, knowingly.
course they're adventurers, and the sooner you get clear of them
the better ; but they're not the worst of the lot by a long way.
He's the open, loud-mouthed Fenian, the sort of man who knows
the police have their eye on him, and, though he swaggers a good
deal, takes care to keep within the law. He has lived by his wits,
one way or another, for the past fifteen years. He played the part
of showman to that poor girl in Boston who died about seven
years ago, through mesmerism or clairvoyance.”
Uncle Archie grew scarlet. He pulled the bell furiously.
“ And do you mean to say a man of that sort has been made
free of the house, associating with my sister-in-law and nieces!'' he
cried, the words coming out very like the gobble, gobble of a tur.
key cock.
Then he turned to give an order to the servant.
Captain Buckingham is never again, under any pretext what-
ever, to be admitted to the house. I will explain to your mistress."
"I would advise discretion-prudence," began Morton.
Confound your discretion and prudence, we've had too much
of it already," interrupted the irate old gentleman.
“Captain Buckingham has called twice already to inquire after
Miss Mab, sir,” said the servant putting fuel on the fire.
• Impertinent scoundrel! If he calls again tell him your orders;
and, if that doesn't send the sister flying out of the house after the
brother in double-quick time, I don't know what will,” he added,
turning to Morton, who had crossed his knees, folded his hands
complacently, and sat staring into the fire as though he meant to
give himself up to a pleasant morning in Uncle Archie's society.
There was no need, however, to take any trouble about sending
Sylvia "flying out of the house." Her boxes had been packed
over-night, and she was at that very moment saying a characteristic
good-by to Mrs. Shenstone in that lady's sitting-room.
297311A


A DATELESS BARGAINIOI
Ain
,
executive; but at present we know but little of its special aims and
objects, and what we do know, my dear sir,” this with the air of
one who had grand professional secrets intrusted to his keeping,
you may be quite sure we shall not divulge till the right moment."
“H'm, one doesn't need to be told that dynamite is at the bot-
tom of all these conspiracies.”
“Or boycotting in Ireland on a systematic scale. You, my dear
sir, as an outsider, will hardly credit the time, the thought, the
funds that are expended to bring about some small piece of boycot-
ting in a remote corner of Ireland-a thing we in London read in a
ten-line paragraph in our morning's paper, and forget all about the
next minute.”
All this time Joyce had been standing listening. She broke
silence now.
“Do you mean to say you think Mr. Ledyard has fallen into the
hands of any of these people, these Fenians and dynamiters?" she
cried, feeling that now the ghost of her fears had suddenly taken
definite shape and confronted her.
Uncle Archie turned upon her sharply.
“I wish to Heaven, Joyce, you'd stay up-stairs and look after
Mab and your mother, instead of coming fussing in here, interfering
in matters that don't concern you."
There is really no cause for anxiety," said Morton, with a
grand air of superior knowledge; "we shall hear of Mr. Ledyard
long before the day is over. We are in London, my dear young
lady, not in St. Petersburg."
And why on earth have you your hat and cloak on, Joyce?"
broke in Uncle Archie again. “ Whatever whim have you in your
head now?"
“ Mab is better, and has been able to describe minutely to me
the house outside which she saw Ned Donovan yesterday, and
where most likely she went last night. I can take you to it at once
if you will come,” was her reply, which sent the two men looking
for their hats at once.
The alley of condemned houses was little more than a quarter
of a mile from Mrs. Shenstone's door. A swift, silent tramp of
about five minutes through the snowy streets brought the three
face to face with the sign-board of “ John Johnson, plasterer.”
The house was the ordinary six-roomed house one sees so often
in London back streets. It consisted of a parlor, with kitchen be-


102
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
hind, and four upper rooms, two on each floor. It bore much the
same neat appearance as it had yesterday, when Mab had rapped
at its front door. Signs of life were nowhere, and Mr. Morton's re-
peated knockings brought no response, save hollow echoes from
adown the deserted alley.
Uncle Archie turned to Joyce.
“Now, Joyce, you've shown us the way right enough, you had
better turn back and go home as quickly as possible,” he said,
raspingly.
" I'm going in with you, Uncle Archie," answered Joyce, grow-
ing very white, but withal as calm as, or calmer than, the old gen-
tleman himself.
“ That you're not. Of all things in the world I detest to
have a young woman for ever forcing herself where she's not
wanted."
“ Hush, dear, don't scold, I can't stand it to-day; but I am go
ing in with you,” answered Joyce, in a voice that silenced Uncle
Archie at once.
“The door is too tight to force,” said Morton. “I know the
landlord of these shanties, I'll go and get the key from him-it's
only a stone's-throw from here-and ask him a question or two as
to Mr. John Johnson, plasterer."
Uncle Archie and Joyce paced the blind alley for a long ten min-
utes while Morton departed on his quest. Here the snow was fresh
and crisp. There was nothing to attract the busy life that tided
along the larger thoroughfare.
A few children with red, dirty faces loitered a moment or two at
the corner to stare at the unwonted apparition of a lady and gentle-
man in these unaristocratic quarters ; but it was too freezingly cold
for any one to loiter long, and Uncle Archie and Joyce pursued their
tramp, tramp over the snow uninterruptedly.
That ten minutes prolonged itself to as many hours to Joyce's
imagination, which peopled the empty, silent house of “ John John-
son " with all sorts of terrors. Traces of Frank they must find
here, it seemed to her. Perhaps they had shut him up in some
cellar or hiding-place; perhaps they had left him lying bleeding and
dying on the floor. The houses began to swim before her eyes, the
snow to dazzle her. Would the man never come back? It was
growing beyond endurance.
“Uncle Archie, I know I could get in at that front window if


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
103
you helped me up,” she said, desperately, clutching at the old gen-
tleman's arm.
Morton turned the corner of the street at that moment and saved
Uncle Archie the necessity of a remonstrance.
He came along with a brisk tread, his nose very much in the air
and a big bunch of kees dangling in his hand."
“One of these will be sure to fit, the landlord says," he said, as
he began trying one of the biggest in the lock.
Joyce could scarcely keep back her impatience; her fingers were
clenching into the palms of her hands beneath her fur cloak, her
feet were scattering the crisp snow into ridges and pits as she stood
waiting a step below Morton with his big bunch of keys.
He, good man, blandly sought to entertain them with scraps of
information he had just picked up concerning “John Johnson,"
while his leisurely fingers tried the keys in succession.
Dixon, that's the landlord of these houses, he keeps an oil and
color shop round the corner, says John Johnson came to him about
six weeks ago to hire this house, stating he had a job of work on
near, and the place would suit him for the next three months. He
paid three months rent in advance, which Dixon was uncommonly
glad to get, as he had taken it for granted that after the houses had
been condemned to be pulled down, no one would be likely to make
an offer for any one of them. He says the man looked like a decent
mechanic, but there was nothing remarkable in his appearance, and
he shouldn't know him again if he saw him."
“Oh, I am confident that key must fit!” broke in Joyce, implor-
ingly. “See, it is the exact size. Ah, thank Heaven!" she added,
as the key creaked in the lock and the door turned on its hinges.
Naturally they went first into the little front parlor which opened
off the passage on their right hand. Bare walls, an empty fire-grate,
and thirteen feet by twelve of bare floor met their gaze. Nothing
else.
Mr. Morton took out his note-book and pencil to report—that
there was nothing to report.
Joyce's impatience refused to be longer restrained.
“While you are writing I will run up-stairs and look through the
other rooms,” she cried, half-way up the first flight. “Don't trouble
to come up, Uncle Archie, unless I call."
In succession she opened and shut the doors of four desolately
empty, cupboardless rooms.


À DATELESS BARGAIN,
105
buildings," she said, trying hard to keep her failing heart from show-
ing in her voice.
“My dear young lady,” said Morton, composedly, " it will all be
done before night thoroughly, much better than you or I could do
it. We'll have men in here to remove the snow, dig the yards up if
need be-"
Joyce felt as if her wits were leaving her.
“ Dig, dig for what?" she asked, vaguely, almost unmeaningly.
When ten minutes later, as they three went silently out into the
snowy streets, she heard Uncle Archie give a husky order to Mor-
ton, “We must have the river dragged without delay," she had no
voice wherewith to ask the question, “ Dragged ! for what?"
CHAPTER XXI.
“JOYCE, why don't you curse me?" moaned Mab, as she and
Joyce sat alone together in their sorrow and desolation. “It is my
doing—all mine."
A month has passed since the day that was to have been Joyce's
wedding-day. During that month Joyce has gone through every
phase of passionate grief ; in it she feels as if she had lived a life-
time twice told. She is older, she says to herself, now than her
mother, than white-haired, placid Aunt Bell, even than that wrinkled,
crooning old body she saw the other day at the window of an alms-
house as she went by. Like the old face she saw at that window,
she feels she has said good-by to all the bright young things of life,
to all the hopes, pleasures, desires which used to set her eyes spark-
ling, her cheeks glowing. Only yesterday she found herself looking
longingly at a widow's cap in a shop window. If only she could
have had the right to wear it, how thankful she would have been !
If only some grim churchyard could have held for her a stone with
Frank's name upon it, she knows she could go down on her knees
even now, thank God, and call herself a happy woman.
“Hush, Mab, you pain me when you say such things !” was her
quiet reply to Mab's moan; and then the sisters, clasping hands, sat
in silence once more.
Uncle Archie came in while they were thus sitting.
Uncle Archie had of late found his rasping, incisive manner dif-


106
A DATELESS BARGAIN,
ficult to keep up, toward Joyce at any rate. So he had dropped it,
and spoke to her in soft, tender tones that came strangely from his
cross old lips. Sometimes he would take her in his arms, and
smooth her head and curly hair as he used to when she was a little
child.
His manner cut Joyce to the heart. She could feel his wordless
pity for her, just as he could feel her unspoken despair.
“Don't sit there moaning, with your hands before you, child,"
he said, as he came in, “or you'll drive me foolish.”
“Uncle Archie, I am not moaning, I am trying to thinkmy
hardest," was Joyce's reply.
The old gentleman shook his head sadly.
“That is what I am trying to do from morning till night; but,
Heaven help me, I am at my wits' end now."
At their wits' end! that was where they all were just then.
Everything that human intelligence could conceive, that labor or
money could execute, had been done, and yet not the faintest trace
of Frank, dead or alive, had they come upon. The river had been
dragged, the canal likewise : they had yielded up their usual treas-
ures of mud, old boots, and other rotting débris, but never a vestige
of Frank or Frank's belongings.
Every police-station in the kingdom had been communicated
with. Every newspaper held conspicuous advertisements, offering
large rewards for his recovery, smaller rewards for the slightest in-
telligence of him.
But, though imaginary clews and false trails had been started by
the score, not one of them came to anything, or answered any pur-
pose under Heaven, save that of buoying Joyce's heart up with hope
for a day or two, in order that she might the better afterward sound
the depths of her despair.
Mr. Morton still informed everybody in grandiose fashion that
we are in London, sir, not in St. Petersburg." But, beyond full
assurance of that fact, his acumen did not appear to extend. He
had traced Ned Donovan down to his lodgings, questioned him, and
also his landlady, closely as to his movements on the 20th of Decem-
ber. The statements of the two were in accord.
Ned stated that, on the afternoon of the 20th, he chanced to be
passing at the end of the blind alley known as Brewer's Court,
when he saw Miss Shenstone standing on the door-step of one of
the houses. He did not consider that it was a neighborhood for à


108
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
06
informed Morton, hotly. "You simply ignore my suggestions, just
as if I were some irritable, unreasonable old man, with gigantic
prejudices, who didn't know what he was talking about."
Morton's eyes had showed a passing twinkle.
Well, sir, you see we've no case against any one of the parties
you name," he had tried to explain.
“Get your case, then. Whose business is it, if it isn't yours ?”.
“Now, there are the Buckinghams. We know they are a pair
of adventurers, but at present they've done nothing to bring the
law upon them."
“ The man writes inflammatory articles for the Irish press.
Isn't that enough to bring the law upon him?"
Morton had shaken his head.
“ Those aren't the dangerous ones, sir. English law very wisely
lets the loud-mouthed democrat alone. He makes a center, so to
speak, for the dangerous ones to congregate to. Let him alone,
and we know where to find them, and can put our hands upon
them at any moment."
• Yes, but you don't put your hands upon them at any mo-
ment.”
“We give them rope enough, sir, and they hang themselves.”
Here Uncle Archie had jumped up boiling over.
Confound you,” he cried, “I'll take your word for it. If they
do get hanged it isn't you they'll have to thank for it.” And Mor-
ton had very wisely bowed himself out of the room.
Mrs. Shenstone had characteristically comported herself as the
one on whom the household sorrow had fallen heaviest.
“ Look at me, Joyce ; I look ten years older,” she had said,
when her sobs and hysterics had died of a severe cold and sore
throat, which did duty for them fairly well.
“Oh, mother, what do looks matter?” Joyce had replied, wea-
rily, shrinking from her mother as she never shrunk from her be-
fore.
“And Joyce-oh, don't be in such a hurry to run away from
me, child—I really think we ought, every one of us, to put on half-
mourning-gray and black or gray and white. You see, if poor
Frank isn't dead, something dreadful must have happened- Dear
me! She's gone out of the room. How extraordinary! I meant
it kindly, too."
So Mrs. Shenstone, in becoming gray and black toilettes, had sat
:)


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
109
in her drawing-room every afternoon receiving condoling visitors by
the score, telling everybody what an awful blow she had sustained,
how fond she had always been of Frank Ledyard, and how she
had been looking forward to Joyce's wedding-day as the one, bright
spot in her own very clouded and troubled career.
With evident enjoyment she would retail to Uncle Archie, Mab,
Joyce, any one who would listen, the remarks of the said sympa-
thetic visitors in response to her confidences. She seemed to
think whenever Mab, Joyce, Aunt Bell, or Uncle Archie got to-
gether for a quiet five minutes that they were bent on excluding
her from their conference. The idea ruffled her temper at times,
sent her to hunt them up, and generally rout them out of their
peaceable corners whenever there came a lull in the whirl of her
afternoon callers.
On the very afternoon that Uncle Archie had confessed himself
to his nieces to be at his wits' end, she swooped down upon them
with capacity for a good half-hour's grumble plainly written on her
face, and an open letter in her hand.
“Nobody comes to me now, saying: 'Mother dear, who are your
letters from this morning?'”_here she looked at Joyce. “Nobody
ever says to me now: .Mother dear, let me answer your letters for
you; I know you detest pen and ink'"-here she looked at Mab.
“Mother dear, who is your letter from?" asked Joyce, mechani-
cally, feeling that the sooner she went through the expected formula
the sooner she would be allowed to get back to her somber thoughts
again.
Mrs. Shenstone's voice changed from plaint to pleasure.
"Well, dear, since you ask, it's from Sylvia Buckingham, telling
me how glad the poor people at Lough Lea are to get the money
I've sent her from time to time."
“ Heavens and earth, ma'am!" cried Uncle Archie, jumping up
in a towering rage, "you don't mean to say you are keeping up a
correspondence with that wretched woman?" he began.
Joyce laid her finger on his lips.
“Oh! pray, pray don't make a scene, Uncle Archie,” she whis-
pered, with something of a shudder, for her nerves were not what
they had been a month ago.
Mab intervened with the question :
“Where does she write from, mother?”
"From the Abbey House, Lough Lea," answered Mrs. Shen-
11


IIO
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
stone, looking down at her letter. Here Mab abruptly left the room
-"And," the lady went on, in a voice that suggested approaching
showers, “she sends all sorts of kind messages to all of you. To
Joyce especially, she says, 'She never pitied any one more in her
life, and she hopes your brain won't give way under it all.' There,
that is what the wretched woman' says."
And all this in spite of Uncle Archie's thunderous frown, which
most women would have felt at a dozen yards' distance.
But one might just as well have leveled a frown at a parrot or
a butterfly as at Mrs. Shenstone.
CHAPTER XXII.
MAB went straight up-stairs to her own room, and wrote down
Sylvia Buckingham's address on a scrap of paper.
She was in a complex and miserable state of mind just then.
She credited herself, and herself only, from first to last with all the
sorrow that had of late visited the household with Ned Donovan's
reckless career, which incidentally it seemed might be laid to her
charge; with whatever of mischance had befallen Frank in his en-
deavor to follow her unconscious footsteps. Worst of all was the
fact that she did not see one single thing she could do to remedy
the evil she had indirectly wrought.
“ It was all very well,” her sad thoughts ran, "for her to be say-
ing to Joyce from morning till night, My darling, I would lay down
my life to get back your happiness.' Her life laid down a thousand
times over would do nothing for anybody, so far as she could see."
She threw herself into a chair, and covered her face with her
hands, as though she meant to give herself up to steady, concen-
trated thought.
But Mab's thoughts as a rule were the reverse of steady or con-
centrated. One half at least of her brain-work was done uncon-
sciously. Her best ideas came to her suddenly, disconnectedly.
Seemingly, they were what people are pleased to call " inspirations”;
in reality they were the definite product of unconscious cerebration.
Of late—notably since her careful perusal of Marie St. Clair's
autobiography—she had become cognizant of the fact that, when
her bodily powers seemed inert and drowsy, her brain was working


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
III
its hardest and best. She did not fight against the idea. To say
truth, to admit it and act upon it, seemed to her one step—the first
possibly-toward the perfect attainment of the habit of clairvoyante
trance which she was cultivating with such evil effect. Where other
people would put their hands to their foreheads-as Joyce so often
did now—and try to think their hardest, Mab would simply shut her
eyes, nurse her drowsiness, make herself as nearly as possible a
blank. Then, when renewal of bodily energy told her that her brain
was craving its turn for rest, she would jump to her feet, seize her
thoughts as they presented themselves, taking it for granted that
they were the brightest and best she was capable of.
Half an hour's dreamy quiet in her chair left her with a sugges-
tion which, from its mischievous malevolence, might have come
straight from the Prince of Darkness, víz., why not write to Captain
Buckingham, craving his assistance on a matter wherein it seemed
permissible to think he had power to help her? Sylvia's letter to
her mother had in the first instance suggested the idea, her half-hour
of dreamy inertion left it paramount and irresistible.
She had surmised the possible enmity that existed between
Buckingham and Frank, careful though the two men had been to
conceal it in her presence. But it seemed to her that all enmities
must die before the terrible sorrow that overwhelmed them now.
She knew that of late, for some unexplained reason, her mother's
interest had cooled toward Buckingham, that Uncle Archie had for:
bidden him the house, and was constantly alluding to him as “ that
scoundrelly American adventurer.”
Neither fact counted for much. No one had ever laid stress
upon Mrs. Shenstone's weather-like changes of taste, nor upon the
blustering of old Uncle Archie, who was in the habit of consigning
large portions of the human race from time to time to condemna-
tion for comparatively light offenses. Her own repugnance to the
man had died utterly, nay, rather had been pushed out of existence
by an opposite feeling, which, as time went on, was rapidly gaining
in strength.
In justice, however, to Mab, it must be said that no thought of
self was in her mind when she took up her pen to write the letter
on which she had resolved.
Never before, it seemed to her, had that pen had so difficult a
task set it. There was so much ground to go over, and it had to
be trodden so lightly if she did not wish to flounder in the mud.


114
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
of his fortieth year-his standpoint now. His father's course in some
sort had determined his. A beggared Buckinghamshire farmer, he
had crossed the Atlantic with his son and daughter, the only surviv-
ors of a large family. In succession he attempted a variety of call-
ings, failed in all, and died in middle life, bankrupt once more, leav-
ing his two children, George at twenty, Sylvia at ten, with his large
ambitions and roving tastes for sole legacy.
George's thirst for notoriety and love of adventure drove him
into the ranks of the Northern army, then at war with the South.
Prior to this, however, he had dropped his English patronymic,
adopted the name of his county for surname, and become a natural-
ized American subject. One or two brilliantly brave things he did
during the campaign, for the man had plenty of animal courage;
also one or two detestably brutal things, for his moral nature was
about on a par with that of a stoat or weasel. Under the latter head
must be classed his elopement with the daughter of a rich Southern
planter, and his abandonment of her afterward, when he found that
the family estates had been confiscated. She, poor child, died
broken-hearted within a year of the marriage. Nemesis fell asleep,
and George Buckingham heard no more of his girl-wife.
Soon after this, traveling through Boston, chance threw him
across the path of Marie St. Clair, then an assistant in a glover's
shop. He speedily detected in her the hyper-sensitive organism
which lays its possessor at the mercy of the mesmerist.
Mesmerism and clairvoyance just then chanced to be the rage in
Boston. In this girl, duly trained and “developed,” he saw the
prospect of a good income. Toward her he played the part of a
gentleman Barnum, with a fair amount of pecuniary success, When
eventually the girl's health and intellect collapsed, under the artifi-
cial conditions of life imposed upon her, his biography of her, written
with the occasional help of her pen, brought him in dollars enough
to start him on a new career.
He had left Sylvia a child, in New York, living as an adopted
daughter with some homely tradespeople. He returned thither to
find her grown into an attractive young woman, the center of a sec-
ond-rate and somewhat fast set. Her ambition ha probably kept
her clear of perils that would have wrecked a weaker woman. This
set numbered among its members not a few loud-voiced ultra-Dem.
ocrats, and George Buckingham at once took up the role of scribe
to them, for which a ready pen qualified him.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
115
quick eye
Among sparrows a chaffinch is a brilliant bird. Buckingham
soon became king of his coterie, and, wielding a certain amount of
power, attracted the attention of a political society connected with the
Irish Nationalistic movement. He was speedily enrolled first a mem-
ber of the executive, subsequently a member of temporary councils
appointed for specific purposes. With a purse frequently at a low
ebb, and principles on a par, he was precisely the man to have dan-
gerous or difficult enterprises entrusted to him. In Sylvia he found
a willing coadjutor. A capable one also.
Her qualifications for the work she undertook were wariness, a
for character, and the weak side of human nature, a good
manner, a clever tongue, a capability for adhering to the letter of
given orders.
The brother's stock-in-trade consisted of an infinite audacity, a
love of adventures with a spice of danger in them, and a strong
sympathy with the rowdy side of everything, Republicanism in-
cluded.
All successful villainy is more or less based on the sanguine as-'
sumption that the unit is swamped in the million. Captain Buck-
ingham, when he endeavored to combine with his political work in
England the equally interesting task of finding a wealthy bride for
himself, must have taken it for granted that his early career had
been outshone, and consequently thrown into oblivion, by the careers
of more brilliant adventurers. And this notion Mab's eccentric con-
duct at the moment assuredly tended to confirm.
$
CHAPTER XXIV.
“No, Aunt Bell,” Joyce had said, in response to the kind old
lady's sobs and kisses, “it won't kill me, I'm too strong and healthy.
I shall most likely live on for another forty years."
It was not said hysterically, passionately, between outbursts of
wailing and tears, but quietly, assuredly, as a simple statement of a
simple fact.
It was none the less pathetic. St. Simeon Stylites, “a sign be-
twixt the meadow and the cloud,” as he looked up at the keen bright
stars in the frosty night sky, might have said the same words in much


116
.
GAIN.
A DATELESS BARGAINsuch a tone. Possibly the cellar walls of the old Bastille echoed to
them times without number.
Yet hope dies hard in young hearts. On the slightest of diets
it nourishes a tough, strong life. In Joyce's heart it kept itself alive
on nothing at all, for weeks and months after it had died in every
one else's.
It was all very well for her to say to herself night and morning,
as she did : “My darling, I know nothing but death would keep
you from me.” She never turned the corner of a street without
her head turning right and left, seeking, inquiring, expecting ; never
heard the postman's knock without a throb at her heart lest a line
of news of Frank might come in some letter ; never bowed her
knee in prayer without Frank's name being first and last on her
lips."
The blank silence, the agony of never-lifted suspense, the com-
paratively enforced idleness at a moment when perhaps gigantic
effort was needed were something awful to bear at times. It was
not to be wondered at if Joyce looked, as her friends were in the
habit of saying she looked just then, “the very ghost of herself.”
What she had said to Aunt Bell in effect she kept repeating to
herself, from the time she lifted her head wearily from her pillow in
the morning, till she laid it there wearily at night.
She was just twenty-one years of age. There was nothing un-
reasonable in the supposition that she should live to be past sixty.
That meant forty years more of a life which, if the choice had been
given her, she would not have prolonged for as many days.
It meant long years of ceaseless, yet always futile effort, of
agonized suspense, of a desperate clutching at phantom hopes till
fingers were too weak or old to clutch at anything. It meant a
heart vibrating to every passing rumor of calamity or mischance
till, like a slackened stringed instrument, it lost power to vibrate
at all.
Only physical incapacity in this world ever gets a day of its sen-
tence remitted. Of physical incapacity Joyce knew nothing, so the
weary treadmill of life went on for her. Petty cares, duties, annoy-
ances had to be carried in addition to the weightier burdens.
Business matters had to be discussed with Uncle Archie, in order to
the proper management of the Gloucestershire estates ; frivolities
had to be entered into with Mrs. Shenstone. She had to be amused.
played with, petted like any captious child, so as to be induced to


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
I17
remain contentedly in London instead of setting off to the Conti-
nent in search of new excitement and amusement, which of late she
had seemed to consider a necessity to her health.
Beyond signing her checks, Mrs. Shenstone could not be per-
suaded to do anything in the way of business.
The check-signing, however, she performed with remarkable
ease and pleasure. She would sit for ten minutes at a time gazing
admiringly at her own signature.
“Ernestine Shenstone !” she would repeat, complacently. "I
don't believe there's a prettier name to be found in the king-
dom."
It had had to be broken very gently to her that her house had
been made a rendezvous for members of Fenian and other associa-
tions. Even then the consequences were, to say the least, uncom-
fortable. Hysterics went on for half a day, all sorts of wild and
foolish plans were propounded during the other half. She would
put advertisements in all the newspapers, saying how she had been
imposed upon by her friends; she would never, no, never, shake
hands with an Irishman or an American again to the end of her
life; never so much as enter a room where one was seated. She
would call at every police station in London, and put herself and
her family under the protection of the police ; that is to say, if she
were compelled-here she threw a bitterly reproachful look at
Uncle Archie and Joyce-to stay on in this terrible city of dyna-
mite and conspiracies, when she would give worlds-yes, worlds-
to be in lively, delightful Paris, beautiful Rome, or Florence.
The only course with any approach to wisdom in it, which the
lady at this time decided upon was at once and forever to drop her
correspondence with Sylvia Buckingham. But even this, so far at
least as Mab was concerned, was a shutting of the stable-door too
late to save the mare.
The immediate result of the cessation of those weekly big pack-
ets between Sylvia and Mrs. Shenstone, was to send the latter once
more to Joyce with her confidences and cravings for sympathy.
"Mine is a clinging, dependent nature," she would say. “Sym.
pathy I must have or I shall die. Come up-stairs, Joyce, to my
room, and help me to read and answer my letters."
A revelation to Joyce's astonished brain was to follow the read-
ing and answering of these letters. Her mother was developing
into that pitiable specimen of womanhood, the middle-aged flirt.


118
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
In Sylvia Buckingham's sympathy with these ridiculous flirta-
tions had possibly lain the secret of her influence over Mrs. Shen-
stone; also they afforded a ready explanation of the lady's easy in-
difference to the transfer of Captain Buckingham's attentions from
herself to Mab.
Joyce'in the old days would have scented the fun of the whole
thing, seen naught but the humorous side of it, and would have
given her mother no rest until she had made her, to some extent,
see it also. She would have caricatured (verbally) every one of the
lady's admirers, hit off their weak points with a fine pencil, empha-
sizing likeness by exaggerating it. To-day, however, she had no
heart for such doings. Everything in life seemed to her now to
have more of pathos than of fun in it.
To think that her mother, after twenty years of dignified mar-
ried life with such a man as her father, should condescend to listen
to the inanities of some juvenile subaltern, or the platitudes of an
ancient club habitué, seemed pitiful to the last degree.
Mother, is it possible?" she cried, in her indignation, letting
fall to the ground a letter from an elderly general who addressed
Mrs. Shenstone as my dear child" once or twice in the course of
his brief epistle, and paid her a succession of those high-flown com-
pliments which, with elderly gentlemen of a past generation, were
the coin current in their intercourse with women.
“Is what possible, Joyce ?" asked Mrs. Shenstone, in that much
aggrieved tone in which she generally rebuffed her daughter's re-
bukes. “Do you mean, 'Is it possible' for a gentleman with eyes
in his head to see that my hands are white and slender? or, having
ears to hear with, to discover that my voice is like Cordelia's, soft,
gentle, and low?”
Joyce's voice was not like Cordelia's as she answered:
• Mother, is it possible that you don't know when you are in-
sulted? Why, even a child of fifteen could tell you that flattery and
respect don't come hand in hand.”
They were fated to hear more of this elderly general later on.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
119
CHAPTER XXV.
So the year grew older. Brown winter greened into spring,
spring grew golden under summer's magic touch, but there came
never a word of Frank Ledyard, never a sign of him, living or dead.
Mab, in jerky, troubled fashion, contrived to keep up a series of
uncomfortable meetings with Captain Buckingham unknown to any
of her family.
Mrs. Shenstone made the golden hours fly with a continuation
of her small epistolary flirtations and a round of trivial amusements;
and Joyce made them linger with the dreary load of thought, profit-
less speculation, or wild surmise she put into them.
Uncle Archie's pastime just then seemed to consist in dealing
out a series of snubs with fine impartiality to everybody-Joyce
alone being excepted. Aunt Bell naturally came in for the lion's
share of these favors ; Mrs. Shenstone's claims being admitted next
in order. Even Mab at times had to stand still, be lectured, threat-
ened with a doctor and physic, as though she were a school-girl of
thirteen instead of a young woman of three-and-twenty.
Frank's step-step-father-if that degree of relationship be allowed
to him-coming up to London at that time to put in his claim of
distant kinship to Joyce's lover, thought that outside Colney Hatch
there was not to be found such another cranky, irritable old gentle-
man. Uncle Archie compelled him to remain seated while he stood
over him, like a schoolmaster with a switch in his hand haranguing
a refractory pupil.
“I tell you, sir," he said, rounding his periods in true pedagogue
style, and making his forefinger beat time to his periods, “ that I
charge myself with my friend, Mr. Ledyard's, debts and responsi-
bilities; I also charge myself with the safe keeping of his private
and personal property. His rooms are locked up. His banker's
book is in my desk. Not a soul shall lay a finger upon it.”
It was possibly the words “debts and responsibilities " as much
as Uncle Archie's oratory which sent the step-step-father back again
into Gloucestershire, and kept him there.
Morton, the detective, took his share of Uncle Archie's benefits
stoically enough. Off and on, Morton was a good deal about the
house in those early summer months. One never knew when, or
where, his white face and solemn eyes would make their appearance.
He buzzed about the kitchen quarters, made himself free of the


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
121
show of reason identify with her correspondent of the morning.
She walked up and down the length of the bridge two or three
times before the Old Church clock struck ten.
After that, every five minutes had its length doubled by her im-
patience and anxiety.
Could it have been nothing but a hoax after all ? she asked her-
self, wistfully scanning every passer-by, or gazing drearily into the
black shadows lying athwart the murky river. Yet it seemed hard
to believe, in spite of her lately-increased experience in the world's
wickedness, that any one could be base enough to find a pleasure
in playing off even the mildest of jokes upon her at such a time of
sorrow. No, it was not to be thought of. So she waited patiently,
her hopes dying one by one as the church clock chimed the quarters
and eventually tolled the hour-eleven o'clock. During the last
half-hour of her waiting, she became aware of the fact that a han-
som cab was pulled up on the embankment close to the bridge, so
that its occupant, if there were one could get a complete view of
her as she waited out the weary hour. How long the cab had been
there she did not know, but it was only during the last half-hour
that she noticed it.
When at length, tired and sick at heart, she turned her steps
homeward once more, it was to see the same hansom driving away
from the doorstep of their house.
The back gate was locked when she tried it, an emergency for
which she was unprepared. To say truth, her appointment and its
possible results had so filled her mind, she had taken no count of
any difficulties that might lie in the way of her getting back un-
noticed to the house. So she was compelled to ring at the front
door, which to her surprise was opened to her by Uncle Archie.
He showed no astonishment at her appearance outside at this un-
usual hour. He only kissed her, and shook his head at her as she
went past him straight up to her own room again.
But Joyce, as she passed the library door, had a glimpse of
Morton seated within, and in a moment, with a pang of bitter dis-
appointment, guessed the possible reason why her unknown cor-
respondent had failed in his appointment. He had probably seen
Morton on the track of her footsteps, and, dreading detection, had
himself remained in hiding.
Had she heard Morton's words when Uncle Archie re-entered
the library, she would have found her surmise confirmed.


122
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
66
I see every one of the household letters, sir, before they leave
the postman's hands,” the detective said, “and this morning I noted
one addressed to Miss Joyce in a disguised hand. I noted, also, the
young lady's disturbed manner throughout the day, and, putting
two and two together, concluded that she had received a piece of
information she was keeping to herself, and that an appointment
would be the probable result. Now, sir, amateur detectives are all
very well in story-books, but out of story-books—" Here an ex-
pressive shrug finished the sentence. Consequently I had my eye
on Miss Joyce all through the day. When she left the house by
the back door, I followed her through the front; when she arrived
at Chelsea Bridge, I called a hansom, and sat in it watching her all
the time, and if any one had turned up I should have had my hand
on him in a moment. No, sir, I haven't served in my profession for
twenty-five years for nothing. He must be a cute one who'll take
John Morton in. Now, sir, if you'll get the young lady to hand
over that anonymous letter to me, I may able to read between
the lines, and something may come of it."
But though Joyce, in helpless, weary fashion, gave over her
letter into the detective's hand, nothing ever came of it beyond that
long hour of waiting on the dreary bridge.
CHAPTER XXVI.
“ KEEP the family in London, sir,” Morton had said to Uncle
Archie. “Keep the condition of things as far as possible unaltered,
and then-" he broke off abruptly.
“ Then what?" Uncle Archie had cried, in a fume.
“Then wait and you'll see," the detective had calmly finished.
But patient waiting for what the months might have in store did
not at all suit Uncle Archie's constitution. Gout began to threaten,
his irritability grew upon him.
He caught Morton on the stairs one morning in what seemed to
him a most frivolous flirtation with pretty Kathleen. He felt in-
clined to box their respective ears, restrained himself with difficulty,
and ended with summoning Morton to immediate conference in the
library.
“Is this what you call 'giving 'em rope enough'?” he de-


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
123
manded before the astonished Morton had time to get his wits to-
gether for his defense. “ Is this what you call keeping an eye on
things? Confound it, sir, I could have twisted a dozen ropes in the
time you have been bungling over one. And as for eyes! I could
have made them generally at everybody all round in less than half
the time you have spent in making eyes at one pretty servant-
maid."
Morton shut the door quietly.
'Servant-maids are suggestive sometimes," he said. But he
said it in such a tone that Uncle Archie dropped his bluster at once
and prepared to listen.
“Tell me right out, if you've anything to tell,” he said ;
“ Heaven knows, we've had suspense enough to last us to the end
of our mortal lives.”
“Sometimes suspense is better than certainty.”
Uncle Archie shook his head.
“No; I think not, now," he said, wearily; "I might have
thought so once, but I think now, for every one in this house, old or
young, the cruelest certainty would be better than what we have had
to go through during the past few months. Speak out."
"Speaking out is embarrassing sometimes.”
· Don't fumble, man; out with it !• cried Uncle Archie, bring-
ing his fist down upon the table with a crash that set the ink-bot-,
tles jingling.
“Well, sir, I've come to the conclusion that we are in London,
not in St. Petersburg—"
“Heavens and earth, man, you've said that before.”
“And that, consequently, being in London and not in St. Peters-
burg"-here Uncle Archie's foot came with a crash on the carpet
—“it is impossible for a man to disappear and not leave a trace
behind, unless he himself is a party to the transaction. It is easy
enough in London-no place in the world like it-for a man to
keep himself hidden; but simply impossible for him to be hidden
without his consent."
And as Morton finished speaking he gave an uncomfortable
look at the door, as though he would rejoice to be the other side of
it when the full meaning of his sentences dawned upon Uncle
Archie's brain.
But, strange to say, the old gentleman did not take his words
one whit in the manner he expected. He grew suddenly white, he
60


A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
125
86
66
knew, and good-by then to any chance ray of light Morton might
have to let in on the mystery. So he mastered himself with an
effort, seated himself in another chair—this time with his back to
the light-muttering something of an apology.
Tempers don't improve as one gets older, and mine has been
tried a good deal of late,” he said, wearily.
“I have no wish to force my opinions on you, sir,” said Morton,
respectfully ; “ but we think, at Scotland Yard, that it is time you
knew what we consider to be the true solution of the mystery."
Go on," said Uncle Archie ; "and then, leaning back in his
chair, he prepared to hear Morton out, without further interruption.
“Common-place solutions to apparently impenetrable mysteries
are the rule, not the exception, so far as our experience goes,”
Morton began, in dry, professional manner; any member of my
profession would bear me out in that. Inexperienced outsiders
wander far afield searching for motives of action which the experi-
enced detective finds lying ready to his hand."
Get to the point, man-get to the point."
“When I first began to make myself at home in your house, sir,
I said to myself, “To the winds with the Irish Fenian business! we
shall find the secret of the gentleman's disappearance within these
four walls, or nowhere.' Then I took to questioning the ladies of
the family."
“Confound your impudence !” muttered Uncle Archie.
“From Miss Mab I elicited-with due circumlocution, sir, be it
noted—the important fact that, during the illness of Miss Joyce, to-
ward the end of last year, that pretty maid, Kathleen, saw fit on one
occasion to take up hot coffee to Mr. Ledyard, who was watching
through the night, without any order having been given to that
effect. She might have done so on more than one occasion for
aught Miss Mab knew to the contrary. From Miss Joyce I elicited
a no less important fact, viz., that the said pretty maid has a man in
love with her whom her brother wishes her to marry, but whom she
will not marry on account of another lover. From Kathleen herself
I get unintentional confirmation of both these facts. She detests
Irishmen, she tells me, and a life of poverty in a cabin. Now, sir, if
you'll be good enough to put two and two together—"
But here Uncle Archie's impatience refused to be longer re-
strained.
· Are you a lunatic quite, sir," he cried, furiously, “or only a
06


128
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
She felt herself to be incapable of deciding the question whether
the step her mother was about to take was likely to result in her
happiness; so straight to Uncle Archie she went, feeling 'he ought
at once to be made aware of the condition of things.
Uncle Archie's explosions were terrific all that day, and gout
came nearer by a good many paces. Toward evening he calmed
down a little, got Joyce alone, and talked the matter over with her.
“Things are gone too far, I suppose, now, for any amount of
quiet reasoning to do any good," he said, unconsciously satirizing
his own argumentative powers. “I know General Bullen slightly;
he is a gentleman, and your mother might do a great deal worse,
not a doubt. I shall make a point of giving him full details of your
* father's will, and, if after that he perseveres in his suit, I shall con-
clude he knows his own business best."
And to Aunt Bell that night the old gentleman said, as he
pulled on his night-cap and put out the candle:
“After all, I am not sure but what it's the best thing in life that
could happen. That woman wants a keeper if ever a woman did.
Bullen may be able to do what nobody else has done-keep her out
of mischief. So long as she's with the girls, she's bound to get
them into hot water, and we shan't be always here to get them out
of it, for I take it, you and I, Bell, are going down hill a little faster
than we like to own, even to ourselves."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
SING a song very loudly, and very often, and some one will be
sure to catch up your notes and play the echo to them. Uncle
Archie's repeated assertions that “the police authorities at Scot-
land Yard were noodles to a man, sir," had found general accept-
ance among the friends of the Shenstone family. Every one had
decided that, so far as Frank Ledyard was concerned, their work
had been done in an uncommonly sleepy fashion. Yet it is possible
that a fairly plausible brief for the defense might have been made
out. • Experience and known laws,” the police authorities might
've said, “explain alike the mysteries of the universe and the
ommon life. Both point to one simple solution of the
us, viz., an unwilling bridegroom seizing upon a


A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
129
chance opportunity for escape from an unwelcome marriage.” The
case could be paralleled over and over again.
The suspicion that Fenian or secret society machinery had been
at work in the matter, was scarcely worthy of a second thought.
The discovery that the house of John Johnson had been used as a
place of meeting for possible conspirators was a thing apart, and to
be treated entirely on its own merits. There was no tittle of evi-
dence to show that Frank had so much as crossed the threshold of
that house.
The private information which had sent Morton to ladle ices at
Mrs. Shenstone's evening party was, in one sense, important, in an-
other trivial. Important, in so far as it marked out for the observa-
tion of the metaphorical detective “eye” one or two supposed
peaceful and respectable citizens; trivial, in so far as no distinct
plot was unearthed, and consequently no arrests were made. Cap-
tain Buckingham was still looked upon as a clever adventurer,
whom chance had made the mouth-piece of the advanced Irish
party; who was most useful to police authorities when at large, and
forming a center for the more headstrong democrats.
Ned Donovan, in company with another hot-brained Irishman,
Bryan O'Shea, was regarded as one of the active organizers of
systematic boycotting in Ireland.
“But that,” as Morton informed Uncle Archie, “was a matter
to be dealt with by the Irish authorities whenever law-breaking
chanced to be the result of the boycotting, a by no means inevitable
consequence. Let the brother go; it's the sister you should keep
the sharp lookout on."
The latter half of the speech, let it be noted, was not spoken
until Uncle Archie was out of ear-shot,
Although Morton had not summed up the Shenstone family so
epigrammatically as. Uncle Archie had summed up him and his
colleagues, he had, nevertheless, in sufficiently graphic style, sketched
their portraits.
“Knives, scissors, grape-shot, cannon-balls, vinegar, ginger-
beer, pepper, crab-apples. You may select from that list to de-
scribe the old gentleman," he had been heard to say, an oil-flask
might represent the old lady”-Aunt Bell—“milk and water, or
let us say sugar and water, out of politeness, the middle-aged one"
-Mrs. Shenstone !—“As for the two young ladies, they're not a
bad sort as young women go. The younger one isn't made of
9


130
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
wash-leather, and she isn't made of buckram, but of a sort of
something between the two. But the elder—" Here a protracted
shake of the head did duty for a sentence. “ She might as well be
perched on top of the Monument in the thick of a London fog for
all she knows of what goes on about her."
Mab might certainly have had a more poetic portrait drawn, but
scarcely a truer one. Little by little her life had seemed to be
separating itself from the lives of those around her. How it came
about no one quite knew, but certain it was that she was never con-
sulted now on any matter great or small in the household arrange-
ments. Had she been qualifying for a convent, she could not more
effectually have cut herself off from all mundane affairs. Yet
withal of late she had seemed to put more of purpose and order
into her daily routine of life. Its detail ran somewhat as follows-
breakfast early, sometimes before any one else was down-stairs,
then the morning service at the Abbey, afterward an hour or so of
visiting among her poor people; the rest of the day, allowing the
intervals necessary for meals, was spent alone in her own room.
A silent, dreamy, but not an unlovely thing, her life seemed be-
coming now. Could one of the sweet maiden-saints of old time
have been suddenly recalled to life and placed amid nineteenth cent-
ury surroundings she might have kept much such a course. Joyce,
in spite of the intense pre-occupation of her own thoughts just
then, could not keep the question out of them. What is trans-
forming Mab in this way? What does it mean? Where will it
end ?” She felt at times as though little by little, slowly but surely,
Mab were being dragged out of her loving grasp by some hidden
magnetic influence.
At one time she had urged upon her sister the advisability of
resuming her ministrations to her poor people, now she felt as if
those ministrations must be too spiritualizing-if the word be al-
lowed for Mab's temperament.
Don't you think, dear, it would be wiser not to spend so much
time among your poor people? Wouldn't it be better to visit
them, say once a week, instead of every day?" she queried, gently,
tentatively.
Mab aroused to a sudden energy.
Oh, don't ask me to do that, Joyce !” she said. earnestly.
“They are so terribly wretched, poor souls! The misery in the
world is something appalling!" She paused a moment, then
A


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
131
66
added, with deep feeling : “Oh, Joyce, I can understand Christ be-
ing glad to lay down his life for the world. I would cheerfully lay
down mine for any two of the wretched people I know."
Her whole soul seemed spending itself just then in an infinite
pity for every one around her.
· Poor, poor mother," was all she said, when the news of her
mother's intended second marriage was told her.
“ Poor, poor
Uncle Archie !”—not Joyce's mocking “poor Uncle Archie,” be it
noted—was her only acknowledgment for half an hour's steady
irritable lecturing. And once Joyce, going suddenly into her room,
discovered her with her arm round Kathleen's shoulder, comforting
her and drying her tears as though she were a sister instead of her
maid.
“ Kathleen's tears come so readily; she always crying now,"
Mab said, turning apologetically to her sister.
"What can Kathleen have to cry about ?" asked Joyce, eyeing
the girl coldly and suspiciously.
The question and look combined sent Kathleen with a down-
cast face out of the room.
It was, however, an incident occurring on the night before Mrs.
Shenstone's wedding that thoroughly awoke Joyce from her pre-
occupation, and made her resolve that Mab's health, mental and
physical, should have immediate professional attention.
June was drawing to an end now, the London season was
working its hardest, knowing that its days were numbered. Out-
side in the streets sounded a perpetual whirl of coming and going
carriages. The Shenstones had dined quietly. Mab had crept out
of the room immediately after dinner. General Bullen had re-
tired with his bride-elect to the back drawing-room, where, across
a chess-board, an uninterrupted exchange of compliments for sim-
pers did duty for love-making between the two.
Joyce dared not sit still and think. She and tranquil meditation
had months ago said good-by to each other. She thought she
would follow Mab up-stairs and sit with her till weary bedtime
came round once more.
Only in the lower portion of the house the lamps were lighted.
On the upper floor there lingered enough of June twilight to guide
her to Mab's door. It was not locked, and turning the handle
softly, she went in.
There was Mab, as usual, reclining in her high-backed chair,


132
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
with eyes closed and folded hands. The chair stood against the
window. An iron-gray sky with a smirch of red across it, where
the sun had gone down, formed the background. Mab's face
showed white in the twilight, but tranquil and placid enough. The
nervous frown that perpetually contracted her forehead in her wak-
ing moments had disappeared, the full white lids veiled the
troubled, weary eyes, the mouth seemed almost smiling in its per-
fect tranquillity.
Joyce stood looking at her for at least five minutes, scarcely dar-
ing to breathe lest she might awaken her from what appeared to
be the calmest of sleeps. Then she seated herself near in a dark
corner, patiently waiting for her eyelids to lift.
"Joyce, how beautiful you are—how strong and beautiful!'
said Mab presently, in slow, dreamy tones, but without opening her
eyes.
Joyce went and knelt beside her.
“I did not think you knew I was in the room, dear,” she an-
swered, speaking softly, for she half thought Mab was talking in her
sleep.
" I have been looking at you for the past half-hour,” said Mab,
still with her eyes shut.
“My darling, I have only been in the room for about ten min-
utes.”
Mab opened her eyes with a sigh.
“ All the same I have been looking at you.” And, as it were,
unconsciously she laid marked emphasis on the two pronouns.
“Oh, Mab, with eyes shut; and you up-stairs and I down!”
“I see better with my eyes closed, dear. Our senses shut out
as much from us as they let in; they are our limits as well as our
lights."
Oh, Mab, Mab!" and Joyce gave a startled, bitter
cry.
I losing my reason, and don't know what you are saying to me, or
is it you-you who are losing yours and slipping out of my grasp?"
Mab leaned forward in her chair, putting her arms round Joyce's
neck.
“No, dear, I am not going mad. Once I feared I was about
three months ago," she broke off, abruptly.
“Go on, dear,” implored Joyce.
“So I went all by myself to the lunatic ward at the Penitentiary
you know, Joyce, where I went to visit some of my poor people
“ Am


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
133
once. I asked the matron if any of the poor creatures who had felt
themselves going mad had ever described their sensations to her.
She told me that one woman had said to her that she felt as though
a thick black curtain were being let down slowly, slowly, an inch at
a time, between her and her fellow-creatures and the bright, beauti-
ful outer world ; that she knew that by-and-by it would be alto-
gether let down, and she would be shut in alone in the dark-
ness.”
Joyce hid her face in Mab's lap.
“Oh, Mab darling,” she cried, “you don't feel like that—you
can't-it isn't possible.”
• No, Joyce, I don't feel like that,” answered Mab, solemnly, her
face aglow with some intense hidden feeling. “I feel day by day,
with every breath I breathe, as though on every side of me curtains
were being drawn up, not down; as though veils were being rent,
mists rolled away; as though the souls of my fellow-creatures were
being revealed to me; and the secrets of the universe were being
whispered into my ear. Oh, Joyce,
Oh, Joyce, I see, I hear with closed eyes
and sealed ears fifty thousand times more fully than you do with
every one of your senses working at their hardest."
Joyce lifted up a face white as Mab's own.
“ Mab, Mab!” she cried, vehemently, “ death will seal all our
senses sooner or later. While we have them, let us use them."
Mab turned away with a weary sigh.
“ You don't understand, Joyce,” was all she said.
It was a simple statement of a simple fact. Joyce to Mab was
an open book, written in words of one syllable; but Mab to Joyce
was a page of problems, for whose solution a loving, sisterly sympa-
thy supplied guesses in lieu of key.
CHAPTER XXIX.
So the house in Eaton Square once more put on a smart and
festive appearance, as became a house whose mistress was about to
forget her widow's weeds and don bridal attire.
“ Mind," Uncle Archie had said to his sister-in-law, in a voice
that recalled a rusty gate creaking on its hinges, “there's to be no
wretched parade of wedding finery. The first sign of cake or favors


134
A DATELÉSS BARGAIN.
will send me back in a trice to Gloucestershire, and you'll have to
find somebody else to give you to the happy man.”
So Mrs. Shenstone, after much bemoaning, was forced to con-
tent herself with a marriage in a traveling-dress, a quiet family
luncheon, and a departure immediately after for the nearest railway-
station en route for Paris.
"No satin slippers, no flowers, no rice, no anything delightful!"
she lamented to Joyce, as she kissed her at the hall-door; “creeping
out of the house for all the world as though we were ashamed of
what we were doing!”
"As you very well might be, both of you, at your time of life,”
grumbled Uncle Archie to himself, as he shut the door on the de-
parting carriage. “Of course it's your own business, and you are
each of you old enough to know what you are about; but for the
life of me I couldn't say what you can see in each other to take a
liking to.”
Perhaps the newly-wedded pair might have been driven into a
corner with the question. Possibly Mrs. Shenstone, if she had been
compelled to a truthful answer, would have said :
“ He is fifteen years older than I, and he calls me my child.'
The combined facts take at least ten years off my age. Also he
will take me the round of all the delightful watering-places and
cities in Europe, and I shall return with a semi-foreign air of dis-
tinction which will enable me to throw open my doors in London
to my friends with increased éclat.”
And the old general, had the magic flute compelled his candor,
might have answered somewhat as follows:
“I certainly thought her fortune was in her own hands; but
still, after all, five hundred a year, added to my own six hundred,
won't make a bad income. The daughters are easy-going, generous
girls, and will be sure to let the mother have the old home to live in
whenever she wants it, and as much of her old income as she re-
quires for life. Also, she won't make a bad sort of companion for
a man at my age. One can't get all one wants in this world; I've
a horror of strong-minded women and ‘ladies intellectual,' and,
whatever her faults may be, they won't carry her that way, at any
rate.”
The old general was right in his estimation of the course of con-
duct Mab and Joyce meant to pursue toward their mother. They
steadily refused to draw any benefit from her second marriage, as


136
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“This is the exact state of the case, Joyce," the old gentleman
was saying: "gout is coming, coming, as fast as it can; and unless
I can get to Cheltenham, and my old doctor, before it sets in, well
—the consequences may be something awful for everybody."
"Oh, Uncle Archie, go to-morrow; why not?” cried Joyce. “I
can look after Mab. I am never going to lose sight of her now, and
mean to get in the best doctors in London to see her, one after the
other."
“Cheltenham is a famous place for doctors; you have the pick
and choice of doctors there,” said Uncle Archie, as snappishly as he
could make up his mind to speak to Joyce.
After this there followed a brisk argument between uncle and
niece, as to the rival merits of London and Cheltenham as health
resorts. Joyce showed a doggedness of purpose to remain where
she was, for which Uncle Archie was unprepared.
"I am not young, Uncle Archie,” she said, and, as she said it,
in very truth she felt as though she had seen old Time's wheels go
round for half a century at least. “We shall live so quietly; we
shall go nowhere, we shall see no one. Some day we'll run down
to Cheltenham and spend a month with you, but just now pray leave
us alone here to do the best we can for ourselves."
But the real, though unavowed, reason that chained her tight to
her London home was the thought, the instinct, the hope---so vague,
so half-formed it was not possible to clothe it with words—that here,
in the thick of the stirring life, where she had looked her last at her
young lover, she would get news of him, living or dead, if ever such
news was to be had.
People forget sometimes how useless it is to stand watching the
curl of the water where the brave swimmer sank; and how the
rocks far out at sea may get tidings of him sooner than the shallow
river-bed.
CHAPTER XXX.
JOYCE was as good as her word. On the very day after her
mother's wedding, that is to say, on the day of Uncle Archie's de-
parture for Cheltenham, she set to work to turn herself as nearly as
possible into Mab's shadow. It was a difficult part to play, this of
a hybrid between a mother and a maid. Joyce set about it with


A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
137
diffidence. The buoyant self-confidence which at one time had
carried her so smoothly over contrary currents was altogether lack-
ing to her now. It had been born of a joyous heart and sunshiny
experiences. It died with them. In its place there had come an
apprehensive diffidence - that timid touching of stinging-nettles
which tells the tale of the sharply-stung hand.
It must be admitted that Mab's demeanor was not calculated to
inspire confidence. On the morning of Uncle Archie's departure,
she came down early as usual, ate her breakfast hurriedly, and pre-
pared to set off as usual for her morning's service.
Joyce demurred to this.
“Uncle Archie and Aunt Bell will be starting in an hour or so;
can't you give up your service for one day to see the last of them?"
she pleaded.
Mab hesitated only a moment. Then she shook her head.
“I must, must go to the Abbey to-day-you will understand
why later on, Joyce. I will go now and say good-by to Uncle
Archie—it can't make much difference.”
Joyce met with a second repulse later on in the day. Uncle
Archie had departed. Luncheon laid for two in the big dining-
room did not look a cheering or inviting meal. Mab, as usual, ate
next to nothing, and Joyce seized this as an opportunity to introduce
the wish of her heart, viz., that Mab should go with her that very
afternoon to consult an eminent physician, whom she and Uncle
Archie over-night had decided to be the man in London most likely
to understand the peculiarities of Mab's condition.
Mab did not give the suggestion a welcome.
“I will go to see any physician in London you like, Joyce, if it
will make you happy, but I tell you most positively, as I shall tell
him, I will take no drugs of any sort.
Nor will I follow any
directions he may choose to give. My lines are laid down for
me.”
Joyce, in her amazement, craved an explanation.
“What lines, dear, and who has laid them down? You talk
enigmas," she said.
Mab flushed a deep red.
“It is of no use my explaining, you couldn't understand, Joyce.
By-and-by, when you know more, you will forgive me, I am sure,
any pain I may have caused you. Only let me alone now, I beg; I
implore."


138
A DATELESS- BARGAIN.
“Couldn't understand_let you alone,” repeated Joyce, vaguely
in a voice full of pain, and with a rush of hot tears to her eyes.
Mab grew vehement.
“No, you couldn't understand if you tried your hardest from
morning till night. Could I understand, do you think, if an angel
came down from heaven and talked to me in heaven's language?”
And here she hurriedly pushed away her plate, quitted the table,
and quitted the room.
Joyce, left alone, felt as one in an oarless, drifting boat might
feel who suddenly looked up and measured the space between him-
self and the receding shore. There were leagues between her and
Mab now, not a doubt. A servant coming in with a telegram made-
her for the moment bury her heart-ache out of sight. Her thoughts
naturally flew to the traveling bride and bridegroom. Could any
ill-adventure have befallen them?
The telegram was dated from Calais, and ran as follows:
Dispatch Price at once to Hôtel Bristol, Paris. Kathleen
has disappeared."
Later on in the day, the telegram was supplemented by a letter
from the General. Kathleen, it should be said, had been dispatched
to Victoria Station with Mrs. Shenstone's huge dress-boxes and
baskets there to await her mistress's arrival after the wedding
ceremony. The General in his letter stated that they found her
there right enough in the midst of the baggage, but that on arriving
at Dover, though the baggage had been deposited in the luggage-
van Kathleen was nowhere to be seen. They had naturally con-
cluded that she had, through some mischance, lost her train, and
expected her arrival by the next. However, up to the departure of
the mail packet, there had been no sign of her. In the circum-
stances, he strongly advised that the authorities at Scotland Yard
should be communicated with.
Joyce immediately carried out this suggestion.
Only, however, for the sake of her father and mother. It can
not possibly concern any one else,” she wrote back to the old gen-
eral by return post, indignantly resenting what seemed to her an
inuendo leveled at Frank behind the words “in the circumstances."
6!


140
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
Joyce's reply to this was a cry of pain so bitter, it told of a
breaking heart. But she still clutched at Mab's arm.
Mab, Mab, my darling Mab! it can not be, it shall not be.
You marry a man of that sort ! I could hold you against him,
against the world—! This man shall not drag you away from
me !"
In very truth, a doughtier than Captain Buckingham might have
essayed in vain to unlock those convulsively clasping fingers !
Mab suddenly took to trembling under their touch.
"Joyce, I will speak out plainly to you. I feel I have only a
'No'to give him-I felt it from the first. I have put away all
thoughts of that sort from my mind—”
“All thoughts of what sort ?” questioned Joyce, holding Mab
tighter as she felt the girl trembling more and more.
“All thoughts of love or marriage. In the life I have set myself
to live, one sees the end as soon as the beginning. One has to put
away the things of sense to grasp the things of soul”
But with the last word her voice faltered. She grew heavy in
Joyce's arms; her head sank back, her face grew white.
Joyce laid her on the sofa, and rang the bell for the servants.
One she dispatched for a doctor, two she left with restoratives, bid-
ding them sit by Mab's couch till she came back.
Even a disabled war-horse will fall into step at the sound of the
bugle. Joyce went, with head erect, straight to the drawing-room,
to meet and dismiss Captain Buckingham.
“ It would not take many minutes to do this,” she said to her-
self. “A few cold, decisive words, a touch to the bell, a look he
should carry away and remember, and the thing would be done."
There was no sign of surprise on Captain Buckingham's bold,
handsome face as she entered the room. From the first, when he
had made his reckoning of the difficulties which lay between him
and Mab Shenstone and her fortune, he had given foremost place
among them to Joyce, with her vigorous animosity.
Well and good, he had said to himself; he had his weapons
ready to combat alike vigor and animosity. And they were stouter
and crueler than those with which, later on, he intended to do battle
to Mab's convictions and fancies, so fine in their substance, so in-
tense in their fervor, they might fitly be called religious.
He rose from his chair, but made no attempt at hand-shaking.
“ I wish to see Miss Shenstone,” he said, with a formal bow.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
141
Joyce returned the bow with equivalent formality.
"I have to decline for her the honor of receiving you now, or at
any future time,” she said, coldly, laying her hand upon the bell to
expedite his departure.
This was a rushing into battle without preliminary proclamation
with a vengeance.
“I must hear that sentence from her own lips before I accept
it," he said, loudly, defiantly.
“That you will never do. Captain Buckingham, I must ask you
to understand that your visits to my sister, and every attention, small
or great, you are wishing to show her, are at once and finally de-
clined by her and by her family."
“ That also I must hear from her own lips, or I must decline to
accept as final."
"Captain Buckingham, I wish you good morning "; and again
Joyce's fingers rested on the bell-handle.
He laid his hand on hers.
“Don't do that; don't make yourself ridiculous. There are no
ten men who could turn me out of your house if I chose to stay
here. I have come this morning expressly to say something to you
-to your sister. Say it I will—listen to it you shall."
An electric battery could not have sent the blood coursing at a
more rapid rate through her veins. She drew back a step, though
not in fear.
“Shall—will,” she repeated. “Those are not words to be
spoken to me-by you."
She was speaking to him, but she was thinking of Frank, and
how summary would have been his method of dealing with such
impertinence.
Buckingham went on, in his loudest and most emphatic manner:
“I shall use none others. I repeat, you shall listen to what I
have to say, and they are words that will send you down there on
the carpet at my feet, praying me to tell you less or to tell you
more.”
Joyce's hot indignation was swamped now in a dread that chilled
her cheeks and lips. His words could point only one way. Her
fears had always suggested dark suspicions of this man. His words
confirmed her fears.
She strove to command herself, and answered calmly, with a
question :


142
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“Are you referring to Mr. Ledyard? Let me understand what
ground we are on.”
Supposing I decline to answer your question, what then ?"
Her hot indignation came back to her.
“There are ways of making the unwilling speak. There is law
in the land," she cried, vehemently.
He laughed contemptuously.
“Ah, English law has done so much for you already, no wonder
you put your trust in it.”
He paused for a reply. Joyce for the moment felt herself suffo-
cating. Words would not come.
He went on:
“Send at once to your favorite detectives at Scotland Yard.
Say to them: “Here is a man who knows the secret you are hunt-
ing for.' Shall I tell you what their answer will be ?"
Joyce clenched her fingers into the palms of her hand, and held
back her words tight between her teeth.
They will say to you: ‘My dear young lady, we know that
man, not you. He is not to be believed on his oath. Don't you
know that the business of the loud-mouthed democrat is to set the
police on false scents from year's end to year's end? That is the
chief way
in which he serves his cause. Take it for granted he
knows no more than you or I do.'”
Joyce, as she listened, could almost have believed the man
must have heard Morton's own words to her, when once she had
spoken to him as to Buckingham's possible complicity in Frank's
disappearance; so faithfully were they reproduced.
“You know I am speaking the truth to you,” Buckingham went
on, reading easily enough conviction in the girl's face. “Now come
to me instead and say to me: 'Give me your secret, it is life or
death to me.' Shall I tell you what my reply will be ?"
He paused a moment, then dropped into a lower and less defiant
key.
"I will say to you: 'My dear Miss Shenstone, on the very day
that your sister becomes my wife, I will repay your congratulations
with the information you are desirous of.'”
A rush of passionate words came to her lips.
“ You—you can lift in a moment this awful load of agony from
our hearts, and you are standing here making a bargain out of our
necessity ? "


A DATELESS BARGAIN..
143
“Ay, and a good hard bargain I mean to make of it, too. No
shiftiness or double-dealing about it, I assure you."
She drew back a step, wonder, incredulity, bewilderment, all
showing in her face. In her most. somber conceptions of villainy
she had never pictured such blackness as this.
Buckingham went on:
“Don't let us waste time in question and answer.
Let us get to
the point at once. I want something done that you can do; you
want something told that I can tell. In other words, I want you to
use your influence with your sister, so as to induce her to become
my wife, and you want me to give you a piece of information in
which you are greatly interested. Very good ; let us simply agree
to an exchange of favors, and all contention comes to an end.”
White and tottering, she crossed the room, and laid her hand
upon his arm.
" Are you a man, or what are you?” she said, in low, unnatural
tones, her eyes repeating the question to his, which, bold as they
were, for one moment quailed and drooped.
Only for one moment; the next, confidence, and something akin
to derision, came back to them. He laughed lightly.
“Are you insinuating a compliment? Am I to infer that you
consider I am exhibiting superhuman devotion and heroism in the
very simple and lover-like request I made just now, that
do your best to bring about a marriage between me and a woman I -
am devotedly attached to ?”
Then he contrived to free himself from the pressure of her hand,
which yet rested on his arm, and made one step toward the door,
adding:
“But you are disturbed, agitated, this morning, and unable to
see things from a common-sense point of view. In a day or two I
will call again, and talk this matter out with you. You will then
have had time to think it well over.”
Joyce sprang forward, putting herself between him and the door.
“No," she said, in the same low, dissonant voice as before;
there shall be no talk of to-morrow. Having said so much, you
shall say more.
You are bound to!”
“Shall! Bound to! Those are words with a nice sound in
them. Suggest the rack, peine forte et dure, and all that sort of
thing."
“I repeat, bound;" and here her voice grew firmer, louder,
you would
60


146
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
passed through, as, quaking and tottering, she made her way back
to Mab's side.
Mab had been restored to consciousness, but still lay, with
closed eyes, on her couch. Joyce dismissed the maids, and took
thier place beside the sofa. Mab's eyes opened instantly.
"Is he gone, Joyce ?" she whispered, nervously.
When Joyce, making a gigantic effort, gave in reply a calm
“Yes, darling,” there came a long, weary sigh of relief and another
question, this put a little eagerly :
“He won't come back again, will he?"
Joyce was all unprepared for this question.
No, darling, he won't come back again," she answered,
boldly enough; but her heart gave the lie to her words as she
spoke them. It said, with no uncertain conviction, “He will come
back again, and again, and again; he will test his strength against
your weakness day after day, day after day, till how it will all end
Heaven only knows."
“I don't want to see him, Joyce,” Mab went on, presently. “I
don't think I could say 'No'to him, if he really begged for a 'Yes.'
But I feel • No' is the only word I ought to say.” She ended with
another deep sigh, and a pathetic emphasis on the “ I."
Joyce felt she must get to the bottom of this hideous mystery,
no matter at what cost.
Tell me, dear,” she asked, gently, “how is it you have learned
to-to-like this man in the way you do?"
Mab for one instant lifted her eyes to Joyce's face.
They
showed deep and shining as Joyce had never before seen
them.
"Oh, Joyce," she said, in a low, impassioned voice, “if one
walked into the room this very minute, bringing you glad news of
Frank, how would you feel toward him?”
“I-oh, I should fall down and worship him! I would lay
down my life for him, inch by inch, as he wanted it-I can't say
more.”
"Ah, you will understand, then. Well, listen! Captain Buck-
ingham came to me bringing me glad news, the gladdest news in
the world. He made me see how that I, who had been all my
life
long fighting against one half of myself, thinking it was the base,
bad half, had in reality been fighting against the best, noblest part
of my nature. He taught me it was my duty to loose it-let it go


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
149
“ Darling, do not grieve so; I do not believe he is dead. If he
were, I should have seen him, I know. It would take too long to
tell you how I know it-and you wouldn't understand. Oh, and
there's one thing, Joyce-one thing has been forced upon me in
these long, silent hours. I am sure, I have felt it, I know it; wher-
ever he is, he is true to you. By-and-by people will be trying to
make out that Kathleen has had something to do with his disap-
pearance. I have heard them whisper it already. But you'll never
believe this, Joyce, will you ?” Here she sat up on her couch, and
put her arms all round her sister. "And in my long hours of-of
vision this thought has come to me always first and last, strong
and clear, "Wherever he is, he is true, he is true, he couldn't be
otherwise.''
Joyce drew her hands from her white, stricken face, with never
a tear on it.
He couldn't be otherwise,” she repeated, slowly, and the mourn-
ful scorn of her smile as she said it was a thing to remember. “Oh,
Mab, has it taken you hours of trance to find out what is simple
matter-of-fact to me, to every one who ever touched Frank's hand,
or looked in his face? Dear, you have made to yourself wings to
carry you over a plain, straight road that your feet could have trod-
den more easily by far. Oh, Mab, take to your feet again, let the
wings go.
The angels want them, not we!”
Mab sank back again on her couch, answering nothing. Her
eyes closed wearily once more. Was it sleep or trance ? Joyce
asked herself.
66
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THERE is an old legend of a knight whose brave heart was ex-
changed for that of a hare, and who ever afterward trembled at and
fled from the dangers he before had courted. Joyce felt herself in
much such a plight now.
Her terrible interview with Captain Buckingham had left her
with but one thought paramount-a longing for instant flight. In
it alone she felt lay Mab's safety, her own only chance of a success-
ful resistance to an appalling temptation.
She dared not risk another interview with the man. In her last
she had expended all her resources, had drawn upon her utmost


150
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
reserves.
Were they to meet again, she knew she must lie weapon-
less at his mercy.
She at once consulted the doctor, who had been hurriedly called
in to attend Mab in her fainting-fit, as to the expediency of immedi-
ate change of air and scene for his patient. The doctor pronounced
a decidedly favorable opinion on the matter.
Nothing could be better for her," he said.
“ Her nerves were,
so to speak, unstrung, her system generally lacked tone. For this
condition there was no better tonic to be found than sea air."
Then there was Mab to consult, and here Joyce's heart misgave
her sorely, lest Mab, following the dictates of one of her unaccounta-
ble impulses, should steadily refuse to be dislodged from her present
quarters.
Her misgivings, however, were not verified, for Mab gave the
heartiest welcome to the project.
The very thing, Joyce !" she cried, excitedly. “Oh, I can't
tell you how often lately I have longed to get to the sea. I feel"
but here she checked herself abruptly.
“ But, dear, why did you not say so, it could so easily have been
managed ?" queried Joyce, astonished.
“If only we knew where to go!” Mab went on, with a sigh, a
curious, wistful expression passing over her face.
“ How would you like a quiet little village in Switzerland among
the hills and lakes?" asked Joyce, eager to put first the ocean, then
the Alps, between Buckingham and herself.
Mab shook her head.
“I don't think the place I want to go to is in Switzerland.”
Then she drifted into apologies and explanations.
“It's just this, Joyce: the sea haunts me night and day. How
can I make you understand? There is for ever in my ears the rush
and roar of a mighty ocean, and when I close my eyes, and you
think I am sleeping, I see nothing but big brown rocks, steep and
bare, and a grand sweep of murky, dashing sea."
Joyce gave a great start. Mab's visions after all might be some-
thing other than the picture-parables of mystic truths which she had
deemed them. What if they were to throw a clearer light on the
miserable darkness than any that their vast expenditure of time,
thought, money had been able to throw.
"Oh, Mab darling, can you not give the place a name?" she
asked, breathlessly.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
151
Again Mab shook her head.
When I was a child," she said, “and went with Uncle Archie
across Scotland, I remember spending a day in much such a place.
I think it was in Ayrshire, on the coast looking across the North
Channel. I would like to go there first, Joyce, if you don't mind,
although it isn't quite the place I see in my-my. dreams.”
So their preparations for flight were at once begun, Joyce urg-
ing them forward with an eagerness which told tales of her failing
courage.
In spite of her haste, however, she did not forget to take every
precaution to keep their destination a secret. Two days after
Buckingham's visit to the house saw them ensconsed in an hotel in
Carlisle. Here Joyce took the opportunity of dismissing their Lon-
don maids and engaging others, thereby cutting off all communica-
tion with the London household. From Carlisle they went direct
to Newton Stewart, the little town where, in the old days, Mab had
stayed with Uncle Archie.
Here they heard of a little sea-side place which seemed in every
respect to fulfil Mab's descriptions. Tretwick-by-Sea it was called.
Joyce found she could engage a small furnished cottage there for
herself and Mab. Other accommodation for visitors there was
none.
This little cottage had been built by a wealthy inhabitant of
Dumfries, as a last hope of saving the life of an invalid son. The
hope had proved futile, and since the death of the lad the little
house had remained unoccupied. It was well furnished, and fitted
with many invalid comforts. It stood half-way up the cliffs, and
was consequently sheltered from rough land breezes. In addition,
it commanded without interruption a view of a grand sweep of
coast and the great rolling North Channel. The coast-guard sta-
tion stood on a level with it, about a quarter of a mile away. A
few fishermen's huts clustered on a lower level at about five min-
utes' walking distance. These were the only habitations that Tret-
wick could boast on the coast-line. Above, on the cliffs, a land-
scape scarcely less desolate met the eye. The bastion of a ruined
castle on a hill made a bold, sharp outline against the sky. Be-
neath it in a hollow stood an ancient church with ivy-covered tower,
surrounded with a mossy, sunken church-yard. The few cottagers
who attended service in this old-world sanctuary had their homes
on the farther side of the castle-crowned hill, and their humble


152
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
roof-trees were consequently hidden from view. In the foreground
stretched an apparently illimitable heath in its full glory of purple
heather and golden gorse, but with never so much as a stunted
Scotch fir to break its picturesque monotony.
Joyce, as she and Mab posted their last few miles across coun-
try into the heart of this solitude, said to herself that if they had
searched England from corner to corner they could not have found
a better hiding-place.
It was burning August weather, and the vivid sunlight threw
every feature of the landscape into bold relief.
Mab awakened to sudden animation at her first glimpse of the
narrow beach, great brown rocks, and restless ocean flashing
into all sorts of brilliant shifting tints in the effulgence of sunshine.
“ It was something something like this I saw in my-my
dreams, Joyce,” she cried, enthusiastically. “I feel now we are
nearer—" She broke off abruptly and ended with a sigh.
Joyce sighed, too. She never heard Mab speak of her dreams
without a thrill. Vistas in cloudland though they were, they
seemed to suggest possibilities of a glimpse of hope now that all
orher possibilities were cut off.
But were they possibilities of which she dared take advantage ?
she asked herself, gazing sadly at Mab's pallid face, and thin droop-
ing figure.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
DURING the two days that elapsed before Joyce and Mab took
flight for the sea-side, Captain Buckingham did not molest them,
either personally or by letter.
This line of conduct he had deliberately planned, his reasoning
running somewhat as follows:
“This resolute young woman will be bound sooner or later to
meet my views. She is not one, I take it, to stick at a trifle, and
stand shilly-shallying, when words of hers can end a suspense
which must be worse than any certainty. In a day or two there
will come an imploring little note, begging a second interview.
Well and good. She shall have her second interview, and I'll un-
dertake to say it'll be a somewhat less stormy one than the first.
By hurrying matters forward I may simply retard them; better let


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
153
them alone to take their course. It's a bold game I'm playing, a
desperately bold one; but when has audacity, joined to skill like
mine, ever failed of a triumph?”
The motto of Danton, “ De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et tou-
jours de l'audace," aptly enough expressed the principle on which
this man had governed his life.
Put a grain of sand under a microscope, you will see it clearly,
not a doubt. At the same time you will be apt to look it out of its
proportions, and exaggerate its importance in the scheme of the
universe. Captain Buckingham had spent so many agreeable
hours in the contemplation of his own prowess, that he had grown
to overlook the fact that there were such weapons in the world as
truth, honesty, and honor, by which it might be successfully com-
bated.
He gave rein to his thoughts, and let them career freely among
the pleasant probabilities the future might have in store for him
when once Mab became his wife.
The work of his society had of late been pressing and important.
A running fire of urgent orders was being received from head-quar-
ters by every mail. Boycotting and moonlighters' work were being
carried on briskly enough in Ireland, where Sylvia was proving her-
self a very efficient agent. But the impression seemed somehow to
have arisen at the New York center that the work of the society
was beginning to flag in England. The ugly word dynamite had
begun to be whispered from one to the other of the council, and the
scheme for the destruction of certain public buildings in London-
set on foot about a year previously, but abandoned out of deference
to cooler heads and clearer judgments—was once more hinted at.
These whispers, of necessity, had reached Buckingham's ears
before they resolved themselves into the form of a definite order.
He had shrugged his shoulders over them; had said to himself that
he was getting older, and less inclined to risk his life and liberty
than he had been in his old harum-scarum days.
“Now," he soliloquized, as he allowed his fancy to run riot in
the benefits an alliance with Mab might confer upon him, “married
to a rich wife, comfortably settled in New York or London, things
would be altogether different. I should take higher standing at
once, and they'd let me off these risky ventures for the sake of the
money and influence I should draft into the league.”
It may be conjectured that this man had no intention of playing


154
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
As a
the part of a Barnum toward Mab, although it had suited him well
enough to fill this role toward Marie St. Clair. She, a poor, illiterate
girl, could only have been of use to him as a professional clair-
voyante. With Mab Shenstone the case was different.
tractable, rich wife she would benefit him infinitely more than in
any other guise. The clairvoyance, he had from the very first de-
cided, could be useful only in so far as it helped to form another
and closer link. That securely forged, let the lighter and temporary
bond be snapped at once.
Hand in hand with these thoughts came another not one whit
less exultant, having in its substance more of the barbaric chieftain
than of the nineteenth century republican. It painted the hour of
triumph when, on the day that made Mab his wife, he would turn
to Joyce and say: “Here we are, brother and sister at last. Now,
as a brother, let me give you a little piece of advice: Forget that
hot-headed lover of yours as quickly as possible. He met his death
on what would have been his ng-day.” That would be
speech worth making. It would be triumph and revenge at one
blow. It would pay back, with a fine touch, a score of petty slights,
insults, inuendoes which these two had seen fit from time to time to
launch at him. He could picture the girl's face as he said the
words; the beautiful eyes uplifted, first in expectancy, then in
agony, to his. He could fancy the cry of pain that would break
from her lips as the full meaning of his words struck her brain.
Why, it would be every whit as good as bringing in the young fool
himself, and laying him down at her feet, with a dagger through his
heart.
He admitted readily enough that the game was not without its
risks—whenever was there a game worth playing that did not in-
clude risks ? But the risks here were small, the triumph large.
There would be certain small details that would require nice adjust-
ment, such, for instance, as how to couple his certain knowledge of
Frank's death with his perfect innocency in the matter.'
Joyce was a vehement, passionate woman, he knew, but, after
all, vehemence and passion would naturally become diluted when
directed against a sister's husband, and that sister as much doted
on as Mab was. And even supposing she were to carry matters so
far as to set on foot a police inquiry, there was absolutely not one
tittle of evidence to be brought against him.
So in a thoroughly contented frame of mind he reposed for


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
155
66
nearly a week upon his resolve to take matters quietly, and not run
the risk of spoiling the whole thing by rushing at it “ like a bull at a
gate.”
As the days went on, however, and there came no sign whatso-
ever from Mab or Joyce, his resolve grew weaker. A slight feeling
of uneasiness took possession of him. He began to think that it
might be as well to change his tactics and take the initiative.
.He accordingly penned a brief note to Mab, asking her to grant
him an interview, and then, to make sure of its safe delivery, he de-
cided to be his own messenger,
Captain Buckingham's quarters in Bloomsbury saw a good deal
of Ned Donovan's handsome Irish face just then. On the very day
on which Buckingham penned his missive to Mab, he sat waiting in
Buckingham's sitting-room, with dispatches from New York in his
breast-pocket.
Into this young Irishman's demeanor there had come of late a
dogged sullenness and reserve which sat ill upon him. Bucking-
ham, keeping a steady eye upon him, had noted it.
• He's doing good work, and work that no one else could be
found to do just now," he thought; “but he's doing it at the
sword's point. By-and-by there'll be a question or two he'll have
to answer, and it'll go rough with him. But that won't be till we've
got all the work we want out of him."
And forthwith he had sent Ned upon missions that were hourly
becoming more distasteful to him, and had treated him with an
arrogant brusqueness which at times set the Irishman's blood boil-
ing
Naturally the relation between the two men was somewhat
strained. Fellowship in a cause is not omnipotent to swamp all
minor enmities and discords in life.
The individual must wither before “the world,” or in other
words "the cause," can become “all in all.” In this young Irish-
man the “individual” was very strong; in spite of disappointments,
mortifications, and all sorts of hardships, it showed as yet no sign of
withering
"Why I love my life Heaven only knows," he would sometimes
say to himself; “but not a doubt I do love it, and it won't be long
before I claim my right to do what I please with it."
Possibly Captain Buckingham read these thoughts, or something
akin to them, in the man's face as he entered the room. They
1


156
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
added additional fuel to the discontent which had taken possession
of him, when on arriving at Eaton Square he had been told that the
Misses Shenstone had left town, and that all letters were to be for-
warded to Mr. Archibald Shenstone at the Grand Hotel, Chelten-
ham, as they had not yet made up their minds as to their destina-
tion.
With a brief nod to Ned he held out his hand for his dispatches,
opened and read them in silence.
“ There is nothing here to make me alter my present arrange-
ments," he said, when he had run his eye over them. “ The work
in County Down can be well carried through by an inferior officer.
It will most likely devolve upon you."
Ned frowned a deep, ugly frown.
“The rick-firing and cattle-staking business is not the work I'd
choose to set going—" he began.
“Since when has it been the custom of the Society to ask its
members what work they would or would not choose?” inter-
rupted Buckingham, curtly.
“Nor was it the work I was led to believe would be given to
me, when I joined the society," Ned went on, doggedly.
Captain Buckingham looked up at him, a curious expression
passing over his face.
“I suppose you know the penalty attached to insubordination?"
he asked, meaningly.
Yes, Ned knew well enough, none better; and silence fell on
him at once.
"I shall have more to say to you by-and-by on this head," Buck-
ingham went on; “meantime, you had better start for Cork at once.
At the end of the week, full directions will be sent to you at your
old quarters there. On second thought, it will be better for you
to cross by way of Milford. You can branch off from Gloucester,
and run down to Overbury. A day will be allowed you off duty to
spend with your father and mother.”
Ned's face brightened. Work in Ireland was rough and risky
just then, it would be cheery to get a glimpse of the old couple in
the gardener's cottage before he set about it. But what could have
put such kindly forethought as this into the captain's head ? he
asked himself.
He was soon to get his question answered.
“While at Overbury, I wish you to ascertain the Miss Shen-


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
157
stones' present address, and at once telegraph it to me here,” Buck-
ingham resumed. • Through your father and mother, no doubt
you can easily get at it. If they fail to know it, go on to Chelten-
ham, and find it out through the servants at the hotel who post the
old uncle's letters. You've done that sort of thing neatly enough
before now.”
Ned's face fell again, the dogged, sullen look came back to it.
He bit his lip, answering not a word.
Of Captain Buckingham's attentions to Mab he had had hints
from Kathleen, long before they had been so much as suspected by
any member of the family. These hints had roused the wild beast
in him, and had had, moreover, the practical effect of making him
set on foot a few special inquiries concerning Buckingham's previ-
ous career. The result of these inquiries had not been inspiriting,
and had contributed its quota to the distrust with which the man
viewed his chief.
Captain Buckingham noted his silence and read it correctly. To
himself he said : “ That man must be brought to book before long,
with a good strong hand too." Aloud he said, as he drew his chair
to his writing-table and spread his papers before him:
“These are all the instructions I have to give. When next you
hear from me it will be at Cork. Good-morning.”
But Ned did not stir.
“I have a question to ask," he said, and Buckingham's quick ear
once more detected the ring of rebellion in the man's tone. “Is this
—this address you desire me to get for you required for the work of
the society, or is it required for your own private use.”
Buckingham jumped up from his chair-the commanding-officer
to his very backbone.
“Look here, my man," he said, setting his teeth over his words,
'you've had one warning against insubordination, I take it you
won't get a second. You've had your orders, they will not be re-
peated. I've no more to say." Then he went back to his writing-
table.
Ned went silently down the stairs and out of the house. Out-
side, in the open air, he drew a long breath.
“It won't be for long-it can't be for long, now,” he muttered,
clenching his fingers into the palms of his hand.
“Let me get
breathing-time, that's all, and I'll pay off my debts to the last far-
thing."
09


158
.
RGAM
A DATELESS BARGAINCHAPTER XXXV.
AFTER all, the police had not to bring any extraordinary amount
of ingenuity to bear upon the task of discovering Kathleen.
They went a little far a-field at first; having learned that a young
woman answering to her description had taken ticket for Liverpool,
they immediately concluded that she was to be found in America,
and set the Atlantic wires going; only, however, to discover that
she was not, at any rate, to be heard of at New York.
A detective, dispatched on second thoughts to her father and
mother in Gloucestershire, returned with the tidings that she had
sent for a box of her clothes, left behind at Overbury; that she had
married Bryan O'Shea, much to the disgust of her parents, who
“hadn't much opinion of the O'Shea family," and that her present
address was at the O'Shea Farm, Lough Lea, County Down.
This news circuitously reached Joyce and Mab in their sea-side
cottag.
Mab, as usual, had a kind word to say for the girl.
“I don't think, on the whole, we treated either Ned or Kathleen
fairly,” she said ; "we did our best to give them notions beyond
their station; and then, when most they wanted our help, we let
them slip through our fingers.”
Joyce characteristically dismissed the matter.
“She was a weak little goose,” she said; “if she meant to marry
Bryan O'Shea, why didn't she do it without any fuss ?”
With the tragic anxieties that pressed upon her at the moment,
a sentence seemed more than enough to expend upon this girl and
her ridiculous love-affair. But the chances were that, if Joyce had
given to her a true account of the facts of the case, she would
considerably have modified her epithets. If, for instance, she had
seen pretty Kathleen's white, forlorn face throughout the whole of
that long stolen journey to Liverpool, on the day of Mrs. Shenstone's
wedding, or had heard her talk with her brother Ned, when close
upon midnight she had succeeded in unearthing him from his lodg-
ings somewhere in the slums in the heart of the town.
•The brother and sister had walked together up and down the
dark side of a quiet street, talking in low, constrained tones.
This in substance was their conversation:
“I think you must be out of your mind. I never thought you


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
159
66
had much, but what little you had is wanting now," Ned said, in a
hard, gruff voice.
Kathleen's reply came in muffled tones.
• Ned, tell me what I have come all these miles to ask you, and
I'll go back home, or to the Shenstones, or anywhere else in the
world you like. Where is Mr. Ledyard? What have you and the
captain and Bryan O'Shea done with him ? "
“What has any one of us to do with Mr. Ledyard, I should like
to know? And also what have you to do with the gentleman? Will
you tell me that, my girl ?
"I? Nothing whatever. Only this may interest you perhaps.
Miss Joyce is breaking her heart after him."
“ You were not always so particularly fond of Miss Joyce. I've
heard
you
wish her in her grave more times than I could count,"
sneered Ned.
Oh, well, she'll be there soon enough without any wishing on
my part—and," this added with emphasis on each syllable, “ Miss
Mab, too, for she's breaking her heart as fast as her sister."
“Is that true, Kathleen ?” he asked ; and there came a softer
note in his voice now.
Gospel truth. Send me back with a message to her.”
Ned resumed his walk. His steps at first were hurried, and
Kathleen could barely keep pace with him. Presently they flagged,
and she laid her hand upon his arm.
“Look here, Ned—” she began.
He turned
upon her furiously.
“ Look here, my girl. The best thing you can do is to be off to
Lough Lea as quick as possible, and marry Bryan O'Shea as you
promised. Otherwise it may go harder than you think with one or
two you care most for."
Had there been moonlight enough to show Kathleen's face,
Ned might have noted an odd, resolute look come into it—a pallor
and rigidity which seemed to turn her into the marble likeness of
herself.
“Very well,” she said, slowly, “I'll go to Lough Lea and marry
Bryan O'Shea; and, whatever comes of it, I shan't forget 'twas you
gave me the good advice.


160
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
CHAPTER XXXVI,
JOYCE was no sooner safely shut in in her sea-side solitude than
she fell to measuring the distance she had put between herself and
possible hope. Here was a man who held in his hand the secret
she would have paid for cheerfully with her life, and here was she
fleeing from him and stopping her ears, as though she had neither
part nor lot in the matter.
It had been easy enough-comparatively, that is--in the height
of her passion to wish she had a thousand tongues to speak their
“noes” to the hideous temptation; it was not so easy in a cooler
moment to echo the wish. At a crisis her instincts had saved her;
now, when she took to reasoning on the matter, her brain grew be-
wildered, her moral sense confused. A hundred thoughts and
plans in turn suggested themselves, only in turn to be dismissed as
impracticable.
Joyce sorely needed a counsellor in this emergency, but where
was one to be found ? Mab, for obvious reasons, was unfitted for
the part; Uncle Archie, with gout threatening and his irritable tem-
per at its worst, was scarcely the one to handle so delicate a matter.
The police authorities, except as a last resource, were not to be
thought of. Joyce knew that, if she attempted compulsion in any
form, the man would simply throw himself into a defiant attitude,
and her chance would be at an end.
Of course, there was always the supposition that Buckingham's
words might have been mere bombast to force her to favor his suit
to Mab. But it was a supposition she did not for a moment dwell
upon. Her only thought was how to get at the knowledge he
might hold without striking an unworthy bargain with him.
It was scarcely strange that in this connection Ned Donovan's
name should suggest itself. Although she had no facts whereupon
to base the conjecture, there had always been present to her mind
the possibility that Ned and Buckingham were members of the
same political organization. If such were the case there might be
means of information common to both, which Ned might work ad-
vantageously for her now. Also there was the possibility that, as
comrades in a league, Ned might have some influence over Buck-
ingham, which he might bring usefully into play,


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
16r
In addition to all this, there was his devotion to Mab, which,
naturally enough, was an open secret between the two sisters. In
other circumstances, Joyce would have been reluctant to trade upon
a devotion whose unobtrusiveness and unselfishness years had
tested, but had not shaken. Now, however, in this her sore
extremity, she felt justified in appealing to it.
Whether direct good to herself might result from it or not, of
one thing she felt confident, viz., that no unworthy concessions
respecting Mab would be made by him.
So she sat down and wrote a long, passionate, pleading letter to
the young Irishman, giving him, in outline, the account of her
interview with Buckingham, beseeching him to see this man for her
and get what terms he could out of him.
“To no man living but you would I intrust such a mission,”
she wrote. I speak the simple truth when I say I would rather it
should be in your hands than in mine ; for, alas, that I should have
to write it! I feel that your devotion and loyalty to my sister are
at this crisis more to be relied on than mine."
Then she concluded with an entreaty that he would use judg-
ment and caution in the matter, remembering how much they all
had at stake. Furthermore, she added a postscript imploring him
on no account to let Buckingham have her present address; “ for,
see him again in this world,” she wrote, “I never will, or my
chance of Heaven will be gone.”
It was a desperate appeal to make; but affairs were in a des-
perate condition with her. When it was done, she knew not
whether it had been well or ill done.
She inclosed the letter under cover to Kathleen, at Lough Lea,
for of Ned's whereabouts she was totally ignorant. Then she set
herself to fill up the terrible gap of waiting that must ensue, as
best she might, with the common-place and the trivial.
The common-place is one of the few things in life of which the
supply is in excess of the demand. It will never be elbowed into a
corner by tragedy, let it try as it will. So, at least, Joyce found, as
she waited impatiently for letter or message from Donovan. There
came the usual flow of letters to read and answer.
Like this from good Aunt Bell :
“Do spare your uncle as much painful correspondence as pos-
sible, Joyce. Poor darling, his temper was always an irritable one,
and it doesn't improve under this long attack. If I didn't give
11


162
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
in to him in every matter, great or small, the house wouldn't hold
us two."
Or this from Uncle Archie :
" I'm a little out of pain to-day, and hope to keep so if your
aunt will only let me have my own way as to medicine and diet.
It's a little late in the day to complain; but you know she was
always inclined to be despotic, and, to keep the peace, I simply
have to knock under to her in everything."
And finally, this from her mother, on her wedding-tour :
“We have had a desperate-desperate quarrel, darling Joyce.
I'm coming home at once. Ah, my good looks have been my bane
all my life through. If I had been a plain woman I might still
have been happy Ernestine Shenstone. It all began yesterday be-
cause I told him some people in the hotel where we are staying
thought I was his daughter, not his wife. Now, I ask you, was
that enough to put him in a tearing rage, and make him call me
“madam," instead of “my child,” all the rest of the day? And
he does look like my father—no one who saw us together could
deny it. The bald patch at the back of his head gets bigger every
day, and he goes to sleep in his easy-chair whenever I begin to
talk to him, and, if this is not a sign of old age creeping on, I don't
know what is. Oh, and do you know, Joyce, he wears a horrible
red cotton night-cap at nights, and sometimes he forgets and
comes down to breakfast in it. If I had only seen him in it before
we married ! But there, it dosen't matter ; only expect me at
Overbury almost as soon as you get this. By-the-way, dear, there's
one thing I should like to ask you to do for me. He is always ask-
ing me—at least he asked me once or twice lately—if I know any-
thing of the interior of a place called Earlswood. Now, between
ourselves, Joyce, I don't, but I don't want him to know my igno-
rance; so if you could just find out a little about the place, and let
me know, so that I could give him an answer which might imply I
knew a great deal, I should be very much obliged to you. I mean
only, of course, if you don't see me back in a day or two.
Perhaps, after all, I may alter my mind; one never feels quite sure
of one's self in such matters."
And a postscript to the letter, added the next day, showed that
Mrs. Bullen had very much altered her mind :
Darling children,” it ran, “we've kissed and made it up again
-it was nothing more than a lover's quarrel, after all. We are off


164
A DATELESS BARGAIN,
molested. Should the captain laugh his words to scorn and order
him back to his duty, well, then he would have a few words to say
to him about duty also, and would remind him that on one occa-
sion he had somewhat stretched his prerogative which compelled
his subordinates to an unreasoning obedience, and that an impeach-
ment to that effect laid before his superiors at New York might be
attended with unpleasant consequences to himself.
Had Sylvia Buckingham read the man's thoughts in his face as
he presented his sealed packet to her, she could not have treated
him with a more repellent harshness. Possibly she took her cue
from her brother. This Irishman was evidently out of favor at
headquarters.
Ned kept his discontent to himself. His thoughts were too busy
with the course he had mapped out for himself, and its minor diffi-
culties of detail, to allow him to be much disturbed by superficial
annoyances.
From the Abbey House he took his way straight to the O'Shea
farm, separated from it by two or three fields and an occasional
bog. It was an antiquated and ill-kept edifice, flanked on one side
by an untidy-looking potato-field, on the other by an equally untidy-
looking poultry-yard. A few gaunt cattle grazed in an adjoining
field, whose gaping, torn hedges betokened the fact that it had
known nothing of repair or hurdle since the last hunt had ridden
through.
Whatever revenue the O'Shea family might enjoy, this little
ragged homestead most assuredly could not be credited with the
responsibility of being its fountain-head.
An old woman smoking a short pipe sat on a bench at the front
door. She had a bright yellow cotton kerchief tied over her head,
but beyond this her costume inclined to the dusky and ill-mended.
Occasionally she withdrew her pipe to exclaim an " Arrah thin, be
off wid ye,” to the cocks and hens who came straggling in from the
poultry-yard, making frantic efforts to slip past her bare feet into
the house. This exclamation, alternating with another, a muttered
Irish anathema, whose modified English equivalent would be,
“That's a fine wife for an O'Shea to bring home! Look at her and
admire her.” The said anathema following the shadow of a girl
down the garden path to the gate, where Ned stood waiting for
her.
“Look at her and admire her!" assuredly not a difficult task for


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
165
an eye undazzled by O'Shea ideals. Kathleen O'Shea is not the
Kathleen Donovan of a year ago. That Kathleen was a good ten
years younger to look at, and about her there hung such a glamor
of bewitching smiles, fun, and arch glances that one never stopped
to criticise the shape of her mouth, the color of hair or eyes. Now
that the glamor has gone, the fun, arch glances, bewitching smiles
together disappeared, it is possible to take calm stock of her face
and features; to discover that her eyes are large, deep blue, that
dark rings around them accentuate their look of haunting melan-
choly, and tell the tale of weary days and sleepless nights. One
wonders whether it is the pale face that throws the blue-black hair
into such bold contrast, or whether it is the black hair that makes
the face show so deathly white in the glinting morning sun-
light.
In one respect only is the Kathleen of to-day identical with the
Kathleen of last year, and that is in the matter of pretty and neat
attire. That bygone Kathleen had been known to spend an hour
in front of her looking-glass, arranging her glossy hair, before she
saw fit to present herself to her young mistresses, to perform for
them a similar office. Her mother had been wont to assert that the
only way in which to get housework done by those dainty fingers
of hers would be to banish all looking-glasses from the house, when
not a doubt she would set to work to scour the pewter plates on the
kitchen dresser, in order to make them do duty as mirrors.
Whether Kathleen through necessity had been driven to perform
such an office for the O'Shea pewter plates might be doubtful, but
certain it was that those plaits of dark hair, which shone like a
raven's wing in the sunlight, must have had abundant' aid from a
looking-glass, in order to their present elaborate arrangement, as
likewise the prettily-tied knot of ribbon which held her collar in its
place.
The brother and sister talked in low tones, with many a furtive
glance toward the old woman and her pipe. Ned's words, though
all but whispered, were vehement and emphatic.
"I tell you,” he said, breaking abruptly into Kathleen's queries
as to the health and well-being of the old father and mother in
Gloucestershire, “life isn't worth a brass farthing to me. I'm
hunted, dogged from morning till night, in spite of all the hard work
I've done for them.”
Kathleen laughed, not the pleasant laugh of old days, but a


166
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
harsh, scornful laugh. Her voice, too, was harsh and scornful as
she answered:
“ You work hard, but you don't work well. They say you're not
to be trusted—you're too tender-hearted.”
“ Tender-hearted !. I'll give them proof of my tender heart if I
get a chance."
“When they set you to stake Mike Kearney's cattle, didn't you
let them all slip through your fingers, so that the beasts came back
to their sheds as soon as the boys had left plowing up the fields ?”
she went on, not heeding the interruption.
“The poor dumb things! I would have cut off my right hand
sooner than torture them! If those men had any sense they
would" He broke off for a moment, as if he dared not trust him-
self to speak his mind.
Kathleen looked warningly over her shoulder toward the house.
" Don't forget you are on the O'Shea property at the present
moment,” she said, sarcastically.
“ Confound the O'Sheas, every man of them! Now, what good
has your marriage with Bryan done for me, I should like to know,
after all the fine talk he and Maurice made over it?"
“Ah, were you fool enough to expect any good for yourself out
of that ?"
“I don't expect much from any man or woman, let them be
brother or sister a thousand times over; but I don't look to have
my footsteps watched and dogged by a man who has married my
sister, and that man's own brother."
They're set to do it."
“I know that. Now, look here, Kathleen." Here Ned's voice
took a softer tone. "Just get those two off my heels for the next
twenty-four hours—I don't want more. Tell them I'm off to Mil-
ford on the captain's business-special business. Swear it, if you
like. Tell them I shall be back again in Cork to-morrow night at
farthest, and shall report myself there. Tell them any lies you like
-you used to be famous at that sort of thing once.”
“I may be again when the right time comes."
“Well, the right time has come, take my word for it. Don't you
see my necessity? It's a matter of life or death, I tell you."
“I spoke those words to you once before, but you shut your ears
to them. I told you Miss Joyce would die, Miss Mab would die, all
for a secret you might tell, but wouldn't."
1)


Ā DATELESS BARGAIN.
167
66
Ned's face grew white.
“Give over fooling, Kathleen, for the love of heaven. I tell you
this is a matter of life or death to me; that perhaps in this world
you and I may never set eyes on each other again. Now will you
do what I want you get me free of those two men, Maurice and
Bryan O'Shea, for the next twenty-four hours ? "
It's easy to say 'get me free of those two.' How am I to do
it, I should like to know ? "
“Do it any way that comes uppermost. Don't stick at a trifle
so long as it's done, and that before I'm out of sight of the house.
Get them into a row with the O'Gormans-you used to be a capital
hand at setting men by the ears at one time. Make it a shillalah
business if you like, and then bring the whisky and deal it out lib-
erally all round. Do it anyhow, so long as it's done. I tell you it's
a matter of life and death ; not only to me, but perhaps to some
others." This added with a significance that must have set the
girl's thoughts ranging.
“I'll do my best," she promised; but the promise was given sul-
lenly and grudgingly enough.
Very well, then, take care that it is your best, or it may be
worse than useless to me. Now I'll go. Remember it's to Milford,
on the captain's business, that I'm going. Stick to that, whatever
else you're doubtful about."
He turned on his heel and left her. Possibly it was the bright
August sun which made him draw his hat low over his eyes, and
choose the shadow of the hedgerow to walk in rather than the open
road.
Kathleen stood watching him out of sight, leaning over the gate
and shadowing her eyes with her hands. Suddenly, to her surprise,
he stood still in the pathway, then came back with steps as hurried
as those that had carried him away.
“What is it?" she asked. “I've no money–no, not a penny ;
so it's no use asking me for any."
“I don't want money.” He looked right and left to make sure
there were no listeners, and his voice sank to a whisper. “It's just
this—if anything happens to me-I mean if I'm found one day lying
in the road with a bullet through my brain, I want my watch-my
old silver watch”-here he laid his hand upon it—"given to Miss
Joyce-to Miss Joyce, do you understand ?”
Then, before she had time to make her reply, he did a thing she


168
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
had never known him do in all his life before_leaned over the gate
and kissed her.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
AFTER all, the sea-breezes did not do so much for Mab as Joyce
had hoped they might. Without any definite illness, there was yet
that in her condition to cause Joyce serious anxiety-a muscular
weakness so great as at times to incapacitate her from walking, or
even from lifting her hand to her head. She appeared to have a
disinclination for bodily exertion of any sort. She would spend the
whole day, if allowed to do so, lying with closed eyes on her couch,
or listlessly reclining in a high-backed chair at the open window.
Joyce, as she sat beside her, watching her in silence, could only
wonder over a certain mystic beauty that seemed so to overspread
Mab's face as to render it difficult identify that face with the
pained, anxious countenance of a year back. A feeling akin to the
awe that one feels in the presence of the unknown and supernatural,
took possession of her, It was second only to another feeling, that
of apprehensive terror lest her darling might be plucked out of her
hand by another and a stronger one than Captain Buckingham's-
the iron hand of death itself.
She began to think it would be as well to get Mab nearer home, or
at least near some big city, where, in case of need, good medical
advice could be readily had,
She hinted as much to Mab as they sat together two days after
she had dispatched her letter to Donovan. Mab did not seem to
hear her. As usual, she was leaning back in her easy-chair, with
closed eyes.
The window was open. The sun had just sunk into the sea,
amid flames of violet and ruddy gold. The waves lay steeped in all
the changeful glory of the after-glow. Not a sound, save the lap-
ping and soft dashing of the waters on the beach, broke the outside
stillness. Joyce never allowed Mab to spend this sunset hour in
solitude. She had learned from experience that this was the time
when her visions took strongest hold on her, and the world seemed
to let her slip.
Joyce was just then fighting a far harder battle than ever Mab
had fought against the voice of her own heart. “Those dreams of


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
169
hers may cost her her life,” the doctor had said, when called in to
attend Mab in her fainting-fit. . And those dreams seemed now to
Joyce's fancy the only door which might chance to open and let in
a ray of light.
She sometimes felt herself to be in the plight of a man who, hav-
ing been denied a life-boat and a plank as a means of safety from
shipwreck, says, “ Now I'll die sooner than touch the rope you fling
to me.”
She had shut her ears, and had fled from Captain Buckingham's
temptation; now she was as good as putting her right hand across
Mab's eyes, and saying, “ You, at any rate, shall not pierce the
darkness !” her left hand, as an afterthought, across Mab's mouth,
adding, “or, at least, whatever you see, you shall not tell me."
She dared not reason the matter out with herself. Instinct,
nothing else, guided her in her extremity just then. She seemed to
be living out her life in painful jerks, snatching at what was right,
but holding it slackly, and praying it might slip through her fingers ;
fleeing from evil, as she had fled from Buckingham, but all the while,
as it were, with her head looking over her shoulder, hoping that evil
might overtake her.
These still, sunset hours, which seemed to bring naught but
peace to Mab, always found Joyce at her worst. All her doubts,
terrors, misgivings, regrets, seemed then to swoop down upon her
like so many evil birds in a mighty clamorous flock.
Suddenly Mab's soft, uncertain tones broke in on her thoughts.
"Joyce," she queried, “ do you ever feel people to be near you
before you see them?"
Joyce started, for at that very moment, chancing to lift her eyes
to the open window, she had caught sight of the figure of a man on
the beach below, whose outline recalled that of Ned Donovan.
“Whom do you feel near you to-night, dear?" she asked,
eagerly, still keeping her eye fixed on the man on the beach.
She had a reply she did not expect.
Captain Buckingham," answered Mab, in slow, clear tones.
Joyce's impulse was to cry aloud :
“Oh, Mab, don't let that name pass your lips! That man is
temptation incarnate, and he will turn us both out of the road to
heaven if he can!”
But she held in her impulse, biting her lips till they blanched.
She rose from her chair, went to the window, and looked out,


170
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
eyes still
06
shading her eyes with her hand. What if that were Captain Buck-
ingham on the beach, and in another five minutes she should be
called upon to face him and go through a second fiery ordeal !
With a great thrill of thankfulness she saw her fears were ground-
less. The man was Donovan, not a doubt. Most probably he was
coming to the house to answer her letter in person, and not knowing
the exact geography of the place had come along the coast instead
of by the cliffs.
She would not have him shown into the room where Mab was,
she decided. It would take him a good five minutes to get to the
house ; presently she would creep out of the room quietly and see
him alone down-stairs.
Mab's voice again broke the silence.
Last evening, just at this hour, Joyce,” she said, her
closed, her voice growing more and more soft and slow, “I had a
sweet, strange vision. I feel I must tell it to you."
Dream, you mean, darling," interposed Joyce, nervously.
Call it a dream, if you like, Joyce. I thought I was crossing
the heath in the dead of night. It was pitch-dark, but somehow I
did not miss my way. Suddenly, looking up, I saw straight ahead
of me, shining out of the darkness, a clear, soft, white light. I
thought it must be the moon rising from out of the trees in the little
churchyard in the hollow.”
She paused. Joyce went over to her side, putting her arms
round her. Mab's dreams at such a moment were not to be put
on one side unheeded.
“As I drew nearer," Mab went on, in the same slow, faint tones
as before, “I saw there was no moon, that the light, instead of
coming from the sky, came from the churchyard itself, and was
streaming upward, a full, clear, quiet blaze of light in the dark
heavens."
“ Go on, dear."
"I wondered what could be the source of this light. But not
until I had entered the little gate, half hidden by those two dark
yews, did I know. Then, Joyce, an awful and wonderful sight
lay before me, On every grave every mound, every tom stone-
-stood an angel clothed in light begirt with light. Upward, down-
ward, round about them streamed this light ; every dark tree, every
pebble in the path, every cloud in the sky was boldly, beautifully
outlined by it."


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
171
Joyce's heart was beating wildly, she trembled for what was
coming
Mab went on softly and dreamily still.
“And what struck me most was the intense stillness that pre-
vailed. There was this mighty host-for it was a mighty host, on
some graves stood two or more angels—and yet never a sound.
The silence was in itself grand and awful. I felt fascinated, yet I
was not afraid. Step by step I went nearer, till I could feel-yes,
feel—their light falling upon me, and could see their marvelous
and beautiful faces. Some were old, noble and stern-looking ;
some were young, like lovely girls or boys; some were mere chil-
dren; others like cherub babies. Some stood as though praying,
with arms outstretched to heaven ; some were kneeling on the
graves, with bowed heads; one or two had drawn swords in their
hands, which flashed golden-bright in the white light. For the mo-
ment I thought it must be the day of resurrection, and that these
were the souls of the dead rising out of their graves.”
Oh, Mab!” broke in Joyce, in an awe-stricken voice.
“But the next moment it was borne into my mind that the dead
were lying quietly sleeping beneath in their graves, and that these
bright, beautiful beings were their guardian angels, those who had
watched over them and taken care of them in their life-time, and
who had not given them up now that they were coffined and hidden
out of sight.”
Again Mab paused, and now her voice sank to a deep, solemn
tone.
* And suddenly, as I stood there gazing and wondering, I saw
in the midst of all this radiancy one dark, blank space; it was a
grave with no angel upon it. It made my heart ache, and I thought
I would make my way through the light to this forgotten grave,
and say a prayer for the poor soul lying beneath. The air fell upon
me chill and damp as I drew near the spot, the darkness was so
dense I could feel it, just as I had felt the light. I could not see
the name graven on the stone, so I traced it out with my finger.
And it was the name of George Ritchie Buckingham.”
Joyce gave a great start, but words would not come.
“ And as I knelt there I heard a voice, a sweet, strong, sad
voice, speaking out of the stillness, and saying, “Who will come
and be the angel of this grave ?” I looked up as I knelt and said,
“Here am I, Lord, take me!"
?


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
173
Then nothing remained to do but sit still and stare at the blank
wall which once more seemed to confront her.
In the afternoon the doctor arrived. Mab's condition seemed to
puzzle him. He prescribed for her rest, quiet, and a tonic, and de-
parted, promising to come again on the following day.
An answer to Joyce's telegram arrived in due course from Kath-
leen. It briefly stated that the letter had been delivered to Ned,
but that where he was at the present moment she had not the slight-
est idea, nor had she any means of finding out.
Then Joyce, at her wits' ends, telegraphed to Morton, requesting
him to do his utmost to discover Ned's whereabouts as quickly as
possible.
To find him, she felt, was an absolute necessity. If he could
not be found, and induced to face Buckingham for her, what alterna-
tive remained ?
Here Joyce's heart supplied the inevitable answer, an answer.
that had been growing into definite shape during the last few days
of impatient waiting :
" You must see him yourself! And then Heaven help you, that's
all ! "
Joyce covered her face with her hands and sank into a chair be-
side Mab's bed. For the last twenty-four hours, which had magni-
fied themselves into as many days, she had felt herself drifting to
this point.
See Buckingham again! That meant concession on the one
side, victory on the other; there could be no middle course. But
on which side was victory likely to fall ? Heaven help her, in-
deed!
She looked down on Mab's white, yet withal tranquil face, and
thin hand lying on the coverlet. In fancy she saw the wedding-ring
on the slender finger, through her instrumentality; Buckingham tri-
umphant; her own agony of suspense at an end.
Then a sudden great terror fell upon her. She sank on her knees
beside the bed, bowing her head on her hands. Surely never before
did dry eyes and dumb lips plead so passionate a prayer !
How long she remained thus she did not know. The afternoon
sunbeams gave place to the long, slanting shafts of evening. Still
she knelt there in her dumb agony. Time stood still for her, as it
does in sleep, as it may in death.
Mab's soft voice recalled her to consciousness.


174
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“ Joyce,” it said, “I would like to get up now, and go down to
the beach, and see the sun set.”
Joyce did not oppose the wish. To say truth, there was not left
in her much strength to oppose anything-least of all Mab's sudden
impulses, in which of late she had learned to acquiesce without
demur.
So they two went down and sat upon the beach together, watch-
ing the great sun sink low and lower till it disappeared, a burnished,
fiery ball, beneath the waters.
It is all very well for the poets to say that Nature has a voice
and speaks a message to every living soul. The truth of it is, the
living soul first puts its message into Nature's mouth, then takes it
out again, rings the town-crier's bell, and says, “Oyez, oyez, oyez!
This is what great Nature has to say.”
Mab, as she sat there with eyes upturned to the fading sky, said
to herself :
“ There is evening's rest after morning's toil for all creation. It
must come; God sends it."
Joyce got for herself an altogether different message out of the,
grand, desolate seascape; the gaunt, brown rocks; stony beach;
dashing surf. They seemed to laugh at her littleness, her weak
resistance to fate, to bid her fold her hands and confess herself
beaten at last.
“Compare your strength, your duration with ours, and what are
you ?” they seemed to say, in one mocking voice. “Oh, you, less
than a speck on the folds of Creation's garment, find a Providence
for yourself if you can!”
The crunch of feet on the pebbles broke in upon their thoughts.
It was an old fisherman approaching. As he passed he said some-
thing in broad Scotch, pointing with his finger a little distance
ahead.
Joyce could not catch his words, but her eye followed his finger.
She saw a knot of fishermen, and one or two of their wives, gathered
together under the deep shadow of the rocks, a little to the left of
the footway that led up to their house.
Some bare-legged boys in blue jerseys were running up the cliffs,
as though dispatched on messages. A coastguard-man was de-
scending with a telescope under his arm.
"An accident--some one may have fallen over the cliff,” said
another fisherman as he went by. “It'll likely be a stranger."


Å DATELESS BARGAIN.
175
A great and sudden dread seized Joyce, a dread that swamped
every other thought, yet a dread utterly unaccountable and un-
reasonable. It did not follow, because the fisherman had said it
was most likely a stranger who had met with the accident, there-
fore that stranger must be Frank Ledyard. Yet this was the fear
that had taken hold of her now. “My darling, we must, must meet
again somewhere, somehow," she had said to herself over and over
again, even when her hopes were at their lowest, her fears at their
height. Now the thought that chilled her heart was: "What if
this be the meeting after all! What if, in the dead face lying there,
I recognize the face I am hunting the world to find !”
The little knot assembled under the cliff's side had formed into
something of a procession now. Four men headed it, bearing an
improvised ambulance on their shoulders on which lay stretched the
lifeless burden; the women and children straggled beside them and
brought up the rear. The twilight was deepening rapidly into the
gray of night; the shadows of the old rocks went stretching out
nearly to the sea-line. Weird and shadowy looked the dismal little
cortège as it moved along slowly, silently, save for the crunch of the
pebbles underfoot, which told that the burden was a heavy
one.
Joyce, the spectre of herself, tottered forward to meet it, her
hands clasped, her face bloodless.
But it was from Mab, not Joyce, that there broke that low cry
of pain, so like the cry of a wounded dumb animal that has had its
death-blow dealt to it.
For in that “it,” borne past on the men's shoulders, in that bat-
tered form and disfigured face, grayer than the gray twilight that
was settling down upon it, she had recognized the face and form
of Captain Buckingham.
CHAPTER XL.
Thus, in sudden awful fashion, were Joyce's agonies and ques-
tionings forever set at rest. No need now to dread that mocking
smile, that taunting tongue, nor to close her eyes and shudder over
the wonder when and where she would be brought face to face
with both again. She had but to open them, and there was the


176
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
cruel face lying low, with no taunt upon its lips, no mocking glitter
in its eye.
With her fears died her hopes also. Where was the chance
now of getting at the secret this man held ? Into his grave with
him, not a doubt, it would go.
If it had not been for this recognition of Captain Buckingham's
body by Mab and Joyce, he must have been buried under a name-
less stone. Several persons, it is true, came forward stating that
they had seen him walking along the cliffs two days previously.
An innkeeper from Newton Stewart deposed to having supplied
him with a “machine" which set him down within a mile of Tret-
wick. But to one and all he was an utter stranger.
Joyce gave to the authorities of the place Sylvia Buckingham's
name and address. With this, her part in the tragedy came to an
end.
The first feeling in the mind of the good people of Tretwick
was, that Buckingham had met his death by mischance. The
cliffs, below which his body had been found were treacherous and
ill-protected, all sorts of gaps and fissures being hidden by the
gorse and stunted bushes. A stranger attempting to find his way
along them in the late evening, might easily enough, by one false
step, lose his balance. There could be no doubt that Buckingham
had fallen from these cliffs. He was a heavy man, his fall could be
traced down the side by the uprooted bushes to which he had
clung, the displaced crumbling sandstone, and a torn shred or two
of clothing here and there in the gorse.
Joyce, with the thought of her desperate appeal to Ned in her
mind, and of his sudden appearance on the beach, wondered
whether a darker story might lie behind this.
It was an awful thought this—that incidentally, perhaps, this
man's death had been brought about by her instrumentality. After
she had written her letter to Ned, she had wondered whether it had
been ill or well done. It seemed to her now that it had been very
ill done indeed..
Later on, her wonder was to be changed into certainty. When
Sylvia arrived, at her suggestion an inquiry as to the cause of her
brother's death was duly held under the auspices of the Procurator-
fiscal. Evidence was then brought forward which threw a new
light upon the whole matter. Two or three men deposed to having
met a stranger, tall, and in appearance like' an Irishman, walking


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
179
to hold her hand, and watch the white face; the face on which,
slowly but surely, was settling the drawn, beaten look that comes to
man or woman only once in a lifetime, and which seems to say
plainly, as a voice could say it, “Oh, Death, we have wrestled it out
together, and the day is yours.”
In due course the doctors arrived, consulted together, and also
in due course departed, leaving behind them multitudinous direc-
tions for the care and comfort of their patient; but nothing that
could be construed into the faintest suggestion of a hope of her ulti-
mate recovery. The shock to her nerves, they said, had shaken her
very slender hold of life, and it was now a question not of weeks and
months, but of days and hours.
She seemed to be in no pain whatever. From the moment when
they had brought her into the room, and laid her insensible on the
bed, never a question had passed her lips, nor any sentence that
could however remotely be referred to Captain Buckingham, or her
life in the past.
Joyce wondered sometimes whether that terrible scene in the
twilight had niched itself in Mab's memory as an awful, immutable
fact, or whether it had presented itself as one among the many vis-
ions which had helped to efface the border-line between the natural
and supernatural to her clouded senses.
All day long Mab lay silent and motionless. At rare intervals
her eyes opened, with a wandering, bewildered look in them, as if
they held a question that refused to be put into words.
Sometimes her lips would part, and Joyce would eagerly bend
down her ear in the hope of catching some word, some sentence,
that might tell what were the thoughts the tired brain held. Gen-
erally, however, they would close again after muttering some inco-
herent, unmeaning phrases.
She will most likely pass away in her sleep," the doctors had
said. But was this sleep? Joyce asked herself, as again and again
Mab's words would come back to her: “I know now what I'
means; how that 'I' may be in the soul or 'I'may be in the body
at will.” She could almost fancy that Mab, her true, loving Mab,
was standing beside her invisible; was wandering through space at
will ; was anywhere, in fact, rather than penned within that weak,
weary form which lay so still on its pillows.
Painlessly and tranquilly the end came at last. Just as the dark
night was beginning to creep out of the room through the leaves of


180
A DATELESS BARGAIN,
the vine which shadowed the window, and the rush of bird-notes
outside in the dimness told that day was at hand, Joyce, holding
Mab's hand in hers, felt it suddenly grow colder.
Her eyelids trembled a moment, as though they would but could
not raise themselves. Then the pale lips moved, and Joyce's strain-
ing ears could just detect the whisper :
“In the churchyard in the hollow, Joyce.”
“Yes, darling,” Joyce whispered back. Her own aching heart
told her only too surely to what the words referred.
There fell five minutes of perfect, solemn stillness in the room.
Outside there sounded the rustle of the light breeze, the soft wash
of the sea on the pebbles.
Then Mab's faint voice whispered again :
“Always the sound of the sea, Joyce."
Joyce's heart was beating wildly. She bent her ear low, and
lower. But, for all its straining, it could only catch a few muttered,
incoherent sentences.
Once she distinguished the words. “ Dieppe-getting dark."
Then her thoughts flew back, with a sudden thrill of pain, to the
last seaside trip they had taken with their father before his death.
There came vividly before her one day, when she and Mab'had
gone wandering out alone on the shining wet sands at low tide in
the twilight, and their father, coming out in search of them, had
stood high on the beach calling them by name.
Evidently the same thought was in Mab's mind. A sweet smile
for a moment parted her lips, although her eyes still remained
closed.
“Coming, father,” she said, softly yet distinctly, as though an-
swering a sudden summons.
Then the smile slowly faded, the hand which Joyce held became
gradually icy-cold. There came a sigh—and Joyce knew that her
darling had gone to claim a better birthright for herself than any her
occult religion could have brought within reach of her hand.
CHAPTER XLII.
JOYCE felt herself frozen into silence and insensibility. Her
hopes were dead in her heart now, so likewise her fears. Nothing
else, in very truth, of agony, of despair, she felt the years could have


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
181
in store for her. She shrank from none of the sad duties which of
necessity devolved upon her in the absence of near friend or relative.
She herself chose Mab's last resting-place in the little churchyard,
and-followed her as sole mourner to her grave.
She scarcely realized her own identity as she went about her
mournful duties; she felt battered out of all likeness to herself.
Now you, Joyce Shenstone,” she found herself saying one day,
as she stood staring in the glass at the thin white face which called
itself her reflection, "what do you mean to do with yourself for the
next forty years? You'll never die, you know; you are made of,
cast-iron or marble, not flesh and blood, certainly."
Mrs. Bullen and the general arrived the day after the funeral.
Joyce's telegram, after numerous mischances, had overtaken them
in the north of Italy, and, though they had hastened their return as
much as possible, wings alone could have brought them in time to
say good-by to Mab.
The general was very silent, Mrs. Bullen as diffuse and hysteric
as she could be reasonably expected to be.
Between her fainting-fits and floods of tears, she told Joyce a
strange story which had met them on their way to Tretwick.
It was to the effect that a certain Irishman, by name Donovan,
in the act of stepping on board a Greenock trader just about to sail
for the north, had been shot dead by some one standing on the quay.
The murderer was supposed to be an agent of some secret political
society, and had not yet been arrested.
There could be no doubt of the identity of the man Donovan
with their old gardener's son.
Mrs. Bullen had plenty of tears to shed for Mab, but her tears
had never been known to clog her conversational powers, even in
the early days of her widowhood. Side by side her tears and her
gossip flowed together.
My darling daughter,” she sobbed, we were such compan-
ions! I never wanted for sympathy with Mab in the house. Oh,
and by-the-way, Joyce, only think! I met Sylvia Buckingham on
the platform at Newton Stewart station. She was in deep black.
She looks horribly sallow in black; years older than I do. Take
away her blues and her grays, and her good looks are gone. She
was just as kind and affectionate as ever; kissed me again and
again, and asked after everybody. She told me all about her broth-
er's awful death through a fall over the rocks here, just when he


182
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
66
was so kindly coming to see you and our darling Mab. Poor
George! I always liked him, although it was very naughty of him
to bring all the funny people he did to my house. I should have
liked to have introduced him to you, dear.” Here Mrs. Bullen
turned to her husband : He was an old admirer of mine, and such
a fine, handsome man."
The General raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
Mrs. Bullen went on:
“Sylvia is a most tender-hearted person. She spoke so kindly
of poor Ned, and was going, she told me, straight to Greenock to
save his poor father the long miserable journey. She said she
should arrange all about his funeral, and take possession—for his
parents, of course-of whatever property he might have about him.
Oh, dear, what a tragedy it all is ! It seems death, death, every-
where."
Here a flood of tears prevented, for a time, further speech.
Joyce's heart echoed her mother's last sentence."
“Death, death everywhere.”
Here was a third door of possible hope shut in her face by
Death's unmannerly hand.
CHAPTER XLIII.
The gardener's cottage at Overbury was an altogether ideal
place of abode. It might have been constructed of flowers and
creepers only, for all trace of brick or woodwork that met the eye.
Tea-roses framed the windows, and, trailing across the glass,
turned commonplace squares into picturesque diamond panes.
Honeysuckle defied the pruning-knife ; and, after covering side-
walls and roof, did its best to render ugly chimney-pots ornamental
as well as useful. Boxes on the ledges, filled with the glories of
the garden, contributed their quota of color and odor, while a lux-
uriant Virginian creeper, ' fading here into yellow, kindling there
into red,” threw its wild drapery heedlessly, lavishly, in all direc-
tions.
So much for the exterior. Within all was in sharp, gloomy
contrast to this blaze of beauty and color, for the only son lay in
his coffin in the room which had once been his bedroom, and the


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
183
old father and mother had wrung their hands, looked in each oth-
er's faces, and had sung their Nunc Dimittis, though to another
tune to that in which Simeon had sung it in the days of old.
"If he had but kept clear of those secret societies, our brave
strong boy might have been by our side now," was the burden of
their lamentations; and then they would fall to weeping again.
Naturally, in their eyes, Ned figured as a martyr. Of his identity
with the man for whose apprehension on suspicion of murder re-
wards had been offered, they knew nothing. Captain Bucking-
ham's death had only touched them remotely. They knew nothing
of him personally, only by repute, as the brother of a lady who had
shown, steady, persistent kindness to Kathleen during her short
married life, and who now, in their time of sorrow, seemed anxious
to extend a like benevolence to them.
They accepted her kindness humbly and gratefully. The old
father said a prayer for her as he knelt beside his son's open grave in
the little country church-yard ; the old mother sobbed out her won-
derment over such unexpected beneficence, with her head on Kath-
leen's shoulder.
“To think the lady should take such uncalled-for trouble,
for two old bodies like us that she never set eyes on," she moaned,
between her bursts of grief.
Kathleen, who had come from Lough Lea to attend her broth-
er's funeral, seemed to have no tears at command. She stood list-
ening, like one in a dream almost, saying never a word.
Her father had a word to say, though, when he came home
from the solemn service, with a wisp of crape round his hat, and a
face aged by a dozen years.
“I heard from Miss Buckingham this morning," he said; "she
sent Ned's purse, to which, she says, she has added a small amount
that perhaps you may like to spend in planting our boy's grave.
She asks permission to retain his old silver watch in memory of
him. What say you, mother?”
Kathleen gave a violent start, and a curious look flitted athwart
her face. She had not forgotten the promise she had given Ned as
to the destination of his watch if ill-fortune overtook him.
“What say I?” cried the mother. There is only one thing
to say: let the lady keep it and welcome. It's only the kindest of
kind hearts could ask for such a thing ; I love her for her love to our
boy."


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
185
66
Kathleen times without number. “Her marriage with Bryan is a
miserable one; he treats her badly, not a doubt; he's always away
from home, she says, now at one place, now at another. If she
can't stay here with us, I couldn't choose a better mistress for her
than Miss Buckingham; but I expect, after she has been about the
world a bit, she'll come back to the old home and settle down to
cheer us up at the end of our days."
So spoke the mother's hopes-short-lived hopes, however. They
died of the good-by Kathleen gave her—a long, strong, silent one-
when, after a letter from Miss Buckingham expressing her willing-
ness to accept her services, she set off for Greenock,
Sylvia welcomed Kathleen with more cordiality than she had
ever shown to Ned. Nothing could have suited her plans better at
the moment than this companionship of the girl under guise of
maid.
“She is a silly little prattler,” she thought, picturing to herself
the trifler of days gone by, not a girl whom the experiences of life
had embittered and hardened. Her vanity lays her at the mercy
of every one who cares to play upon it. She can only become dan-
gerous by accident; under my eye no such accident can arise. If
we want to make use of her as an unconscious instrument, she can
be made to do good service.”
So Kathleen received a hearty welcome to the Greenock hotel,
where Sylvia had taken up her quarters. With great apparent
candor, Miss Buckingham told Kathleen all she knew of her own
plans, implying that she expected her frankness to be repaid with a
similar confidence.
"I may go to France," she said, “or it may be to Vienna, or
perhaps back to New York. I can't tell in the least till I hear from
my friends across the water. Tell me, do you think you will like
long journeys and short rests for a time? And what has become
of your husband, and when do you expect to see him again ?”
To which Kathleen replied, with a similar candor, that long
journeys and short rests would suit her better than anything else
just then; that she felt she needed change of air and scene after
the terrible shock of her brother's death. As for Bryan, she had
not the remotest notion where he was. Of late, his absences from
home had been frequent and prolonged. She feared, but of course
she could not be sure, that he had joined some Fenian society. If
so, she knew his home would see but little of him, and as she hated


186
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
66
old Mrs. O'Shea and the dilapidated O'Shea farm, she did not care
if she never set eyes on the place again.
Sylvia looked long and steadily at the girl as she finished speak-
ing. Kathleen bore the gaze without flinching. Whatever sus-
picions might have arisen in Sylvia's mind, not a muscle of Kath-
leen's face gave substance to them.
On the day after her arrival at Greenock, Kathleen fell into her
maid's duties. Sylvia made the kindest of mistresses, putting Kath-
leen on a thoroughly friendly, confidential footing, and showing a
sympathetic curiosity as to the girl's private affairs, which might
have proved embarrassing to many in her class of life.
Not so with Kathleen. She reciprocated sympathy with an ap-
parently frank confidence, and opened her heart freely to her mis-
tress while she fulfilled the duties of the dressing-room. Every
question as to her husband and her married life she answered with
a candor scarcely to be expected in so newly-made a wife.
The truth of it is, ma'am,” she said, while her deft fingers
busied themselves with Sylvia's crape gowns or bonnets, “ Bryan
got tired of me within a week of our wedding-day. It's my belief
the O'Gorman girl has turned his head, and he'll be uncommonly
glad to be quit of me.”
For once, Sylvia's keen eye for character was baffled.
“ The matter lies in a nutshell,” she said to herself. “The girl
is jealous of some attentions her husband has been showing a
neighbor's daughter. A jealous woman is a dangerous woman
while the fit lasts, and it is just as well she should be here under
my eye, so that danger may be nipped in the bud.”
After Bryan and the “O'Gorman girl,” they passed in review
the members of the Shenstone family.
Kathleen shrugged her shoulders and drew her pretty mouth
down at its corners significantly when she spoke of Mrs. Shenstone
and Uncle Archie. Sylvia alluded to Joyce and Mab.
“One would scarcely believe they were sisters, they were so un-
like,” she said, feeling her way to Kathleen's likes or dislikes.
“ Miss Mab was all goodness and kindness, and all the world
loved her,” said the girl in reply; “but Miss Joyce was often hard
upon me-sometimes I hated her.”
As to the deaths of their respective brothers, neither mistress
nor maid were disposed to be so confidential.
" Ned knew he was playing with edged tools,” once Kathleen


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
187
said, when the matter had been lightly touched upon. And Sylvia
thought it wiser not to hunt the subject down.
While Kathleen's fingers and tongue were thus perpetually kept
in occupation, her eyes also had never so much as a spare moment.
Not a detail of Sylvia's daily life escaped them. Every square inch
of every cupboard or wardrobe, as well as every corner of every
trunk, was in due course laid bare to them.
Sylvia's morning visit to the post-office to fetch her letters was
the time when Kathleen's most energetic explorations of hiding-
places were carried on.
Within a week of her arrival at Greenock her work of investiga-
tion had answered its purpose, and had come to an end. Ned's old
silver watch, discovered alongside of Buckingham's gold one in a
small box within a trunk, lay in her hand, and the fac-simile watch,
given her by her father, had taken its place.
To secure two days' holiday from Miss Buckingham, under pre-
tence of seeing her father and mother before she set off her
travels with her mistress, was a comparatively easy task. The
watch, not a doubt, must now find its way to Joyce's hand. What
results might follow from its so finding its way, Kathleen had not
the remotest idea. Loyalty to her promise to her dead brother had
been the mainspring of her action in this matter, and had taught
her treachery toward one to whom, judged by her inadequate moral
code, she deemed that naught but treachery was due. Underlying
this thought was the conjecture that Joyce might find a meaning in
Ned's bequest which no one else could. It might be a necessary
link in a chain of evidence, of which Joyce held fragmentary portions.
Or, it might be the enigmatic answer to some question the young
lady had once put to Ned. In any case, she had done her part, she.
said to herself, as she laid the dead brother's watch beneath her
pillow at night, and closed her eyes to dream of the old bygone days
when she and Ned played childish games of ball in the little cottage
garden, or, later on in life, walked side by side in the gray-green
twilight meadows, building castles in the air, of which, alas, there
remained not one stone upon another now.


188
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
CHAPTER XLIV.
“UNCLE ARCHIE, rough weather is setting in, I can't leave
Mab alone in the wind and the hail," wrote Joyce, in response to
the old gentleman's entreaties that at once she would come to him
in Gloucestershire and make her home there, or anywhere else in
the world she might choose so long as it was in company with him
and Aunt Bell.
Uncle Archie rubbed his eyes over the letter. Was this Joyce,
the common-place, the clear-headed writing ? Had the mantle of
the dead sister fallen upon her? he asked himself, for, though the
bold, free hand was Joyce's, the diction was none of hers; it was
Mab's.
Off and on the old gentleman fussed a good deal that day-de-
clared that his shoes were beginning to pinch him again ; a state-
ment which set Aunt Bell's heart fluttering with the possibility that
the truce between him and his old enemy the gout had come to an
end.
She grew anxious and sympathetic immediately. “It was that
curry last night; I felt sure they had put cocoanut into it-I mean,"
she corrected herself, “ it's all that new boot-maker-I said from the
first those soles were too narrow."
Uncle Archie cut both sympathy and anxiety short by ordering
instant preparations for a journey to the North.
“If it's on crutches I must go to her, since she will not come to
me," he said, with decision.
And Aunt Bell, knowing better than to attempt a remonstrance,
set about the packing at once.
Just for once in her forty-five years, Mrs. Bullen sang a song to
the same tune as Uncle Archie.
“ You can't live on here for ever, Joyce," she reasoned, “and, if
you want to be quiet and not see a soul, you need only go down into
Gloucestershire and stay with Uncle Archie. You can be just as
wretched there as here, the only difference will be you'll have a few
more comforts about you."
And then she launched into a tirade against the little Scotch
watering-place, putting foremost among its shortcomings its lack of
a dressmaker, who could lay down the law for them concerning the
depth and the cut of their crape garments.


190
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
So the close, of each day saw her laying her head on her pillow
with the moan which sorrow and suffering have made common to
humanity, “How long, how long ?” and each day's beginning found
her sitting among the graves with the bitter cry on her lips,
“Would to Heaven you and I could change places, my darling.”
CHAPTER XLV.
SOMETIMES Joyce would lose count of time as she sat thus beside
Mab's grave, and the sun would be high in the heavens before she
would aro'ise herself to think of going back to the house. Mab's
grave was in the loneliest part of the lonely churchyard. No village
life ever strayed through the mossy paths. It was an island of si-
lence in what was not a very stirring sea at its best. Its gray
stone wall was completely hidden from view by some stunted yews
and an undergrowth of wild rose bushes. Through a break in this
tangled screen, Joyce could catch a glimpse of the wide heath
stretching away, to where the brown cliffs met the blue sky. The
sea and the beach lay out of sight a couple of hundred feet or so
below.
Once as she sat thus, her face turned toward the cliffs, her arm
thrown across the heather-heaped mound, her hat beside her in the
long grass, she saw, yet without seeing, a small, dark figure on the
edge of the cliffs, making a silhouette against the blue sky. Anon
it vanished. She was too much absorbed in her own thoughts to
notice by which path it had disappeared, how, leaving the cliff's
edge abruptly, it had followed the narrow sloping path which led
straight to the churchyard.
Ten minutes after a shadow fell upon the grass at her feet, and
a voice sounded in her ear, saying :
“Miss Joyce! Miss Joyce !”
She looked up to see Kathleen O'Shea—in deep black like her-
self-standing a yard or so on the other side of Mab's grave.
The voice was respectful, grave to solemnity. Joyce, however,
was not inclined to give it a welcome. When Kathleen might
have been of service to her she had held aloof; there was nothing
at the present moment to render her presence anything but an in-
trusion.


192
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“Miss Joyce," she cried, with a vehemence that proclaimed all
the Saxon in her dead, all the Celt rampant, “Ned did well to lie in
wait for that bad, black-hearted man, and speak his mind to him.
He did better when he fought him as they say he did, and thrust
him backward over the cliff. He would have done better still if he
had tossed his body out into the rough sea while he was about it,
instead of letting it be brought in here for Christian burial.”
Here she threw an angry glance toward the corner of the church-
yard where a big white stone marked Buckingham's resting-place.
Joyce looked up astonished. Was this the Kathleen whom not
so very long ago she would have summed up in her usual terse
fashion as being a playful as a kitten, merry as a bird, and with feel-
ings about as deep as a butterfly's ? "
She put her astonishment into questions.
“Why did you—why did Ned ever have anything to do with the
man, then, if you thought thus of him? Why did you not stay
quietly with us in England instead of rushing off in that foolish
fashion to marry a man who"
Once more she broke off hastily. She had no right, she felt, to
utter to this young wife the suspicions which filled her own mind as
to Bryan O'Shea's complicity in Fenian conspiracies with Captain
Buckingham.
A sudden change of expression passed over Kathleen's face.
She suddenly came round the grave and stood beside Joyce, laying
her hand on her arm.
“ Miss Joyce," she whispered, scarcely above her breath, **
you want to know why I married Bryan O'Shea ? Shall I tell you
the whole truth now from beginning to end?”
Then, without waiting for Joyce's reply, she went on hurriedly,
in the same low tone:
" It was because my heart was breaking-yes, breaking for news
of Mr. Ledyard—I did it. I said to myself one of those four men
know what has become of him-Ned, Captain Buckingham, Bryan,
or Maurice O'Shea. Ned I had tried to move, and could not. Cap-
tain Buckingham I knew was cruel and hard as death itself. Mau-
rice was such a liar that I could not believe him on his oath. But
Bryan—even if he would not tell me what I wanted to know for the
asking—I knew I could get secrets out if I married him, and gave
him plenty of whisky. There was nothing else in life for me to do.
I meant always to marry him on your wedding-day."
do


194
A DATELESS BARGAIN,
Then I should have been handed over to the police to be dealt with.
But all the same Ned would have been shot, and the man who shot
him would not have been handed over to the police.”
For a moment Joyce's face flushed with indignation.
“ It is monstrous-justice ought to be done. It is my duty, your
duty, to denounce this man as a murderer,” she cried, vehe-
mently.
• If we did, Miss Joyce, there's not a soul could be brought to
prove our words, and a good score at least who would swear he
was a hundred miles away when the deed was done. But all the
same, he'll suffer for it." Here there came a sudden gleam in the
girl's eyes. “ He's too sure a shot not to have work of this sort
given him again to do, and one day he'll get his death by it. But
not yet-no, and I don't want it to be yet.”
“ You want to try and forgive him first?" questioned Joyce, a
little doubtfully.
Kathleen laughed a bitter laugh.
" I try to forgive him! There's little enough of forgiveness he'll
get out of me, Miss Joyce. No; he shall suffer, and just exactly as
he made me suffer. The Red Right-hand of the League,' as they
call it, has 'removed' my brother; the Red Right-hand of the
League shall • remove' his."
“ Kathleen!"
Once more the two pale faces looked at each other. But the
face of one was that of a strong soul compelled to the transient
weakness of an inert submission; the face of the other, that of a
weak soul impelled to the transient strength of a purpose of re-
venge.
“Ah! and he loves that brother, Miss Joyce, just as I loved
mine. Weak, tipsy, and stupid though Maurice O'Shea is, Bryan
loves him, and—" She broke off abruptly. For another moment
there fell a pause. When Kathleen resumed it was in a more even
tone. “I want to tell you this morning, Miss Joyce, all about this
League. When you've heard it, you can make up your mind who
you'll tell it to.”
Joyce's heart began to beat wildly. After all, the girl had some-
thing to tell ! True, it might be something to lead them down a
blind alley straight to a blank wall again; or, possibly, might take
them by a circuitous road to a hidden grave; but, in any case, it
must be told, and must be listened to.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
195
.
“Tell me everything you know, from beginning to end-every-
thing,” she implored.
But Kathleen had a condition to impose.
“ Before I tell you one word, Miss Joyce, you must give me your
solemn, sacred promise that my name shall not be mentioned to
the police as an informer-no, nor to living soul!” she said, with
decision.
Joyce drew a long breath. A promise might prove an embar-
rassment. Yet she dared not throw difficulties in the way of the
girl's confidences.
“Tell me how you got this knowledge-how you found out
what you have to tell,” she asked, by way of gaining time for her-
self.
“ How I found out? Didn't I marry Bryan O'Shea on purpose
to find out ?" Kathleen answered, excitedly. He was fool enough
to think I married him because I loved him, but he found out his
mistake before the wedding-day was over. Then his love turned
to hate quick enough, and—” She broke off a moment, then re-
sumed. “Well, no matter. He thought he had frightened and
mastered me. He did not know how I used to hide and
creep
about
the house, and listen when he and Maurice were sitting up late and
talking over their work, thinking I was fast asleep up-stairs. I
never let a chance slip, not one, Miss Joyce. When Bryan used to
take too much whisky, he would let fall hints which I took good
care not to remind him of the next morning, but which were easy
enough to fit onto something else I had heard before."
Here Joyce interrupted her impatiently.
“ Tell me at once all you have to tell,” she said.
“ But I want your promise your solemn promise, Miss Joyce
that my name shall not be mentioned to living soul,” said Kathleen,
doggedly. Remember, if my name gets whispered about, I am
doomed.”
Joyce thought again.
“You must let me tell Uncle Archie, or how can I make use of
what you tell me? I will make him give me his word of honor that
your name shall not pass his lips. Will that do?”
For a moment Kathleen remained silent. Joyce's impatience
grew upon her.
“Come, Kathleen, do not keep me in suspense; you ought to
know you can trust my word, Uncle Archie's word_"
--


196
A DATELESS BARGAIA
Kathleen looked at her steadily.
“ Yes, I know I can trust you, Miss Joyce, and Mr. Shenstone,
too, but no one else."
• There will be no one else to trust. I give you my solemn
promise your name shall not be mentioned by either of us to living
soul. Now begin at the very beginning—tell me all about this
League—all about your troubles and Ned's, which, I suppose, began
with these miserable plots and conspiracies.”
Kathleen drew a long breath.
Mine began about three years ago, Miss Joyce, when I went
to stay with father's people at Lough Lea, and I first met Bryan
O'Shea. He was always fierce, and wild, and passionate, and half
frightened me into promising to marry him. I was glad enough to
get back home again, and would have forgotten all about my prom-
ise, only Ned wouldn't let me. Ned, Bryan, and Maurice had all
joined one of those dreadful secret societies at the same time. Bryan
was cruel and reckless, and did all that was wanted of him ruth-
lessly. He could turn the women and children out of their warm
beds into the cold fields in the dead of night, and beat the old men
nearly to death, particularly if he owed them a grudge for anything
that happened years ago.” She broke off a moment, then added :
“Ah, if those Fenian leaders, safe on the other side of the ocean,
only knew the number of small debts that are paid off under pre-
tence of patriotism, they wouldn't be so keen to set the Moonlighters
and Boycotters going.”
Joyce shuddered.
“Go on,” she said, again.
Ned was altogether as tender-hearted. He used to cry off a
lot of things that the O'Sheas volunteered for. Bryan and Maurice
went up in high favor with the heads of their society; Ned went
down. He and Bryan were soon in what they call different grades,
and Bryan made things very hard for Ned, because he took it into
his head he was preventing me keeping my promise to marry him.
At times, I think Ned was half desperate, and scarcely knew what
he was doing or saying."
Poor Ned! Poor Ned!”
“It was poor Ned when Captain Buckingham came on the
scene, Miss Joyce. He met him one day coming out of your house
in Eaton Square, and thought he would be useful on dark nights
for messages and that sort of thing, because he had no brogue
66


198
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
66
The girl's own vehemence compelled her to pause a moment.
Joyce said nothing. There was that in Kathleen's manner
which puzzled her and made speech a difficulty.
Kathleen went on again, rapidly as before.
“And as for deceit and lies-ah, I've matched her at that just
for once in a way! She thinks she's sending off to New York her
brother's watch and Ned's watch. It's one of the articles of the
League, that if a man dies in the work his watch is to be handed to
the Council, who will pass it on to a man willing to be sworn in to
take up the dead man's work. Well, she's welcome to her brother's
watch; it's little enough good it'll do to any man who gets it. But
as for Ned's"
Again the girl broke off, then turning suddenly to Joyce, asked
in a quieter tone:
And you'll tell all this to the police, Miss Joyce?”
“Undoubtedly, word for word.”
“Ah, they'll never form a timeless league again, as they used to
call it—in England, at any rate. The captain's dead—”
Where is Maurice O'Shea ? " interrupted Joyce.
“Don't know, Miss Joyce. The League will find him out safe
enough.”
“The League! The police, you mean."
Kathleen laughed.
“Ah, there are some who do their work better than the police;
but they'll be out in their reckoning for once in a way."
Joyce was troubled; bewildered also; some hidden meaning
seemed to lie behind Kathleen's words; she felt herself at a loss.
“Where is Bryan?" she asked, wondering whether the girl's
answer would let in a ray of light.
“I don't know, Miss Joyce. I dare say I shall soon enough
when he sends for me to join him somewhere in America– New
York, perhaps," answered Kathleen, in a bitter, careless tone.
"Sends for you! Could you live under the same roof with that
man? Surely you would not go ?”.
Kathleen's face grew set and rigid.
“Yes, I should go," she answered, slowly. “I wouldn't have
blood spilt on mother's doorstep. I shouldn't dare refuse to go, if
he sent for me: but New York would never see me.
There are
some who start for it, but never land.”
The last words were said in a tone so low, that they could not


200
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
“Miss Joyce, there's one thing I should like to say to you before
I go. You must not think Mr. Ledyard knew anything of all this,
or that he ever said a word to me that any gentleman might not
have said to any poor girl.”
The nearest approach to a smile of which Joyce was capable in
those sad days, parted her lips, but still she said nothing.
“It all began as it ended, with my own folly,” Kathleen went on,
as though she were bent on making a full confession and leaving no
dregs of suspicion in Joyce's mind. “I was going home from the
village one day-Overbury, I mean—in the winter twilight, and a
rough farmer's lad overtook me, and would persist in following and
annoying me. Mr. Ledyard happened to be coming from the house
and met us. He soon sent the man off, scolded me for being out
so late, turned back, and saw me safe home. It was after that I
used to say to myself: 'If I had only been a lady he might have
married me;' and then it was I took to hating you. Oh! don't
you see, Miss Joyce? Pray, pray believe me!" Here she clasped
her hands together imploringly. “It was only my own vanity and
foolishness, nothing else.”
Joyce's ghost of a smile vanished. She looked Kathleen full in
the face with clear, solemn eyes.
“Why take the trouble to tell me all this?" she asked, quietly.
“Do you think if you told me a story exactly the reverse I should
believe one syllable of it? Don't you see-don't you understand
that nothing any one could say would ever shake my faith in his
truth and honor?”
She seemed to be addressing Kathleen. In reality she felt as
though she were saying the words to Frank himself.
While they had been talking, the early brightness of the morn-
ing had waned ; a fresh breeze had risen, black masses of clouds
came rolling up from the sea.
Kathleen had grown weather-wise during her brief sojourn on
the Irish coast; she picked up Joyce's hat from the ground and
handed it to her.
“There's a storm coming, Miss Joyce,” she said ; "you ought to
make haste home."
But Joyce did not stir. Mechanically she put on the hat, saying
never a word. Her brains ached with the load of thought Kathleen
had put into them. Little by little the facts of that terrible twen-
tieth of December began to piece themselves into the story of plot


202
A DATELESS BARGAIN,
message to her, which he had not dared to put into words while he
lived his uncertain life, with Death for ever dogging his heels ?
With trembling fingers she pressed the spring of the outer case.
No; there was nothing there save the marks of daily wear and tear.
Then she opened the inner lid which covered the mechanism.
The wind swept past with a mighty rush; the rain came down
in a great drenching shower; but Joyce stood still, heeding neither
wind nor rain, for a brief sentence, which fixed her eye, written in
blue pencil within the inner lid.
It ran thus :
“ Latitude N. 62. 32.
Longitude W.7. 10.".
CHAPTER XLVI.
"UNCLE ARCHIE, you may take off your overcoat while you
eat; but you'll have to put it on directly after. I am going to
Greenock to-night, and I'm sure you won't let me go alone,” said
Joyce to the old gentleman, as she kissed her welcome to him and
Aunt Bell.
Uncle Archie arrived at Tretwick on the day that Kathleen had
her interview with Joyce in the churchyard. He and Kathleen
must have passed each other on the road.
"To Greenock!” repeated Aunt Bell. My dear, do you
know your uncle was sixty-five last week, and can't be expected to
fly about the country like a bird ?"
The old gentleman turned upon her sharply.
Well, what if I did have a birthday last week," he said, rasp-
ingly, “ I'm none the worse for it this week, am I? And if Joyce
and I choose to start on a journey to the North Pole, whose busi-
ness is it so much as our own, I should like to know."
Aunt Bell was silenced at once. Mrs. Bullen's exclamations
died unspoken. She contented herself with taking possession of
Aunt Bell and her wraps, and escorting her up-stairs to her room.
Uncle Archie looked grimly after the retreating figures of the
ladies. Then he turned to Joyce.
“Now that the women are gone, Joyce, we can talk in peace:
or rather, you can, for I see you have something to tell me.”
He paused a moment. Years ago he had got into the habit of
60


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
205
she told you. She was always a good hand at fibbing. Her dash
of Irish blood is quite enough to make her do her romancing easily.”
Joyce shook her head.
“There was no romancing in what she told me this morning,"
she said ; " if you had seen her you could not have doubted she was
speaking the truth.”
“I wish I had seen her. You should have kept her here till I
came. It is all so wildly incoherent–inexplicable. Not so far as
her story of the League is concerned—that may be true enough, in
outline that is—but her own conduct. She vows vengeance against
her husband, yet goes a fine roundabout way to get it. This pledge
to secrecy, toomI can't understand it !”
“She may be afraid of the consequences if her name should be
mentioned.”
“Yet her conduct in telling the story is not that of a timid
woman.”
“A strong purpose makes cowards brave sometimes. Ah-h_"
and here Joyce broke off abruptly, as though struck by a sudden
thought.
“What is it?" queried Uncle Archie, turning sharply round
and facing her.
“ No, I will have nothing to do with it,” she said, speaking slowly,
half to herself. “I see now why she came telling me this story, and
who she wants to have the credit of it."
“ Who! what !”
“She wants the League to think that Maurice O'Shea, Bryan's
brother, has turned informer, and then they'll take his life as they
took Ned's and Bryan will suffer as she has suffered. No, I will
have nothing to do with it."
“Upon my word, Joyce, I don't think you need be squeamish
on the matter. They're a set of scoundrels, every man of them,
and so long as they get paid out one way or another I really don't
care two straws who helps them into their coffins."
“I will have nothing to do with it, Uncle Archie. I can't tell
you why, but all desire for vengeance has died out of my
heart now.
I couldn't take it, even if it were offered to my hand.”
Uncle Archie looked at her till there came a mist before his eyes.
" Don't get too angelic, Joyce," he said, huskily, “or I shall ex-
pect you'll get to heaven before I shall."
Angelic! If you could have seen into my heart at one time.


206
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
you would have feared I should never get to heaven at all! Oh,
Uncle Archie!” she added, tremulously, as her thoughts flew back
to the hour of agony she had spent on her knees beside Mab's
bed. " It was only lack of opportunity saved me. Nothing
else,”
“ Joyce, Joyce,” said the old gentleman, deprecatingly, “ don't
speak like that of yourself. It pains me.”
“ It's true, Uncle Archie. And what is more, Kathleen's little
scheme of vengeance is weak beside those I have contrived and exe-
cuted in imagination. But all those feelings are dead now.” She
broke off a moment, then resumed, in a low uncertain tone: “I
didn't sit all those hours beside Mab's grave, with Captain Bucking-
ham's tomb facing me, for nothing. I've learned to look at it with-
out a curse rising to my lips. I feel now the sins of those men
might have been mine if"
But here Uncle Archie laid his finger on her lips.
“That'll do, Joyce, you shake my nerves when you talk in that
fashion. Let those men be. As Kathleen said, Bryan will get his
dues safe enough some day, and we'll leave him to get them his
own way, while we think of something else.” Here he laid his
hand upon the watch which lay before him, with the map, on the
table. “Now, so far as I understand you, your idea is to work out
this clue—if clue it be-entirely unaided by the police. Now my
idea is to telegraph at once to Morton, and set other brains-brains
used to that sort of work-going on the same scent.”
“Telegraph then, Uncle Archie, set their brains going. Let
Morton go with us if you like. I'll see he doesn't do any harm this
time,” said Joyce, with a bitter recollection of her hour of waiting
on the bridge, and her lost chance. But, all the same, I go to
Greenock to-night.”
“ Very well, then Morton shall have a telegram before night.
Now about Greenock. What are we to do when we get there?"
“Do ! there is only one thing to do there. Get a boat at once.
You'll know best what sort of a boat it ought to be.”
• No doubt I shall. And then-"
“ Then we'll start at once for-for this place.”
“Well.”
“And-and-find out everything that—that is to be found out."
Uncle Archie did not reply. He leaned his head thoughtfully
upon his hand. His brains were clouded. Joyce's plan, wild and
60
66


208
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
ing hours of prose, ways and means have to be consulted. Joyce
and Uncle Archie, having arrived at Greenock, drew as it were a
long breath, opened their eyes wide, and took the measure of the
road they had to go. A full purse will carry most things before it,
but it can not quite lift old Time off its feet. It secured a good
strong craft-in other words, a small coasting steamer-for the
two, in which to undertake their somewhat visionary journey to-
wards the Arctic Circle, an experienced captain for it, and a com-
petent crew of some ten or twelve men; but it could not compress
these achievements into the twenty-four hours which Joyce's eager
heart would have deemed a liberal allowance of time for them ; so a
week from the day on which they had left Tretwick found them still
at a Greenock hotel, with preparations all but, yet not finally, com-
plete.
To Joyce's fancy that week at Greenock seemed to stand alone
in the current of her life, isolated from the miserable past with its
crush of sorrow and strain of suspense, isolated also from the
dreaded future with its possible solutions of direful mysteries. It
had a lull and a quiet all its own. It was like the brief breathing
space on a battle-field, when the sullen roar of the enemy's artillery
momentarily silenced, the general in commands asks himself,
“Now, is the day over, or will they open fire again ?"
Every day of that week of waiting and preparation, the feeling
seemed to grow upon them that now they were nearing the end of
their long, painful suspense; a feeling which Uncle Archie character-
istically put under a bushel by exhibiting an extra amount of cyni-
cal irritability, and which Joyce, naturally enough, hugged to her
heart, saying to herself, with every breath she drew.
“By so much nearer the end; one way or other it will soon be
all over for us now."
She could not, with an amount of trying, have realized the
picture of their little boat cruising fruitlessly in and out among
those northern islands day after day, till stress of wind or weather
beat them off into some sheltered harbor. It was of no use for
Morton, when, in quick response to Uncle Archie's telegram, he
made his appearance at the hotel, to shrug his shoulders, turn up
his solemn eyes, and say, in an altogether superior manner,
Of
course I'm willing enough, sir, to go cruising with you and the
young lady anywhere you wish, but if you call a memorandum of
that sort a clew, then I've followed my profession for five-and-
66


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
211
technical knowledge on these matters a little astonishing to Uncle
Archie.
“ You see, sir,” he had said, by way of explanation, “my profes-
sion gives a man a wonderful facility for acquiring knowledge wher-
ever it is to be had. An orderly brain, and keen powers of observa-
tion, I take it, are the first requisites necessary for learning the
A B C of any calling. Now unless a man in our profession pos-
sesses both these admirable qualities, I assure you he is nowhere at
all, sir-nowhere at all.”
“ Then there must be a great many of you in that delightful posi-
tion," Uncle Archie had replied, snappishly, for Morton's platitudes
never failed to irritate him.
Morton had objected strongly to the name of the steamer, Frea.
" It's a name of ill-omen," he had bluntly informed the captain,
a bluff, good-tempered Dane, who spoke excellent English. “Now,
if those English or Scotch sailors you are engaging to make up your
crew knew a little of ancient mythology they'd refuse to sail in
her.”
Upon which the captain had laughed heartily, and had replied:
“Yes, but you see they don't know a scrap of it; nor do I either,
for the matter of that. We Danes know nothing of your English
superstitions. All I know is, my little craft had her first nail struck
on a Friday; she was christened on a Friday, and so we called her
Frea, who is the godmother of all the Fridays. And there's not a
Dane on board of her who'll give the matter a second thought."
“Not that I'm superstitious,” Morton had continued. “But I
was born in Cardiff, where they think a great deal of such things.
Now, if any man in Cardiff -"
Here Uncle Archie had interrupted him irritably.
“My dear sir," he had said, “we are in London, not in St. Peters-
burg—I mean, we are in Greenock, not in Cardiff. Be so good as
to leave your superstitions in the place of your nativity.”
Naturally enough the Frea saw a good deal of Uncle Archie
and Joyce during that week of waiting. Not a day but what they
might have been seen making their way along the bustling quay.
More than ever crowded and bustling it seemed to be on this partic-
ular afternoon that Joyce dispatched her telegram to Kathleen. A
big steamer was getting under weigh, its deck was thronged with
passengers, who were waving their adieus to cheery or sorrowful
friends and relatives lingering yet on the pier. Its prow was turned


212
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
southward, and Joyce concluded from sundry expressions that caught
her ear that New York was its destination.
“One would think,” said Uncle Archie, snappishly, “from the
fuss they're making, and the pocket-handkerchiefs they are flourish-
ing in our faces, that America was the bourne whence no traveler
returns, instead of a country which sends back to us our rogues and
vagabonds—with one or two native specimens added to the number
-almost as fast as it gets them.”
Joyce made no reply. Her attention had been attracted by two
female figures on board the steamer, whose outlines seemed strangely
familiar to her.
They were standing near the wheel, one was tall and of good
carriage, the other was short and slight. Both were dressed in
neat, plain mourning, with heavy crape veils. The neatness, how-
ever, of the one dress was the neatness of a lady, the neatness of
the other dress that of a maid.
As the steamer with one final pant and plunge put distance be-
tween itself and the quay, the taller of the two, suddenly turning,
faced the shore, raising her veil.
The shifting September sun, playing hide-and-seek among the
crowd on the deck, made plain to Joyce the pale face, fair hair, and
satirical mouth of Sylvia Buckingham. Joyce's heart failed her lest
the small figure beside Sylvia might be Kathleen.
There could scarcely be a doubt but what Sylvia had seen Joyce
as she stood on the quay, for although the slight smile which parted
her lips and showed her small teeth could scarcely be construed
into one of friendly recognition, it had yet a word of meaning.
"See,” it seemed to say: "you and I have had more than one
tussle together, who do you think has got the best of it now?”
A letter received the next morning from old Donovan gave
substance to Joyce's misgivings. He wrote, with many apologies,
in reply to Miss Shenstone's telegram, that Kathleen had left home
about ten days previously, having undertaken the duties of traveling-
maid to a lady who had shown him and his family great kindness
in their time of sorrow-a Miss Buckingham. He thought the
lady's name was not unknown to Miss Shenstone. It was a bitter
blow to him that Kathleen could not rest contented in her own
home. He had received a letter from her only that morning, stat-
ing that she was on the point of starting for America. When he
would hear from her again he did not know.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
213
“I am now bereaved of both my children,” concluded the old
man, in simple scriptural fashion ; “and I am bereaved."
CHAPTER XLVIII.
JOYCE's fancy had drawn in somber colors many a dismal pict-
ure of the events of that memorable night of the 20th of December.
Could it have painted truly, in detail, as well as in outline, the inte-
rior of the little outbuilding of the house in Brewer's Court, this is
what it would have shown her; Frank lying on the red-brick floor,
gagged, his feet bound together, his hands tied tightly behind him;
a lickering lantern, on a level with his head, throwing fitful light on
his gray, unconscious features; a man bending over him, with face
only by one degree less pallid and rigid.
That man was Ned Donovan. He was trying with rapid fingers
to unloose the knots of the gag which covered Frank's mouth and
nostrils. His breath was coming thick and fast; he was muttering
to himself in short sentences.
“ If they had told me to stand up against him in fair fight I could
have done it, but in cold blood-no; and I don't forget he was try-
ing to protect her”
He succeeded in loosing the tightly-tied bandage, but some min-
utes passed before the faintest sign of animation showed in the pros-
trate man's face. First the eyelids quivered, then lifted ; and the
eyes turned upon Ned with a vacant, bewildered look in them.
“ Lift my head,” he said, faintly, and then the eyes closed again.
There was nothing in that bare, little out-house-not so much
as a brick-bat—that could be converted into a substitute for a pillow.
So the Irishman knelt on one knee on the floor, raising Frank's head
and shoulders by supporting them against the other knee.
Then Frank's eyes opened again, and there came a question in
a stronger tone.
Ned, why in Heaven's name am I tied in this way–what does
it all mean?"
Ned's answer came in a low, constrained voice.
" It means," he replied, “that you've walked into the lions' den,
and they won't let you walk out of it, if they have their way.”
“Who are 'they'? Loose my arms, man, and let me see if !


216
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
Ned tugged at his knots for a moment in silence. When he
spoke next it was in short, brusque tones.
“You don't see, sir; you don't understand," he said, still with
his face bent low and his fingers busy. “ I've had a certain work
given me to do, and my life must go for it if it's left undone.”
Frank missed the man's meaning no longer.
There fell a minute's silence. A minute which held for Frank
in its sixty seconds, the rush, the whirl, the turmoil of a life-
time.
Out of the darkness of the bare little room seemed suddenly to
flash Joyce's bright, beautiful face; over the tumult in his heart
seemed to sound her clear happy voice saying, as he had last
heard it :
“This is the open sesame. Joyce, my dear, I think you are the
happiest girl alive!"
When he next spoke his voice had changed.
“Well," he said, in odd, quiet tones “are you going to do your
work?"
There came no reply from Ned.
“I can't prevent you, you know. I'm at your mercy, tied here
hand and foot at your feet-and I'm not going to whine and cry
for my life, I can tell you,” Frank went on.
Ned's answer was the sudden release of Frank's hands.
“ The feet won't take so long to unstrap, sir," he said, “ they've
not put quite so much strength in there. I daresay 'they were
more afraid of your hands than your legs. They knew you'd be a
better hand at fighting than running away."
Whether that was their reason or - not, certain it was that
Frank's feet were set free with but scanty expenditure of labor.
At first it was hard for him to stand upright; every muscle in
his body seemed bruised and aching. His head whirled; he felt
sick and giddy. He leaned against the bare wall for a moment.
When he spoke again, it was with an effort.
“Now you must tell me everything, Donovan, so that I may see
exactly your danger and mine, for I take it we stand much upon
the same footing now," he said.
* Ay," answered Ned, bitterly. • There isn't much of a chance
left for either of us."
** Where are those men now ?”
“ Bryan O'Shea is waiting at the corner of the court till I come
.


A DATELESS BARGAIN,
219
the police and make known the whole thing from beginning to
end."
“Exactly; what else on earth is there to be done?”
And-what-becomes-of-me?”
He put long pauses between his words, doubling his meaning by
his slow emphasis.
“What becomes of you?" repeated Frank. " Why, of course,
you'd be put under the protection of the police till those scoundrels
were disposed of. You'd be safe enough then, I suppose."
Ned laughed a short, bitter laugh.
“You forget that those men and I represent not only a small
branch association, but a big League pledged to--well, no matter
about that. What I want you to understand, and what you don't
seem able to understand, is that the moment your face is seen alive,
here or anywhere else, my life is gone. As I stand here before you,
I am a condemned man, and your appearance alive anywhere is the
signal for my sentence to be executed. You may put yourself under
the protection of the police, well and good, but there's no twenty
bodies of police can protect me.
Do
you
understand now, sir?"
“Ned, I am not likely to play the part of a cur or a coward."
And the tone in which Frank said this showed that at last Ned's
words held their full of meaning for him. Then, for a minute, the
two men stood staring into each other's faces silently, the flicker
from the lantern showing one bitter, haggard look shared between
them.
Frank was the first to speak.
“Whatever you propose I shall feel bound in honor to accede to.
I won't take my life at the price of yours," he said, huskily.
Ned stood silent. Frank went on :
“I will remain in hiding where and for how long you please,
until—that is—you can get away into some place of safety. Only
one proviso I make; you must take a message from me to Miss
Shenstone explaining matters. I can't have her dragged in for any
of this misery."
Ned still did not speak; so Frank went on again :
"America, of course, would be no refuge for you; nor France,
nor Belgium"
“ No, nor any corner of the earth, so far as I can see,” broke in
the Irishman, impetuously. “Heavens, that I should have sold
myself into this state of bondage !”


220
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
And then in his wrath he lifted up his voice and cursed the day
that he was born; cursed his Irish blood, which had found its kith
and kin among traitors and cowards ; cursed the tyranny of wealth
and rank which called such a race of traitors and cowards into ex•
istence.
Frank subsided into coolness before the tumult.
“Don't let yourself go in that way, for Heaven's sake. Let's
take counsel together and see what can be done for the best,” he
said, quietly.
But, think as they would, everything seemed for the worst, noth-
ing for the best. They passed in review every corner of Europe
where there would be a likelihood for a forsworn Fenian to dodge
his destiny. Ned shook his head over it all.
"If I could be tossed out of the clouds into the heart of Nor-
way, or even on the coast,” he said, “ I might be safe enough there;
it's a little out of the track of Fenianism, but the thing is how am I
to get there ? Not to-night, nor to-morrow night, should I cross
London alive with the work I have had dealt out to me to do. The
Society gives a man his work for each day, and, if they haven't per-
fect faith in that man, they appoint two men to look after him and
see that it is done. When work slackens, as it may before long,
then I can begin to think of my hiding-place. But at the present
moment, it seems to me, the only thing to do is to hide you, not me,
till my chance comes round.”
The happy wedding-day, of which the morrow held the promise,
seemed suddenly to disappear from Frank's sight into the dim dis-
tance. He tried to keep his head steady.
“As I told you a moment ago, I am prepared to go into hiding
where and for how long you please, on the one condition I have
named. So far as I can see, your safest plan will be to turn sailor so
soon as you can get a fair chance of escape, and live upon the ocean."
“ Yes,” answered Ned, thoughtfully, “ so long as I kept clear of
the Atlantic highway, or the Australian steamers, I should be right
enough. The life would suit me-"
“It would be a glorious life," broke in Frank, “and, after the
bondage you've lived in the last two or three years, I should think
you'd hail it with delight. If circumstances hadn't made me a law-
yer, I should have been a sailor myself.”
A long, low whistle once more broke in upon their talk. It was
sounded on a lower note than before.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
221
Ned made no attempt to answer it.
“What does that mean?" asked Frank.
It means warning. I am not to stir till he signals again.”
“The scoundrel! I'd like to signal him. Well, so far as I can
see, it only remains now to arrange my hiding-place, the where and
how long it is to last. Thank Heaven I have some money with
me-ah, I suppose those men didn't rob me of my purse as a finish
to their kind treatment?”
With an eagerness he had never before evinced on the matter of
pounds or pennies, he ransacked his pockets, and, thankfully enough,
came upon a roll of bank notes, with which, in view of the morrow's
necessities, he had provided himself, and for safety had stuffed into
his pocket-book over-night, as he had left his rooms to attend Mrs.
Shenstone's evening party.
Ned eyed them.
" They wouldn't touch notes—they're too wary,” he said ; " but
if it had been gold no doubt it would have been appropriated for
patriotic purposes.'
“Patriotic humbug! But I tell you what, Ned, you shall have
half of whatever I've got here, so that we may each have an equal
chance of fulfilling our share of our bargain. There's nothing like
solid hard cash to tide a man over difficulties."
He knelt on the floor beside the lantern, so as to count over the
store of “solid hard cash " he had to divide.
Ned stood looking at him, still thoughtfully turning over in his
mind the ways and means that remained to him for redeeming his
forfeited life.
“Whaling up in the North would suit me better than anything
else in life," he presently said, with an energy which showed that,
for all his love-lornness and wretched bond-service, the love of
adventure and a reckless freedom was strong as ever in his heart.
Frank looked up sharply from his bank-notes.
“That reminds me of the trip I took about four years ago, when
I broke down with hard reading. I took passage in a whaler from
Dundee, and sailed out beyond the Faroes. A better hiding-place
from Fenian Leagues, or any phase of civilized (or brutalized) hu-
manity couldn't be found than the Faroes. For all practical pur-
poses they are as far off from England as Australia."
Ned's face brightened.
“ It would be giving me a chance, sir, if you'd manage to get


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
223
and said: "Sir, this is Light Island, latitude 62.32 north; longitude
7.10 west.' I can hear her now. It impressed the latitude and
longitude of the place in my memory; but you had better write it
down--there may be a hundred or more Light Islands up in the
North, for anything I know to the contrary."
Ned produced a scrap of paper from his pocket, but pencil he
had none.
Frank had a blue-lead pencil at command, but he objected to
the paper.
"You'll lose that," he said, eyeing it dubiously; "or perhaps
light a pipe with it."
“Never fear, sir."
“But I do fear. A meeting-place like this ought to be tattooed
on your arm or leg, if we had means at command. Have you a
watch?”
Ned was not likely to forget he had a watch, over which he had
sworn his impetuous oath of allegiance to a League that set time at
defiance.
He produced it in its old-fashioned case, with the hands station-
ary at the memorable hour that his bond-service had begun.
Frank handed him his pencil and superintended the writing in
the inner lid of the latitude and longitude of Light Island.
“It's a special Providence put that place into your head, sir,”
Ned said, his enthusiasm mounting high and higher. “It'll be easy
enough for you to get away unnoticed, before the hue-and-cry is
after you. When once you're missed, there's not a town or
village in England could hide you; but out there on the Faroes I
take it you'll be safe enough from newspapers or the detectives.”
Frank was in no mood to play the echo to the Irishman's enthu-
siasm.
“Yes, it's a dismal enough look-out,” he said, gloomily, " but
I'm not going to shirk my share of the compact. I can get across
London on my legs before dawn, take the first train to the North,
be at Dundee before night, and on board a whaler or any other
boat I can catch before the hue-and-cry, as you call it, has had
time to begin. Once at Light Island, I remain there until you get
free from your bondage and take my place. This is my share of
the bargain, isn't it?"
“ It is, sir. I wish I could make it lighter for you.”
“ Never mind about that. I am grateful enough to you that I
set up


228
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
vendors. But he dared not run the risk of getting a cup for him-
self. Then the snow began to fall. His teeth chattered, and he
shrank from the northeaster in a way that seemed to him unac-
countable.
When he reached the Great Northern station, an early train was
about starting for the North. He had only just time to get his
ticket and swing himself into it. It was a workman's train, and he
chose a well-filled compartment, wisely reasoning that in a crowd
he would be less likely to attract attention. One of his fellow-trav-
elers chanced to be a British workman of "advanced ” democratic
opinions. These he proceeded to air for the benefit of those about
him. More than once he appealed to Frank for confirmation-or
the reverse-of his political notions. Frank's replies must have
been given in odd, incoherent tones, for the British workman turned
to his companions and openly expressed his opinion of the gentle-
man's condition. Then he addressed Frank again, advising him in
kind, fatherly fashion to get home as soon as possible and "sleep
it off.”
He little knew, good man, how gratefully Frank would have
welcomed the power to lie down in some quiet corner, and in
heavy sleep toss into oblivion the whole hideous drama of over-
night.
Three times he had to change trains on his way to Dundee. At
each of these stoppages he contrived to get refreshments for himself,
of which he stood greatly in need ; without which, indeed, he could
scarcely have arrived at his journey's end.
About nine o'clock at night he reached Dundee, with head burn-
ing, limbs aching, and thoughts, if possible, more chaotic than be-
fore, with his long day of rapid traveling. The bustle of the town
bewildered him. The quay seemed one mass of moving heads,
dancing lights, deep shadows, ringing bells. To his fancy every one
seemed staring at him, and he could not divest himself of the feeling
that presently some one would come up, lay a hand upon his shoul-
der, and tell him that, in spite of all the fine precautions he had
taken, every one knew who he was. He slunk away from the busy
thoroughfares, engaged a night's lodging in a quiet street leading
off the quay, borrowed a razor, and, with a more unsteady hand
than he had ever in his life owned to before, shaved off his mustache
and whiskers.
Then he went out once more, trying his hardest to collect his
1


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
231
dressed, yellow-haired maidens, rough fisher-folk, strong-handed,
sea-roving Norsemen.
Frank recalled with a pang one happy half-hour when he and
Joyce had been discussing their wedding-trip together, and she had
said, in her usual gay, frank manner, “ Now, if it had only been
July instead of December, how delightful it would have been to
have packed a knapsack, and made tracks,' as the Americans say,
for the land of the midnight sun!” And he had promised her
that the very first summer holiday they took together should be in
that delightful region. Here was he, well on his way to the north-
ern latitudes, but it was scarcely in the holiday spirit he had con-
templated.
The more he thought over things, the more discontented he
grew with them. Why had he not arranged matters more defi-
nitely with Ned, and when he as good as gave his word not to send
letter or message to Joyce, why had he not stipulated that she
should be informed of his hiding-place, so as to be able to send let-
ter or message to him?
Looked back upon now, his midnight interview with Ned
seemed so hurried and confused that everything that ought to have
been done had been left undone. It would have lightened the
gloom of this dreary exile--would have turned it by comparison
into a holiday-could he have looked forward to a line from Joyce
telling him how things went with her, what sort of a stand she
might make against Buckingham's insolence and her mother's fool-
ishness.
For foremost among his anxieties, naturally enough, was the
thought that this man was left free now to act according to the dic-
tates of his audacity.
Frank had no wish to underrate Joyce's courage or strength of
will, but he knew how limited her knowledge of the world was, and
what feeble weapons after all a woman's courage and strength of
will were when opposed to the unscrupulous villainy of a man like
Buckingham. Uncle Archie at his best was a doughty antagonist,
he readily enough admitted ; but, unfortunately, the old gentle-
man's irritable temper and his frequent attacks of gout showed him
more often at his worst than at his best. A fact, no doubt, of
which Buckingham would take due cognizance.
• There'll be a heavy day of reckoning for him—the scoundrel-
when once I get a chance," Frank muttered, shading his eyes with


232
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
his hand, and momentarily shutting out the bright seascape of
dancing-waves and winter sky.
A sailor touched his arm, and offered him a glass wherewith to
get his first glimpse of the Faroes. Frank put it on one side with-
out a word of thanks. It seemed to him he would see enough and
to spare of the Faroes before he had done with them. There they
were, straight in front of him, treeless, sunless, their soft coloring
and bold, fantastic outlines looming dimly out of a shrouding veil of
clinging silver mist. He looked across the roughly dashing waters
of the Sound, which rolled between him and Light Island, where
the tall, round light-tower showed like some ghastly monument to
the dead, and for the first time the whisperings of mutinous discon---
tent with his own ethics made themselves heard in his heart.
“ Now,” he said to himself, " in the name of common sense, can
it be expected of me to hide myself from my fellow-creatures like
some escaped felon dodging the hangman just to save the life of a
man who, no doubt in the eyes of the law, has forfeited it a hun-
dred times over?”
Common sense held her peace. Possibly the matter was a little
outside her domain; but honor and gratitude joined voices together,
and in chorus preached his duty to him. They did it simply.
enough, too, just repeating his own promise over again in his ear;
“I shall be simply a dead man, Ned, till you give the word "; and
the question was settled at once.
CHAPTER L.
THUS, when the hue-and-cry after the missing man was at its
loudest; when Ned, like some hunted hare, was so sore beset with
actual pressing dangers that he dared not trust himself to give a
thought to Joyce's by one degree less urgent necessity; when Mab
was striving her hardest to attain the seer's gift; and Joyce was
looking longingly at widow's weeds and irrevocable tombstones;
Frank, on his sea-bleached rock, was fighting with might and main
to preserve a fortitude, which, in the circumstances, fell little short
of the heroic.
Although it was veritable midwinter, and King Fog reigned
supreme, it was a matter for congratulation that by comparison
with the general run of winters in these northern latitudes it was


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
233
mild in the extreme. Of necessity, Frank's life among these uncult-
ured, though kindly, islanders promised to be a rough one, and
climate became of proportionate importance.
Light Island, by comparison with Stromoe —the island on
which Thorshavn, the capital, is built-was a desert. Its popula-
tion, all told, was but a feeble company, consisting of the old light-
house-keeper, and his children of a second and third generation.
Frank's intercourse with the people was at first naturally much
restricted. He knew scarcely a word of Danish; they had but lit-
tle English at command. The few idioms they knew had come
down to them, strongly flavored with Scotch, from the old light-
house-keeper's Scotch wife. She, poor soul! had been gathered to
her fathers in the preceding year, and had been borne over-sea for
burial in a Faroe whaling-boat to one of the Shetland Isles, where
lay her dead kith and kin. Old Christian, however, the deaf mute,
lived on to trim the lamps of the light-tower; a task which had
been assigned to him by the Lag-Thing, or Faroe Parliament, some
twenty years previously. Not once in all those twenty years had he
been known, through illness or any other cause, to fail in his trust.
Day after day did the old man make his way up the rough ladder
into the round tower, there to watch out the long hours of the
dreary winter's night, or the short golden ones of the summer night,
which, in truth, had not much of night in them after all.
This round white tower, whose light fell athwart the sunken
rock, was built on the very edge of a jutting headland, which stood
nearly two thousand feet, without break or so much as an outstand-
ing ledge, above the sea. A plain, straight, awful fall of rock it
showed from above or below.
The light, like the tower, was of primitive construction, and was
fed by the whale-oil, which came so readily to hand in these islands.
Of late years, however, since the toppling over of the pinnacle of the
Monk Rock into the sea, it had been supplemented by a somewhat
modern contrivance-a metallic reflector, which threw a parallel
beam of light on the sunken rock. An apparatus--an arrangement
of glass prisms—had been erected on a beacon on this sunken rock.
This caught the beam of light and refracted it, giving the appear-
ance of a flame springing up from the rock itself.
On his first arrival Frank threw himself heartily, if a little spas-
modically, into the pursuits of the islanders. A man must do some-
thing with his days, even though they may consist of but eight hours


234
A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
at their longest. So in turn he fished, he trapped sea-fowl, or
mended boats or nets.
After a time, however, this light-tower saw more of him than
did any one of the grass-covered huts. He speedily made the cal-
culation that two thousand feet of rocky height with forty feet of
tower superadded, could command a noble view of the sweep of
ocean which separated Faroe from the British Isles, and conse-
quently of every northward-bound vessel.
Henceforward the old deaf mute became almost his sole com-
panion, if, that is, a deaf mute who can neither read nor write can
be dignified by such a title."
Three low cottages, roofed with growing turf and huddled on a
sheltered, inland ridge of rock, sufficed for the little colony.
The good, kindly souls accepted without question Frank's state.
ment, that he had made their island a place of assignation with a
friend, who would shortly cross over from England or Scotland.
They made him heartily welcome to one of their huts, set apart
for him the warmest corner by their peat-fire, and treated him to the
best of the frugal diet they had at command-rye-bread, whale-meat,
wind-dried sea-fowl—disdaining so much as to look at the English
coin he ventured to tender in acknowledgment.
Among its scanty furniture the one room of the light-tower num-
bered an ancient telescope. It did little more than double the range
of the naked eye; but that even was a gain not to be despised. The
old man, as he came heavily up the ladder with his oil-can, would
find Frank, with a sigh, putting on one side the rickety old thing for
the night; and, long before the sullen red Aush of the winter's dawn
gave him warning that the night-watch was ended, Frank would
come springing up the ladder, two steps at a time, eager to take
his post once more.
It made a pathetic picture: that drowsy old man nodding in his
wicker-chair over his knitting-pins, with dumb lips, and ears locked
against every sound, noisy or gentle, jubilant or sad; and that eager
young one, with senses strung to highest pitch by an expectancy so
intense that it was near akin to agony.
Facing the old man was another wicker-chair, high-backed like
his own, and, like his own, blackened with age and the smoke from
the peat-fire. On it lay a pair of rusty knitting-pins and a ball of
sheep's wool. That was the chair whereon the old wife had sat,
keeping him company through the long night-watches, and that was
up


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
235
the last scrap of work wherewith her thin, feeble fingers had busied
themselves. To this chair the old man's eyes would lift dreamily
at times. In it, no doubt, he read a page of past history, or, per-
haps, a line or two of blessed hope for a future meeting--who could
say?
Facing the young man was the sweep of ocean without a sail
and sky without a cloud-a great impassable barrier between him
and all he held most precious in life—with no tender memories of
the past written upon it, nor any golden promise for the future, so
far as he could see—a wide, desolate blank, which pained his eye-
balls to scan, and made his brain sick with its staring emptiness.
That was on bright, keen, frosty days. But when the northeast
wind set in, and brought with it rolling masses of formless vapor,
which compacted into one solid wall of fog, everything was changed.
A great, wonderful hush seemed to fall alike on sea and land; it
was as if some mighty power had held up its finger to all creation,
imposing a sudden, awful silence. Even the rush and swirl of the
waves at the base of the rock sounded muffled and far away; the
of the gair-fowl came distant and stifled.
High up in that round tower, cut off from the land, shut away
from a glimpse even of sea or sky, dense dun fog everywhere, with
never a book within reach, nor soul with whom to exchange a
thought, it was no wonder if Frank at times found it difficult to real-
ize his own identity with that eager, energetic young man who had
looked upon life as a big wrestling-ground wherein muscle and vigor
were bound to carry the day.
“Great heavens!” he cried aloud once, in the extremity of his
impatience, “a man might as well be shut up alive in a tomb at
once and be done with it."
It mattered after all very little whether he cried loud or whether
he cried low. That old deaf mute, with the knitting-pins in his
hands, never moved a muscle nor bent the ear toward him.
It seemed as if Heaven itself had grown equally hard of hear-
ing; as if that great dense wall of fog were playing the part of
sounding-board to him, throwing back his cries in his teeth.
cry


236
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
CHAPTER LI.
66
It was just about the time that Uncle Archie and Joyce, looking
into each other's blank faces, confessed themselves to be at their
wits' end, that Frank received his first message from Ned.
Frank might have confessed himself in much the same predica-
ment as Uncle Archie, for he had been putting to himself one or
two uncomfortable questions, to which his wits were incapable of
supplying adequate answers. Such for instance as Supposing
mischance of some sort has overtaken Ned and he is dead, without
revealing my hiding-place, how on earth am I to become aware of
the fact? How long, in common reason, may it be expected of me
to remain here waiting for some sign of his existence?"
It was easy enough to recall Ned's vehement promise that he
would provide effectually for such an emergency; it was a more
difficult task to feel the matter set at rest by it. Even Ned's hur-
ried line only succeeded for a time in allaying apprehension. The
note was brought by the little fishing-boat, which, in fair weather,
coasted between the islands, bringing from Thorshavn cheeses and
tinned meats in return for the sheep's-wool stockings knitted by old
Christian's daughters.
Frank, with eager fingers, tore open the envelope. Perhaps it
might contain a line from Joyce, he thought. A chill of disappoint-
ment fell upon him when he saw only the few following lines from
Ned:
“Am hard pressed, dogged, and watched night and day-dare
not attempt flight. Give me time.”
Second thoughts, however, told him it was better than no mes-
sage at all, and he tried to get his utmost of hope out of the few
brief words.
It may be conjectured, nevertheless, that he would have read
the lines with other eyes could he have known how Ned had failed
in his share of the compact; how Joyce's terrible suspense remained
unlifted; how his own brief note to her, instead of finding its way
to her hand, had been held in the flame of a candle till it was
burned to ashes, and the ashes even carefully scattered to the four
winds of heaven.
Of all this, however, he was necessarily ignorant, and his trust
in the Irishman's sense of honor remained unshaken. It seemed to


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
237
him an altogether unworthy thing to harbor a suspicion against a
man who had saved his life at the risk of his own, without exacting
so much as bond or promise in return.
Old Christian's eldest son, who had acted messenger, eyed him
as he read the letter.
“ Your friend stays long," he said, in his composite idiom.
Frank put as cheerful a look on his face as he could command;
and tried to make the man understand that everything was all right,
and that people could not always keep their appointments to the
day and hour.
The man trailed his fowler's net along the rock, and, on the
strength of the cheerful look on Frank's face, forthwith invited him
to join in a fowling expedition.
• The wind was favorable--a little sport would make the time
pass more swiftly,” he intimated.
So Frank threw himself heartily on the man for companionship
that day, and in his newly-recovered buoyancy of spirit he equaled
every one of the well-seasoned fowler's daring exploits over crag
and chasm, in the teeth of a strong gale which, blowing shoreward,
swept in the sea-fowl by dozens into the net. The exercise height-
ened his spirits. He began to read a world of meaning in Ned's
few hurried lines.
“The man was heartily sick of his slavery,” he said to himself,
"not a doubt he would soon make a desperate effort and gain his
freedom."
Then what a hey-day of gladness he and Joyce would keep
together-why, the happy festival on the eve of what was to have
been his wedding-day would be a funeral feast by comparison !
But this buoyancy of spirit was after all of short duration. A
few days of sea-fowling, alternated with cod-fishing, saw the end of
it. Back to the solitude of the lighthouse tower and the weary
gazing through the telescope Frank betook himself once more.
“ It's more than flesh and blood can bear," he would groan
sometimes, feeling the young eager life within him well-nigh annihi-
lated by the silence, the immensity of outside creation ; of the vast
rolling ocean, the empty sky, the bare, brown, awful rocks.
A solitude can be a prison or a paradise, according to the point
of view from which it is regarded. To Ned, hunted, harassed, with
limited ambitions, keen young love for life, above all, for a life of
purely physical freedom, it doubtless would have figured in the


238
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
latter guise. He would have gloried in the reckless daring of
rough seas and rougher winds which the life of the Faroese whale-
fisher involved. He would have outdone the boldest of the fowlers
in their desperate clambering adown tremendous precipices in the
teeth of a driving gale. If he could have reached this haven, the
chances were he would have settled down a veritable Viking among
Vikings, and, in the smiles of some yellow-haired, blue-eyed maiden,
have learned to forget his first ill-starred passion.
Frank’s notion of a paradise necessarily included higher ideals.
Judged by these, the island solitude took but low rank. Quite apart
from the special circumstances of his life at that period, there was
in his nature but little that was congenial to solitude and inaction.
He had said to Ned, and had meant it, that if circumstances had
not made him a lawyer, he would have chosen to be a sailor. That
might be true, but the chances were that if he could not have seen
straight ahead of him a prospect of stepping on board a flagship, he
and salt water would speedily have parted company. Quite apart
from his true, passionate love for Joyce, and his bitter disappoint-
ment at the postponement of his happiness, the very energy with
which he had worked the lines of his life, rendered him intolerant of
any interruption to it. A pause in his career at any moment would
have been an agony to him. Silence, solitude, were for him syno-
nyms for vacuity and extinction. To attempt to find a voice in either
would have seemed to him something equivalent to putting his ear
to a coffin and listening for speech from the dead man within.
So, gloomy and despondent, he set himself to bear his banish-
ment as best he could, drawing largely upon his stores of fortitude
to keep up even the appearance of equanimity before his kindly en-
tertainers,
Old Christian's son tried in vain to tempt him on a second fowl-
ing expedition.
Frank looked down the black chasm of shelving rocks, shook his
head, and turned his back on it. In the gloomy despondency which
had succeeded the transient buoyancy caused by Ned's letter, he did
not dare to test the strength of his grip upon good luck. He shrank
from physical danger in a way he had never in his whole life known
himself to shrink before.
Everything was against him; good luck was a thing of the
past,” he said to himself now, as day after day went by and there
came not another word from Ned.
66


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
239
Once, in the old happy time gone by, he had dared, as only the
young and happy cán dare, to trifle with and defer his happiness ;
now Fate, in her irony, had turned the tables on him, had brought
his cup of happiness close to his lips only to snatch it away with the
taunt : “See, I have taken a leaf out of your own book, and it's a
part that suits me uncommonly well."
It seemed to him that he and Joyce in this world were never to
meet again. Death and mischance were forever stalking abroad
on the lookout for targets for their darts. He had put himself in
their way, and, so to speak, had flung defiance to them. Come,
stand straight and bow your head,” he could fancy they said to him
now.
It was scarcely to be wondered at if, in the extremity of his
misery, he asked himself a few more questions--such as: “Suppos-
ing, throught his enforced inaction of his, Buckingham and a few
other scoundrels contrived to elude justice, might he not be held
morally responsible for the fact ?” Or to put it another way:
“Would not the guilt of a broken implied promise be less than that
involved in leaving at large acknowledged traitors and criminals ?”
Then when his conscience gave a sturdy. "no" to sophistry, it
shifted its ground and put its questions in another form, thus :
'“Would it of necessity be a breach of his implied word of honor to
communicate with the police at London in some roundabout fash-
ion, putting them on the scent of the timeless League ? Would
Ned's chances of escape of necessity be endangered? Could not
the police be made to understand that Buckingham and the O'Sheas
were first to be secured, and that Ned was in no sort a willing ac-
complice in their plots ? "
But to these queries his legal knowledge, aided by his practical
common-sense, gave a succession of most decisive negatives. What
evidence had he to offer that would inculpate the three other crimi-
nals and leave Donovan unimpeached ? Did they not all four, so
far as regarded treasonable conspiracy, stand upon the same foot-
ing? What right had he to suppose that Ned, no matter how hard
pressed he might be, would turn informer, and save his life to the
hazard of his comrades' lives? Did not his previous knowledge of
the man point to a diametrically opposite conclusion ? Much as
Donovan had owned he loved his own life, he had been willing to
put it in jeopardy for one to whom he was in no sense bound by ties
either of kindred or friendship.


242
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
boats came in, but there came never a sign of Ned nor message
from him.
Rough weather set in. Strong gales blew persistently from the
northeast; the good wives on Light Island began to speculate on
the chances of a whaling expedition, which had started from a
neighboring island in the spring and had not yet returned. This,
and the possible hazard the incoming mail steamer to Thorshavn
might run, were the staple topic of talk among the islanders.
Frank's fears, though they lay all in another direction, were not
one whit less gloomy. He naturally enough concluded that Ned,
on the eve of sailing from Greenock, had, through untoward circum-
stances, been compelled to delay his departure. It was therefore
more than likely that he was on the ocean highway now.
It was
highly improbable that he would be able to secure a passage in a
well-built, sea-worthy steamer ; now what might be the fate of a
small fishing-smack or trading vessel in the sea that was running
then?
A whole train of gloomy possibilities suggested themselves.
Back again trooped the string of uncomfortable questions he thought
he had set at rest forever by the sturdy negatives he had dealt
them. The ignobleness of the whole thing seemed to stifle him,
He to be waiting quietly and patiently on this barren ridge of rock,
with the best days of his life slipping past, when perhaps, if the real
circumstances of the case were laid bare to him, he would see that
quietness and patience savored less of the heroic than of the despica-
ble! The mere thought was torture to him.
The bond of honor which held him must have been a tough one.
It was strained to its utmost limit during those days of despondency
and bad weather,
Then the fog set in. Light Island became once more roofed
and walled with the dense ocean mist. Old Christian began wheez-
ing and coughing a good deal; his eldest son took to sharing the
lighthouse duties with him, turn and turn about.
Frank volunteered his services. He had naturally acquired
some Danish idioms during his long stay on the island; the younger
Christian had picked up some of his English. Their talk conse-
stly was fairly intelligible to each other.
een with you some time now; you know me and
st me," Frank said. “Occupation is the first of
ve caught your fish for you; and caught your


244
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
once more,
from the ocean : brought it in, swept it out again, and brought it in
Never since Frank had set foot on the island had he
felt himself so stified and oppressed by the fog. It was like being
packed in a box filled with feathers. He began to ask all sorts of
questions as to the possible risks boats would run on the open sea
that night. Were shipwrecks of frequent occurrence on the coast ?
How far out would the beacon on the Monk Rock be seen ?
Would it lose half its radiance, or would the fog quench it alto-
gether?
He got, in reply to his questions, a longer list of casualities than
he expected. One man counted on the fingers of his hands no less
than eight shipwrecks he could remember within sight of the Faroes
in less than half that number of years. Another began the narra-
tion, in glowing language, of a fog and wind-storm he could recall,
when the beacon on the Monk Rock had not been visible a hun-
dred yards out, and a big ship had struck upon the sunken pin-
nacle, and all hands had perished.
Frank, of necessity, lost many of the details of the terrible inci-
dent through his ignorance of the Danish tongue; but he under-
stood enough to set him shivering, and to send him questioning the
younger Christian as to what means of fog-signaling (if any) the
Faroes had at command.
The man's reply was to the effect that none, so far as he knew,
had ever been in use on the islands; that an imperfect method of
signaling, such as horn-blowing or gun-firing on the beach, would
be as likely to do harm as good, the fog, it was well-known, fre-
quently making the sound to appear to come from an opposite di-
rection. But he had unbounded faith in the beacon. The fog, too,
might lift before night-why not? One could only hope for the
best. He had lived through fog and wind in his little fishing-
smack in the open sea before now. Others might have equal good
luck, why not?
But Frank had, somehow, in these days, lost his faith in good
luck. He found it far easier to say to himself, “ This is a direful
day; there's ill-luck in that wind and fog for me, as well as for the
poor souls who have to face it,” than to say a prayer for those at
sea, and turn in an hour or so earlier to shorten the dismal black
hours of the night, as he had done many a time of late.
In the morning he had contrived, by keeping close under the
shelter of the overhanging rocks, to get down to the beach, and


A DA TELESS BARGAIN.
245
66
had come away awe-stricken with the sense of the incapacity of
man when once the wild forces of Nature, uncurbed and unbridled,
are let loose on him. Toward evening, however, although the fog
had thinned somewhat, going down to the beach had become an
impossibility. The sea had come rushing up the thoroughfares
that led down to the coast, and showed beneath the windows of the
little huts an angry torrent of white foam. The path over the
rocks to the light-tower still stood high and dry, but Frank noticed
that young Christian equipped himself in his waterproof overalls ſor
the night-watch a full two hours earlier than usual, and that a good-
sized basket of provisions was packed for him to take with him.
It was not difficult to understand that he was facing the possibility
of being cut off for a time from the little colony. Frank was on the
alert to accompany him without delay.
It will be my turn on duty to-morrow," he said to the man.
“I had better take my chance of getting to the tower while I can.”
So with lanterns and provisions the two men set off for the dis-
mal night-watch, old Christian, from his fireside corner, nodding a
sleepy approval to them between his fits of wheezing.
The pent-up coldness of the lighthouse seemed to meet and
strike them on cheek and lip as they entered. Naturally, the light
was their first thought. That attended to, they wrapped their rugs
and cloaks about them, and made as big a fire as due regard to the
quantity of peat fuel stored would allow.
Young Christian stroked his straw-colored beard, and made one
or two monosyllabic exclamations, to which Frank replied by brief
nods. Then the man lighted a pipe, drew a chair into a warm cor-
ner, crossed his legs, and indulged either in a brief snooze, or in
meditation of a somnolent character.
As for Frank, chair, pipe, or meditation was alike impossible to
him. Had the room been long enough to admit a backward and
forward march, the chances were he would have got through close
upon thirty miles that night. Young Christian suggested to him
once that, as it would be his turn on duty to-morrow night, it would
be as well for him to get as much rest as he could that night.
rank scouted the idea.
Even a brief half-hour of sleep seemed to him an impossibility
with that uproar of furious wind and wave without, and that tur-
moil of hideous apprehension within.
Every blast of roaring wind that beat against their tower, every


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
247
“They may be near enough for us to fire a line into them with
one of your fowling-pieces, and so get a rope from them. We may
do something with a rope," cried Frank, making his way rapidly
down the ladder-staircase into the room below, where lamps, string,
and fowling-pieces were stored.
Young Christian followed him.
“That gun was fired far out at sea," he said.
“The fog muffles sound," said Frank, busy lighting the strongest
hand-lamp they had in store.
“It muffles sound, and also makes it seem to come from another
quarter. Now, would you say that gun came from north, south,
east, or west?" said the other.
“ They'll fire again—we shall tell better next time," answered
Frank, opening the door and making his way out upon the rock,
lamp in hand.
But, for all the use it was, he might just as well have left the
lamp behind him. A dense wall of fog barred them in; over the
darkness came the roaring of the northeaster, bringing with it the
rush and swirl of the waters which swamped the thoroughfares
running inland.
At the peril of their lives they ran along the edge of the rock, in
the teeth of the driving gale. They fired fowling-piece after fowl-
ing-piece into the black fog, hoping for an answering gun to show
that their signals were heard. But, though they waited out there
in the cutting blast with straining ears for an hour or more, never
an answering gun came athwart the racket of wind and wave.
“ Heaven help them, whoever they are," said Frank, firing his
last shot into the air, “they are beyond our help now.”
CHAPTER LV.
Out on the broad Atlantic, the little ship Frea had done brave
battle with the tempest. She had got well away from the Scotch
coast, had steamed past the Shetland Isles, and was almost in sight
of the Faroes, when the storm had broken forth in its full fury. It
had snapped the mast as though it were a willow wand, torn its one
sail into ribbons, and swept it away like a handful of dust.
The little vessel had lumbered heavily from side to side, rolling
like a log in the deep troughs of the sea.


248
A DATELESS BARGAIN.
3
Uncle Archie grew apprehensive.
“It's her way of doing things; she's like some people, you know
-takes life heavily, but she's none the less to be relied on,” said the
captain, cheerily, jealous for the honor of his little craft.
But later on in the day as the gale, instead of abating, steadily
increased in strength, he grew less cheery, and his voice was only
heard giving short, sharp orders to his crew.
Once, toward midnight, Uncle Archie thought he heard the
words “driven out of our course—we must go wherever the wind
takes us now," but the deafening turmoil wind and wave kept up
prevented his being certain.
Toward daybreak matters grew worse. The sky was wild, the
rain came down in buckets. Big seas broke over the deck, rushing
down the hatchway into the cabin where Joyce had been bidden to
remain. The lifeboat hanging in the davits was swept away, and,
worst fate of all, the skylight of the engine-room was smashed at
the same moment by the fury of the blast.
After this all was consternation, though, thanks to the good sea-
manship of the captain and crew, there was no confusion. The
engineer came up reporting that the fires were out, and that they
were up to their middle in water below; another man rushed for-
ward crying that the ship was filling through the openings in the
deck.
The signal-gun was at once fired, in case help was to be had
from some passing vessel. Then there came the hurried order to
man the remaining boat. Joyce heard her name called desperately
by Uncle Archie, and, rushing up from the cabin, found herself
caught in some one's arms and lifted into the boat where some
four or five sailors were already seated. Uncle Archie and Morton
took their places beside her, the boat was lowered rapidly though
cautiously, the remainder of the crew leaped in from the mizzen
chains, followed last of all by the captain.
All was hurry, confusion, and bewilderment to Joyce. From the
time that the order to man the boat had been given, to the time
when the men, with their oars, pressed the boat off from the sides
of the sinking steamer, only about five minutes had elapsed. In
that five minutes they had been nearer death than ever they had
been in their lives before.
They realized this as, carried away on the crest of a mountainous
wave, they turned to give a farewell look to the battered steamer.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
249
She lay on her side now; the black line of her hull showed for one
moment between the masses of madly-dashing waves; the next the
black line was altogether gone, the funnel only showing dark be-
tween the white, foaming spray. Another big wave carried the little
boat onward; and when they lifted their eyes next not a vestige of
the Frea was to be seen.
After gratitude for their own present safety, came the anxious
thought, if the big boat were unable to live through the gale, what
about the little boat ?
In good truth their danger was not fanciful. Out there in the
open sea they had not the fog that begirt the Faroes—that began
where the waters of the Gulf Stream met the colder waters of the
ocean-but it was pitch dark; there were neither stars nor moon,
the wind was furious, and every moment the big seas sweeping
down upon them threatened to engulf them.
Without excellent seamanship the little boat could not have lived
in that sea for twenty minutes. But excellent seamanship they had.
The captain had a cool, clear head, every one of the sailors was an
“old salt,” and knew well enough what he was about.
The captain took his place at the helm, giving his orders dis-
tinctly. The men were to row in spells, and those who did not row
were to bale out the water, which threatened every moment to
swamp them. This was by no means light work; only one baler
had been thrown into the boat on starting, and hats and caps had
to be called into requisition. It was bitterly cold, the wind was
piercing, hands and arms speedily grew benumbed and chill. After
all, the rowing seemed the lighter work of the two. Morton worked
away at the baling briskly and bravely, rolling up his shirt-sleeves
to the elbow, making a scarlet pocket-handkerchief do duty for his
fur cap, and earning such high encomiums from the captain that
the worthy man began to think that, after all, he had mistaken his
vocation, and would have made a better sailor than detective. Poor
old Uncle Archie did his best, but his limbs were stiff, and it was
quickly evident that his task told
upon
him.
“Some one must keep a lookout for the big waves with the
white crests,” said the captain, looking at the old man. So he vol-
unteered for the duty, sitting back to back with the others, and
Joyce, taking from his hand the baler he had in use, possibly found
the work lighter than he had done.
So they tossed about in the dark, at the mercy of wind and


A DATELESS BARGAINARGAIN.
253
.
But Frank scarcely heard him for the tumult his own thoughts
kept up within, a tumult which one simple question had started and
kept going
“Now, supposing that Ned, on his way here, was drowned in
the storm of last night, am I to wait on, trusting he has kept his
promise to provide for that emergency? Or may I consider that I
have fulfilled every claim that honor or gratitude can have upon me,
and return to my friends ?”
It was a complex question. He had at one time been quick in
answering questions in a word, at cutting all sorts of knots with a
single touch. But here was a knot that defied alike fingers or knife.
Second thoughts suggested that perhaps, after all, it was a ques-
tion he had no right to ask, and, when he fell to considering upon
what grounds he had started it, he found they were unsubstantial
enough. His mind was restless and ill at ease, he had heard a sig-
nal-gun fired in the height of the storm; on this slight foundation
he had built a fabric sky-high. Ned was, of necessity, in that par-
ticular boat; Ned, of necessity, had been drowned, with every living
soul on board. There was, evidently, nothing in reason to warrant
such a conclusion.
With something of a groan he helped to run the boat in and pull
it up on the beach. Then he offered to assist young Christian with
his shattered palings and sheep-folds. Hard, incessant work, for
that day at least, he felt he must have. To sit still with folded
hands meant mental torture of the worst kind. Perhaps, while his
hands were busy, his brain might clear.
With brief intervals for food the two men worked hard till close
upon sundown.
Then another mood fell upon Frank; he grew
restless, distracted again, threw his carpentering tools down in a
heap, strapped his seal-cap under his chin, and went wading through
the receding waters down to the beach once more.
Why he went he could not have said, he felt too perturbed in
mind to reason on this or any matter. His brain felt all on fire, his
nerves unstrung. The anxiety and suspense of the past nine months
were beginning to tell upon him physically as well as mentally, the
grip of the terrors of overnight was on him still.
The wind had ceased entirely now; the sea, with many a 'sullen
roar, was settling down to its usual wash and ceaseless lapping, at
- the base of the mighty headland on which the Light Tower was
built. The fog was nothing more than a thin veil of silver mist,


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
261
the party approached. Young Christian, and one or two others
came out to meet them.
“You did not tell me,” he said, in his mixed Danish, wagging
his yellow beard at Frank, “ that the friend you were waiting for
was a woman."
Then he welcomed the strangers heartily, entered into friendly
talk with his compatriots, and, with the help of the women, a plen-
tiful though simple meal was soon set before the weary travelers.
At meal-time they discussed the question of sleeping arrange-
ments. How could they make room for so many within the small
compass of their huts? Naturally the Light Tower suggested itself.
" It will be my last night on duty," said Frank.
“Some one, no
doubt, will keep me company through the watch."
And Uncle Archie and Joyce, feeling, in spite of their fatigue,
what an impossibility sleep would be until confidences had been
exchanged, hailed with delight the prospect of an eight or ten hours'
quietude.
etering So, in the little room which had been prison-house, or catacomb,
to Frank through so many dreary months, those three sat up
through the night, talking and listening by turns, making each oth-
er's hearts ache over again, bringing tears to each other's eyes,
words of pity to each other's lips.
Once Joyce bowed her head on the arm of the old wife's wicker-
chair, and her tears fell in a shower on the rusty knitting-pins which
lay beside it, as Frank told the story of the miserable night when he
lay, tied hand and foot, at Ned's mercy. He would fain have
glossed over this part of his narrative, but Uncle Archie would not
have it.
“Go on,” he said, “ tell us everything. Let her cry; it will do
her good. She has been dry-eyed for many a day past."
On parts of her story, Joyce touched but lightly. She dared not
test her powers of self-control by going through the last day of
Mab's illness, nor Frank's, by giving in detail the history of Captain
Buckingham's persecution. By-and-by, Frank would have much to
hear, not a doubt.
But once, in spite of her reticence, Frank sprang to his feet in
overwhelming indignation and anger, as she told simply, without
comment, her own and Uncle Archie's interview with Ned, and how
that, through all those long months of suspense, the Irishman had
not given them so much as a word of hope.


A DATELESS BARGAIN.
263
have an answer ready to every question that presents itself. We
rush in and talk, talk, talk, where angels would veil their faces and
weep in silence.”
Possibly Frank, like Joyce, had not watched out long hours in
solitude for nothing.
“Ay," said Uncle Archie, solemnly, looking up from a paragraph
he was reading, with misty eyes, a prayer for mercy for ourselves,
a cry of pity for the whole human race, these are the only words
that come fitly from our lips.”
The paragraph he had been reading appeared under the heading
of “ News from New York," and related how a young girl, in the
act of landing at midnight from a Greenock steamer, had taken a
false step, been precipitated into the harbor, and had been drowned,
in spite of efforts made to rescue her.
The name of the girl was Kathleen O'Shea.
ito
THE END.


人大
​