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Tous les autres exemplaires originaux sont filmte en commenpant par la premiere page qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par la darnlAre page qui comporte une telle empreinte. ofiche ig "CON- "END"), Un das symboles suivants appara?tra sur la dernlAre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole -^ signifie "A SUIVRE ", le symbole ▼ signifie "FIN ". ned at arge to be filmed er, left to mes as itrate the Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmis A des taux da rMuction diff6rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Atre reproduit en un seul clichA, il est filmA A partir de Tangle supArieur gauche, de gauche h droite, et de haut an bas, en prenant le nombre d'images nAcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mAthoda. 1 2 3 4 5 6 N POPULAR NOVELS. By ICay Agnes Fleming. I.— GUY EARLSCOUBT'S WIFE. II.— A WONDERFUL WOMAN. III.— A TERRIBLE SECRET. IV.— NORRIXE'S REVENOK v.- A MAD MARRLAGE. " Hn. FlemlnK'n ntorica are Browing mora and mora popu- lar every (lay. Thi'lr dclinuntionri of clmrnctar, lifc-Uko conversatlonx, llnKhog of wit, ooo- ■tnntly vnryliw bccikh, nnd deeply In- tenwtlng plotn, combine to plaoo their author in the very first ntiik of Modem Noveliata" AH pabUihed onUorm with thia Tolome. Frioa fl.TS each, and aBut/rtt by mall, on noeipt of ivioa, by O. Vr. OARLETON Sn CO.« Now York. 'GUY NORINE'S REVENGE, AND SIR NOEL'S HEIR. BT MAY AGNES FLEMING, AUTiiuR or "ouY earlscourt's wife," "a wonderful woman," "a terrible secret," "a mad marriage," etc. *&. V: \ , /o^3V?'»^ NEW YORK: G. W. Carleton & Co., PublisherSy LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO., MDCCCLXXV. ^'"■^ar-tg,- 4-TZ Copyright, O. W. CARI.ETON a CO., I87S- John K. Thow & Son, Printkrii, aoj-aij Kast 12111 St., Nkw Vokk. II II I\ V VII VII I> > X XI XII xr X XV XVI XVII xi: x: XX XXI XXII ' ^ \ I CONTENTS. :o: NORINE'S RKVENGE. L'HAPTKR. r\r,m. I.— Two Ulack Kyes and their Work 7 II.— A Wise Man's Folly 18 III. — Mr. Laurence Thorndyke 35 IV. — The lawyer's Warning 42 V.—" I will l)e your Wife " 55 VI.— Before the Wedding 69 VII. — The Gathering Storm 78 VIII.— Fled 94 IX.—" Mrs. Laurence " 102 X.—" A Fool's Paradise " 109 X I. — Gone 12a XII.— The Truth 131 XIII. — Mr. Liston's Story 142 XIV. — A Dark Compact 150 XV.—" A Fashionable Wedding " 1 59 XVI. — " His name is Laurence Tliorndyke " 167 XVII.— A Letter from Paris 178 XVItL— After Four Years 185 XIX. — "Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad ".. 196 XX. — Norine's Revenge 211 XXI. — "The .mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small 215 XXII. — "The way of the Transgressor is hard." 225 XXIII. — "Jenny Kissed me." 231 ■n "5*i; wmm VI CONTENTS. SIR NOEL'S HEIR. CHAPTER. i-ACB. I.— Sir Noel's Deathbed 243 II. — Captain Everard 252 III.—" Little May " 262 IV. — Mrs. Wcymorc 272 V. — A Journey to London 283 VI.— Guy 2S8 VH.— 'ol. Jocyln 298 VIII.— Lady Th'ctford's liall 307 ^ IX. — (iuy Legard 317 X. — Asking in Marriage 325 XI. — Cn the Wedding eve 334 XII. — Mrs. Weymore's Story 346 XIII. — "Tliere is many a slip " 354 XIV.— Parted 363 XV. — After Five Years 369 XVI. — At Sorrento 373 XVII.— At Home 376 A DAKK CONSriRACY 379 FOR BETTER FOR WORSE 393 ^"^ NORINE'S REVENGE. CHAPTER I. TWO BLACK EYES AND THEIR WORK. |HE early express train from Montreal to Port- land, Maine, was crowded. Mr. Richard Gilbert, lawyer, of New York, entering five minutes before starting time, found just one seat unoccupied near the door. A crusty old farmer held the upper half, and moved grumpily toward the window, under protest, as Mr. Gilbert took the place. The month was March, the morning snowy and blowy, slushy and sleety, as it is in the nature of Canadian March mornings to be. The sharp sleet lashed the glass, people shivered in multitudinous wraps, lifted purple noses, over- twisted woolen clouds and looked forlorn and miserable. And Mr. Gilbert, congratulating himself inwardly on having secured a seat by the stove, opened the damp Montreal True Witness, and settled himself comfortably to read. He turned to the leading article, read three lines, and never finished it from that day to this. For the door opened, a howl of March wind, a rush of March rain whirled in, and lifting his eyes, Mr. Richard Gilbert saw in the doorway a new passenger. 8 NOR /NETS REVENGE. The new passenger was a young lady, and the young lady was the prettiest young lady, Mr. Gilbctt thought, in that first moment, he had ever seen. She was tall, she was slim, she was dark, she had long loose, curly black hair, falling to her waist, z .J two big, bright, black, Canadian eyes, as lovely eyes as the wide earth holds. She stood there in the doorway, faltering, frightened, irresolute, a very picture — the color coming and going in the youthful, sensitive face, the luminous brown eyes glancing like the eyes of a startled bird. She stood there, laden with bundles, bandboxes, and reticules, and holding a little blinking spaniel by a string. Every seat was i ''ed, no one seemed disposed to dispossess themselves, even for the accommodation of youth and beauty. Only for six seconds, though ; then Richard Gilbert, rose up, and quietly, and, as a matter of course, offered his seat to the young lady. She smiled — what a smile it was, what a bright little row of teeth it showed, dimpled, blushed — the loveliest rose-pink blush in the world, hesitated, and spoke : " But, monsieur 1 " in excellent English, set to a delici- ous French accent. " But, monsieur will have no place." "Monsieur will do very well. Oblige me, mad- emoiselle, by taking this seat." " Monsieur is very good. Thanks." She fluttered down into the seat, and Mr. Gilbert dis- posed of the many bundles and boxes and bags on the rack overhead. He was smiling a little to himself as he did so ; the role of lady's man was quite a new one in this gentleman's cast in the great play of Life. The grumpy old farmer, with a grunt of disapprobation, edged still further up to the window. •w" youn shy, M finds chari of y( youtl face heavt Ml the articl plung to th about windc bert i then 1 matet stand and h all. own finds his b little He hard- wom< foole worn; nVO BLACK EYES AND THEIR WORK. " Monsieur can sit on the arm of the scat," suggests the young lady, glancing up with a pretty girl's glance — half shy, half coquettish ; " it is so very fatiguing to stand." Monsieur avails himself of the offer immediately, and finds he is in an excellent position to examine that very charming face. But he does not examine it : he is not one of your light-minded, mustache-growing, frivolous-headed youths of three-or-four-and-twenty, to whom the smiling face of a pretty girl is the most fascinating object under heaven. Mr. Gilbert casts one look, only one, then dra' s forth the True IVilmss and buries himself in the leading article. The last bell rings, the whistle shrieks, a plunge, a snort, and they are rushing madly off in- to the wild March morning. The young lady looks about her, the grumpy farmer is between her and the window, the window is all blurred and blotted ; Mr. Gil- bert is fathoms deep in his paper. She gives a little sigh, then lifts her small dog up in her lap, and begins an ani- mated conversation with him in French. FroUo under- stands Canadian French, certainly not a word of English, and he blinks his watery eyes, and listens sagaciously to it all. The farmer looks askance, and grunts like one of his own pigs j the lawyer, from behind his printed sheet, finds the words dancing fantastically before his eyes, and his brain taking in nothing but the sweet-spoken, foolish little prattle of mademoiselle to Frollo. He is thirty-five years of age, he is a hard-headed, hard-working lawyer, he has a species of contempt for all women, as bundles of nerves and nonsense, fashions and foolery. He is thirty-five ; he has never asked any woman to marry him in his life ; he looks upon that ^\ lO NORINE'S REVENGE. foolish boy-and-girl idiocy, called love, as your worldly-wise cynics do look upon it, with a sneer and a scoff. Pretty girls he has met and known by the score — handsome women and clever women, but not the prettiest, the hand- somest, the cleverest of them all has ever made his well- regulated legal pulses beat one throb the quicker in all his five-and-thirty years of life. Why is it then that he looks at this little French Canadienne with an interest he has never felt in looking at any of the bright New York beauties he has known so long ? Simple curiosity, no doubt — nothing more. " She looks like a picture I once saw of Joanna of Na- ples," he thought, " only Joanna had golden hair. I hope the similarity to that very improper person ends with the outward resemblance." He returned to his newspaper, but somehow politics and cable dispatches, and Our Foreign Relations, had lost their interest. Again and again, under cover of the friendly sheet, his eyes wandered back to that fair drooping face, that piquant profile, those long eyelashes, and the rippling black tresses falling from beneath the litde hat. The hat was trimmed with crape, and the graceful figure wore dingy black. " Who is she ? " Mr. Gilbert found himself wondering ; " where is she going ? and for whom is she in mourning ? " And then, conscious of his own folly and levity, he pulled himself up, and went back for the dozenth time to the True Witness. But — his hour had come, and it would not do. The low French babble to the dog rang in his ears, the dark mignonne face came between him and the printed page, and blotted it out. ■^■C riVO BLACK EYES AND THE/R WORK. i j "She is much too young, and— yes, too pretty to be travelling alone. I wonder where is she going ; and if her friends will meet her? Very imprudent to allow a child like this to travel alone. She hardly looks sixteen." His interest — fatherly, brotherly of course, in this handsome child was increasing every moment. It was something not to be explained or comprehended. He had heard of such imbecility as " love at first sight," but was it likely that he, a man of five-and-thirty, a lawyci-, without an ounce of sentimentality in his composition should make an idiot of himself over a French Cana- dienne, a total stranger, a bread-and-butter-eating school- girl at his time of life. Not likely. She interested him as a pretty picture or marble Venus, or other work of art might — just that. He di' 1 not address her. Lawyers are not bashful as a body. Mr. Gilbert was not bashful individually, but something, for which he knew no name, held him silent now. If that grumpy, over-grown farmer were only out of the way, he thought, instead of sitting sulkily there star- ing at the falling rain, he could no doubt find some- thing to say. ' Fate favored him, his evil angel " cursed him with the curse of an accomplished prayer." At the very next sta- tion the surly husbandman got up and left ; and the mis- tress of Frollo, moving close to the window, lifted those two orbs of wondrous brown light to the lawyer's grave thoughtful face, and the sweet voice spoke : "Will monsieur resume his place now ? " Monsieur needed no second bidding. He resumed it, threw aside his paper, and opened conversation in the usual brilliant and original way : . . M 'f I 13 NOR/NE'S REVENGE. " The storm seems to increase — don't you think so ? Abominable weather it has been since March came in, and no hope of its holding up to day." " Oh, yes, monsieur," mademoiselle answered, with ani- mation ; " and it is such a pity, isn't it? It makes one low- spirited, one can see nothing, and one does like so to see the country as one goes along." " Was she going far ? " the lawyer inquired. " Oh, very far ! " Mademoiselle- makes a little Gallic gesture, with shoulders and eyebrows and hands all togeth- er to express the immensity of the distance. " A great way. To Portland," with a strong accent on the name of that city. " Monsieur knows where Portland is?" " Yes, very well — he was going there himself en route to New York. You, mademoiselle," he adds, inquiringly, " are going on a visit, prob.ibly ?" Mademoiselle shakes her pretty head, and purses her pretty lips. " Monsieur, no — I am going home." " Home ? But you are French." " But yes, monsieur, certainly French, still my home is there. Papa and mamma have become dead," the brown eyes fill, " and Uncle Louis and Aunt Mathilde have seven of their own, and are poor. I am goin;^ to mamma's relatives, mamma was not French." " No ? " Mr. Gilbert says in sympathetic inquiry. " No, monsieur. Mamma was Yzn-kee, a New England lady, papa French Canadian. Mamma's friends did not wish her to marry papa, and she ran away. It is five years ago since she died, and papa — papa could not live without her, and two years after the good God took him too." i:mm nVO BLACK EYES AND THEIR WORK. 13 The tearful brown eyes look down at her shabby black dress. " Monsieur beholds I wear mourning still. Then Uncle Louis took me, and sent me to school, but Uncle Louis has so many, so I wrote to mamma's brothers in Portland, and they sent a letter back and money, and told me to come. And I am going — Frollo and me." She bends over the little dog, her lips quivering like the lips of a grieved child, and the lawyer's middle-aged heart goes out to her in a great compassion. " Poor little lonely child 1 " be thinks, watching the sweet overcast face : " I hope they will be good to her, those Yankee friends." Then aloud. " But you are very young, are you not, to travel this distance alone ? " " I am seventeen, and I had to travel alone, there was no one to come with me. My Uncle Kent will meet me at Portland." " You are Mademoselle Kent ? " he says with a smile. " No, monsieur, my name is Bourdon — Norine Kent Bourdon. " " Have you ever seen those relatives to whom you are going?" " Once. They came to see mamma when she was dead. There are three — two uncles ind an aunt. They were very kind. I liked them very much." " I trust you will be happy in your new home, Miss Bourdon," the lawyer says gravely. " Permit me to offer you my card. If you ever visit New York I may meet you again — who knows ? " The young lady smiles as she reads the name. "Ah — who knows ? I am going out as governess by-and- by. Perhaps I shall write to you to help get me a situation." " What a frank, innocent child it is 1 " thought Mr. Gil- ^^ri Ml j u NORINE'S REVENGE. bert, looking down at the smiling, trustful face: "othei girls of her age would be bashful, coquettish, or afraid of a masculine stranger. But this pretty child smiles up in my face, and tells me her little history as though I were her brother. I wish I were her brother, and had power to shield her from the hardships of life. Any service in my power I shall always be happy to render you, my dear young lady," he said; " if at any time you apply to me, believe me I shall do my utmost to serve you." ■Mademoiselle Norine Kent Bourdon looked up into the grave, genial face, with soft, trustful eyes that thanked him. She could not have defined it, but she felt he was a man to be trusted— a good man, a faithful friend and an honorable gentleman. The train flew on. As the afternoon wore away the storm increased. The trees rocked in the high wind, and the ceaseless sleet beat against the windows. Miss Bourdon had a novel in her satchel, an j:nglish novel, and she perused a few pages of this work at intervals, and watched the storm-blotted landscape flitting by. She made small French remarks to Frollo, and she refreshed herself with apples, gingerbread and dyspeptic confectionery. But, all these recreations palling after a time, and as the darkness of the stormy March day closed, drowsiness came, and leaning her head against the window, the young lady fell asleep. Mr. Gilbert could watch her now to his heart's content, and he did watch her with an interest all-absorbing, and utterly beyond his comprehension. He laid his railway rug lightly over her, and shielded her from all other rnale eyes, with jealous care. What was it that charmed him about this French girl ? tfllKltrrr :«» ««»¥*•?*■ -1 rrro BLACK EVES AND THEIR WORK. 15 He could no more have told you then than he could ever have told you afterward. It was w ten, it was Kismet ; Jiis fate had come to him as it comes to all, in unlooked- for form. She looked, the poetic simile came to the unpoet ical mind of the lawyer — like a folded rose, the sweetness and bloom yet unbrushed from the leaves. Mademoiselle did not awake until the train stopped ; then she opened her eyes bewildered. But Mr. Gilbert gathered up the boxes and bundles, drew her hand under his arm, and led her out of the cars, and up to the big noisy hotel, where they were to stop for the night. Miss Bour- don took her supper seated beside her friend, at the long, crowded table, and was dazzled, and delighted. It was all so new to her; and at seventeen, novelty is delight. After supper her protector gave her into the hands of a cham- bermaid, told her at what hour they started next morn- ing, bade her good-night, and dismissed her. Were Richard Gilbert's dreams that night haunted by the vision of a dark, soft face, two dark tender eyes, and the smile of an angel ? Richard Gilbert only knows. But this is certain: when Mademoiselle Bourdon descended the stairs next morning he was standing at the dining-room door awaiting her, and his calm eyes lit up, as few had ever seen them light in his life. He led her into breakfast, and watched her hearty» school-gi"-! morning appetite with pleasure. Then, there being half-an-hour to spare before the train started, he proposed a little stroll in the crisp, cool sunshine that had followed yesterday's storm. It was very fair, there in that lovely valley in Vermont, with the tall mountains piercing the heavens, and the silvery lakes flashing like mirrors below. I6 A'OM/A'E'S REVEXGE. U was past noon when they reached Portland. The usi.al rush followed, but Norine, safe under the protecting wing of Mr. Gilbert, made iier way unscathed. She looked e.ngeriy amon;; the crowd in the long depot, and cried out at hist at sight of a familiar face. " There, monsieur— there I Uncle Reuben is standing yonder with the blue coat and fur cap. He is looking for me. Oh 1 take it 2 to him at once, please. " Mr. Gilbert led Miss Bourdon up to where a blulf-Iook- iug, middle-aged countryman stood — " Down East " from top to toe. " Uncle," cried Norine, holding out both hands, eagerly, " I have come." And then, heedless of the crowd, of Mr. Gilbert, made- moiselle flung both arms around Uncle Reuben's neck with very French effusion, and kissed him, smick — smack, on both cheeks. " Hey ! bless my soul ! it i:. you, is it.'" Uncle Reuben exclaimed, extricating himself. " It is, I swow, and growed out of all knowin'. You're welcome, my dear, and I'm right glad to have you with us, for your poor mother's sake. You ain't a look of her, though — no, not one — Gustave Bourdon all over. And how did you manage on your journey ? I tell you, we was all considerable uneasy about you. " He looked at her tail companion as he ceased, half sus- piciously, half inquiringly, and Miss Bourdon hastened to introduce them. " This gentleman is Mr. Gilbert, uncle. He has been very kind to me all the way. I don't know what I should have done but for him. He has taken care of me ever since we left Montreal. " TIVO DLACK EVliS AND THEIH WORK. "'I'haiiky, sir — much obligetl to you for looking after this little gill. Come along and speiul the day with us at my place, Kent I'arm. " "Thanks, vciy much," the lawyer answered ; " I regret more than I can say that circumstances render that pleasure impossible. I must be in New York to-morrow, but the very next time I am in Portland I shall certainly avail myself of your kind invitation. Miss Bourdon, until that time comes, good-by." He shook hands with her, and saw her led away by her uncle, with a feeling of strange, yearning regret. A two- seated country sleigh stood near. Uncle Reuben helped her in, took his seat beside her, tucked her up, said "Ga'lang, " and they were off. Once she looked back, to smile, to wave her hand to him in adieu. One more glimpse of that brunette face, of that rare smile, of those black Canadian eyes, and the clumsy sleigh turned an acute angle, and she was gone. Gone. A blank seemed to fall, the whole place turned desolate and empty. With a wistful look in his face he turned slowly away. " Poor little girl 1 " the lawyer thought. " I hope she will be happy. She is so pretty — so pretty 1 " I' \l W 4' ^^m CHAPTER II. A WISE MAN S FOLLY. R. Richard Gilukkt went to New York, .md the pirl with the black Ciinadian eyes and float- ing hair went with him — in spirit, that is to say. That dark, piquant face ; that uplifted, gentle glance ; that dimpling smile haunted him all through the upward journey ; haunted and lit up his dingy office, and came between him and Blackstone, and Coke upon Littleton, and other legal lights. Her bright, seventeen-year old face formed itself into a picture upon every page of those mouldering, dry-as-dust tomes, looked at him in the purple twilight, in the sunny mornings, in the dead waste and middle of the night. He had become " A Haunted Man," in short, Mr. Gilbert was in love. And so. " how it came let doctors tell," all of a sudden Mr. Gilbert found that business required his presence Down Ivist early in July. It was trifling business, too, under- strappers in the office "thought, that could very well have (lone without his personal supervision ; but Mr. Gilbert reasoned otherwise ; and, with a very unwonted glow about the region of the heart, packed his portmanteau, and started for Portland, Me. The hot July sun was blazing in the afternoon sky and the streets of Portland were blistering in the heat, as the New York lawyer walked from the cars to his hotel. That important business which had brought him so many miles was transacted in a couple of hours, and then he re- turned to his hotel to dress and dine. Dress! — when had Richard Gilbert in his plain business pepper-and-salt suit and round-topped straw hat, ever taken so much pains with his toilet before, ever sported such faultless broad- cloth in July, ever wore a diamond pin in his snowy linen, ever stood so long before the glass, ever felt so little satisfied with the result ? When had the crow's feet around mouth and eyes ever shown so plainly, when had his tall, bald forehead ever appeared so patriarchal, when had he ever looked so dreadfully middle-aged, and plodding and priggish in his own legal eyes ? Ah, when indeed ? He hired a light wagon and a bony horse at the nearest livery stable, and inquired the way to Kent Farm. Kent Farm was three miles distant, he found, and the white, dusty road lay like a strip of silver between the golden, green fields. The haymakers were at work, the summer air was sweet with perfume, the fields of buckwheat waved, the birds sang in the branches of the elms, the grasshoppers chirped until the drowsy air was alive, and far beyond all, more beautiful than all, the silver sea lay asleep under the sparkling sun. Pretty houses, all white and green, were everywhere ; and more than one Maud Miiller leaned on her rake, and looked up under her broad-brimmed hat as this thoughtful Judge rode by. He rode very slowly, so slowly that it was nearly an hour before he reached his destination and drew up at the gate of Kent Farm. Had he been wise to come ? What was this young girl, this child of seventeen, to him ? What could she ever be ? Youth turns to youth, as flowers to the sun. What if he found her the plighted wife of some stalwart young farmen «1.| 20 NOXINE'S REVENGE. some elegant dry-goods clerk of the town ? What ? His heart contracted with a sharp, sudden spasm, and told him what ? Kent Farm at last. Half a mile from any other house, on the summit of a green, sloping eminence, an old red, weather-beaten farm-house its once glaring color toned and mellowed down by the sober hand of Time. A charm- ing old place, its garden sloping down to the roadside, its lilac trees in full bloom, A wide-spreading old-fash- ioned garden, with rose bushes, and gooseberry bushes, -currant bushes, sunflowers, and hollyhocks, and big, gnarled old apple trees, mixed up in picturesque confusion. Seated in a chair of twisted branches, under one of these crooked, blossoming apple trees, the sunlight tan- gled in her shining hair, and the mignonne face, sat Norine Kent Bourdon, reading a novel. He opfened the gate. Her book was interesting— she did not hear. He walked up the gravelled path, and drew near. Then she looked up, then half rose, in doubt for a moment and then — to the day of his death, until all things earthly, will Richard Gilbert remember the flush of joj^ the flash of recognition, the glad cry of welcome, with which she flung aside her book and sprang towards him, both hands outstretached .' " Monsieur 1 monsieur I " the sweet voice cried. " Ah, monsieur ! how glad I am to see you. " She gave him her hands. The lovely, laughing face the eyes of fathomless light, looked up into his. Yes, she was glad to see him, glad with the impulsive gladness of a little younger sister to see an indulgent brother, old and grave, yet beloved. But Mr, Gilbert, hold- ing those hands, looking into that eager, sparking face, drew no such nice distinctions. A WISE MAN'S FOLLY. 2\ " Thank you, mademoiselle. You have not quite for- gotten me, then, after all ? " " Forgotten you, monsieur ? Oh, my memory is better than that. You have come to pay us that promised visit, have you not ? Uncle Reuben has been looking for you ever since the first of June, and Aunt Hester is never so happy as when she has company. You have come to stay, I know." "Well, I'm not sure about that, Miss Bourdon. I may remain a week or two, certainly. New York is not habitable after the first week of July, but I am stopping at the Preble House. ! am too much of a stranger to tres- pass on your good uncle's hospitality." " You have been kind to me, monsieur, and you are a stranger no more. Besides, it is dull here— pleasant but dull, and it will be a second kindness io enliven us with a little New York society. " She laughed and drew away her hands. The golden light of the July afternoon gilded the girlish face, upon which the New York gentleman gazed with an admiration he did not try to hide. "Dull," he repeated ; "you don't find it dull, I should think. Your face tells a very different story," Mademoiselle shook back her rippling satin hair, and made a little French moue t/iutine. " Ah, but it is. Only the fields and the flowers, the trees and the birds, the eating and sleeping, and read- ing. Now, flowers and fields and birds are very nice and pleasant things, but I like people, new faces, new friends, pleasure, excitement, change. I ride the horse, I milk the cows, I pick the strawberries, I darn the stoc' jngs, I play the piano, I make the beds, I read the novels. But I see nobody — nobody — nobody, and it is dull." 22 NORINE'S REVENGE. " Then you prefer the old life and Montreal ? " " Montreal ! " Miss Bourdon's black eyes flashed out, as your black eyes can. "Monsieur," solemnly, "I adore Montreil. It was always new and always nice there; bright and gay and French. French ! it is all Yankee herf,, not but that I like Yankees too. Aunt Hester thinks," a merry laugh, "there never was anybody born like me, and Uncle Reuben thinks I would be an angel if I didn't read so many novels and eat so many "custard pies. And, monsieur," with the saucy uplifted coquettish glance he remembered so well, "iiyou find out I'm not an angel don't tell him, please. I wouldn't have him undeceived for the world." " I don't think I shall find it out, mademoiselle. I quite agree with your uncle. Here he comes now." Reuben Kent came out of the open front door, smoking a pipe. He paused at sight of his niece in friendly collo- quy with a strange gentleman. The next moment he recog- nized him, and came forward at once in hearty welcome. " Wal, squire," Mr. Kent said, " you /:ev come, when I had e'enamost gi'n you up. How dye deow ? 'Tarnal hot, ain't it? Must be a powerful sight hotter, though, up to York. How air you. You're lookin' pretty considerably spry. Norry's glad to see you, /know. That gal's bin a talkin' o' ye continual. Come in, squire — come in. My sister Hester will be right glad to see ye." What a cordial welcome It was ; what a charming agri- cultural person Mr. Reuben Kent, one of nature's Down East noblemen, indeed. In a glow of pleasure, feeling ten years younger and ten times better looking than when he had started, the New York lawyer walked up to the house, into the wide, cool hall, into the " keepin' room," A WISE MAN'S FOLLY. 23 and took a seat. A pleasant room ; but was not everything about Kent Farm pleasant, with two large western win- dows, through which the rose and golden light of the low dropping sun streamed over the store carpet, the cane-seat- tu chairs, the flowers in the cracked tumblers, and white, delf pitchers. Traces of Norine were everywhere ; the piano in a corner, the centre-table littered with books, papers, magazines and scraps of needle-work, the two canaries singing in the sunny windows, all spoke of taste, and girlhood. There were white muslin cur- tains, crocheted tidies on every chair in the room, a lounge, covered with cretonne in a high state of glaze and gaudy coloring, and the scent of the hay fields and the lilacs over all. No fifth-avenue drawing-room, no satin-hung silver-gilt reception-room, had ever looked one half so ex- quisite in this metropolitan gentleman's professional eyes. For there, amid the singing birds and the scented roses, stood a tall, slim girl, in a pink muslin dress — and where were the ormolu or brocatelle could embellish any room as she did ? Uncle Reuben went in search of Aunt Hester, and re- turned with that lady presently ; and Mr. Gilbert saw a bony little woman with bright eyes and a saffron complex- ion. Miss Kent welcomed him as an old friend, and pressed him to " stay to tea." " It's jest ready," she remarked, — a maiden lady wns Aunt Hester, — "we've ben waitin' for brother Joe, and he's jest come. There ain't nothing more refreshing, I think myself, than a nice cup o' hot tea on a warm day." Uncle Reuben seconded the motion at once. "We can't offer you anything very grand — silver spoons and sech — as you get at them air hotels, but sech as it is, 1^ I? 24 NOR/NE'S REVENGE. and Hester's a master hand at crawlers and hot biscuit, you're most niightly welcome. Norry, you fetch him along, while I go and wash up." Miss Bourdon obeyed. Mr. Gilbert did not require ail that pressing, if they had but known it. There was no need to apologize for that " high tea." No silver teaspoons, it is true, but the plated-ware glistened as the real Simon Pure never could have done ; and no hotel in Maine, or out of it, could have shown a snowier table-cloth, hotter, "Whiter, more dyspeptic biscuits, blacker tea, redder straw- berries, richer cream, yellower ginger-bread, or pinker cold-sliced ham. Mr. Gilbert ate ham and jelly, straw- berries and tea, hot biscuit a-^-! cold ginger-bread— in a way that fairly warmed Aunt Hester's heart. " And we calk'late on keeping you while you're down here, Mr. Gilbert," Uncle Reuben's hearty voice said. " It's a pleasant place, though I say it as hadn't ought to —a heap pleasanter than the city. Our house ain't none too fine, and our ways may be homespun and old-fashioned, but I reckon Norry and Hester kin make you pretty tol'bel comfortable ef you stay." "Comfortable!" He looked across at that face opposite; comfortable in the same house with her 1 But still he murmured some faint objection. " Don't mention trouble, sir," said Uncle Joe, who was the counterpart of Uncle Reuben ; " you've ben kind to our little Norry, and that's enough for us. Norry, hain't you got nothin' to say ? " "I say stay!" and the bewildering black eyes flash- ed their laughing light .across at the victimized law- yer. " Stay, and I'll teach you to milk and make butter, the A WISE MAN'S FOLLY. 25 and feed poultry, and pick strawberries, and improve your mind in a thousand rural ways. You shall swing me when Uncle Joe is too busy, and help me make short-cake, and escort me to 'quiltin' bees,' and learn to rake hay. And I — I'll sing for you wet days, and drive you all over the neighborhood, and let you *ell me all about New York and the fashions, and the stores, and the theatres, and the belles of Broadway. Of course you stay, " Of course he stayed. It is so easy to let rosy lips per- suade us into doing what we are dying to do. He stay- ed, and his fate was fixed — for good or for evil — fixed. That very night his portmanteau came from Portland, and the " spare room " was his. Supper over, Uncles Reuben and Joe lit their pipes, and went away to their fields and their cattle — Aunt Hester " cleared up, " and Miss Bourdon took possession of Mr. Gilbert. She wasn't the least in awe of him, she was only a bright, frank, fearless, grown-up child. He was grave, staid, old — is not thirty-five a fossil age in the eyes of seventeen ? — but venerable though he was, she was not the least afraid of him. She led her captive — oh, too willing, forth in triumph to see her treasures — sleek, well-fed cows, skittish ponies, big horses, hissing geese, gobling turkeys, hens and chicks innumerable. He took a pleased interest in them all — calves and colts, chickens and ducklings, ganders and gobblers, listened to the history of each, as though he had never listened to such absorbing biographies in all his life before. How rosy were the lips that spoke, how eager llie sun- ny face uplifted to his, and when was there a time that Wisdom did not fall down and worship Beauty ? He liked 26 NORINE'S REVENGE. to think of her pure and sweet, absorbed in these inno- cent things, to find neither coquetry nor sentimentalism in this healthy young mind, to know her ignorant as the goslings themselves of all the badness and hardness andi cruelty of the big, cruel world. They went into the garden, and lingered under the lilacs, until the last pink flush of the July day died, and the stars came out, and the moon sailed up serene. They - found plenty to say ; and, as a rule, Richard Gilbert rare- ly found much to say to girls. But Miss Bourdon could talk, and the lawyer listened to the silvery, silly prattle with a grave smile on his face. It was easy to answer all her eager questions, to tell her of life in New York, of the opera and the theatres, and the men and women who wrote the books and the poems she loved. And as she drank it in, her face glowed and her great eyes shone. " Oh, how beautiful it all must be !" she cried, to hear such music, to see such plays, to know such people 1 If one's life could only be like the lives of the heromes of books— romantic, and beautiful, and full of change. If one could only be rich and a lady, Mr. Gilbert 1 " She clasped her hands with the hopelessness of that thought. He smiled as he listened. ^^ « A lady. Miss Bourdon ? Are you not that now ? " Miss Bourdon shook her head mournfully. "Of course not, only a little stupid country girl, a far- mer's niece. Oh ! to be a lady— beautiful and haughty and admired, to go to balls in diamonds and laces, to go to the opera like a queen, to lead the fashion, and to be wor- shipped by every one one met 1 But what is the use of wishing, it never, never, never, can be." ■"HiJt,*,! A WISE MAN'S POLL Y. V " Can it not "t I don't quite see that, although the ladies you are thinking of exist in novels only, never in this prosy, work-a-day world. Wealth is not happiness — a worn-out aphorism, but true now as the first day it was uttered. Great wealth, perhaps, may never come to you but what may seem wealth in your eyes may be nearer than you think — who knows ? " He looked at her, a sudden flush rising over his face, but Norine shook her black ringlets soberly. " No, I will never be rich. Uncle Reuben won't hear of my going out as governess, so there is nothing left but to go on with the chicken-feeding and butter-making and novel-reading forever. Perhaps it is ungrateful, though, to desire any change, for I am happy too." He drew a little nearer her ; a light in his grave eyes, a glc^w on his sober face, warm words on his lips. What was Richard Gilbert about to say? The young, sweet, wistful face was fair enough in that tender light, to turn the head of even a thirty-five year-old-lawyer. But those impulsive words were not spoken, for " Norry, Norry 1 " piped Aunt Hester's shrill treble. " Where's that child gone ? Doesn't she know she'll get her death out there in the evening air " Norine laughed. "From romance to reality I Aunt Hester doesn't believe in moonlight and star-gazing and foolish longings for the impossible. Perhaps she is right ; but I wonder if she didn't stop to look at the moon sometimes, too, when she was seventeen ? " It was a very fair opening, given in all innocence. But Mr. Gilbert did not avail himself of it. He was not a " lady's man " in any sense of the word. Up to the pres- il ill Mi «MP 28 NOR/NE'S REVENGE. gi ! ii:; ent he had never given the fairest, the cleverest among them a second glance, a second thought. The language of compliment and flirtation was as Chaldaic and Sanscrit to him, and he walked by her side up to the house and into the keeping-room in ignoble silence. The little old maid and the big old bachelors were as- sembled here, the lamp was lit, the curtains down and the silvery shimmer of that lovely moon-rise jealously shut out. Norine went to the piano, and entertained her ~^audience with music. She played very well, indeed. She had had plenty of piano-forte-drudgery at the Convent school of the Grey Nuns in her beloved Montreal. She sung for them in the voice that suited her mignonne face, a full, rich contralto. She sang gayly, with eyes that sparkled, the national song of Lower Canada : " Vive la Canadiennc, " and the New York lawyer went up to bed that first night with its ringing refrain in his ears : " Vive la Canadienne ct ses beaux yeux, £t sts beaux yeux tous doux, Et ses beaux yeux." *' Ah 1" Richard Gilbert thought, " well may the habithns sing and extol the beaux yeux of their fair countrywomen, if those bright eyes are one-half as lovely as Norine Bour- don's." ^ He stayed his fortnight out at the old red farmhouse ; and he who ran might read the foolish record. He, a sober, practical man of thirty-five, who up to the present had escaped unscarred, had fallen a victim at last to a juvenile disease in its most malignant form. And juvenile disor- ders are very apt to be fatal when caught in mature years. He was in love with a tall child of seventeen, a foolish A WISE AfAN'S FOLLY. 29 little French girl, who looked upon him with precisely the same affection she felt for Uncle Reuben. " What a fool I am," the lawyer thought, moodily, " to dream a child like that can ever be my wife ? A sensible, practical young woman of seven-and-twenty is nearer your mark, Richard Gilbert. What do I know of this girl, except that she has silken ringlets and shining black eyes, and all sorts of charming, childish, bewitching ways. I will not make an idiot of myself at my age. I will go away and forget her and my folly. I was a simpleton ever to come." He kept his word. He went away with his story untold. He bade them all good-bye, with a pang of regret more keen than any he had ever felt before in his life. Perhaps the little brown hand of mademoiselle lingered a thought longer than the others in his ; perhaps his parting look into those beaux yeux was a shade more wistful. He was going for good now — to become a wise man once more, and he might never look into those wonderful, dark eyes more. Norine was sorry, very sorry, and said so with a frank regret her middle-aged lover did not half like. He might be unskilled in the mysteries of the tender passion, but he had an inward conviction that love would never speak such candid words, neyer look back at him with such crystal clear eyes. She walked with him to the gate ; her ebon curls a stream in the July breeze. " Will you not write to me sometimes ? " Mr. Gilbert could not help asking. " You don't know how glad I shall be to hear of — of you all." Mademoiselle Bourdon promised readily. " Though I don't write very good letters," she remarked If ! 30 NORINE'S RE VENGE. deprecatingly. " I get the spelling wrong, and the gram- mar dreadfully mixed when I write in English, but I want to improve. If you'll promise to tell me of all my mistakes, I'll write with pleasure." So what were to be the most precious love letters on earth to the gentleman, were to be regarded as " English composition," by the lady. Truly, the French proverb saith : " There is always one who loves, and one who is loved." -- Mr, Gilbert returned to New York, and found that pop- ulous city a blank and howling wilderness. The exercises in English composition began, and though both grammar and spelling might get themselves into hopeless snarls, to him they were the most eloquent and precious epistles ever woman penned. He had read the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, but what were those vapid epistles to Miss Bourdon's? He watched for the coming of the Eastern mail ; he tore open the little white envelope ; he read and re-read, and smiled over the contents. And time went on. August, September, October passed. The letters from Miss Norine Bourdon came like clock work, and were the bright spots in Richard Gilbert's hard-working, drab-colored life. He wrote her back; he sent her books and music, and pictures and albums, and pretty things without end, and was happy. And then the Ides of dark November came, and all this pastoral bliss was ended and over. The letters with the Down-east post mark ceased ab- ruptly, and without any reason ; his last two remained un- answered. He wrote a third, and fell into a fever while he waited. Was she sick, was she dead, was she — . No, not faithless, surely, he turned cold at the bare A WISE MAN'S FOLLY. 31 thought. But what was it ? The last week of November brought him his answer. Very short, very unsatisfactory. "Kent Farm, Nov. a8, i860. "Dbar Mr. Gilbbrt— You must pordon me for not replying to your last letters. I have been so busy. A gentleman met with an acridcnt nearly three weeks ago, close by our house, broke his left arm, and sprained his right ankle. I liave had to take care of him. Aunt Hetty has so much to do all the time that she could not We are all very welt, and send you our best wishes. I am Very much obliged for the pretty work-box, and the magazines, etc And I am, dear Mr. Gilbert, with the most affectionate sentiments, " NORINR K. DOURDON. " P. S.— The gentlenun is greatly better. He is with us still. He Is very nice. Ife is from your city. N." In the solitude of his legal sanctum, Richard Gilbert, with frowning brow and gloomy eyes, read this blighting epistle. His worst fears were realized, more than realized. There was a gentleman in the case. A gentleman who absorbed so much of Miss Norine Bourdon's time that she could not answer his letters. And he was " greatly better " and he was from your city. Confound the puppy I He was young and good-looking, no doubt ; and he must meet with his accident, at her very door j precisely as though he were enacting a chapter out of a novel. Of course, too, it was his arm and his ankle that were smashed, not his villainous face. And Norine sat by his bedside, and bathed his forehead, and held cooling draughts to his parched lips, and listened to his romantic, imbecile de- lirium, etc., etc., etc. She sat up with him nights ; she read to him ; she talked to him : she sang for him. He could see it all. Mr. Gilbert was a Christian gentleman, so he did not swear. But I am bound to say he felt like swearing. He jumped up ; he crushed that poor little letter into a ball ; he strode up and down his ofHce like a caged (legal) tiger. I \ r; 32 NORWE'S REVENGE. The green-eyed monster put forth its obnoxious claws, and never left him for many a dreary year. It was that atro- cious postscript, so innocently written, so diabolical to read. " He is greatly better. He is with us still. He is very nice." Oh, confound him ! what a pity it had not been his neck. Suddenly he paused in his walk, his brows knit, his eyes flashing, his mouth set. Yes, that was it, he would do it, his resolution was taken. He would go straight to Kent Farm, and see for himself. And next morning at 8 o'clock the express train for Boston bore among its pas- sengers Mr. R. Gilbert, of New York. The train whirled him away, and as the chill, murky De- cember landscape flew by, he awoke all at once to a sense of what he was about. Why was he going ? what did he mean ? to ask Norine Bourdon to be his wife ? certainly not. To play dog in the manger, and keep some more fortunate man from loving and marrying her ? most certain- ly not. Then why had he come ? At this juncture he set his teeth, took up the Herald and scowled moodily at its printed pages all day long. He slept that night in Boston, and next morning re- sumed his journey. He reached Portland before noon, dined at his usual hotel, and then, as the afternoon sun began to drop low in the wintry sky, set out on foot for Kent Farm. How familiar it all was ; how often, when the fields were green, the trees waving, and the birds singing, he had walked this road beside Norine. But the fields were white with snow to-day, the trees black, gaunt skeletons, and the July birds dead or gone. All things had changed in four months — why not Norine as well ? A Vy/SE AfAN'S FOLLY. 33 It was four by the lawyer's watch as he raised the latch of the garden gate, and walked up the snow-shrouded path. There stood the gnarled old apple tree, with its rustic chair, but the tree was leafless, and the chair empty. Doors and windows had stood wide when he saw them last, with sun- shine and summer floating in ; now all were closed, and the Decembci blasts howled around the gables. Ihere was no one to be seen, but the red light of a fire streamed brightly out through the curtains of the keeping-room. He went slowly up the steps, opened the front door, and entered the hall. The door of that best apartment stood half open, light and warmth, voices and laughter came through. Mr. Gilbert paused on the threshold an in- stant, and looked at the picture within. A very pretty picture. The room was lit by the leaping fire alone. Seated on a low stool, before the fire and beside the sofa, he saw Norine. She was reading aloud the lovely story of Lalia Rookh. He had sent her the green and gilt volume himself. She wore a crimson merino dress, over which her black hair fell, and in the fantastic firelight how fair the dark, piquant face looked, the dark eyes were bent upon her book, and the soft voice was the only sound in the room. On the sofa, perilously near, lay the, "gentleman " of her letter— the hero of the broken arm and sprained ankle, who was " very nice." And Richard Gilbert looking, gave a great start. He knew him. His worst fears were realized. He saw a man both young and good-looking— something more, indeed, than good- looking. The face was thin and pale, but when was that 34 NORINE'S REVENGE. a fault in the eyes of a girl !— a tall figure in a dark suit, brown hair, and silken blonde mustache artistically curled. Surely a charming picture of youth and beauty on both sides, and yet if Mr. Gilbert had seen a cobra di capella coiled up beside the girl he loved, he could hardly have turned sicker with jealous fear." " Laurence Thorndyke," he thought blankly " of all the men in the wide world, what evil fortune has sent Laurence Thorndyke here 1 " mmmm m^i CHAPTER III. MR. LAURENCE THORNDYKE. HE little dog FroUo, curled up beside his mis- tress, was the first to see and greet the new comer. He rushed forward, barking a friendly greeting, and the young lady looked up from the book she was reading, the young gentleman from the face he was reading at the same moment, and be- held the dark figure in the doorway. Norine Bourdon sprang to her feet, blushing violently, and came forward with outstretched hand. It was the first time he had ever seen her blush — like that — the first time her eyes had fallen, the first time her voice had faltered. She might be glad to see him, as she said, but all the old, frank, childish gladness was gone. " I have taken you by surprise," he said, gazing into her flushed face and shrinking eyes, " as I did once before. I get tired of New York and business very suddenly sometimes, and you know I have a standing invitation here." "We are very glad — / am very glad to see you, Mr. Gilbert," Norine answered, but with an embarrassment, a restraint altogether new in his experience of her. " We missed you very much after you went away." The young man on the sofa, who all this time had been calmly looking and listening, now took an easier position, and spoke : i;ii ft.,. 36 NORINE'S REVENGE. " Six-and-twenty-years experience of this wicked world hi' taught me the folly of being surprised at anything under the sun. But if I had not outlived the power of wondering, centuries ago, I should wonder at seeing Mr. Richard Gilbert out of the classic precincts of Wall street the first week of December. I suppose now you wouldn't have looked to see me here ? " He held out a shapely, languid hand, with a diamond ablaze on it. The lawyer touched it about as cordially as Ihough it had been an extended toad. "I certainly would not, Mr. Thorndyke. I imagined, and so did M»- Darcy, when I saw him last, that you were in Boston, practicing your profession. " " Ah ! no doubt 1 So I was until a month ago. I suppose it never entered your — I mean his venerable noddle, to conceive the possibility of my growing tired practicing my profession. Such is the fact, however. Even the hub of the universe may pall on the frivolous mind of youth, and I've 'thrown physic to the dogs, I'll none of it,' for the present at least. My patients — ^few and far between, I'm happy to say, will get on much more comfortably, and Stand a much better chance of recovery without me." " Indeed 1 I don't doubt it at all. But your uncle r " " My uncle can't hope to escape the crosses of life any more than poorer and better men. All work and no play makes, what's his name, a dull boy. There will be a row very likely, the sooner my venerated relative is convinced that my talents don't lie in the bleeding and blistering, the senna and salts line, the better. They don't." " Don't they ? It would be difficult to say, from what I know of Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, in what line they da lie. May I ask what you mean to do ?" t . ''-.-> -H- AfR. LAURENCE THORNDYKE. 17 Mi " I shall go in for sculpture," responded Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, with the calm consciousness of superior geniuf. " Other men have made fame ana fortune by art, and why not I ? If my hypocondriacal adopted uncle would only shell out, send me to Rome, and enable n>e to study the old masters, I have the strongest internal conviction that—" "That you would set the world on fire with your genius. That you would eclipse the Greek Slave. No doubt — I have known others to think so before, and I know the sort of ' fame and fortune' they made. How do you come to be here ? " Very curtly and abruptly, this. " Ah I — thereby hangs a tale," with a long tender glance at Norine." I am the debtor of a most happy accident. My horse threw me, and Miss Bourdon, happening along at the moment, turned Good Samaritan and took me in." " I don't mean that," Mr. Gilbert said, stiffly ; " how do you come to be in Maine at all ? " "I beg your pardon. Tom Lydyard — the Portland Lydyards, you know — no I suppose you don't know, by the by. Tom Lydyard was to be married, and invited, me over on the auspicious occasion. Tom's a Harvard man like myself, sworn chums, brothers-in-arms, Da- mon and P}rthias, and all that bosh; and when he asked me down to his wedding, could I — I put it to yourself, now, Gilbert, could I refuse ? I cut the shop, I turned my back on blue pills and chloral, I came, I saw, I — mademoiselle, may I trouble you for a glass of lemonade ? You have no idea, Mr. Gilbert, what a nuisance I am, not being able to do anything for myself yet.' " Perhaps I have " was, Mr. Gilbert's frigid response. ^fS^. 38 NORINE'S REVENGE. i ;'■■ 1^ s < The sight of Norine bending over that recumbent fig- ure gave him a sensation of actual physical pain. He knew what this languid, graceful, slow-speaking young Sybarite's life had been, if she did not. Just at that moment — and it was a relief. Aunt Hester entered, followed by Uncles Reuben and Joe. No restraint here, no doubt about his welcome from them, no change in the place he held in their ester "n and affection. Tea was ready, would everybody please to come. - Mr. Thorndyke's fractured limb was by no means equal to locomotion, so Uncle Reuben wheeled him, sofa and all, into the next room, and Aunt Hester and Norine vied with each other in waiting on him. It comes natural to all women to pet sick men — if the man be young and handsome, why it comes all the more naturally. Mr. Thorndyke wasn't sick by any means — that was all over and done with. He'took his tea from Aunt Hes- ter's hand and drank it, his toast and chicken from Norine and ate them. He talked to them both in that lazy, pleasant voice of his, or lay silent and stroked his mus- tache with his diamond-ringed hand, and looked hand- some, and whether the talk or the silence were most danger- ous, it would have puzzled a cleverer man than Richard Gilbert to tell. To sit there listening to Aunt Hester chirp, ing and Uncle Reuben prosing, and see the blue eyes mak- ing love, in eloquent silence, to the black ones, was almost too much for human nature to endure. She sat there silent, shy, all unlike the bright, chattering Norine of the summer gone, but with, oh 1 such an infinitely happy face I She sat beside Laurence Thorndyke — she ministered to that con- valescent appetite of his, and that was enough. What need of speech when silence is so sweet? 9¥m MR. LAURENCE THORNDYKE. 39 Supper ended, Mr. Thorndyke was wheeled back to his post in the front room beside the fire. Norine never came near him all the rest of the evening, she sat at the little piano, and poured out her whole heart in song. Richard Gilbert, full of miserable, knawing jealousy, understood those songs ; perhaps Laurence Thorn- dyke, lying with half-closed eyes, half-smiling lips, did too. They were old-fashioned songs that the lawyer had sent her, favorites of his own : " Twere vain to tell thee all I feel," and " Drink to me only with thine eyes." Yes, the meaning of those tender old ballads was not for him. It was maddening to see Laurence Thorndyke lying there, with that conscious smile on his lips ; he could endure no more — he arose with the last note, abruptly enough, and bade them good-night. "What! so early, Gilbert ? " Thorndyke said, looking at his watch. " What a dickens of a hurry you're in. You've got no clients in Portland, have you ? and Miss Bourdon, is going to sing us half-a-dozen more songs yet." Mr. Gilbert paid no attention whatever to this flippant young man. He turned his back upon him indeed, and explained elaborately to Uncle Reuben that it was im- possible for him to remain longer to-night, but that he would call early on the morrow. " He is very much changed," remarked Aunt Hester, thoughtfully J " don't you think so, Norry ? He's nothing like so pleasant and free, as he used to be." " Particularly grumpy, I should say," interposed Mr. Thorndyke. " ' Pleasant and free ' are the last terms I should think of applying to Richard Gilbert. Not half a bad fellow either, old Gilbert, but an awful prig— don't you think so, Miss. Bourdon ? " w I" Id I 1 40 NOR INK'S REVENGE. ¥ % If: "I like Mr. Gilbert very much," Miss Bourdon answered, strumming idly on the keys; " and I think him pleasant. He seemed out of spirits to-night, though, I fancy." It was bright, frosty starlight as the lawyer walked back to town. He walked rapidly, his head well up, a dark frown clouding his face. " Any one but Thorndyke— any one but Thorndyke I " he was thinking bitterly. Alas 1 Mr. Gilbert, would you not -have been jealous of the Archbishop of Canterbury had that dignitary been " keeping company " with Miss Bourdon ? " And she loves him already — already. A very old story to Laurence Thorndyke. Six-and-twenty years, a well-shaped nose, two blue eyes, a mustache, and the easy insolence of the • golden youth' of New York. What else has he but that ? What else is needed to win any woman's heart ? And hers is his, for good or for evil, for ever and ever. He is the Prince Charming of her fairy tale, and she has caught his wandering, artist fancy, as scores have caught it before. And when I tell her the truth, that his plighted wife awaits him, what then ? Little Norine ! to think that you should fall into the power of Laurence Thorndyke." Yes, she was in his power — ^for she loved him. Had it all not been so delightfully romantic, so like a chapter out of one of her pet novels, that first meeting, when Fate itself had flung him wounded and bleeding at her feet ? Was it not all photographed forever on her mind, a picture whose vividness time never could dim ! It had befallen in this way : On the afternoon of the third of November Miss Bourdon had driven over in the light wagon from the farm to the MJ-:f\M MR. LAURENCE THORNDVKE. 41 city, to receive her usual, eagerly-looked-for package from Mr. Gilbert. It had been dark and windy from early morning. As the afternoon wore on, the sky grew darker, the wind higher. She got her bundle of books, visited one or two stores, one or two friends, and night had fallen before she turned old Kitty's head towards Kent Farm. A faint and watery moon made its way up through the drifts of jagged cloud, and the gale howled through the street as though it had gone mad. It was a bnely and unpleasant ride; but old Kitty could have made her way asleep, and Norine sang to herself as she drove slowly along. They were within a quarter of a mile of the house, when Kitty pricked up her red ears, gave a neigh of alarm, and shied from some long, dark object lying motionless across her path. Norine bent over and looked down. There, she saw, lying on his face, the prostrate form of a man. Was he drunk, or was he dead ? She was out in a twinkling, and bending above him. There was blood on his clothes, and on the dusty road. She turned his face over until the pallid moon shone upon it. Dead, to all seeming, the eyes closed, life and consciousness gone. Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Laurence Thorndyke was lying in the best bedroom of Kent Farm, with Aunt Hester and Norine bending over him, and Uncle Joe scudding along on horseback for a doctor. All their efforts to bring him out of that fainting fit were vain. White and cold he lay ; and so Norine Bourdon, with a great pity in her heart, looked first upon the face of Laurence Thorndyke. ^4)S- W I!; il CHAPTER IV. THE lawyer's warning. R. Gilbert appeared in no hurry to revisit his friends at Kent Farm. It was late in the af- ternoon of the next day before he came slowly along the quiet country road. He had passed the morning idly enough, staring from the hotel win- dow, down at the peaceful street and the few straggling passers by. After his three o'clock dinner he had put on hat and overcoat, and leisurely taken his way over the familiar ground. It was a gray December afternoon, with a threatening of coming storm in the overcast sky. A few feathery flakes whirled already through the leaden air, an icy blast blew up from the sea, the road was deserted, the dreary fields snow-shrouded and forsaken. And only yesterday it seemed he had walked here by her side, the golden grain breast high, and the scarlet poppies aflame in the gardens. His youth had come back to him with that sunlit holiday. If he had spoken then, who knew what her answer might have been. But he had let the hour and the day go by, and now it was too late. The snow ." l.es were whirling faster and faster as Mr. Gil- bert opened the gate and approached the house. He could see the rose light of the fire through the curtained windows, », THE LAWYER'S WARNING. 43 and a slight, graceful figure seated at one, scwitig. The brown rattling stems of hop vines twining around it, like sere serpents, made a framework for the girlish head and fair young face. All the floss silk curls were bound back with scarlet ribbon, and the luminous black eyes were fixed on her work. They saw the tardy visitor, however, and with a bright, welcoming smile she sprang up, and ran to open the door. " How late you are. We thought you were not coming at all. I have been looking for you all day." She held out her hand, far more like Norine of old than last night, and led the way back into the parlor. There on his comfort- able sofa, by his comfortable fire, reposed of course the five feet, eleven inches of Mr. Laurence Thorndyke. Mr. Gil- bert gave that invalid a nod several degrees icier than the elements out doons. "Ah, you have come I I told Norine you would." — Norine 1 it had come to that then — " I know you to be one of those uncompromising sort of characters, Gilbert, who never break their word. Have you your cigar case about you ? I should like a smoke." " Miss Bourdon is present, Mr. Thorndyke." " So she is — for which Allah be praised. But Miss Bour- don is the most sensible, as she is most charming of young ladies. She gave me carte blanche ages ago to smoke as much as I please. Didn't you Norry ? She fills my pipe, she even lights it when this confounded shoulder twitches more than usual." Richard Gilbert set his teeth v/ith inward fury. To sit here, and listen to Laurence Thorndyke's insolent familiar ity, his lover like — " Norry," drove him half wild. " I have not my cigar-case," he answered, more and more r® ipo^ 44 NORINE'S REVENGE. frigidly ; " and if I had, I don't know that I should counte- nance such a trespass on common decency as to let you smoke one here. How long before your doctor thinks you fit to be removed ? " " Oh, not for weeks yet ; it was a deuce of a fracture, I can tell you. Why, pray? My insignificant movements, as a rule, are all unworthy Mr. Gilbert's attention." " Your uncle is my friend, sir," the lawyer replied, " and I prefer not to see him hoodwinked. I recommend you ""Strongly to write and explain your position, or I shall take an early opportunity of doing so myself." " Will you ? How very kind you are. But isn't it a pity to give yourself so much unnecessary trouble ? I believe Mr. Hugh Darcy did invest you with a species of authority over my actions, but at six-and-twenty, don't you think a fellow ought to be let loose from the leading strings ? And what would you have ? I couldn't help accepting Tom Lyd- yard's invitation. I couldn't help my horse taking fright and throwing me. I couldn't help breaking my arm, and spraining my ankle, and I can't help being in the seventh heaven of happiness and comfort with two such nurses as Miss Kent and Miss Bourdon. Don't be unreasonable, Gilbert. Norine — ma belle, I am utterly exhausted with all this talking. What are you laughing at ? Do pray favor me with my meerschaum and a light." The pleasant lazy voice stopped, the pleasant smile turned upon Norine. Miss Bourdon laughing at this passage of arms arose with alacrity to obey, and the lawyer, looking unspeakably grim got up, too. " Permit me to say good-by, Miss Bourdon. I start for New York to-night. Can I see your uncle a moment be- I THE LA WYEK'S WARNING. 45 fore I go ? " The door opened as he asked the question and Aunt Hester came into the room. " I heard your voice as I passed through the hall," she said. " Surely you ain't going so soon ? " " I regret I must, my business requires my immediate return. 1 have only time to say good-by and speak a word to your brother. Where shall I find him ? " " In the stable, most likely. I'll go with you." "Thanks. Farewell, Miss Bourdon." Again their hands met, she looked perplexed and wist- ful, but she did not urge him to stay. With a second stiff nod to Mr. Thorndyke, the lawyer strode out of the room after Aunt Hetty. " A word to her brother," muttered Mr. Thorndyke to himself looking after them. " I think I know what that means. ' That fellow, Thorndyke, is a spendthrift, a gam- bler, a flirt, an engaged man. Don't let him have any- thing to say to Norine.' That will be about the sum and substance of it. To think of his falling in love at his time of life, when he's old enough and big enough to know bet- ter. But then middle-aged fools are the worst of all fools. And you come a day after the fair, Mr. Richard Gilbert. Your word of warning is just two weeks too late. I owe you two or three little grudges for your espionage of the past, and for two or three little games blocked, and I think I see my way clearly to wiping them out at last. A thou- sand thanks my charming littl' lurse." Aloud to Norine, entering with pipe and pipe-light : " What should I ever do without you ? " Mr. Gilbert, escorted by Aunt Hester, reacheS the stable, where Uncle Reuben stood busily curry-combing Kitty. " I want to speak half-a-dozen words in private to you, ^^^Wnt*** ..^ t1 I' ii !^ 46 JVOH/NE'S REVENGE. Kent," the lawyer began, abruptly enough, "You will tell your good sister here at your convenience, if you see fit. You :Tiust excuse my seeming rudeness, Miss Kent, and say goodby, now." He shook hands with her cordially, and watched her out of sight. Then he turned to her brother. " We are quite alone ? " he asked. " Quite, squire. Take a seat." He brought forward a stool, but Mr Gilbert waved it away. " " No, no, what I have to say will take but a minute, and then I shall be going. I want to speak to you of that young man who is your guest — Laurence Thorndyke." " Wal, squire." "You have not known me very 1^ Mr. Kent, but I think, I hope, you have known mc enough to trust me, to believe what I say, to understand I have no selfish motive. It is for " — he paused a moment — " it is for your niece's sake I speak, you can hardly take a deep- er interest in her welfare than I do." Was there ever so slight a tremor in the grave, steady voice, or did Reuben Kent only fancy it ? He paused in Kitty's toilet and looked at him keenly. " Wal, squire ? " he said again. " Laurence Thorndyke is no fit, no safe companion for your niece. He is not a good man, he is as false as he is fascinating. She is only seventeen, she knows nothing of the world, nothing of such men as he, and believe me, Kent, it won't do." Reuben Kent looked up, a sudden flash in his eye, a sudden redness in his face. " Go on," he said, curtly. " I am afraid Miss Bourdon cares more for him already I THE LAWYER'S WARNING. 47 than — " He paused again and averted his face. " You know what I mean. He is handsome, and she is only a girl. She will grow to love him, and he could not marry her if he would, he is already engaged, and unless I mistake him greatly, would not if he could. Mr. Kent, this young man will go away, and Norine will be neither the better nor the happier for his coming." His voice was husky. Something of the pain he felt was in his face. The farmer stretched forth and caught the lawyer's hand in a hard grip. "Thanky, squire," he said ; " I ain't a man to jaw much, but I believe ^(?«, and am obliged to you for this. If that young jacknapes from York tries > come any of his city games down here, by the Lord Jchosaphat 1 I'll lay him up with something worse than a broken a .n I " " Can you not avert the danger ? " suggested Mr. Gilbert. " It may not be too late. Send the fellow away." " Wal, squire, you see that mightn't be doing the square thing by him. It would look unpleasantly like turning him out. No, I can't send him away until the doctor says he's fit to go, but, by ginger, I'll send her I " "Will she go?" Uncle Reuben chuckled. " We won't ask her. I'll fix it off. We've some cousins thirty miles up country, and they've invited her time and again, but, somehow, we've never felt — ^Joe and me — as though we could spare her afore. It's powerful lonesome, I tell ye, squire, when Norry ain't around. But now — I'll lake her to-morrow morning." " The best thing you can do. And now, before it gets any later and stormier, I will be off. Good-by, Mr. Kent, for the present." 4 11 l?f^ I, fci u I. A. 48 NORINETS REVENGE. You'll be along " Good-by, and thanky, squire, thanky, again ?oon, hey ? " " Well, perhaps so," replied the lawyer, coloring slight- ly. " Take care of your niece, Kent, and good-by to you." They parted at the gate. Reuben Kent watched the stalwart form of the lawyer out of siglit, then walked slow- ly and thoughtfully back to the house and the sitting- room. Mr. Thorndyke, in a deep, melodious tenor, was reading aloud " Lucille," and Miss Bourdon, with flushed cTieeks and glistening eyes of light, was listening. The reading ceased at the farmer's entrance j the spell was broken, and Norine looked up. " Has Mr. Gilbert gone, Uncle Reuben ? " "Yes." He said it with unusual gravity, regarding young Thorn- dyke. The girl saw the change in his usually good humored, red-and-tan face, and went over and threw an arm around his neck. " What is it, uncle ? Something gone wrong ?" «« No— yes. Nothing that can't be set right, I hope. Where's your aunt ?" " In the kitchen baking cake. Shall I rui» and call her ? " " No, I'll go myself." He left the room. Mr. Thorndyke watched him. " It is as I thought," he said to himself. " My label is up, 'dangerous.' What has Gilbert been saying ? Has he given Uncle Reuben my whole interesting biography? Has he told him I drink, I gamble, I make love to pretty girls wherever I meet them ? All right, my legal duffer ; you have set your forty-years-old heart on pretty, black-eyed, belle Norine, and so have I. Now, let's see who'll win." •«!r THE LAWYER'S WARNING. 49 Mr. Kent found his sister in the kitchen, baking, as Norine had said, cakes for tea, their fragrant sweetness perfuming the hot air. In very few words he repeated to her the lawyer's warning. " We might a seen it ourselves, Hetty, if we hadn't been blinder than bats. I'll take her up to Abel Mei zeath- er's to-morrow, and just leave her thar till this ere chap goes." " Will you tell her, Reuben ? " Aunt Hetty asked. " No ; I kinder don't like to, somehow. She'll guess without any telling, I reckon. If I told her, she might tell him, there ain't never no countin' on gals, and then he'd be after her hot foot. Least said's soonest mended. Jest call her down to help you, Hetty, and keep her here as long as you can. What with his poetry reading, his singing, his fine talk, and good-lookin' face, he's enough to turn any gal's head." " It was very good of Mr. Gilbert to tell you, Reuben." " Very." They looked at each other, and smiled. Poor Richard Gilbert ! Your cherished secret was very large print after all. " Mr. Gilbert's her best friend, and sets heaps by her,", said Uncle Reuben rising. " Call the girl at once, Hetty." He left the kitchen and Aunt Hester obeyed. Norine was summoned from " Lucille," and Mr. Thorndyke — to look after the cakes, to make tea, to roll out the short-cakei to butter the biscuits, to set the table. For once Aunt Hester turned lazy and left everything to Norine. She had not breathing space until supper was on the table. After supper it was as bad. Contrary to all precedent, instead of going to tho piapo, Norine got a basket of socks 3 f^ SO NORINE'S REVENGE. to darn. She looked at the heap and the rents with laugh- ing dismay. , "All these for me, Aunty I I'll never get through in the world, and I want to practice my new songs with Mr. Thorndyke." "Mr. Thorndyke will excuse you, I am sure," Aunt Hetty answered quietly. " You sing a great deal more for him than you darn for me. You darn very badly — it is time that you learned something useful. Here is your needle and ball, my dear, go to work at once." Miss Bourdon made a little wry face ; Mr. Thorndyke's laughing blue eyes looked knowing. Love and music were to be exchanged for cooking and darning, all thanks to Mr. Gilbert. Aunt Hester placed herself between her guest and her niece, and kept her post like a very duenna all the even- ing. No poetry, no music, no compliments, no love- making, only silence and sock-darning. Laurence Thorn- dyke reclining on his lounge, even his efforts at con- versation falling flat, saw and understood it all perfectly. By Gilbert's order the ewe lamb was to be guarded from the wolf. And his spirit rose with the resistance " Guard her as you like," he said inwardly, — " watch her as you will, I'll baffle the whole of you yet. If I cared nothing for the girl, and I don't care much, I would still conquer you here, if only for the pleasure of paying off Richard Gilbert. Meddling old prig! There was that affair of Lucy West, he had to bring that to light, and old Darcy was within an ace of disinheriting nie. He wants to marry this little black-eyed, sentimental French girl him- self — more fool he — and it shall be my pleasant and profit- able occupation to nip that middle-aged romance in the ***--* THE LA WVEIVS WARNING. 51 bud. I flatter myself I am rather more than a match for Aunt Hetty." But Mr. Thorndyke was yet to learn whether he was or no. At no time, well or ill, was this elegant young doctor addicted to the vice of early-rising. It was mostly noon when, half-carried in the strong arms of Uncle Reuben and Joe, he reached the parlor. Norine, however, was up with the lark — that is to say, there were no larks in December, but with the striking six of the kitchen clock. On the morning following the stock- ing darning,' as the family assembled together for their seven o'clock breakfast. Uncle Reuben said : " Norry, I'm a going to give you a treat to-day — some- thing you've been wanting this long time." Norine opened her black eyes, and held the portion of buckwheat cake on her fork, suspended in space. " A treat I Something I've been wanting this long time I You darling old dear, what is it ? " " Don't ask me, it's a secret, it's to be a surprise. Have you finished breakfast ? Wal, run and put on the best duds you've got, while I go round and gear up Kitty." " Kitty ! Then we're going somewhere. Now Uncle Reuben " " It ain't a mite o' use, Norry, I ain't agoin' to tell. Be off and clap on your Sunday fixins, while I get around the cutter." " You're going to take me to the city and buy me some- thing — a silk dress, perhaps. Oh, uncle! what a dear old love you are 1 I'll be ready in ten minutes." Uncle Reuben's heart smote him a little as he received Norine's rapturous kiss, but there was no drawing back. He left the house, while Miss Bourdon flew off singing like M^. 52 NORINETS REVENGE. a skylark, to make her toilet. A new silk— yes, that was it — a new wine-colored silk with black lace trimming. If Mr. Thorndyke admired her in last winter's dingy red me- rino, how would he be dazzled by the wine-colored silk ? In fifteen minutes her rapid toilet was made, and looking charming in her holiday attire she came running back to Uncle Reuben. The sleigh was drawn up before the door ; she sprang into her seat beside him. Aunt Hetty, in the doorway, was smiling good-by, the bells jingled, the whip cracked, Kitty tossed her head and darted away into the frosty morning sunshine. " Not going to the city, uncle 1 " cried Norine " now, where on earth can you be taking me ? " " To Merryweather's my dear," calmly responded Uncle Reuben, " where you have been teasing me to take you these three months. There! ain't that a pleasant surprise ? " There was a blank silence for a moment — the silence of great amaze. He looked at her askance. A surprise be- yond a doubt, but a pleasant one. Well, that was another question. Her face had changed ominously all in a mo- ment. " To Merryweather's ? " she repeated. " Thirty miles I " "Exactly, my dear — to stay two or three weeks, as they've been wanting you to do. I didn't tell you, be- cause I wanted to surprise you. I knew you would be pleased to death." " But uncle I can't ! " exclamed the girl, vehemently. " I can't go. I have nothing to wear. My trunk and all my things are at home." " Jest so ; the cutter wouldn't hold your trunk ; but Joe, he's going out 'bout the end of the week, and he'll fetch it. THE LA WYEIVS WARNING. 53 Make your mind easy, my dear ; Aunt Hetty will forget nothin'." Norine made no reply. The sunny face wore the darkest expression Uncle Reuben had ever seen it wear yet. Was Mr. Gilbert right — was the mischief done — was it too late, after all ? He drove on. The blank silence lasted. He had never dreamed the laughing face of his little Norine could wear the look it wore now. She spoke after a long pause, in a tone of sullen inquiry : " I wish you had told me last night, Uncle Reuben. It seems very odd going off in this way. What will Mr. Thorndyke say ? " " What business is it of his ? " placidly inquired Uncle Reuben. An angry flush rose up over Norine's face. " He will think it very strange — very strange ; I did not even say good-by." "I'll explain all that." " And Aunt Hetty — how will she ever get along with- out me, with the house work to do, and Mr. Thorndyke to wait on, and everything." " He won't be to wait on long, he'll be able to return to his friends in Portland in a week, and to tell the truth, I shan't be sorry to be rid of him. As for you, Norry, by the way you object, one would think you didn't want to go, after all." Again Norine flushed angrily. " I don't object to going," she said, in a tone that con- tradicted her words. " It is the manner of going I don't like. I do think you might have told me last night, Uncle Reuben." >■■ I? 1^ m II s *!li ■A I I i ail i; t £1 '; * !■■ '^. 54 NO NINE'S REVENGE. Uncle Reuben stopped the cutter abruptly, and looked • at her. " Shall I turn and drive back ? " he asked. What could she say ? The black eyes emitted an angry flash, the voice that answered was sharp and petulant. " No — go on." He drove on, without another word. Norine lay back in the sleigh, wrapped her cloak about her, pulled a little •veil she wore, over her face, and was silent. A great fear, a great dismay, a great foreboding filled Uncle Reu- ben's heart. Had this girl lived with them so long, made herself so dear, and hidden the nature that was within her, after all ? What lay under luat sparkling surface that had seemed as clear as limpid water ? Dark depths he could never fathom, depths undreamed of as yet by herself. Was she — ^he wondered this vaguely, with a keen sense of pain — the gentle, affectionate, yielding child they had thought her, or a self-willed, passionate, headstrong woman, ready, woman-like, to throw over her oldest and truest lEriends if they stood between her and the man she loved ? say, ther he t She with dim For Mr. his r life weal ters. Nor: chaptp:r v. "I WILL BE YOUR WIFE." ISS Bourdon's visit to the family of Mr. Abel Merryweather lasted just three weeks and two days, and unspeakably dull and empty the old red farmhouse seemed without her. Uncle Joe had gone out with her trunk on Saturday, and with the news that everybody was well, and Mr. Thorndyke was to go for gf^od the following Monday. " To New York ? " Norine asked, turning very pale. " I reckon so,*' Uncle Joe responded, coolly ; " that's to say, he's to stop a few days in Portland with his friends there ; he's going to spend the rest of the winter South — so he told Hetty — down to Maryland somewhere." Norine set her lips, and turned away without a word. She would have given half her life to be able to return with Uncle Joe, but she was far too proud to ask. Some dim inkling of the truth was beginning to dawn upon her. For some cruel reason they did not wish her to be with Mr. Thorndyke, and they had sent her here to be out of his way. They were the dullest three weeks of the young lady's life. It was a pleasant place, too— Mr. Abel Merry- weather's, with a jolly, noisy houseful of sons and daugh- ters, and country frolics without end. Two months ago, Norine had looked forward to this visit with delight. i\ ih m 1 1^ II !i; Mi : '" I I I '^,« '^ 56 NORINE'S REVENGE. But in two months the whole world had changed ; and now, there was no sunshine in heaven, no gladness on earth, since a well-looking, well-dressed young man from the city would light her life with his smile no more. Mr. Thorndyke did depart the following Monday. He had been considerably surprised on first missing Norine, and inquired of Aunt Hetty where she was. The reply was very brief and reserved. " Uncle Reuben has taken her away to visit some friends." " Mr. Thorndyke fixed his large, blue eyes full upon the speaker's face. Aunt Hester, never looking at him, went on arranging the furniture. " How long will she be gone ? " he asked, at length. "That depends upon circumstances," replied Miss Kent ; " probably some weeks." Mr. Thorndyke said no more. Aunt Hetty poured out his tea, arranged his buttered toast and boiled eggs, and left the room. It had been Norine's labor of love hitherto, Norine's bright face that smiled across the little round table, instead of the withered, sallow one of Aunt Hetty. He sat alone now over his noon-day breakfast, an inex- plicable look on his handsome face. " So," he thought, " they have gone even farther than I anticipated, thay have spirited her away altogether. Poor little girl ! pretty little Norry I I believe I am really fond of you, after all. I wonder if she went willingly ? " he smiled to himself, his vanity answered that question pret- ty accurately. " It's rather hard on her, a modern case of Elizabeth and the exiles. It's all my friend Gilbert's doing, of course. Very well. It is his day now, it may be mine, to morrow. The intervening days were hopelessly long and dreary *5 J^ m "/ tV/LL BE YOUR WIFE," 57 to Mr. Laurence Thorndyke. How fond he had grown of that sparkling brunette face, those limpid eyes of "liquid light," he never knew until he lost her. That pleasant, homely room was so full of her — the closed piano, the little rocker and work -stand by the window, her beloved books and birds. Life became, all in an hour, a horrible bore in that dull red farm-house. Come what might to ankle and arm, ailing still, he would go at once. He dispatched a note to his friends in Portland, and early on Monday morning drove away with Mr. Thomas Lydyard, his friend. " Good-by Miss Kent," he said, as he shook hands with her on the doorstep. " I can never repay all your kindness, I know, but I will do my best if the opportunity ever offers. Give my very best regards to Miss Bourdon, and tell her how much I regretted her running away." And so he was gone. Uncle Reuben watched him out of sight with a great breath of relief. "Thank the Lord he's gone, and that danger's over." Ah, was it ? Had you known Mr. Laurence Thorndyke better, Reuben Kent, you would have known, also, that the danger was but beginning. Mr. Thorndyke remained four days with his friends in the city, and then started for New York. Reuben Kent heard it with immense relief and satisfaction. "He's gone, Hetty," he said to his sister, "and the good Lord send he may never cross our little girl's path again. I can see her now, with the color fading out of her face, and that white look of disappointment coming over it. I hope she's forgot him before this." " Will you go for her to-day ? " Aunt Hetty asked. " It's dreadful lonesome without her." ha iri 58 NORfNE'S REVENGE. " Not to-day. Next week will do. She'll forget him faster there than here, Hetty." It wanted but three days of Christmas when Uncle Reuben went for his niece, and it was late on Christmas eve when they returned. The snow was piled high and white everywhere. The trees stood up, black, rattling skeletons around the old house. All things seemed to have changed in the weeks of her absence, and nothing jjiore than Norine Bourdon. She sank down in a chair, in a tired, spiritless sort of way, and let Aunt Hetty remove her wraps. She had grown thin, u. the past fortnight, and pale and worn-look- ing. " You precious little Norry," aunt Hetty Raid, giving her a welcoming hug. "You can't tell how glad we are to have you back again ; how dreadfully we missed you. I expect you enjoyed your visit awfully now ? " " No," the young girl answered, with an impatient sigh j it was dull." " Dull, Norry ! with four girls and three young men in the house ? " " Well, it was dull to me. I didn't care for their frolics and sleighing parties and quilting bees. It was horridly stupid, the whole of it." " Then you are glad to be home again ? " "Yes." She did not look particularly glad, however. She leaned her head against the back of the chair, and closed her eyes with weary listlessness. Aunt Hetty watched her with a thrill of apprehension. Was her fancy for their departed guest something more than mere fancy ?— had she not begun even to forget yet, after all ? l SI thini «/ WILL BE YOUR WIFE." 67 " You are very good," she answered, quite steadily. " I will be your wife if you like." " Thank Heaven I " — he said under his breath. " Thank Heaven ! " Her heart smote her. She was giving him so little — he was giving her so much. He had always been her good, kind, faithful friend, and she had liked him so much. Yes, that was just it, she liked him so well she could never love him. But at least she would be honest. " I — I don't care for — I mean I don't love " she broke down, her eyes fixed on her mutt. '^Oh, Mi. Gilbert, I do like you, but not like that. I — I know I'm not half good enough ever to marry you." He smiled, a smile of great content. " You will let me be the judge of that, Norry. You are quite sure you like me ? " " Oh, yes. I always did, you know, but I never — no never thought you cared for — Oh, dear me ! how odd it seems. What will Uncle Reuben say ? " Mr Gilbert smiled again. " Uncle Reuben won't lose his senses with surprise, I fancy. Ah, Norry, Uncle Reuben's eyes are not half a quarter so bright nor so black as yours, but he has seen more than you after all." And then all the way home he poured into her pleased listening ear the story of her future life. It sounded like a fairy tale to the country girl. A dazzling vista spread before her, a long life in " marble halls," Brussels carpets, satin u^olstery, a grand piano, pictures, books, and new music without end. Silk dresses, diamond ear-rings, the theatres, the opera, a carriage, a waiting-maid — French, if possible — her favorite heroines all had French maids. J?%. 68 NOR /NETS REVENGE. Long Branch, Newport, balls, dinners — her head swam with the dazzle and delight of it all. Be his wife — of course she would be his wife — to-morrow, if it were prac- ticable. But she did not say this, you understand. Her face was all rosy and dimpling and smiling as they drove home ; and alas for Richard Gilbert, how little he personally had to do with all that girlish rapture. He saw that well- pleased face, and, like a wise man, asked no useless ques- tions. She was going to be his wife, everything was said in that. \\\ )♦ CHAPTER VI. BEFORE THE WEDDINO. jHE sober March twilight lay low on the snowy earth when the sleigh whirled up to the door. The red fire-light shone through the windows, and they could see Aunt Hetty bustling about the kitchen. Neit.,.f had spoken for a time, but now Norine turned to him, as she lightly sprang out. "Say nothing of this to-night," she said, hurriedly; "wait until to-morrow." She was gone before he could answer, and he drove round to the stable. Uncle Reuben was there, and Mr. Gilbert remained with him until Aunt Hetty's voice was heard calling them to supper. The lawyer was standing in the doorway, watching the solemn stars come out, a great silent grayity on his face. But oh, so happy, too — so deep- ly, unutterably happy. The supper table was spread, lamp-light beamed, fire- light glowed, and Aunt Hetty awaited them impatient, lest her warm milk biscuits and sugared " flap-jacks " should grow cold. Norine stood leaning against the mantel, looking dream- ily into the red fire. How pale she was, how strangely grave and thoughtful. Yet not unhappy, surely, for she glanced up in her lover's face with a quick blush and >• «!■ ^ si vll in I.' H: i'S £ SM j't i; It! ill 70 NORINE'S REVENGE. smile, and talked to him shyly throughout supper. La- ter still she played and sang for him the songs and pieces he liked best, played a game of euchre with him, and if she thought of Laurence Thorndyke, who had taught her the game, Richard Gilbert did not know it. " She will learn to love me," he thought. " My pretty, dark-eyed darling 1 I will love her so much. I will so gratify her in everything. I will be so devoted, in all ways, that she cannot help it. Please Heaven, her life shall be a happy one with me." Norine retired early. Her long drive had made her tired and sleepy she said ; but she did not go to sleep. Moon and stars shone crystal clear, pearly bright. She blew out her lamp, wrapped a shawl about her, and sat down by the window. Weirdly still lay everything, ivory light, ebony shadows, no sound but the rattling of the skeleton trees in the wintry night wind. No living thing was visible far or near. There was only the star-gemmed sky above, the chill, white world below. She could read her heart in the holy hush of the night, and look into the life that was dawning for her, by its solemn light. Rich- ard Gilbert's wife I How strange and unreal that seemed. She liked him very much as she might have liked an indulgent elder brother, but love him — no I She might have deluded herself into thinking so, had Laurence Thomdyke's splendid image never dazzled her. She knew better now — the knowledge had come upon her all at once, transforming her from a child to a woman. •* If I had never met him," she thought, " I might have been a happy wife, but now 1 Now can I ever learn to for- get him, and to give Mr. Gilbert his place ?" She covered her face with her hands, alone as she was. BEFORE THE WEDDING. n Alas for Richard Gilbert I congratulating himself at that very moment on having won for his very own the fairest, the sweetest, the truest of her sex. Miss Bourdon sat mournfully musing there until long past bedtime, long past midnight. Moonlight and star- light paled presently, the prospect grew gloomy, the air bitter cold, and shivering and miserable, the girl crept away to bed. Even then she could not sleep — her nerves were all unstrung and on edge. She lay broad awake trying to imagine what her life would be like as Mr. Gil- bert's wife. The fairy world of her dreams and her books would open to her. Costly dresses and jewels, a fine house in New York, her carriage and servants, sum- mer travel and winter balls — all this he had promised her. And there in the midst of it all, once again she would meet Laurence Thorndike. It would be part of the romance, she as the wife, he as the husband of another, and the weak silly heart fluttering under the bedclothes, gave a great bound. Then she remembered that it would be wicked to wish to see him — a sin to be happy in his presence ; but do what she would, the hope of meeting him again, was at the bottom of her willingness to become the lawyer's wife. When Norine descended to breakfast next morning, she found Mr. Gilbert standing in the open doorway, looking out at the frosty sunshine. He came forward to meet her, his face suddenly radiant. " I have been waiting to waylay you," he said, smiling, " I want you to let me tell your uncle to-day." " You are in a hurry," Norine answered, rather impa- tiently. " Yes, my darling. Why should I not be? And Ire- 72 NO FINE'S REVENGE. \% turn to New York early next week. You say yes— do you not, Norine ? " She smiled, and gave him her hand. She had said " yes " to a more important proposition, he had been very good to her, why should she not please him ? " Do as you like, Mr. Gilbert. Tell my uncle i£ you choose." " And if he consents, Norine— as I think he will— when shall I tell him our marriage is to take place? I want it to be soon, my dearest girl, very soon, for I don't feel as though I could live much longer without you. Come, my little wife I name an early day." " Oh, I cannot I I don't know when. Next summer some time." " That is indefinite," he laughed. " Allow me to be de- finite. Say early next May." " No, no, no ! that is too soon— greatly too soon I I couldn't be ready." " Then, when ? I won't be selfish, but you must be mer- ciful, mademoiselle, and not keep me in suspense too long." She laughed her old gay laugh. " Patience, monsieur ; patience stands chief among the virtues. Will June do — the last ? " "The first, Norine." Aunt Hetty was coming through the hall. Norine dart- ed away. " Have it as you will I Don't you want me to help you with breakfast, auntie ? " Mr. Gilbert smilingly looked after his bright little prize, so soon to be his bright little wife, then turned to Aunt Hetty. " Where is your brother this morning, Miss Kent ? I wish to speak to him." ■*■ ^% BEFORE THE IVEDD/A'G. 73 " In the stable, I think. Shall I go and see ? " " Not at all. I will go myself." He walked away, humming a tune, in the happiness of his heart. Ah 1 shone ever winter sun so brightly before, looked ever the work-a-day world so paradisiacal as now 1 Tlie earth and all thereon was transformed as with an en- chanter's wand to this middle-aged legal gentleman in love. Uncle Renben, busy among his cattle, looked up in some surprise at sight of his early visitor. "Don't let me interfere with your work, Kent," the lawyer said. " You can attend to your horses and listen, too. I must leave the day after to-morrow ; my business has been too long neglected, and I have something of im- portance to tellyQu before I go. Something I hope— I believe, you will notT>e sorry to hear." The eyes of the two men met. There was a peculiar smile on the lawyer's face, a happy light in his eyes, and Reuben Kent's countenance grew suddenly bright with intelligence. " Is it about Norry ? " A smile and a nod answered him. " Then I reckon I can guess. You have asked her to marry you ? " " Exactly. But how, in the name of everything wonder- ful have you found it out .' " Uncle Reuben's eyes twinkled shrewdly. " I ain't a lawyer, Mr. Gilbert, but I can see as far into a milestone as any other man. Do you think I s'posed it was to see me and Joe and Hetty you came to Kent Hill so often ? No, sir ! I see you had a hankering after our little girl from the first." 4 i% 74 NOR MPS REVENGE. !. ' x ; :.:',? Mr. Gilbert actually blushed. And he had guarded his precious secret so carefully, he had thought. " Well, Mr. Kent, I trust I have your approval ? " Reuben Keui stretched out his big brown paw, and grasped the lawyer's white hand. " I give her to you with all my heart, sir. I'd rather see her your wife than the wife of the President. I've been hoping this long time it would come to this. She's a good girl, as good as she's pretty, and I know she'll make you a good wife." Not one word of the honor done them or her by the wealthy lawyer's offer — not one thought of it. In Reuben Kent's eyes no king or kaiser on the wide earth would have been too good for his beautiful Norine. " And when is it to be, sir ? " he asked. " The wedding? " smiled Mr. Gilbert. " The first week of June. If I possibly can, I will run down here once or twice between this and then, but I am doubtful of its being possible. I have neglected business somewhat of late, and it has accumulated. You will tell your brother and sister, Kent ? " They walked back to the house together to breakfast. Norine saw in her unck's face that he had been told, and blushed beautifully. How very, very near and real, it seemed to bring it, this telling Uncle Reuben. Mr. Gilbert took her out for a walk after breakfast, and Uncle Reuben availed himself of the opportunity to inform his sister and brother. They were no more sur- prised than he had been, and equally pleased, but Aunt Hetty cried quietly, woman-fashion, for all that. " We will miss her so much," she said j " the old house will seem like a tomb without her. He is a good man, a I' • i I PEFORE THE WEDDING. 75 rich m.in, and a gentleman — I ought to rejoice for her sal...'iiti^i-iA»«i_l'-*?'' 86 NORWE'S REVENGE. herself to be his wife. This very day, dawning yonder over the hills of Maine, would see him here to claim her as his own forever. Was one sight of Laurence Thorndyke's face, one touch of his hand, one seductive tone of his voice sufficient to make her fling honor and truth to the winds, desert her best, her only friends, break her plighted husband's heart, and make her memory a shame and pain to them all forever ? Oli, what a wretch she was, what cruel, selfish passion this love she felt must be I The sun rose up between the fleecy clouds, filling the world with jubilant brightness, tiie sweet scents of sun- rise in the country perfumed the warm air. Norine threw up her window and leaned out, worn and fevered with her night's vigil. That meeting under the trees seemed a long way off now, it was as if she had lived years in a few brief hours. Presently there was a rap at the door, and Aunt Hetty's voice outside spoke. " Are you up, Norry ? is your headache better, dear ? " " Much better, aunty — I'll be down directly." " Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes," said aunty, and Norine got wearily up, and bathed her face, brush- ed out her tangled curls, shrinking guiltily from her own pallid face in the glass. " How wretchedly haggard I look," she thought, drear- ily ; " surely every one who looks at me will read my guilt in my face." She went down stairs. Aunt Hetty nearly dropped the sweet, smelling plate of hot muffins at sight of her. " You're whiter than a ghost, child I " she cried. " You told me you were better." "I am better, aunty. Oh, pray don't mind my looks. ^ THE GA THERING STORM. 87 La3t night's headache has made me pale — I will be as well as ever after breakfast." But breakfast was only a pretence as far she was con- cerned, and the day wore on and the fair, young face kept its pallid, startled look. She could do nothing, neither read or sew, she wandered about the house like a restless spirit, only shrinking from that Bluebeard's chamber, where all the wedding finery was spread. How was she to meet Mr. Gilbert, and the fleeting hours were hurrying after one another, as hours never had hurried before. The afternoon sun dropped low, the noises in the fields grew more and more subdued, the cool evening wind swept up from the distant sea. Norine sat in the wicker chair in the garden under the old apple-tree and waited — waited as a doomed prisoner might the coming of the ex- ecutioner. A book lay idle on her lap, she could not read, she sat there waiting — waiting^waiting, and school- ing herself for the ordeal. Presently, far off on the white road, rose up a cloud of dust, there came the rolling of wheels, she caught a glimpse of a carriage. She clasped her hands together and strove to steady herself. At last he was here. Out of the dusty cloud came a buggy, whirling rapidly up to the gate — out of the buggy came Richard Gilbert, his eager face turned towards her. His quick eye had espied her ; she rose up to meet him, calm in the very depth of desperatioti. Mr. Gilbert sprang out and caught both her hands in his. " My dear, dear girl ! My own Norine ! how glad I am to be with you once more ! But how pale you look. Have you been ill ? " ttm tm m 5a- I" ■i'-*ti*cii«*Hn«H*Sr.«rta(iiUA. •■■-'- -^i ■'"'■^"■^"*''^*^^-i'*i^4*.'K»t>Ji^S,:^^ *iS» 'w> IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) <. .<,^1^. ;' 1.0 Ifi^ I I.I 125 ■^ i^ 12.2 IM 1-25 i 1.4 1.6 -► V vg Photographic Sdences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICIVIH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques 'Hi ■'.f. dli 88 NORINES REVENGE. " Oh, no — that is — only my old friend, headache. Here comes Aunty Hetty and Uncle Reuben to welcome you." She drew back, thankful for the diversion, feeling-hot and cold by turns, and not daring to meet his eye. Their laughter, their gay greetings were only a confused hum in her ears, she was looking at the clump of hemlocks, and feeling — oh, such a false, treaclierous guilty creature. " How dazed you look, little girl ! " her happy lover said laughing ; " am I such an ogre, then, in your sight .' " He drew her hand beneath his arm, with the air of one who assumes a right, and led her to the house. They were alone together in the parlor, and she was trying to call her wandering mind to order, and listen to him and answer his questions. She could see with terror that he was watching her already with grave, troubled eyes. What was it, this pale, still change in her ? Dread of her ap- proaching marriage, maiden timidity, or worst of all — was the thought of another man haunting her still ? Tea time came and was a relief ; after tea, Mr. Gil- bert proposed a walk. Norine took her hat passively, and went out with him into the hushed and placid twilight. The pale primrose light was fading out of the western sky, and a rising wind was tossing the arms of the hemlocks •where she stood with another lover last night. It was a very silent walk. They strolled along the lonesome road, with the primrose light growing grayer and grayer through the velvety meadows, where the quiet cows grazed. Something of the dark shadows deepening around them seemed to steal into the man's heart, and dull it with nameless dread, but there was no voice in the rising wind, in the whispering trees, in the creeping gloom, to tell him of what was so near. I 1 THE GATHERING STORM. 89 A very silent walk — the last they would ever take. The little talking clone, Mr. Gilbert did himself. He told her that all his preparations for his bride, all his arrange- ments lor her comfort were made. Their home in New York's stateliest avenue was ready and waiting — their wed- ing tour would be to Montreal and Niagara, unless Norine had some other choice. But she would be glad to see once more the quaint, gray, dear old Canadian town — would she not ? " Yes, she would ever be glad to see Montreal. No, she had no other choice." She shivered as she said it, looking far off with blank eyes that dare not meet his. " Niagara would do very well, all places were alike to her. It was growing cold and dark," — abruptly this — " suppose they went home." Something in her tone and manner, in her want of in- terest and enthusiasm, hurt him. More silently than they had come they recrossed the darkening fields. The moon was rising as they drew near the house, forcing its way up through dark and jagged clouds. She paused suddenly for a moment, with her pale face turned towards it. Mr, Gilbert paused, too, looking at the lowering sky. " Listen to the wind," he said. " We will have a change to-morrow." " A change I " she said, in a hushed sort of voice. " Yes, the storm is yerj' near." " And you are shivering in this raw night wind. You are white and cold as a spirit, my darling. Come let us go in." His baggage had arrived — a trunk and valise stood in the hall as they entered. The sister and brothers sat in holiday attire in the keeping room, but very grave and I i r 90 NOR/NE'S REVENGE. quiet. The shadow that had fallen on Richard Gilbert in the twilight fields seemed to have fallen here, too, Norine sat at the piano, her face turned away from the light, and played the melodies he asked for. From these she drifted gradually into music more in accordance with her mood, playing in a mournful, minor key, until Mr, Gilbert could endure the saddening sweetness no longer. " Your music is very melancholy, my dear," he said quietly, " Will you not sing us something instead," " Not to-night, I think. I find my headache has not altogether departed. If you will kinc'.Iy excuse me, I will retire." She got up as she spoke, lit a lamp, and with a brief goodnight, was gone. It was not yet ten o'clock, but there was little induce- ment to linger now. Mr. Gilbert owned to being rather fatigued, took his light, and departed. Before half-past ten all were in their rooms, the doors and windows secured for the night. By eleven all were asleep — all save one. Norine sat at her window, her light shaded, her watch (one of Richard Gilbert's presents to his bride elect) open before her, gazing out into the gusty darkness, and wait- ing. Her hands were tightly clasped together, silent, tearless sobs shook her at times as remorse swept through, her soul, and yet not for one minute did she think of with- drawing f roin her tryst. But she would not fly with Laurence Thomdyk — no, no ! Every best impulse within her cried out she would not, she could not. She was a wretch for even thinking of it — a wretch for going to this meeting, but she would only go to say farewell forever. She loved him, but she belonged to another man j it would be better THE GATHERING STORM. 91 to die than to betray him. She would bid Laurence Thorndyke go to-night, and never see him more. The threatening storm seemed drawing very near. The moon was half obscured in dense clouds ; the wind tore around the gables ; the trees tossed their long, green arms wildly aloft. Within the house profoundest silence reigned. Half-past eleven I the hour of tryst ; she seemed to count the moments by the dull beating of her heart. She rose up, extinguished her lamp, put on a waterproof, drawing the hood over her head, took her slippers in her hand, and opened the door. She paused and listened, half choked by the loud throbbing of her heart, by guilty, nameless dread. All was still — no sound but the surging of the trees without ; no glimmer of light from any room. She stole on tiptoe along the passage, down the stairs, and into the lower hall. Noiselessly she unlocked the door, opened it, and was out in the windy dark, under the gloom of the trees. One second's pause, her breath coming in frightened gasps, then she was flitting away in the chill night wind to meet her lover. She reached the gate, leaned over it eagerly, straining her eyes through the gloom. " Laurence 1 " she said, in a tremulous whisper. " Lau- rence, I have come." " My own brave little girl I " A tall figure stepped forward from beneath a tree, two warm hands clasped hers. " Norry, you're a trump, by Jove ! Come out at once. All is ready. You must fly with me to-night," But she shrank back — shocked, terrified, yet Jonging with all her soul to obey. " No, no 1 " she cried. " I can never go—never I never I ■?r jffs- 93 NORINerS REVENGE. never 1 O Lawrence I I have come here to bid you good- by forever 1 " His answer was to laugh aloud. His face was flushed his blue eyes gleaming — Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, bold enough at all times, had primed himself with brandy for to-night's work, until he was ready to face and defy devils ad men. " Good-by forever I " he repeated. " Yes, that's so like- ly, my darling. Come out here, Norry — come out. I've no notion of talking with a five-barred gate between us. So old Gilbert came down to his wedding this afternoon didn't he ? By Jubiter ! what a row there will be to-mor- row, when the cage is opened, and the bird found flown. He laughed recklessly aloud, as he opened the gate and drew her out. " Not if I know it, Norry. No dry-as-dust, grim, solemn owl of a lawyer for my little Canadian rosebud, old as the everlasting hills, and priggish as the devil. No, no ! we'll change all that. Before morning dawns you and I will be safely in Boston, and before another night falls you'll be my blessed little wife — the loveliest bride from Maine to Florida, and I the most blissful of bridegrooms. All is ready — here are my horse and buggy — the sloop sails in an hour, and then — let them catch us who can I " Either the excitement of his triumph, or the French brandy, had set Mr. Laurence Thorndyke half wild. He drew her with him, heedless of her struggles, her passionate protest. " Can't go ? Oh, that's all bosh, my darling ! you've got to come. I love you, and you love me— (sounds like a child's valentine, don't it ?) — and you don't care that for old Dick Gilbert. You won't go ? If you don't I'll shoot myself to shoo I don't moon's upon r angel, that, me for get in, He! Stun only Is horse \ forwan scream "O A w like th mingle THE GA THERING STORM. myself before morning — I swear I will ! You don't want me to shoot myself, do you ? I can't live without you, Norry, and I don't mean to try. After we're married, and the honey- moon's over, I'll fetch you back to the old folks if you like, upon my sacred honor I will. Not a word now, my little angel, I won't listen. Of course you've scruples, and all that. I think the more of you for them, but you'll thank, me for not listening one day. Here's the carriage — ^get in, get in, get in ! " He fairly lifted her in as he spoke. Stunned, terrified, bewildered, she struggled in vain. He only laughed aloud, caught up the reins, and struck the horse with the whip. The horse, a spirited one, darted forward like a flash ; there was a girl's faint, frightened scream. " O Laurence ! let me go I " A wild laugh drowned it-^they flew oyer the ground like the wind. Norine was gone I His exultant singing mingled with the crash of the wheels as they disappeared. " She is won I they are gone over bush, brake and scsir ; They'll have fleet steeds that follow, quoth young Lochinvar." r CHAPTER VIII. fled! R. GILBERT wr jt to his room, went to his bed, but he did not go to sleep. He lay awake so long, tossing restlessly, that, at last, in disgust, he got up dressed himself partly, and sat down in the darkness by his open chamber window ; to have it out. What was the matter with Norine? Headache; she had said — ^but to eyes sharpened by deep, true, love, it looked much more like heartache. The averted eyes, the faltering voice, the pallid cheeks, the shrinking form, betokened something deeper than headache. Was she at the eleventh hour repenting her marriage ? Was she still in love with Laurence Thorndyke ? Was she pin- ing for the freedom she had resigned ? Was there no spark of affection for him in hsr girl's heart after all ? " I was mad and presumptuous to dream of it," he thought. " I am thirty-six — she is seventeen. I am not handsome, nor brilliant, nor attractive to a girl's fancy in any way — she is all. Yes, she is pining for him, and repenting of her hastily-plighted troth. Well, then, she shall have it back. If I loved her tenfold more than I do, and Heaven knows to love her any better than I do mortal man cannot, still I would resign her. No woman FLED I 95 shall ever come to me as wife with her heart in the keeping of another man. Better a thousand times to part now than to part after marriage. I have seen quite too much, in my professional capacity of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure, to try it myself. I will speak to her to-morrow ; she shall tell me the truth fearlessly and frankly while it is not yet too late, and if it be as I dread, why, then, I can do as better men have done— bear my pain and go my way. Poor, pretty little Norry I with her drooping face and pathetic, wistful eyes— she longs to tell me, I know, and is afraid. It is a very tender heart, a very romantic little heart, and who is to blame her if it turns to him, young and handsome as she is herself, in- stead of to the grave, dull, middle-aged lawyer. And yet, it will be very hard to say good-by." He broke down for a moment, alone as he was. A great flood of recollection came over him— the thought of parting— now— was bitter indeed. A vision rose before him— Norine as he had seen her first, standing shyly down- cast in the train, her dark, childlike eyes glancing im- ploringly around, the sensitive color coming and going in her innocent face. She arose before him again as he had seen her later, flushed and downcast, sweet and smiling, bending over Laurence Thorndyke, with " Love's young dream " written in every line of her happy face. Again as he had seen her that day when he spoke, pale, startled, troubled, afraid to accept, afraid to refuse, and faltering out the words that made him so idiotically happy, with her little, white, handsome face, keeping its startled pallor. " Yes," he said, " yes, yes, I see it all. She said 'yes,' because it is not in her yielding, gentle, child's heart to NOR/NE'S REVENGE. .'• \ say no. And now she is repenting when she thinks it too late. But it is not too late ; to-morrow I will speak and she will answer, and if there be one lingering doubt in her mind, we will shake hands and part. My little love 1 I wish for your sake Laurence Thorndyke were worthy of you, and might return ; but to meet him again is the worst fate that can befall you, and in three months poor Helen Holmes will be his bride." Hark ! was that a sound ? He broke off his reverie to listen. No, all was still again — only the surging of the wind in the maples. "It certainly sounded like the opening of a door below," he thought ; "a rat perhaps — all are in bed." He was looking blankly out into the windy darkness. This time to-morrow night his fate would be decided. Would he still be in this room, waiting for Thursday morning to dawn and give him Norine, or — He broke oE abruptly again. Was that a figure moving down in the gloom to the gate ? Surely not, and yet some- thing moved. A second more, and it had vanished. Was this fancy, too ? He waited, he listened. Clearly through the dusk, borne on the wind, there came to him the faint, far-off sound of a laugh. " Who can it be ?" he thought, puzzled. " No fancy this time. I certainly heard a laugh. Rather an odd hour and lonely spot for mirth." He listened once more, and once more, fainter and farther off, came on the wind that laugh. Did he dream, or did a cry mingle with it? The next instant he started to his feet as the loud, rapid rush of carriage wheels sounded through the deep silence of the night. What did it mean j Had some one stealthily left the house and driven FLED! 97 away ? He rose, drew on his coat, and without his boots, quitted his room, and descended the stairs. The house door stood ajar— some one had left them and driven away. He walked to the gate. Nothing was to be seen, noth- ing to be heard. The gloomy night sky, the tossing trees, the soughing wind, nothing else far or near. " It may have been Reuben or Joe Kent," he thought. " and yet at this time of night and in secret ! And there was a cry for help, or what certainly sounded like one. No need to puzzle over it, however— to morrow will tell. A New England farm house is about the last place on earth to look for mysteries." Mr. Gilbert went to bed again, and, somewhere in the small hours, to sleep. It was rather late when he awoke, and an hour past the usual breakfast time when, his toilet completed, he descended the stairs. The storm had come in pouring rain, in driving wind, in sodden earth, and frowning sky. Aunt Hetty was alone, the table was laid for two, a delightful odor of coffee and waffles perfumed the air. She looked up from her sewing with a smile as he bade her good-morning. " I was just wondering if you and Norry meant to keep your rooms all day. Oh, you needn't make any apology ; it is as easy to wait breakfast for two as for one. The boys and me "—(they were the " boys " still to Miss Hester Kent)—" had oure at seven o'clock. Now sit right down Mr. Gilbert, and I'll go and rout out Norry, and you and her can have your breakfast sociably together. You'll have a good many sociable breakfasts alone together, I dare say, before long. Gloomy sort of day now, ain't it ?" 5 98 NOR INK'S REVENGE. " Norine is not clown then ? " the lawyer said, startled a little, yet hardly knowing why. " Not yet. She ain't often lazy o' mornings, ain't Norry, neither. You wait, though. I'll have her down in ten minutes." He looked at her .is though to say something, changed his mind suddenly, and took seat. Miss Kent left the room. Five minutes passed. Then she came rushing down the stairs, and back to his side, all white and frightened. " Mr. Gilbert, Norine's not in her room 1 Her bed was not slept in at all last night 1 " She sat down all at once, pressing her hand hard over her heart. " I'm," she said, panting, " I'm very foolish, I know, but it has given me a turn." He rose to his feet. He knew it then ! As well as he ever knew it in the after time, Richard Gilbert knew it all at that moment, Norine had fled. " It was she, then, who left the house last night," he said, in a hushed voice ; " and it was a man's laugh 1 Was it— My God ! Was it—" He stopped, turning white with the horror of that thought. " Call your brothers," he said, his voice ringing, his face setting white and stern as stone. " We must search for her at once. At all costs we must find her — must bring her back. Quick, Miss Kent I Your brothers! I am afraid Norine has fled." " Fled 1 " " Fled — run away from home, for fear of marrying me. Don't you understand. Miss Kent ? Call your brothers, I say every minute may be worth a life — or more 1 Quick 1 " She obeyed — stunned, stupefied by the shock, the horror FLED. 99 of her amaze. The two men rushed wildly in, frightened by their sister's incoherent words. Rapidly, clearly, Rich- ard Gilbert told them what he had heard last night, told them even what he feared most. " Thorndyke has come back, and either persuaded her to run away with him or forcibly abducted her. I feel sure of it. I heard him laugh, and her cry last night as plainly as I hear my own voice now. There is not a moment to be lost. On with your coats ! out with the horses, and let us be off. Better she were dead than with him.'' They are gone, and the woman sits alone, stunned, speechless, unable to realize it, only dumbly conscious that something awful has happened. Norine has gone I Fled on the very eve of her bridal with another man. Norine— little Norrie, who but yesterday seemed to Tier as a young innocent child. The woman sits and weeps alone by her desolate hearth. The men go forth into the world, and forget their grief for the time in the excitement of the search— the men, who have the best of it always. All his life long that miserable day remained in Richard Gilbert's memory more as a sickening dream than as a reality. He suffered afterward— horribly— to-day he was too dazed to suffer or feel. Whether found or not, No- rine Bourdon was lost to bim forever ; dumbly he felt that, but she must be found. At all costs, she must be brought back from Laurence Thorndyke. The two men acted passively under his orders— awed into silence by the look on his set, white face. Even to them that day remained as a dizzy dream. Now they- were at the station, listening to Gilbert's rapid, lucid in- quiries and description, and the clerk shook his head. lOO NORINE\S REVENGE. " No," he said ; " so far as he could recollect, no two parties answering the description, had left by the earliest train that morning." Then Mr. Gilbert went backward, and tried the regis- ters of the various hotels for the name of Thorndyke. It did not appear, but in one of the lesser hotels the question was solved. " Thar hain't ben nobody here answerin' to that air," said the Down-East innkeeper ; " but thar hes ben a chap callin' himself Smith — ^John Smith. That may be the cove you want. Likely's not, ye know, if he's ben up to any of his larks, he would give a false name, ye know. He come Saturday night— staid Sunday and Monday, paid his bill last evenin', and made himself scarce. Shouldn't be a mite surprised, now, if he's the rooster you're after." " Describe him," the lawyer said, briefly. " Wal, he was a good-lookin' young fellow as ye'd wish to see. Tall and slim and genteel, city clothes, a niouslache, blueish eyes, and sorter light hair— a swell young chap, sech as we ain't used to in our house." " Thorndyke ! " the lawyer muttered, between his teeth. " He never stirred out all Sunday," pursued mine host, " until after nightfall. Then he started off afoot, and it was past eleven when he got back. All day Monday he loafed about his room the same way, and on Monday even- nin', as I said, he paid his bill, got a buggy somewhere, and drove off. And I calk'late, square, he'd been a drink- in', he kinder looked and talked that way. That's all I know about Mr. John Smith." They telegraphed along the line, but without success. Nothing satisfactory could be discovered. It was noon FLED. lOI Mr. Gilbert now— there was a train for Boston at two. looked at his watch. • • „, , •« t « I will not return with you," he said, decisively. I will go on to Bostoi. I am positive he will take her there Meantime, you will leave no stone unturned to track the fugitives here." . " I'll go with you to Boston," said Uncle Reuben, quietly ; « if he's taken her there, my place is on the ground Joe will do all he can here. And by the Lord 1 when I ^^ see h.m, I'll make it the dearest night's work he ever did in his life So it was arranged. In the dismal loneliness of the pouring afternoon, Joe Kent drove back alone to Ken Hill and to the tortured woman waiting there. Who knew ? thought quiet Joe. Perhaps Mr. Gilbert and Reuben had been too hasty, after all. Perhaps Norine was back. But Norine was not back. The house was empty and desolate-Aunt Hetty sat crying alone. She had gone and left no trace behind, not one word, no note, no letter. Her clothes were all untouched, except those she had worn, and her waterproof cloak. Surely she had never meant to run away, or she would have gone differently from that, and left some line of farewell, some prayer for pardon be- hind. It must be as Mr. Gilbert had said-the villain had taken her by force. • u^ *i,o And while the rainy afternoon deepened into night, the two sad, silent men sat side by side, flying along to Boston. At every station inquiries were made, but no one had seen anything of a young girl and a young man answering the description given. So many came and went always it was impossible to remember. So when night fell m lashing rain and raw east wind the lawyer and the farmer were m Boston, and no trace of runaway Norine had been found. m iij : "■ i i CHAPTER IX. 'MRS. LAURENCE. Bourdon. [T was eleven o'clock on the Wednesday morn- ing following that eventful Monday night. In an upper room, a private parlor of a Boston hotel, seated in an easy chair, was Miss Norine They had arrived this morning, and in the hotel book their names were registered " Mr. and Mrs. John Laurence." At the present moment Miss Bourdon is alone. Her dark face is very pale, her eyelids are red from much weeping ; at intervals, as she sits and thinks, the lovely dark eyes fill, the childlike lips quiver, and a sob catches her breath. And yet she is not really very unhappy. Is she not with Laurence ? Before another hour passes will she not be his wife ? and what is the love of aunt or uncle, what the friend- ship of a thousand Mr. Gilberts compared to the bliss of that ? Truth to tell, the first shock of consternation at her enforced flight over, Norine had found forgiveness easy. She was only seventeen, remember ; she was intensely ro- mantic ; she loved him with her whole, passionate heart — a heart capable, even at seventeen, of loving, and — who was to tell ? — perhaps of hating very strongly. And most girls like bold lovers. It was a very daring coup de main, this carrying her off, quite like something in a last century novel, and with his tender, persuasive voice in her ear, * " She starts, grows very white, and two dilated eves turn to him. " Laurence, why do you ask me that? Unhappy? Mon Dieu! it would kill me -just He laughs a little, but uneasily, and shifts away from the gaze of the large, terrified eyes. » Kill you ? No, you're not the sort that die so easily. Don't look so white and frightened, child ; I didn't mean anything, at least, not anything serious ; only we have been almost a month here and it is about time I went to pay my respected Uncle Darcy a visit. He has taken to asking unpleasant questions of late-where I am, what I am doing, why I don't report myself at headquarters-meamn? his house in New York. Norry, there's no help for it; I'll have to take a run up to New York." She sits down suddenly, her hand over her heart, white as the dress she wears. « Of course I need not stay long," Mr. Thomdyke "A FOODS PARADISE." nS pursues, his hat still over his eyes; "but go I must, there's no alternative. And then, perhaps, if I get a chance, I can break it to him gently — about you, you know. I hate the thought of leaving you, and all that— nobody more ; but still, as I've told you, I'm absolutely depending upon him ; the exchequer is running low and must be replenished. Conjugal love is a capital thing, but a fellow can't live on it. Love may con t and love may go, but board goes on forever. You'll stay here with the two Waddles, do fancy work, read novels, and take walks, and you'll never find the time slipping by until I am back. You don't mind, do you, Norine ? " " How long will you be gone ? " she asks, in an odd, constrained sort of voice. " Well, two or three weeks, perhaps. I shall have busi- ness to attend to, and — and all that. But I'll be back at the earliest possible moment, be sure of that." She does not speak. She stands looking, with that white change in her face, over the sunny sea. " Come, Norine ! " he exclaims, impatiently, " you're not going to be a baby, I hope. If you love me, as you say you do—" She turns and looks at him, and he alters the phrase suddenly, with an uneasy laugh. " Well, since you love me so well, Norry, you must try and have a litde common sense. Common sense and pretty girls are incompatible, I know ; but really, my dear child, you can't expect that our whole lives are to be spent billing and coo- ing here. It would be very delicious, no doubt " — a great yawn stifles his words for an instant — " but — ^by Jove ! who':, this ? " He raises himself on his elbow, pushes back his hat, and stared hard at an advancing figure. Norine follows his ii6 NORINEPS REVENGE. glance, and sees, stepping rapidly over the sand, the small, slim figure of a man. •' The— devil !" says Laurence Thorndyke. He springs to his feet, and stands waiting. The man advances, comes near, lifts his hat to the lady, and looks with a calm glance of recognition at the gentleman. He is a pale, thin, sombre little man, not too well dressed, with keen, small, light blue eyes, and thin, decisive, beardless lips. " Good-day, Mr. Thorndyke," he says, quietly. " Liston— it is Liston 1" exclaims Mr. Thorndyke, a red, angry flush mounting to his face. " At your usual inso- lent tricks, I see— dogging me ! May I ask—" "How I have found you out?" Mr. Liston interrupts, in the same calm, quiet voice. " I knew you were here three weeks ago, Mr. Thorndyke. I saw Maggs— the Reverend Jonas Maggs — in Boston." He lifts his light, keen eyes for one second to Laurence Thorndyke's, then drops them to the sands. The red flush deepens on the young man's blonde face, his blue eyes flash steely fire. " By Heaven, you have ! " he exclaims, in as uppressed voice. " Has the drunken fool — " Liston interrupts again : " I beg your pardon, Mr. Laurence, but if you will step aside with me, I would like to say a few words to you. Meantime, here are two letters— one from your uncle, the other—" " H'm ! All right Liston I " Thorndyke says, hastily, and with a warning glance. " My uncle has sent you to hunt me up as usual, I suppose." " As usual, Mr. Laurence. He commands your imme- diate presence in New York." "A FOOLS PARADISE." U7 Again the color mounts to the young man's face, again his eyes flash angry fre. " Do you mean to say, Liston, that you or that d snivelling hypocrite, Maggs — " " Mr. Thorndyke," says Mr. Listen, interrupting for the third time, and raising his voice slightly, " I have a word to say to you in private— if the young lady will excuse you." He bows in a sidelong sort of way to Norine, and watch- es her furtively beneath his drooping eyelids. She is standing very still, her eyes on one of the letters—a square, perfumed, rose-colored letter superscribed in a lady's delicate tracery, and bearing the monogram " H. H." Thorndyke thrusts both abruptly into his pocket, and draws her aside. "Go back to the house, Norine," he says hastily. "I must hear what this fellow has to say. He's secretary- confidential clerk, valet, factotum generally, to my uncle. And I wish the devil had him before he ever found me out here I " She obeys passively, very pale, still. «« That snivelling hypocrite, Maggs ! " she is repeat- ing inwardly. " What a dreadful way to speak of a clergy- man I" Mr. Thorndyke rejoins Mr. Liston, a scowl on his face, his brows lowering and angry. « Well ? " he demands, savagely. " Well," the new-comer's quiet voice repeats, " don't lose you temper, Mr. Laurence — I haven't done anything. Your uncle told me to hunt you up, and I have hunted you up — that is all." " When did he tell you, confound him ? " ii8 NORINEPS REVENGE. I ' I ! i l! i' w\ " One week ago, Mr, Laurence," " A week ago } I thought you said — " " That I met Maggs three weeks ago ? So I did. That he was beastly drunk ? So he was. That he told me all ? So he did. That I have kept my eyes upon you, off and on, ever since ? So I have. Mr, Laurence, Mr. Laurence, I wonder you're not afraid." A suppressed oath — no other reply from Mr, Laurence. He gnaws his mustache, and digs vicious holes with his boots in the soft sand, "You're a bold card, Mr, Laurence," pursues Mr, Liston's monotonous voice. " You've played a good many daring games in your life, but this last daring game I think, has put the topper on the lot, I fancied mock parsons, sham marriages, and carrying off young ladies by night, went out of fashion with Gretna Green and Mrs, Radcliffe's romances. If ever Mr. Darcy hears of it, the sooner you take a rope and hang yourself, the better." Another smothered imprecation of rage and impatience from Mr. Thorndyke, " If I only had Maggs here," he says, clenching his fist " You would punch his head for him— very likely. But I don't know that even that would do much good. He's got the jim-jams to-day, poor brute, the worst kind. For you, Mr, Laurence — how long before this play of yours is played out ? " " I'm going to New York to-morrow," growls Mr. Laurence Thorndyke. " I was just telling her so as you hove in sight. " " Ah 1 you were just telling her so — the play is played out, then. May I ask, Mr. Laurence, though it is none of my business, how the poor thing takes it ? " " No, you mayn't ask," replies Mr, Laurence, with ferocity, "A FOOL'S PARADISE." 119 " as you say it's none of your business. Liston ! look here, you're not going to turn State's evidence, are you — honor bright ? You are not going to tell the old man." His angry voice drops to a pleading cadence. Mr. Lis- ton's shifty light eyes look up at him for a moment. " Do I ever tell Mr. Laurence ? It is late in the day to ask such a question as that. " So it is. You're not half a bad fellow, old boy, and have got me out of no end of scrapes. Get me out of this and I'll never forget it — that I swear. One of these days you -shall have your reward in hard cash — that I promise you." " When you marry Miss Holmes ? It's a bargain, Mr. Laurence— I'll try and earn my reward. What is it you want me to do ? " " I'm going to New York to-morrow," Thorndyke says, hurriedly. " I must invent some excuse for the governor, and what I say you are to swear to. And when peace is proclaimed you must come back and tell her. I can't do it myself — by George, I can't." " Is that all ? " asked Mr. Liston. " You'll look after her — poor little soul 1 and, if she wishes it, take her to her friends. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry — for her sake and for my own. But it's rather late for all that. Liston, is Richard Gilbert in town ? " "He is in town. He has been to see your uncle. He has been speaking of this girl. My wordl Mr. Laurence, you'll have to do some hard swearing to prove an alibi this time." " Curse the luck ! Tell me what Darcy said to you, Liston, word for word." "Mr. Darcy said this: 'Liston, go and find young IZF i!^Si»?Slfe3SS i2e NORINE'S REVENGE. Thorndyke (he never calls you young Thorndyke except when he's very far gone in anger, indeed), and fetch him to me. And hark'ee, fellow I no lying from you or him. If what I hear of him be true, I'll never look upon his false, cowardly face again, living or dead.' He was in one of his white rages, when the less said the better. That was a week ago, I had known all about you for two weeks be- fore. I bowed, kept my own counsel, and — here I am." " You're a trump, Liston I And he gave you this letter ? " " He gave me that letter. You'll find it considerably shorter than sweet. The other came from Miss Holmes, a few days ago— he sent that too." " She doesn't know—" " Not likely. She will though, if the old man finds out, and then you're cake's dough with a vengeance. How do you suppose the lltde one (she's very pretty, Mr. Laurence — you always had good taste), how do you sup- pose she will take it ? " Mr. Thorndyke's reply was a groan. " For Heaven's sake don't ask me, Liston I It's a horri- ble business. I must have been mad." " Of course — ^madlv in love." " Nothing of the sort — not in love at all. It was pure spite — I give you my word — not a spark of real love in the matter, except what was on her side. Gilbert was going to marry her, you know." " I know." " And I hate him as I hate the — " Prince of evil ! I know that, too." "You know everything that's my opinion. What a detective was lost in you, old boy. Perhaps you know why I hate him ? " " A FOOL'S PARADISE." 121 " He has blocked one or two little games of yours. And he ' peached ' in that affair of Lucy West." " Liston I what an infernal scoundrel you must think me 1 When you recall Lucy West, I wonder you don't hate me tenfold more than I hate Gilbert." " I do think you an infernal scoundrel," replies Mr. Liston, coolly. " As for hating — well I'm one of the for- giving sort, you know. Besides, there's nothing made by turning informer, and there is something to be made, you say, by keeping mum. Now suppose you go back to the house, and her, she's pining for you, no doubt, and tell her you're off to-morrow. I'll call for you with a light wagon about noon. Until then good-day to you." Thorndyke seized his hand and shook it. " I don't know how to thank you, Liston ! You're the prince of good fellows. And I haven't deserved it-^I know that." ;;3 ; h-.i y_ He strode away. If he could only have seen the look '' the prince of good fellows " cast after him 1 " ' You don't know how to thank me,' " he thought, with sneering scorn. " You fool I You blind, conceited, besotted fool I ' When I recall Lucy West you wonder I don't hate you I ' Was there ever a time, my perfumed coxcomb, when I did not hate you ? And you'll reward me, will you ? Yes, I swear you shall, but not in that way. Poor little girl 1 how young she is, how pretty, and how in- nocent. She has had her fool's paradise for three weeks —it ends to-day." - 6 MMMf ^fK y CHAPTER XI. GONE. AURENCE THORNDYKE strode rapidly back OTcr the sands to where Norine stood. She had not gone into the house, she was leaning against a green mound, her hands hanging listlessly before her, the white, startled change on her face still. Laurence was going away— in an aimless sort of manner she kept repeating these words over anil over, Laurence was going away I " I've made a devil of a mess of it," thought Mr. Thorn- dyke, gnawing his mustache with gloomy ferocity. " What an unmitigated ass I have been in this business ! Liston's right — a mock marriage is no joke. I can make my es- cape from her now, but the truth's got to be told, and that soon. And what is to hinder her taking her revenge and blowing me sky-high, as I deserve ? One whisper of this affair, and Darcy disinherits me, Helen jilts me, and then — ^good Heaven above ! what a fool I have been." Yes, Mr. Thorndyke had been a fool, and was repenting in sackcloth and ashes. To gratify a passing fancy for a pretty face may be a very pleasing thing — to take revenge upon a man who has interfered with one's little plans, may also be a pleasing thing, but to cut off one's own nose to spite one's own face, i-^ something one is apt to regret afterwards. It was Mr. Thorndyke's case. He had taken Richard Gilbert's bride from him at the very altar, as one i I GONE. 123 may sny, and he had gloated over his vengeance, but what was to hinder Norine Hourdon from rising, strong in her wrongs and betrayal, and ruining him for life ? She was the gentlest, the most yielding of human beings now, and she loved him ; but is it not those whom we have once loved best, we learn afterwards to hate most bitterly ? He had cruelly, shamefully wronged and deceived her — what right had he to look for mercy in return ? As he had sown, so must he reap. She scarcely turned at his approach. How pale she was, and the large dark eyes she lifted were full of a child's startled terror. " Norine," he abruptly began, " there is no help for it — I must go to New York to-morrow." Her lips trembled a little. "To-morrow," she repeated, under her breath — "so soon I " " Rather short notice, I admit, but then you see it — it isn't for a lifetime. All husbands and wives part once in a while and survive it. Come, Norine," with irritated impatience, " don't wear that woe-begone face I I'm not to blame, I can't help it. You don't srppose I want to leave you. But here's Liston — my uncle's man. You heard him yourself. You saw the letter commanding my return." " The letter," she repeated, looking at him ; " there were two 1" " Ah — ^yes — two, so there were. But the other was merely a note from a friend. I leave at noon to-morrow, so see that my valise is packed, and everything all right, that's a good child. And do try to get rid of that white, reproachful face, unless you want it to haunt me like the face of a ghost." -^-'M-.. m { ^iiMj>^.kwiife>yi»«b>M.>#«&^vu.'j^.fe-^gife~t. Did he mean it? A liand of ice seemed to clutch her heart at the thought. No, no, no I he had only been trying her — proving what her love was worth. And she had answered him like that she would hate him and be revenged. He had called her a " strong-minded woman," — a term of bitter reproach — and no wonder. No wonder he was angry, hurt, outraged. Why had she said such a horrible thing ? She hardly knew herself — the words seemed to have come to her in- stinctively. Were they true ? She did know that either — ^just now she knew nothing but that Laurence had left her in anger for the first time, that he would probably not return until to-morrow morning, the fateful to-morrow that was to take him from her for — how long ? She broke down then, and laying her face against the soft, cool grass, gave way to a storm of impassioned weep- ing, that shook her like a reed. " The strong-minded wo- man " was gone, and only a child that had done wrong and is sorry — a weak girl weeping for her lost lover, remained. The afternoon waned, the twilight fell, the wind arose chilly from the sea. And pallid as a spirit, shivering in the damp air, silent and spiritless, the younger Miss Wad- dle found her when she came to call her in to supper. She drank her tea thirstily, but she could eat nothing. Immediately tvfter the lonely meal, she hastened to her 128 A'OR INK'S REVEXGE. room, and throwing a shawl around her, sat down in the easy chair by the window to watch and wait. He had told her not to sit up for him— it would annoy him proba- bly to be disobeyed, but she could not go to bed, for in the darkness and the quiet, lying do\.M, she knew how she would toss wakefully about until she had thought herself into a fever. Night fell. Outside the sea spread black, away until it melted into the blacker sky. The wind sighed fitfully, tlie stars shone frostily bright. Inside, the little piano in the parlor, played upon by the elder Miss Waddle, after her day's teaching, made merry music. In the intervals, when it was silent, the younger Miss Waddle read chapters aloud from her latest novel. Ten, eleven struck, then the parlor lights went out, doors were locked, and the Misses Waddle went up stairs to their maiden slumbers. The pale 'lUle watcher by the window sat on, hoping against hope. He might come, and be it late or early she must be awake and waiting, to throw herself into his manly arms and implore his lordly pardon. She could never sleep more until si e had sobbed out her penitence and been forgiven. But the long, dark, dragging, lone- ly hours wore on. One, two, three, four, and the little, white, sad face lay against the cold glass, the dark, mournful eyes strained themselves through the murky gloom to catch the first glimpse of their idol. Five ! the cold gray dawn of another day crept over sea and woodland, and worn out with watching, chilled to the bone, the child's head fell back, the heavy eyelids swayed and drooped, and she lay still. So, when two hours later Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, smelling stronger than ever of cigars and brandy, as the I t , * GONE. 129 younger Miss Waddle's disgusted nose testified, came into the silent chamber, he found her. The pretty head, with all its dark, rippling ringlets, lay against the back of the chair, the small face looked deathly in its spent sleep. She had watched and waited for him here all night. And remembering how, over the card table and the wine bottle, his night had been passed, utterly forgetful of her, the first pang of real unselfish remorse this young gentleman had ever felt, came to him then. " Poor little heart 1 " he thought ; " poor little, pretty Norine. I wish to Heaven I had never heard of Gilbert's projected marriage— I wish I had never gone back to Kent P\arm." Five hours later, and white and tearless, Norine is cling- ing to him in the speechless pain of parting. T 1 A DARK CO MP ACT. I5S . '^ < " The coward I " she said, ahnost in a whisper. " The base, base, base coward 1 Sir, I will never go home ! I will go down to the sea yonder, and make an end o£ it all, but home again — never I " "Ah, I thought not 1" he said quietly. "Then, Miss Bourdon, may I ask what you mean to do ? You cannot stay here." '• No, I cannot stay here," she said bitterly. " I am utterly friendless and homeless to-night. I don't know what to do." " Let me tell you. Come to New York." «' Sir ! " «• Our hatred of Laurence Thorndyke is a bond between us. You shall never be friendless nor homeless while I live. I am old enough to be your father ; you may trust me, and never repent it, that I swear. See here I this is what I mean to do for you. Sit down once more." She obeyed, looking at him in wonder and doubt. " Helen Holmes lives with Hugh Darcy. She is as dear as a daughter to him. He is one of those old, world- worn men who love to have youth and beauty about them. She reads for him his newspaper and books of poetry and romance ; he is as fond of verse and fiction as a girl in her teens. She plays the piano and sings for him— he has a passion for music. Now, can you play and sing ? " " Yes." " Then here is my plan. He is soon to lose Miss Holmes, and some one like her in her place he must have —that he told me himself. A young girl to read aloud his pet books, to play in the long winter evenings his pet music, to sing his favorite songs, to read and write his let- ters—to brighten the dull old house generally by her pres- ■ . ■ ryj-ia ^ ijt 'V *-* ' '*^'* *'^ 156 NORINE'S REVENGE. ence — to look pretty and fair and sweet always ; that is what he wants. Salary is no object with him. You will have a happy home, light ami pleasant work, plenty of money. Will you lake it ? " " I5ut— " " You will suit him exactly. You are young enough, in all conscience — pretty enough, ii you will pardon my say- ing so, to brighten even a duller house than that. You play, you sing, you can read aloud. What more do you want ? You need a home. There is a home. And " — a long pause — " who can tell what may come of it ? " She was looking up, he was looking down. Their eyes met. In the darkness they could yet look at each other long and steadily for a moment. Then hers fell. " How old is Mr. Darcy ? " she asked in a subdued voice. " He is seventy-eight, old, feeble, and easily worked upon. I say again — who knows what may come of it ? To be disinherited is the only thing in heaven or earth Laurence Thorndyke is afraid of. Anil old men of eighty, with stub- born minds and strong resentments, do sometimes make such strange wills." Again there was a pause. Then Norine Bourdon spoke firmly. " I will go with you to New York." He drew a long breath of relief. " I thought you would. You will not repent it, Mrs. I/uirence. By-the-by, would you mind leaving that name behind you? " She looked at him inquiringly. ''You will accompany me to New York as my niece, A DARK COMPACT. 157 Jane Listen. I have a niece of that name, a widow, out in Oregon. As my niece, Mrs. Jane Liston, from the coun- try, looking for work in tiie city, I will introduce you to my landlady, a most respectable woman. As my niece, Jane Liston, I will present you to Mr. Darcy. We don't want Master Laurence to see our little game. If you went as Mrs. Laurence, or Miss Kent, even, he would. He will be sure to hear the name of Miss Holmes' successor." " ]}ut — you have forgotten — I may meet him. That " — her lips quivering—" I could not bear." " No danger at all. You will not go there until they are off on their wedding tour. They do not return until May. In five months, judiciously made use of, great things may happ-in." She rose up, with a long, weary-worn sigh. " I am in your hands, Mr. Liston. Friendless, money- less, helpless, I suppose I ought to thank you for this, but —I cannot. I know it is not for my sake you are doing it, but for the sake of your revenge. Say what you like of me when we go to New York ; I am ready to follow where you lead. Just now I am tired — we will not talk any more. Let us say good-night." She gave him her hand ; it was like ice. uneasily. " And you will not fail me? " he asked. " I shall not fail you," she answered. In what either said, it was not necessary. They understood— revenge upon Laurence Thorndyke. " To-morrow at twelve I will call for you here to take the train for New York. You will be ready ? " " I will be ready." The door closed behind the small white figure, and he was alone. He let it fall .[rrjBi.— 7- T 'g.—ETT g- .-T-,r. -i Tr-aa^-.«^g* 158 NORLVE'S REVENGE. Alone, and he had not told her the truth, that in his opinion the marriage was legal. " Another time," he thought ; " big.~-r)y is an ugly crime. Let us wait until he marries Miss Holmes." ■A 'ii w # Mr. CHAPTER XV. "a fashiokable wedding." NOTHER night had passed, another day had come. At twelve sharp Mr. Listen and a hack- ney carriage had come for " Mrs. Laurence." Her trunks had been packed by her own-hands. Listen had settled the claim of the Misses Waddle, and white and still she had come out, shaken hands with the kindly spinsters, entered the hack, fallen back in a cor- ner, her hand shading her eyes, and so was driven away from the Chelsea cottage forever. " And dead and in her shroud," said the younger Miss Waddle, melo-dramatically, " she will never look more like death than she does to-day." She had scarcely slept the night through. That pleas- ant cottage chamber overlooking the sea was haunted for her, full of memories that nearly maddened her to-night. With all her heart she had loved — with all her soul she had trusted. She stood here in the darkness, forsaken, deceived. She hardly knew whether it were passionate love still, or passionate hatred that filled her now. The boundary line between strong love and strong hate is but narrow at the best. A tumult that was agony filled heart and brain. He had never cared for her ; never, never ! Out of pure revenge upon Richard Gilbert he had mocked her with the farce of love — mocktd her from first to last, and wearied of her before one poor week had ended. / i6o NO NINE'S REVENGE. " Lightly won, lightly lost," man's motto always, never more true than in her case. Without one pang he had cast her off contemptuously, glad to be rid of her, and h;id sent his uncle's servant to take her back to the home she had disgraced, the hearts she had broken. Siie clenched her hands — in the darkness she was walking up and down her room, and hoarse, broken murmurs of a woman scorned and outraged came from her lips. She could picture him even at this hour seated by the side of the girl he was so soon to marry, his arm encircling her, his eyes looking love into hers, his lips murmuring the old false vows, sealing them with the old false caresses. Face down- ward she flung herself upon the bed at last, wild with the remorse, the despair of her own thoughts. " Oh," she cried ; " I cannot bear it ! I cannot, I cannot." The darkness wrapped her, the deep silence of the night was around her. Up stairs the Misses Waddle slept their vestal beauty sleep, commonplace and content. A month ago she had pitied their dull, loveless, ploddii.ij lives. Ah, Heaven ! to be free from this torturing pain at her heart, and able to sleep like them now. But even to her sleep came at last, the spent sleep of utter exhaus- tion. The morning sun was shining brightly when she awoke. She got up feeling chilled and stiff, worn and grown old. Mechanically she bathed and breakfasted — Miss Waddle the younger gazing askance at her white cheeks and lustre- less eyes. Mechanically she returned to her room, and began packing her trunks. And then, this done, she sat with folded hands by the window, looking out upon the sparkling sea, until noon and Mr. Liston should come. Her mind was a blank ; the very intensity of the blow be- »A FASHIONABLE WEDDING." I6l ^m. numbed pain. Last night she had lain yonder, and writhed in her torture ; to-day she felt almost apathetic — indiffer- ent to past, present, and future. And so, pale and cold, and still, Mr. Liston had found her, so she had shaken hands, and said good-by to the Misses Waddle, and so she had been driven away from her " honeymoon paradise " to begin her life anew. They reached New York. If Mr. Liston had indeed been the fondest of uncles, he could not have been more afifectiona'.oly solicitous for the welfare and comfort of his charge. She was indifferent to it all — unconscious of it in- deed, looking upon all things with dull, half-sightless eyes. " Take good care of her, Mrs. Wilkins," he said to his landlady ; " she is ailing, as you can see, and don't let her be disturbed or annoyed in my absence. She has had trouble lately, and is not like herself," It was a shabby-genteel boarding-house, in a shabby-gen- teel street, close upon East Broadway. At first "Mrs. Liston " had her meals served in her room, and spent her time, for all Mrs. Wilkins could see, in sitting at the window, wiih idly-lying hunds, gazing out into the dull street. Mr. Liston was absent the chief part of the day, and Mrs. Liston steadfastly kept her room ; but in the evenings, always closely veiled, Mrs. Wilkins observed he could prevail upon her to go out with him for a walk. He was kind to her, the girl vaguely felt — she would obey him, at least ; and, since she could not die and make an end of it all, why, she might as well take a little exercise for her health's sake. He was veiy good to her, but she felt no gratitude — it was not for her sake, but for the sake of the grudge he owed their mutual foe. Their mutual foe ! Did she hate Laurence Thorndyke she wondered. There '4 l62 NORINE'S REVENGE. were times when her very soul grew sick with longing for the sight of his face, the tone of his voice, the touch of his hand, and the sound of his name from Mr. Liston's lips had power to thrill her to the inmost heart still. Gradually, as the weeks passed, matters changed. " Time, that blunts the cdRe of things, Drica our tears and six)ils our bliss," was quietly at work for Norine. She came down to the public table, and the pale, spirituelle beauty of the invisi- ble and mysterious Miss Liston caused a profound sensa- tion among the boarders. Next, she took to spending the long afternoons in the dingy boarding-house parlor, playing upon the jingling, toneless boarding-house piano such melodies of mournful sweetness that Mrs. Wilkins and her handmaidens of the kitchen paused in their wor! to listen, and wonder, and admire. "That young woman has seen trouble," Mrs. Wilkins said, shaking her head. She had her own opinion — a pretty correct one — of what nature that trouble was ; but her beauty and her youth were there to plead for her. She was a lady to her finger-tips, that was evident ; and— most potent reason of all with Mrs. Wilkins — Mr. Liston had been her boarder and friend for the past ten years. So December came. How the time had gone Norine could hardly have told— it did go somehow, that was all. Trouble, remorse, despair, do not kill ; she was still alive and tolerably well, could eat and sleep, play the old tunes, even sometimes sing the old songs. She looked at herself in a sort of dreary won- der in the glass. The face she saw a little paler than of old, was fair and youthful still — the bright hair glossy and '^■■ 'M "A FASHIONABLE WEDDING'' 163 abundant as ever. She had read of people whose hair turned gray with trouble ; hers had passed and left no sign, only on the lips that had forgotten to smile, the eyes that never lit into gladness or hope, and the heart that lay like lead in her bosom. The crisp, frosty December days seemed to fly, bring- ing with them his wedding-day. Every hour now the old agony of that night in the Chelsea cottage came back to stab her through. The seventh of December was the day — could she bear it ? — and it was in her power even yet, Mr. Liston told her, to prevent it. Twice during the last fortnight she had seen him, the first time, when, closely veiled, her dress had brushed him on Broadway. He was advancing with another gentleman, both were smoking, both were laughing gayly at some good story Thorndyke seemed to be telling. Handsome, elegant, well-dressed, nonchalant, he passed her, actually turning to glance after the graceful figure and veiled face. " That figure should belong to a pretty girl," she had heard him say. " Deuce take the veils, what do they wear 'em for. There — there's something oddly familiar about her, too." She had turned sick and faint, she leaned against a store window for a moment, the busy street going round and round. So they had met and parted again. The second time it wa? almost worse. Mr. Liston had taken her to the opera — in her passionate love of music she could forget, for a few brief hours, her pain, when, coming out, in the crush, they had come almost face to face. His bride elect was on his arm, by instinct she knew it, a tall, stylish girl, in sweeping draperies, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a skin like pearl. He was bending his tall 164 NO AVNE' S REVENGE. head over her, devotedly; both looked brilliantly hand- some and happy. " For Heaven's sake, come this way ! " Liston had cried, and drawn her with him hurriedly in another direc- tion. She had been literally unable to move, standing, white and wild, gazing upon him. Presently came the fateful wedding day. All the night pteceding she lay awake, the old tempest of feeling going on within her. Should she denounce him, or should she not, on his wedding-day? Should she take his bride from him at the very altar, and proclaim him to the world as the liar and betrayer he was, or shouKl she wait ? She could not decide. When morning came her mind was in as utter a tumult as ever. " Have you decided ? " Mr. Liston asked her. " Shall Laurence Thorndyke leave his uncle's house to-day, with his bride by his side, or as an outcast and a pauper, scorned by all ? It is for you to say." " I don't know," she answered, hoarsely. " Take me to the church — I will decide there." He had taken her, led her in, placed her in one of the pews, and left her. His manifold duties kept him with Mr. Darcy ; he would be unable to join Norine again that day. The church filled ; an hour before the ceremony it was crowded. Then they came ; the bridegroom a trifle pale and nervous, as bridegrooms are wont to be, but, as usual, handsome of face and elegant of attire. Then on her guardian's arm, the bride, a dazzling vision of white satin, Honiton lace, pearl, orange blossoms, gold hair, and tender drooping face. A breathless hush fills the church — in that hush the officiating clergyman came forth — in •"i^l m ^m»K»^. '•s "A FASHIONABLE WEDDING." 165 that hush the bridal party take their places, a flock of white briilcsmaids, a group of black gentlemen. And then a voice out of that great stillness speaks. " If any here know of just cause or impediment why these two should not be joined in the bonds of matrimony, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace." Mr. Liston turns his quiet face and watchful eyes to one particular pew, to one slender figure and veiled face The five seconds that follow are as five centuries to the bridegroom. His face is quite white, his gloved fingers are like ice. He glances up at Liston, and then — the ceremony begins. What a horrible time it takes, Laurence Thorndyke thinks ; what a horrible ordeal a fashionable public marriage is. Does a dingy hotel par- lor rise before him, the rain beating on the windows, and a pale, wistful face look up at him, while a mockery of this solemn rite is being gabbled through by a tipsy actor ? Is it the fair, happy, downcast face of his bnde he sees or that other face as he saw it last, all white and drawn in the anguish of a last farewell ? "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder !" It is over. He draws a long, hard breath of relief. Come what may, Helen is his wife. They rise ; they file slowly and gracefully out of the church; the bride hanging on the bridegroom's arm. Closely, very closely, they pass one particular pew wherein a solitary figure stands. She has risen with the rest ; she has flung back her veil, .^nd people who glance at her stop involuntarily and look igain. The face is like stone, the dark eyes all wild and wide, the lips apart ; she stands as if slowly petrifying. But the bridal party do not see her J they pass on, and out. Binajugmwi i i66 NORINE'S REVENGE. " Who is she ? " strangers whisper. " Has she known Laurence Thorndyke ? " Then they too, go, and all is over. The wedding parly enter their carriages and are whirled away. Mr Listen sees his employer safely oflf, then returns hurriedly to the church. He is angry with Norine, but it is his duty to look after her, and something in her face to- day has m.idc him afraid. There is nothing to fear, how- ever ; she is very quiet now ; she sunk dcTwn upon her knees, her head has fallen forward upon the rail. He speaks to her ; she does not answer. He touches her on the shoulder ; she does not look up. He lifts her head— —yes, it is as he feared. The edifice is almost deserted now ; he takes her in his arms and carries her out into the air. For the second time in her life she has fainted entirely away. « CHAPTER XVI. "his name is LAURENCE THORNDYKE." GRAY March afternoon is blustering itself out in the streets of New York — a shxte-colored sky, fast drifting with black, rainy clouds ; the wind sobs and shivers in great dusty soughs, and pedestrians bow involuntarily before it, and speed along with winking and watery eyes. In a quiet, old-fashioned street — for there are quiet, old- fashioned streets even in New York — there stands a big, square, dingy, red brick house, set in a square of grass- grown front garden, a square of brick paving in the rear. Two slim poplars — "old maids of the forest," lift their tall, prim green heads on either side of the heavy hall door. The house looks comfortable, but gloomy, and that is precisely what it is, this dun-colored spring day, conjortable, but gloomy. There are heavy curtains of dark, rich damask dnaping the windows. Through the clear panes of one of the upper windows you catch the flicker and fall of a red coal fire, and the sombre beauty of a girl's face. She stands in the large, handsome room, alone, a long, low room, with a carpet of rich, dull crimson velvet, cur- tains of dull crimson satin damask, papered walls, dull crimson, too. There are oil paintings in gilded frames, ponderous mahogany chairs, tables and footstools ; but there is nothing bright in the apartment save the cheerful red fire. It is all dark and oppressive — not even except- i68 NOK/XITS REVEXGE. ins the Rirl. The p.ilc face that looks gloomily out at (he fast drifting sky, at the fast-fading light, is smilclcss and sol)er as all thq rest. And yet it is a yoiilhfiil face, a beautiful face, a face that six months ago bloomed with a childish brightness and bloom, the face of Norine Bourdon. It is close upon four months since she entered this house, as companion, secretary, amanuensis, to Mr. Hugh Darcy. Now she stands here debating within herself whether she shall go to him to-night and tell him she must leave. She shrinks from the task. She has grown strangely old and wise in these four months ; she knows something of the world — sf)mething of what it must be like to be adrift in New York, friendless and penniless, with only eighteen years and a fair face for one's danger- ous dower. Friendless she will be ; for in leaving she will deeply irritate Mr. Darcy, deeply anger Mr. Liston, and in all the world, it seems to Norine, there are only those two she can call friends. And yet — friends I Can she call even them by that name ? Mr. Liston is her friend and protector so long as he thinks she will aid him in his vengeance upon his en- emy. Mr. Darcy— well, how long will Mr. Darcy be her friend when he discovers how she has imposed upon him ? That under a false name and history she has sought the shelter of his roof— she, the cast-off of his nephew ? He likes her well— that she knows ; he trusts her, respects her — how much liking or respect will remain when he knows her as she is "i " And know he shall," she says, inwardly, her lips com- pressed. " I cannot carry on this deception longer. For the rest I would have to leave in any case— //i^^ return in U '\<-^^Bi^^tS^^i*^:v>':^e^f»^^»iii\i^ 1 " LA U RE NCR THORN J) VA'E." 169 May, and I cannot, I cannot meet them. Mr. Listen may say what he pleases, it were exsier to die than to stay on and meet him ;iyain — like that." She has not forgotten. Such first, passionate love as slie gave Laurence Thorndylve is not to be out-lived and trampled out in four months ; and yet it is much more abhorrence than love that fills her heart with bitterness now. "The dastard I" she thinks, her black eyes gleaming dangerously ; " the coward I How dare he do it I One day or other he shall i)ay for it, that 1 swear ; but I cannot meet him now. There is nothing for it but to go and tell Mr. Darcy I must leave, and take my chance in the world, quite alone." She leaned her forehead against the cold, clear glass with a heavy heart-sick sigh. The first keen poignancy of her pain was over, but the dull, deadly sickening ache was there still, and would be for many a day. Hate him she might, long for retaliation she did, but not once could she think of him the happy husband of Helen Holmes without the very heart within her growing faint with dead- ly jealousy. The sound of his name, the sight of his letters, had power to njove her to this day. In the drawing-room below a carefully-painted portrait of the handsome face, the bright blue eyes, the fair, waving hair, hung— a portrait so true, that it was torture only to look at it, and yet how many hours had she not stood before it, her heart full of bitterness— until burning tears filled and blinded her dark impassioned eyes. Now he and his bride were coming home to this house, and she was expected to stay here and meet them. Ek- pected by Mr. Darcy, who had learned to love her almost 8 170 NORINE'S REVENGE. as a daughter ; expected by Mr. Listen, who had told her she must confront Laurence Thorndyke in this very house, and show him to uncle and wife as he really was — a coward, a liar, a seducer. " I cannot do it 1 " she said, her hands clenching togeth- er. " I cannot meet him. Mon Dieu, no 1 not yet — not yet." She had been introduced into the house just two weeks after the marriage as " my niece from the country — Jane Lision." As Jane Listen she had remained here ever since, winning "golden opinions" from all the household. She had found Mr. Darcy a decrepit, irritable old invalid, bored nearly to death since his ward's wedding — lonely, peevish, sick. He had looked once into the pale, lovely face, and never needed to look again to like her. Trouble and tears had not marred her beauty. A little of the bloom — there never had been much — all of the sparkle, the gay brilliance that had charmed Richard Gilbert were gone ; but the eighteen-year-old face was very sweet, very lovely, the dark Canadian eyes, with their unutterable sadness and pathos, wonderfully captivating ; and old I-ugh Darcy, with a passion for all things fair and young, had become her captive at once. " You suit me fifty times better than Helen," he said often, drawing the dark loops of shining hair fondly through his old fingers. "Helen was a rattle pate. Never mird — matrimony will tame her down, though the lad's fond of her enough, and will make her a very good sort of husband, I dare say, as husbands go. But you, little woman, with your soft voice — you have a voice like an ^'olian harp, Jennie, your deft fingers, your apt ways — you are a treas- yre to a cross old Dachelor. You are a nurse born, Jen- ■ ai.t.',^^-^>(|-^^ ^^ "■LAURENCE THORNDYKE:' 171 ■• nie, child ; how did I ever get along all these years with- out you ? " He meant it, every word, and a moonlight sort of smile, sweet and grateful, if very sad, thanked him. Once she had lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it, passionate tears filling her eyes. "la treasure ! Oh, Mr. Darcy ! You do not know what you say. I am a wretch — a wretch unworthy of your kindness and trust. But one day I shall tell you all." He had wondered a little what she meant. *' Tell him all ! " What could the child have to tell ? She was so young — so pathetically young to be widowed — what story lay in her life.' The very oldest of all old stories, no doubt — a beloved one lost. He sighed as he thought it, bald-headed, hoary patriarch that he was. He had had his story and his day. The day had ended, the story was read, the book closed and put away, years and years and years ago. In the gallant and golden days of his youth he had met and loved a girl, and been (as he believed, as she told him,) loved in return. He left her to make a home and a competence — he was no millionaire in those far-off days, save in happiness — to return in a year and marry her. Eight months after there came to him his letters, his picture, his ring. A richer knight had entered the lists, and the lady was borne off no unwilling captive. A commonplace, every-day story — nothing new at all. He took his punishment like a man, in brave silence, and the world went on, and years and riches and honors came, and a man's life was spoiled forever, that was all. As be recalls it, old, white haired, half paralyzed, now in the twilight of seventy odd years, he can remember with curious 172 NORINE'S REVENGE. vividness how brightly the July sun shone down on the hot, white pavement of the streets below, the cries of the chil- dren at play, the quivering glare of the blazing noontide, as he sat in his office and read the words that renounced him. Twenty-seven years ago, but the picture was engra- ven on Hugh Darcy's brain, never to be blotted out. Twenty-seven years ago, and when the fortunate rival had fallen in the battle of life, ten years later ; when his feeble- souled wife had followed him to the grave, Hugh Darcy's revenge upon her had been .o step forward and take the child of that marriage to his heart and home to rear him as his own son, to make his will in his favor, leaving him sole heir to a noble inheritance. Laurence Thorndyke had sown his wild /""t:;. Well, most young men go in for that kind of agriculture, and the seed sown had not yet begun to crop up. He was happily married, and done for, and for himself Mr. Darcy meant to keep his little " Jennie " with him always, to travel about with her this coming summer, and leave he* a '>:indhome portion at his death. " For of course," said Mr. Darcy, " she will forget the husband she has lost, and make some good man happy after I am gone." He had settled her little romance quite to suit himself. She had crept with her quiet, gentle, womanly ways into his iinnost heart — a ve^-y kindly heart in spite of life's wear and te?.r ; very kindly, yet with a stubborn sense of justice, anr' of right and wrong underlying all. Kindly, yet terribly, obstinately, ur. forgiving to anything like im- morality, deception or dishonor. " I love the child almost better than Helen," he thought sometimes. " I don't want to lose her, and yet I should like to see her safely she!<^ered under a husband's wing be- "LAURENCE THORNDYKEP 173 fore I go. There's Richard Gilbert now. I've often meant to introduce him to her, but somehow she always slips out of the room and the house when he sends up his card. I wonder if he's got over the loss of that girl last fall. Some men do get over that sort of thing they say. I hope Laurence had nothing to do with it. Gilbert suspected him, I know, but then — 'give a dog a bad name and hang him.' Yes, my little Jennie wouldn't make half a bad wife for Dick Gilbert. I'll introduce him the very next time he comes." Mr. Darcy sits before his study fire this chill afternoon alone. Liston left some hours ago. It is not yet dinner time, and his companion — where is she ? He looks im- patiently around — while he took his afternoon nap she has left him. He listens a moment to the wailing voice 01 the wind, sobbing in a melancholy way about the house, then reaches forth nervously, and rings the bell. " Send Mrs. Liston here," he says to the servant who answers. This gray twilight hour is haunted for him, with melan- choly flitting faces, dead and gone. He will have Mrs. Liston in to sing and play and exorcise the ghosts. No- body ever sang Scotch songs or played Scotch melodies half so sweetly, thinks the worn old man, as his little companion. The door opens and she enters. Her tread, her touch, her garments, are always soft and noiseless. She comes gliding forward in the gloaming, not unlike a ghost herself. Her pale face seems almost startlingly pale in contrast with the black dress she wears. In its whiteness her great dusk eyes look bigger and blacker than ever. It strikes Mr. Darcy. 174 NOR INK'S REVENGE. " Child," he says, " how pale you are. Come over here and let me look at you. You are more like a -spirit of the twilight than a young lady of tiie period." He draws her affectionately to him, and she sinks on her knees by his chair. There is no light but the dull glow of the fire j he tilts up her chin, and gazes smilingly down into the lovely sombre eyes. " ' Oh, fair, pale Margaret,' " he quotes. " Little one, what is it ? You promised to tell me sometime. Why not to-night?" " Why not to-night ? " she repeats. " To-night be it, t'aen. But first, is that a letter on the table ? " " Oh, by-the-by, yes— I nearly forgot all about it. An- other letter from our mated turtle doves in Florida. 1 see by the post-mark they are in Florida now. I have kept it for you to read, as usual." She takes it quite calmly; she knows that big, bold chirography well, and the day comes back to her when Mr. Liston brought to the Chelsea cottage the brief, pitiless note in the same hand — her death warrant. She seats her- self on a hassock near the big invalid chair, and by the light of the fire reads Laurence Thorndyke's letter. It is the gay letter of a happy bridegroom whose bride bends over his shoulder smiling while he writes. He tells of their travels, of how well -^nd handsome Helen is look- ing ; that in another month for ceriain they will be at home. And with best love and all the kisses he can spare from Nella, he is, as ever, his affectionate nephew, Laurence Thorndyke. ^ She finished the letter and laid it down. " Coming home," Mr. Darcy repeats. " Well, I am al- ways glad to see the boy, always fond of Nella. And we »f ■r'Ti.r-W^n'.;'-'!!- •aMucsm* u « LA URENCE THORN D YKEP 175 will all go to Europe together in May— you to take care of the old man, my dear, and help him laugh at the turtle doves billing and cooing. And in sunny France, in fair Italy, we will see if we cannot bring back roses to these white cheeks." The dark eyes lift, the grave young 'ce rpeaks. " Thank you," she says. " You are always kind, Mr. Darcy, but I cannot go." "Jennie! Cannot go?" "1 cannot go Mr. Darcy. I am sorry to leave you; more sorry than I can say, but you must get another at- tendant and companion. I am going away." " Mrs. Listen ? " " I am not Mrs. Liston— my name is not Jennie— I am not Mr. Listen's niece. From first to last I have deceived you. I have come to tell you the truth to-night, although it breaks my heart to see you angry. I will tell you the truth, and then you will see that I must go. My name is not Jane Liston. It is Norine Bourdon." There is a pause. He sits looking at her, astonishment, anger, perplexity, doubt all in his face, and yet he sees that she is telling the truth. And Norine Bourdon— where has he heard that name before ? Norine Bourdon ! A foreign-sounding and uncommon name, too. Where has he heard it ? " I do not wish you to blame Mr. Liston too much," the quiet voice goes on. " He is to blame, for he suggested the fraud, but I was ready enough to close with it. I had not a friend nor a home in the world that I dared turn to, and I could not face life alone. So I came here under a false name, false in everything, and broke your bread, and took your money, and deceived you. I am not what you I' M . I W 176 NORTIVE'S REVENGE. think me ; I am a giil who has been lured from her home, deceived and cast off. A wiclced wretch who fled from her friends, who betrayed a good man's trust, who promised to marry him, and who ran away from him with one who betrayed her in turn. You have heard of me before — heard from Richard Gilbert of Narine Bourdon." A faint exclamation comes from his lips. Yes, yes, yes, he sees it all. This is that girl — " Norine Bourdon ! " He remembers the odd French name well now. " I will tell you my story, Mr. Darcy — my wicked and shameful story, and you shall turn me out this very night if you chocse. I am the girl your friend, Richard Gilbert, honored with his respect and love ; whom he asked in marriage. I loved another man, a younger, handsomer man, but he had left me, forever, I thought, and wearied of my dull country life, sad and disappointed, I accepted him. The man I loved hated Mr. Gilbert. Liston will tell you why, if you ask him. In that hatred he laid a plan of revenge. He cared nothing for me ; he was be- .trothed to a beautiful and wealthy lady ; I was but the poor little fool to whom a wise man had given his heart — what became of me did not matter. Three days before my wed- ding-day he came to me and urged me to fly with him. He loved me, he said ; he would make me his wife ; he would come for my answer the next night. I must meet him ; I must go with him. At night, when they all slept, I stole from the house to meet him ; not to fly with him, the good God knows — to refuse him, to forget him, to keep to my duty if my heart broke in the keeping. He had a horse and carriage waiting, and — to this day I hardly know how — he made me enter it, and drove me off. I cried out for help ; it was too late ; no one heard me. He soothed " LA URENCE THORND VKE." i77 me with his specious promises, and perhaps I was not difficult to soothe. It was too late to go back ; I thought he loved me and went on. He took me to Boston. There, next morning in the hotel, without witnesses, we were married. A man, a clergyman, he told me, came, a ceremony of some sort was gone through, we were pronounced man and wife. " He took me with him to a cottage he had engaged by the sea shore. For three weeks he remained with me there, tired to death of me, I know now. Then he was summoned to New York to his home, and I was left. Mr. Darcy, he never came back. " I waited for him weeks and weeks — ah, dear Heaven I what weeks those were. Then the truth was told me. His uncle's servant was in his confidence. I was deserted. I had never been his wife, not for one hour. The man who had come to the hotel was no clergyman ; he was going to be married in December ; I was to go back to my friends and trouble him no more. That was my fate. I had been betrayed from first to last, and he had done with me forever. " Well, that is more than six months ago. I don't know whether hearts ever break except in books. I know I am living still, and likely to live. But not here. I have de- ceived you, Mr.' Darcy, but I tell you the truth to-night. And to-night, if you like, I will go." He rose slowly to his feet ; swift, dark passion in his eyes — swift, heavy anger knitting his shaggy brows. He held to the arms of his chair and looked down upon her, his face set hard as iron. " Sit there ! " he ordered. " Tell me the scoundrel's name." The dark eyes looked up at him ; the gravely quiet voice spoke. " His name is Laurence Thorndyke." 8* ■'^'rffsr^sssiss&f'^ :i3iJ^ CHAPTER XVII. A LETTER FROM PARIS. iT is a sunny summer afternoon. The New York pavements arc blistering in the heat, and even Broadway looks half deserted. Up- town, brown stone mansions are hermetically sealed for the season, the " salt of the earth " are drinking the waters at Saratoga, gazing at the trembling rapids of Niagara, or disporting themselves on the beach at Long Branch. The workers of the earth still burrow in their city holes, through heat, and dust, and din, and glare, and among them Richard Gilbert. He sits alone this stifling August afternoon, in his down- town office. The green shades that do their best to keep out the white blinding glare and fail, are closed. The windows stand wide, but no grateful breeze steals in. He sits at his desk in a loose linen coat, multitudinous docu- ments labelled, scattered, and tied up before him. But it is a document that does not look legal, that is absorbing his attention. It is a letter, and the envelope, lying beside him on the floor, bears the French postmark. He sits and re-reads with a very grave and thoughtful face. " It is queer," he is thinking, " uncommonly queer. She must be an adventuress, and a clever one. Of course she has wheedled him into making a new will, and the lion's share will go to herself. Hum! I wonder what Thorndyke will say. Come in." A LETTER FROM PARTS. 179 He pushes the paper away, and answers a discreet tap at the door. " Lady and gentleman to see you, sir," announces a clerk, and the lady and gentleman enter. " Hope we don't disturb you, squire," says the gentle- man, and Mr. Gilbert rises suddenly to his feet. "Me and Hetty, we thought as how it would keinder look bad to go back without droppin' in. Hot day, squire — now ain't it?" " My dear Miss Kent— my dear Uncle Reuben, this is an unlooked-for pleasure. You in the city, and in the blazing month of August. What tempted you?" " Well, now, blamed if I know. Only Hetty here, she's bin sorter ailin' lately, and old Dr. Perkins, he said a change would do her a heap of good, and Hetty, she'd never seen New York, and so — that's about it. Squire ! we've had a letter." He says it abruptly, staring very hard straight before him. Aunt Hetty fidgets in her chair, and Richard Gil- bert's pale, worn face grows perhaps a shade paler. " A letter," he repeats ; " from her i " " From her. Two letters, if it comes to that. One from this here town last Christmas — t'other from foreign parts a week ago. I want to show 'em to you. Here's number one." He takes a letter in an envelope from his pocket, and hands it to the lawyer. It seems almost a life-time ago, but the thrill that goes through Richard Gilbert at sight of that writing still ! " Last Christmas," he says glancing at the postmark, a shade of reproach in his tone. " And you nevtir told me!" l l ! J»-i.lJ!fA.j4i: i8o NORINE'S REVENGE. " I never told you, squire. It ain't a pleasant sort o' tiling to talit about, least of all to you. She doesn't de- serve a thought from you, Mr. Gilbert — " The lawyer stopped him with a gesture. " I have forgiven her long ago," he answers ; " she did not care for me. Iktter she should fly from me before marriage than after. Thank Heaven she is alive to write at all." He opens the note. It is very short. " Dear Aunt Hetty — Dear Uncle Reuben — Dear Uncle Joe — if you will let me, unworthy as I am, still call you by the dear old names. This is the third time I have written since I left home, but I have reason to think you never received the first two letters. I wrote then, as I write now, to beg you on my knees for forgiveness. Oh I to see your dear faces once more — to look again on the peaceful old home. But it cannot be. What 'shall I say of myself ? I am well — I am busy — I am as happy as I de- serve, or can ever expect to be. I am safely sheltered in a good man's house. I have been to blame, but oh, not so much as you think. Some day I will come to you and tell you all. Yours, Norine. " P. S. — He is well. I have seen him since I came to New York twice, though he has not seen me. May the good God bless him and forgive me. N. K. B. Richard Gilbert read that postscript and turned away his head. He had been near her, then, twice, and had never known it. And she cared for him enough to pray for him still. " Here's the other," said Reuben Kent, " that came a week ago." He laid a large, foreign-looking letter on the desk, with many stamps, and an Italian post-mark. A LETTER FROAf PARIS. |8| " From Florence," the lawyer said ; "how can she have got there ? " It was as short as the first. " She was well. Foreign travel had done wonders for her health and spirits. She was with kind friends. Im- possible to say when she would return, but always, whether at home or abroad, she was their loving niece, Norine IkjUKDON." That was all. Very gravely the lawyer handed them back. " Well, squire," Mr. Kent said, " what do you think } " " That I am unutterably glad, and thankful to know she is alive and well, and with friends who are good to her. It might have been worse — it might have been worse." " You believe these letters, then ? " •"Undoubtedly I believe them. She is travelling as com- panion, no doubt, to some elderly lady. Such situations crop up occasionally. I see she gives you no address to which to write. " " I don't know that I should care to write if she did. Vou may forgive her, squire, but by the Lord Harry 1 / aint got that far yet. If she didn't run away with young Thorndyke, what did she run away at all for ? " " Because she cared so little for me, that facing the world alone was easier than becoming my wife. We won't talk of it, Mr. Kent. How long do you remain in town ?" Uncle Reuben rose. " We go to-day, thank fortin'. How you, all of you, man- age to live in such a Babel beats me 1 Can't you strike work, Mr. Gilbert, and run down to see us this blazin' summer weather ? " Mr. Gilbert shook his head with a smile. ilMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) !k 1.0 ^li^ K^ I.I £ us 1110 1.8 1.25 1.4 \^ « 6" - ► Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ';-.#»iv'''^-^sia(SSWias.%^*'*w!*i*»*'**^'"^'- -i^V' ■ itaB ■■■I ;:«? CIHM/iCMH Microfiche Series. 1 CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques MMa«M»»' m mmmessam I82 NOR INK'S REVENGE. " I am afraid not. I am very busy ; I find hard work does me good. Well, good-by, old friend. I am sincerely glad to have read those letters — sincerely glad she is safe and well." Then they were gone, and Richard Gilbert sat down alone in the hot, dusty office. But the dusty office faded away, and in its place the rich greenness of meadows came, the sweet, new-mown hay scented the air, green trees and bright flowers surrounded him instead of dry-as-dust legal tomes. And fairer, brighter, sweeter than all, came float- ing back the exquisite face of Norine, the dark eyes gleam- ing, the white teeth sparkling, the loose hair blowing, the soft mouth laughing. And once she had promised to be his wife ! "Mr. Thorndyke, sir?" The voice of his clerk aroused him. The fairy vision faded and fled, and Richard Gilbert, in his grimy office, looked grimly up into the face of Laurence Thorndyke. " How do, Gilbert? " says Mr. Thorndyke, nodding eas- ily ; " hope I don't intrude. Was loafing down town, and thought I would just drop in and see if there was any news yet from the old man." Mr. Thorndyke has lost none of the easy insouciance that sits upon him so naturally and becomingly. He is in faultless Broadway-afternoon-promenade costume, but he is not quite as good-looking as he used to be. His hand- some face looks worn and tired, dissipated, and a trifle reckless, and the old flavor of wine and cigars hangs about him still. He draws a chair towards him, and sits astride upon it his arms folded over the back. " The old man ? " Mr. Gilbert repeats, still more grimly, " You refer to Mr. Darcy, I presume ? " A LETTER FROM PARIS. 183 "Who else. To Darcy, of course — and be hanged to him. Any news yet ? " " There is news, Mr. Thorndyke. Will you be kind enough, in talking of my old and valued friend, — and yours once, — to speak a little more respectfully?" " A little more fiddle-dee-dee I " retorts Mr. Thorndyke. " Confound the old bloke, I say again ! What business has he cutting up the way he has cut up ever since my marriage ? I did everything I could to please him — I leave it to yourself, Gilbert, I did everything I could to please him. He wanted me to marry Helen. Well, haven't 1 married Helen ? He wanted us to go with him to Europe in May. Didn't we come back from the South in April, to go with him in May as per agreement ? And what do we find ? Why, that the venerable muddle-head has started off on his own hook, with old Liston and some girl that he's taken in — adopted, or that bosh — a niece of Liston's. Started off without a word — without one blessed word of excuse or explanation to Helen or me. That's four months ago, and not a letter since. Then you talk of respect 1 By Jove, sir, I consider myself — Helen con- siders herself, shamefully treated. And here we are broil- ing alive in New York this beastly hot weather, instead of doing the White Mountains, or Newport, or somewhere else, where a man can get a breath of air, waiting for a letter that never comes. You've heard from him, you say — now what has the old duffer to say for himself ? " " He has nothing to say for himself. I have not heard from him. I said I had heard 0/ him. How is Mrs. Thorndyke ? " " Well enough in health — devilish cross in temper. The old story — I'm a wretch, drink too m-ich, gamble too much, 1 84 NORINE'S REVENGE. spend too much, keep too late hours. Tell you what, Gilbert, matrimony's a fraud. Whilst I thought Nellie was the old man's pet and I was his heir, it was all well enough ; blessed if I know what to think now. Are you going to tell me what you have heard aurence Thorndyke. Time has been when bright eyes brightened, fair cheeks flushed, and delicate pulses leaped at his com- ing. That day is over. Time has also been when among all the golden youth of New York none were more elegant, more faultless of attire, than Laurence Thorndyke. 194 NORINE'S REVENGE. That day also is over. Time has been when the most ex- clusive, most recherche doors of Fifth avenue flew gladly open at his approach. That day, likewise, is over. The places that knew him, know him no more ; he is an outcast and a Bohemian ; he drinks, he gambles, he is poor ; his coat is gray at the seams ; bistre circles surround his eyes ; his haggard, handsome face ttlls the stoiy of his life. Yet the old elegance and old fascination of manner, linger still. People rather stare to see him here. Mrs. Alli- son frowns. She has flirted desperately with him '• ages " ago ; but really bygones should be bygones, and Mr. Thorndyke has gone to the dogs in so pronounced a man- ner, and been disinherited for some dreadful doings, and, really and truly, the line must be drawn somewhere, and it is inexcusable in Mr. Allison to have asked him at all. " No one invites him now," Mrs. Allison says, indignant- ly. " Both he and Helen are socially extinct. They say she takes in sewing, and lives in a dreadful tenement house away over by the East River — and with dear Mrs. Liston- Darcy here and everything ! Of course it can't be pleasant for them to meet. He contested the will — if he should make a scene to-night ! — good heavens ! No doubt he is half-tipsy — they say he always is half-tipsy — and look at his dress ! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Arthur Allison, for asking him ! " " Couldn't help it, Hattie — ^give you my word now," re- sponds Arthur meekly ; " he as good as asked me to ask him, when he heard Mrs. Darcy was coming. And he wants to be introduced, and I've promised, and there's no u^e malang a fuss now. He isn't tipsy, and I don't believe there will be a scene. I'll introduce him at once; the sooner it's over, the better." ^ • '-ftftrf-jwatito^^^-v AFTER FOUR YEARS. 195 He goes off uneasily, and leads Mr. Thorndyke into an inner room, where a lady sits at the piano, singing. A lady elegantly dressed in white silk, and violet trimmings, with a white perfumery rose in her black hair. Her face? is averted — Mr. Thorndyke glares vindictively at the woman who has ousted him out of a fortune. She is a beautiful singer, and somehow — somehow, the sweet powerful con- tralto tones are strangely familiar. Can he have ever heard her before ? She finishes. Mr. Allison draws near the piano. " Mrs. Darcy," he says, clearing his throat, " will you allow me to introduce to you Mr. Thorndyke ? " She is laughingly responding to a complimentary gentle- man beside her. With that smile still on her lips she turns slowly round, lifting up her eyes. And with a gasping sound, that is neither word nor cry, Laurence Thorndyke stands face to face once more with Norine. / mmm CHAPTER XIX. "whom the gods wish to destroy they first MAKE MAD." ORINE ! And like this, after four years, these two meet again. Norine ! His lips shape the word, but no sound follows. He stands before her destitute of all power to si->eak or move. Lost in a trance of wonder, he remains looking down upon the fair, smiling, upturned face, utterly confounded. " I am very pleased to meet Mr. Thorndyke. By repu- tation I know him well." These audacious words, smilingly spoken, reach his ear. She bows, taps her fan lightly, and makes some airy remark to hei host. And still Laurence Thorndyke stands petrified. She notices, lifts her eyebrows, and ever so slightly shrugs her shoulders. " Mr. Thorndyke does not spare me. To which of my defects, I wonder, do I owe this steady regard ? " " Norine ! " The name breaks from his lips at last. He still stands and stares. ' She uplifts her graceful shoulders once more — the old French trick of gesture he remembers so well. " I remind Mr. Thorndyke of some one, possibly," she says — impatience mingled with her " society manner," this time — " of some lady he knows ? " *'WHOM THE GODS IVTSHJ' ETC. 197 " Of some one I once knew, certainly, Mrs. — Ah, Darcy," he retorts, his face flushing angrily, his old inso- lent ease of manner returning, " I am not sure that you would call her a lady. She was a French Canadienne — her name — would you like to hear her name, Mrs. Liston-Darcy ? " "It does not interest me at all, Mr, Thorndyke." " Her name was Norine Bourdon, and she was like — most astoundingly \\V^ you I So like that I could swear you were one and the same." " Ah, indeed ! But I would not take a rash oath if I were you. These accidental resemblances are so decep- tive. Mr. Wentworth, if you will give ir„ your arm, I think I will go and look at the dancers." The last words were verj' marked. With a chill, formal bow to Mr. Thorndyke she took her escort's arm, and turned to move away. With that angry flush still on his face, that angry light still in his eyes, Laurence Thorndyke interposed. " Mrs. Darcy, they are playing the ' Soldaten Lieder.' It is a favorite waltz of yours, I know. Will you not give it to me ? " She turned upon him slowly, a swift, black flash in her eyes that made him recoil. " You make a mistake, Mr. Thorndyke I Of what I dance or what I do not, you can possibly know nothing. For the rest, my time of mourning for my dear adopted father has but just expired. I do not dance at all." Then she was gone — tall, and fair and graceful as a lily. And Laurence Thorndyke drew a long breath, liis face aglow with genuine admiration. " By Jupiter I " he said \ " who'd have thought it I In a 1 98 NORTNE'S RE VENGE. the language of the immortal Dick Swiveller, ' This is a staggerer ! ' Who'd have thought she'd have had the pluck 1 And who would have thought she would ever have grown so handsome ? " " You do know her, then, Thorndyke ? " his host asked, in intense curiosity. Mr. Thorndyke had forgotten him, but Mr. Allison was still at his elbow. His reply was a short, curious laugh, " Know her ? By Jove ! I used to think so, but at this moment I am inclined to doubt it. Have you not heard her deny it, and ladies invariably tell the truth, do they not ? * These accidental resemblances are so decep- tive ! '" He laughed shortly. " So they are, my dear Mrs. Darcy 1 Yes, Allison, it's all a mistake on my part, no doubt." He turned and swung away to escape Allison, and think his surprise out. His eyes went after her. Yes, there she was again, the centre of an admiring group of all that was best in the room. Her beautiful dark face was all alight, the black, beautiful eyes, like dusk diamonds, the waving hair most gracefully worn — by odds the most attractive woman in the rooms. Those years had changed her won- derfully — improved her beyond telling. The face, clear cut and calm as marble, the lips set and resolute, the figure matured and grown firm. About her there was all the uplifted ease, the ineffable self-poise of a woman of the world, conscious of her beauty, her wealth, and her power. " And this is Norine — little Norry," Laurence Thorn- dyke thought in his trance of wonder. " I can hardly believe my own senses. I thought her dead, or buried alive down there in the wilds of Maine, and lo 1 here she •■ I **WHOM THE GODS WISH;' ETC. 199 crops up, old Darcy's heiress — beautiful, elegant, and ready to face me with the courage of a stage heroine — the woman who has done me out of a fortune. This is her revenge I And I thought her a love-sick simpleton, ready to lie down and die of a broken heart the hour I left her. By George! how handsome she has grown. It would be easy enough for any man to fall in love with her now." She meant to ignore the past, utterly and absolutely ignore it — that he saw. Well, he would take his cue from her for the present, and see how the farce would play. But — was it Norine ? — that self-possessed regal-looking lady ! Could it be that those dark, calm, haughty eyes had ever filled with passionate tears at his slightest word of re- proach ? had ever darkened with utter despair at his go- ing ? Could it be that yonder beautiful, stately creature had waited and watched for him in pale anguish, night after night, his veriest slave ? — had clung to him, white wj.h direst woe, when he had seen her last? Proud, uplifted, calm — could it be ? — could it be ? " Norine, surely ; but not the Norine I knew — a Norine ten thousand times more to my taste. But how, in Heav- en's name, has she brought this transformation about? Mrs. Jane Liston — old Liston's niece. I have it! I see it all ! Liston is at the bottom of this. It is his revenge for Lucy West ; and they have worked and plot- ted together, whilst I, blind fool, thought him my friend, and thought her too feeble, soul and body, to do anything but droop and die when I left her." Yes, he saw it all. Like inspiration it came upon him. In his own coin he had been paid ; the trodden worms had turned, and Lucy West and Norine Bourdon were avenged. ^|m_|-g_||g__-|^-,^_| 200 NORTNETS REVENGE. Mr. Thorndyke withdrew from every one and gave him- self wholly up to the study of Mrs. Darcy. 'I'here was no scene ; Mrs. Allison need not have feared it ; no gentle- man present " behaved himself " more quietly or decorous- ly than Mr. Laurence Thorndyke. How wonderfully she had changed ! how handsome she had grown ! that was the burden of his musings. And she had loved him once — ah, yes — "not wisely, but too well." They say first love never wholly dies out. He didn't know himself ; he had had so many first loves — centuries ago, it seemed to him now — they certainly had died out, wholly and entirely. But with women it was different. Had she quite outgrown the passion of her youth ? And if it were not for Helen, who could tell — , He broke off, with a sudden impulse, and joined her. For a moment she was alone, in a curtained recess, wield- ing her fan with the languid grace of a Castilian, and watching the daiicei-s. He came softly from behind and bent his tall head. " Norine ! " If she had been stone-deaf she could not have sat more perfectly still and unheeding. " Norry ! " No motion — no sign that she heard at all. " Mrs. Darcy ! " She moved slowly now, turning her "graceful shoulder, and lifting the brown, tranquil eyes '.al to his face. "Did you address yourself to me, Mr. Thorndyke?" " Norine, there is no one to hear ; for pity's sake have done with this farce. Norine I Norine I as though I should not know you anywhere, under any name." " Mr. Thorndyke," Mrs. Darcy answered, her soft, sweet "WHOM THE GODS WISH," ETC. 201 voice singularly calm and clear, " if you persist in this strange delusion of yours I shall be forced to throw my- self upon the protection of Mr. Allison. As the disinherited nephew of the late Mr. Darcy, I have no objection to make your acquaintance ; in the light of a former friend I utter- ly refuse to know you. I am Mrs. Darcy. If you insist upon addressing me by any other name I shall refuse to hear or answer." There was no mistaking the tone in which it was said. His eyes flashed blue fire. " Take care ! " he said ; " even you may go too far 1 What if I tell the world Mrs. Darcy's past ? " The dark, disdainful gaze was upon him still. "Is that a threat, Mr. Thorndyke? I do not know you, I never have known you. If you say that I have, I am prepared to deny it, at all times, and in all places. My word will carry as much weight as yours, Mr, Thorndyke. I am not afraid of you, and if this is to be the manner of our conversation, I decline henceforth holding another." She arose to go. He saw he had made a mistake. It was no part of his desire to make an enemy of her. "Forgive me," he said, humbly — "forgive me, Mrs. Darcy. The resemblance is very striking; but I am mistaken, of course. You remind me of one I loved very dearly once — of one whose loss has darkened my whole life ! Forgive me, and let me be your friend." The scorn in the dark, contemptuous eyes ! — it might have blighted him , but of late years Laurence Thorndyke was well used to scorn. "Friend?" she said. " No / I do not make friends lightly. Acquaintance, if you will, for Mr. Darcy's sake 9* 203 NORINE'S REVENGE. — for the sake of your great disappointment pecuniarily, I am willing to be that." " It was deserved," he faltered, his eyes averted. " I have repented — Heaven knows how bitterly. That I have lost a fortune through my own misdeeds is the least of my punishment." She turned from him, sick — sick at heart with the utter scorn she felt. As her gaze wandered away, it fell upon another face — the face of Richard Gilbert ! He was watching them. As he met her glance he bowed and walked away. A flush that Laurence Thorndyke had not for a second called there, came vividly into her pale cheeks. " And for this craven — this hypocrite, I fled from him — spoiling my own life and his forever. Oh, fool I fool I What can he have but scorn and loathing for me now." She arose impatiently. All at once the presence of Laurence Thorndyke had grown intolerable to her. W th- out a word of excuse she bent her head to him sli(,htly and frigidly and moved away. Mr. Thorndyke was not offended. The course he meant to pursue in regard to Mrs. Darcy was not yet quite clear. This, however, was — he would not let her easily offend him. His friend she should be. Who could tell what the future might bring forth ? With all her girl's heart and strength she had loved him once. A fatuous smile came over his face as he glanced at himself in the mirror. Not so good-looking as of yore, certainly, but late hours, hard drinking, and the fierce excitement of the gaming- table had wrought the evil. He would change all that — go in for reform — total amendment of life — try sculpture, "WHOM THE GODS WISH;' ETC. 203 and become a respectable member of society. Meantime he would see all he could of Mrs. Darcy. By Jove 1 how handsome she had looked — what thorough- bred good style she was! .uid if— hidden under all this outward coldness— the old love still lay, how easy for him to fan the smoldering embers into bright flames. And then— ? A vision rose before him — Helen, in the shabby rooms at home, writing far into the night, to earn the bread his children ate. Whilst Helen lived, let his uncle's heiress love him never so well, what could it avail him ? " There is the law of divorce," whispered the small voice of the temp- ter. " To the man who wills, all things are possible. Mr. Darcy's fortune, and Mr. Darcy's heiress may be yours yet. You have played for high stakes before to-night, Laurence, my boy. Play your cards with care now, and you hold the winning hand ? " From that night a change began in Laurence Thorndyke —began on the spot. Once more, that night, he had spoken to Mrs. Darcy— then it was to say farewell. " You have told me you will accept me as an acquaint- ance," he said very quietly. " Life has gone hardly with me of late, and I have learned to be thankful even for small mercies. For what you have promised I thank you, and — will not easily forget it." She bowed— gleams of scorn in her dark, brilliant eyes. So they had parted, and very grave and thoughtful Mr. Thorndyke went home. The change began. Less drinking, less gambling, better hourfi. His wife looked on with suspicious eyes. She had reason to suspect. When Satan turns saint, Satan's relatives have cause to be on the alert. f i 204 NORINE'S REVEXGE. Given up gambling and going to try sculpture ! Leon Saroni lias given you the run of his studies, has he ? 1 don't understand all this, Mr. Tliorndyke. What new project have you in your head now ? " "Going to turn over a new leaf, Nellie. Give you my word 1 am," replies Mr. Tliorndyke, keeping his temper with admirable patience. " Going in for legitimate indus- try and fame. I nhvays felt I had a genius for sculpture, I feel it now more than ever. Soon, very soon, you may throw this beastly copying to tlie dogs, and we will live in comfort once more." The wonder and incredulity of his wife's face, as she turned back to her writing, infuriated him. But he had his own reasons for standing well, even with her, just at present. " Nellie," he said, and he stooped to kiss her, " I've been a brute to you, 1 know, but — you care a little for me still ! " Her face flushed, as a girl's might under her lover's first caress. Then she covered it with her hands and broke into a passion of tears. He soothed her with caresses. " It will be different now," he said. " Forgive the past, Nellie, if you can. I swear to do better in the future." Forgive I What is there that a wife who loves will not forgive ? On her wedding-day Helen Thorndyke had hardly been more blessed. With a glow on her cheeks and a light in her eyes, strangers there for many a day, she went back to her drudgery. And smiling a little to him- self, as he lit his cigar and sauntered to his friend Saroni's studio, Mr. Thorndyke mused : i »lVnOM THE GODS Il'/S//," ETC. 20$ "They're all alike — all I Ready to forp;ive a man seven- ty times seven, let liim do as he may. Ready to sell them- selves body and soul for a kiss! And what is true of Helen shall be true of Norinc." So Mr. Thorndyke set to work, and with untiring energy, be it said " Deserted," he meant to call this production of genius. It should tell its own story to all. The white, marble face would look up, all wrought and strained in its mortal anguish. The locked hands, the writhing figure, all should tell of woman's woe. The face he had in his brain — as he had seen it last down there in the light of the summer noon. All was at stake here — he must not — he would not fail. And while Mr. Thorndyke chiselled .marble, Mrs. Thorn- dyke copied her law papers. She had met Mrs. Darcy more than once in Mr. Gilbert's office, and Mr. Darcy's proposal had been laid before her. Her eyes had kindled, her face flushed as she refused. " Leave my husband ? Never ! Whatever his errors, he loves me at least — has always been true to me. All other things I can forgive. Mr. Darcy meant kindly, no doubt — so do you, madame, but I refuse your offer, now and forever. I will not leave my husband." The gravely beautiful eyes of Mrs. Darcy had looked at her compassionately. " Loves you I " she thought — " always been true to you. Poor little fool 1 " For she knew better. She and Mr. Thorndyke met often. Now that he had " gone in for " respectability and hard work, old friends came back, old doors flew open, society accepted him again. He was ever an acquisition, brilliant, handsome, gay. Married, it is true, but his wife never 206 NORLVE'S REVENGE. appeared. Truth to tell, Mrs. Thornclykc had nothing to wear. Mr. Thonulykc in some way rejuvenated his ward- robe, and rose, glorious as the Phoinix, from the ashes of the shabby past. They met often, and if passionate admiration — passionate love, ever looked out of man's eyes, it looked out of his now, when they rested on Norine. It was part of his punishment, perhaps, that the woman he had betrayed and cast off should inspire him with the one supreme passion of his life. She saw it all, and smiled, well content. She was not perfect, by any means. Revenge she had bound herself to have. If revenge came in this shape — so let it come. Every pang he had made her suffer he should feel— as she had been scorned, so she would scorn him. For Mrs. Thorndyke— well, was it not for Mrs. Thorndyke she had been forsaken. She was his wife, at least— let his wife look to herself. They met constantly. As yet he had never offended in words. They were friends. She was interested in his " Deserted " — she visited it in company with some acquaint- ances at the studio. She had praised it highly. If she recalled the resemblance to herself, in that day past and gone, no word nor look betrayed it. " It will be a success, I am sure," she had said ; " it is so true to life, that it is almost painful to look at it." Then he had spoken — in one quick, passionate whisper. " Norine — forgive me ! " The dark eyes looked at him, not proudly, nor coldly, nor angrily now — then fell. His whole face flushed with rapture. " I have something to say to you. You are never at **wiioAr THE GODS WISH;' etc. 207 home w/ien I call. Norinc, I implore you I let me see you alone — once." Over her face there came a sudden change — her lips set, her eyes gleamed. Wiiat it meant he could not tell. He interpreted it to suit his hopes. " I will see you," she said, slowly. " When will you come ? " " A thousand thanks. This evening if I may." She bent her head and turned from him. " Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad," she thought. " I know as well as you do, Mr. Thorndyke, what you are coming to say to night, and — I shall not be the only listener." He leaned in a sort of ecstasy against his own work. At last I she would see him — she would hear how he had repented, how he worshipped her, how the only hope that life held for him, was the one hope of winning back her love. Of Helen he never thought — never once. It seemed so easy a thing to put her away. Incompatibility of temper — anything would do. And she had the pride of Lucifer. She would never lift a finger to retard the divorce. ^ at Uta CHAPTER XX. norine's revenge. Y DEAR MRS. THORNDYKE :— Will you come and spend the evening with me ? Fetch the little people, I shall be quite alone. " Jane Liston Darcv." It was not the first time such notes had come to the tenement house — not the first time they had been accepted. Laurence was always away. The late hours had begun again. The evenings at home were so dreary. It was a glimpse of the old glad life, before poverty and hard work had ground her down. Yes, she would go. Mrs. Darcy, very simply, but very prettily dressed, wel- comed her. B.aby Nellie she took in her arms and kissed fondly, but little Laurie, with his father's bold, blue eyes and trick of face, she shrank from. The father she could face unmoved ; the old pain actually came back when she looked at the child. As they sat, a pretty group in the gas-light, a card was brought in. Mrs. Darcy put the baby off her lap and passed the card to Helen. " Your husband," she said. " He begged for this inter- view, and — I have granted it. But I wished you to be present. Whether I do right or wrong, 3'ou shall hear what he has to say to me. You love and trust him still. You shall hear how worthy he is of it. But first — have you ever heard the name of Norine Bourdon ? " NORINE'S REVENGE. 209 le d. in a rk i\- 2d es Id [le as id ;r- be lat ou er " Norine Bourdon ! the girl whom Laurence — " " Betrayed by a false marriage — for whom he was disinherited. I am she." " You ! " Helen Thorndyke recoiled. . "It was Norine Bourdon, not Jane Listen, Mr. Darcy adopted. Have you not then the right to hear what your husband has to say to me ? But it shall be as you wish." "I wish to hear," Helen answered, almost fiercely. " I 7uill hear." Norine threw open a door. "Wait in this room. I will leave the door ajar. My maid shall take the children. And be sure of this — neither by word nor '00k shall I tempt your husband to say one word more than he has come to say to-night." Helen Thorndyke passed into the inner room. Norine Darcy rang for the servant waiting without. " Show Mr. Thorndyke up." He came, bounding lightly and eagerly up the stairs, and entered. She arose from her seat to meet him. In full evening dress, his face slightly flushed, his blue eyes all alight with eagerness, he had never perhaps, in the days when she had adored him, looked so handsome as now. She smiled a little to herself as she recalled thai infatuation ; how long ago it seemed. And for this good- looking, well-dressed, heartless libertine, she had gone near to the gates of death. "Norine!" He clasped the small hand, shining with diamonds, that she extended, in both his, his tone, his eyes speaking volumes. " Good-evening, Mr. Thorndyke. Will you be seated ? Quite chilly for September, is it not, to-night ? " 2IO NO FINE'S REVENGE. She sank gracefully back into her easy-chair, the gas- light streaming over her dusk, Canadian loveliness. She made an effort to disengage her hand, which he still held fast, but he refused to let it go, " Mo, Norine I let me keep it. Oh, love, remember it was once all mine. Norine I Norine ! on my knees I im- plo' e your forgiveness for the past ! " He actually sank on one knee before her, covering the hand he held with passionate kisses. No acting here j that was plain, at least. The infatuated man meant every word he said. " Forgive me, Norine I I know that I have sinned to you beyond all pardon, but if you knew how I have suffered, how the memory of my crime has made my whole life mis- erable, how, to drown the torture of memory, I fled to the wine-cup and the gambling-table, and to — " " Marriage with Miss Helen Holmes, heiress and belle. Oh, 1 know it all, Mr. Thorndyke. Pray get up. Gentlemen never go on their knees nowadays except in melodrama. Get up Mr. Thorndyke ; let go my hand and sit down like a rational being. I insist upon it." " A rational being ! " he repeated. " I have ceased to be that since your return. It is my madness, Norine, to love you as I never loved any women before in my life." She laughed, toying with the fan she held. " My dear Mr. Thorndyke, I remember perfectly well what an absolute fool I was in the days of our acquaint- anceship four years ago. Even such a statement as that might have been swallowed whole. But it is four years ago, and — you will pardon me — I know what brilliant tal- ent Laurence Thorndyke has for graceful fiction. To how NORINE'S REVENGE. 211 many ladies in the course of his thirty years of life has he made that ardenf declaration, I wonder ? " " You do not believe me ? '"' " I do not." " Norine, I swear — " " Hush-h-h I pray don't perjure yourself. Was it to tell me this you came here this evening, Mr. Thorndyke ? " "To tell you, Norine, what I am sure you do not know. What I never knew myself until of late, that you and you alone have ever been my wife ; that our marriage was a marriage, legal and true — that you, not Helen, are my lawful wife. To tell you this and much more, if you will listen. From my soul I have repented of the past ; how bitterly, none may know. I left you — great Heaven ! I sit and wonder at my own madness now; and all the time I loved you as I never loved any one else. I married Helen Holmes — ^yes, I cannot deny it, but what was I to do ? I was bound to her, she loved me, ' my honor rooted in dishonor stood,' and I married her. There is horrible fatality in these things. While I knelt before the altar pledg- ing myself to her, my whole heart was back with you. I will own it— despise me more than you do already, if that be possible — I married her for her wedding dower, and be- cause I dared not offend Mr. Darcy. Wealth so won could bring little happiness. I fled from home and her presence to drown remorse and the memory of my lost love in drink. So poverty came. I was reckless. Whether you lived or died I did not know, I dared not ask — in abandoning you I '^ad spoiled my whole life. Then suddenly you reappeared, beautiful as a dream, so far off, so cold, so unapproachable — ^you my love I my love 1 once my very own. You held me at arm's-length — you 212 NORINE'S REVENGE. refused to listen to a word, and all the time my heart was on fire within me. 'J o-night I have come to speak at last. Norine, I have sinned, I have suffered, I have repented. What more can I say ? I love you madly, I always loved you. Say you forgive me, or I will never rise from your feet ! " Once more he cast himself before her, real passion, its utmost abandonment, in every tone. She had let him rave on, never moving, her cold eyes fixed upon him, full of hard, contemptuous fire. " You mean all this, Mr. Thorndyke ? Yes, I see you do. And you love me — ^you always loved me, even when you cast me off and married Miss Holmes, really and truly i " " Really and truly ! I swear it, Norine ? " " No — don't swear, please — it's against my principles to encourage profanity. But isn't it rather late in the day to tell me all this ? There is your wife — you don't care for her, of course, but still you see she is your wife, in the eye of the world at least. And a gentleman's wife is rather an obstacle when that gentleman makes love to another lady." The fine irony of her tone he did not hear — the scorn of her eyes he did not see. The " madness of the gods " was upon him — blind and deaf he was going to his doom. " An obstacle, but an obstacle easily set aside. lu any case I mean to have a divorce. I never cared for her — there are times when I loathe her now. A divorce, with permission to marry again I shall obtain, and then, No- rine—" He moved as though to clasp her. With a shudder of horror and repulsion she waved him back. And still he was blind. " And your children, Mr. Thorndyke ? " NORLXE'S REVENGE. 213 " That shall be as Helen wishes. I don't care for them — never cared for children. She may keep them if she wishes. If I had loved her it would be easy to love her children. You consent then, Norine? It is as I hoped. You forgive the past. You will again be my wife. Oh, darling ! my whole life shall be spent in the effort to blot out the past and make you entirely happy. You love me still — say it, Norine '. " He clasped both her hands vehemently. She arose to answer. Before the words of passionate scorn on her lips could be spoken the inner door opened and Helen Thorn- dyke stood on the threshold. •' Great Heaven ! Helen ! " He dropped Norine's hands and staggered back. For a moment he almost thought it her ghost, so white, so ghastly with concentrated passion was she. She advanced, — she tried to speak — at first the words died huskily away upon her dry lips. " I have heard every word," she panted. " You coward 1 You basest of all base cowards. Though I live for a hun- dred years, these are the last words I shall ever speak to you. Living or dying I will never forgive you — livii:g or dying I will never look upon your face again 1 Norine 1 " She turned to her suddenly : " You offered me a home and a competence once, apart from him. For his sake I refused it then — ^formy children's sake I ask it now. I have no hope left but in you and — Heaven." Her head fell on Norine's shoulder with one dry, hard sob, and there lay. Norine Darcy drew her to her side, her arm clasping her closely, and so — faced Laurence Thorn- dyke. 214 NORINE'S REVENGE. " ' Every dog has his day'. It is not a very elegant adage, but it is a true one. Your day has been, Mr. Thorndyke — mine has come. For it I have hoped, and worked, for it I have let you go on — for it I have listened to the words you have spoken to-night — for it I concealed your wife yonder, that she might hear too. You love me, you say — I am glad to believe it — since a little of the torture you once made me feel you shall feel in return. For myself all memory of the past is gone. You are so utterly indifferent to me, so ut- terly contemptible in my sight, that I have not even hatred to give you. To me you are simply nothing. After this hour I will never see you, never speak to you. For your wife and children I will provide. You did your best to ruin me, soul and body, because you hated Richard Gilbert. I take from you wife and children, and what you value far more — fortune. I think we are quits, and as there is no more to be said, I will bid you good-night. Liston 1 show this gentleman to the door, and admit him here no more." Then Mr. Liston, pale of face, soft of step, furtive of glance, appeared on the scene. Still clasping the drooping form of the outraged wife, Norine moved towards the inner room. Thorndyke had stood quite still, his arms folded, listen- ing to all. The game was up ! A devil of fury, of disappoint- ment, would possess him by-and-by — just now he only felt half-stunned. He turned to the door, with a harsh laugh. " I have heard of men who murdered the women they loved, and wondered at them. I wonder no longer. By Heaven, if I had a pistol to-night you would never leave this room alive, Norine Bourdon 1 " <*a CHAPTER XXI. " THE MILLS OF THE GODS ORIND SLOWLY, BUT THEY GRIND EXCEEDINGLY SMALL." T the drawing-room window of the late Hugh Darcy's old-fashioned house, Hugh Darcy's heiress sits. It is a dreary November day, a long, lamentable blast soughs through the city streets — the two vestal poplars toss their green arms wildly aloft in the gale, and the sleety rnin goes swirling before it. At all times a quiet street, it is entirely forsaken to-day. Far off comes the clatter and jangle of passing street-cars, the dull roar of the city's ceaseless life. In this by-street peace reigns. Yet Norine sits by the window gazing steadfastly out at the wet, leaden, melancholy afternoon. In her lap some piece of flimsy feminine handicraft lies — on the table be- fore her are strewn new books and uncut magazines. But she neither embroiders nor reads — she lies back against the crimson velvet of the old chair looking handsome and listless, her dark, thoughtful eyes, gazing aimlessly at the lashing rain. Now and then they turn from the picture without to the picture within, and she sighs softly. A bright fire burns in the steel grate and lights ruddily the crimson-draped room. On a sofa drawn up before it, in a nest of pillows, Helen Thorndyke lies so still, so white, you might think her dead. But she is not even aslee* although she lies motionless with closed eyes. Her seems to have come to an end. Pride she has, an^" 2l6 NORIAE'S REVENGE. upheld her, but love she has too, and pride cannot quite crush it out. Since that fatal September night she has been here — since that night his name has never passed her lips ; these two women, whose lives Laurence Tiiorndyke has marred, never tall< of him. She lies here and broods, broods, broods ever — of the days that are gone and can never come again. On the floor near, little Laurie is building a house of blocks, and squat in the centre of a wool rug baby Nellie crows delightedly and watches the progress of the archi- tect. So the minutes tick off, ind it is an hour since Norine has entered the room. In the library, before her entrance here, she has had an interview with Richard Gilbert — it is of that interview and of him she sits thinking now. Some business connected with Mr. Darcy's estate has brought him, and she has asked him, constrainedly enough, for news of Laurence Thorndyke. " I keep Liston on his track," she said, playing nervous- ly with her watch chain. " Helen says little, but she suf- fers always. And Liston's news is of the dreariest." The strong, gray eyes of the lawyer had lifted sternly to her face. No word of censure had ever escaped his lips — what right had he ? but Norine felt the steady rebuke of that firm, cold glance. He knew all, and she felt he must utterly despise her now. " He has fallen very low," Mr. Gilbert answered, briefly, " so low that it is hardly possible for him to fall much low- ^r. In losing his wife and children he lost his last hold respectability, his one last hope on earth." ''•'. deserved to lose them," Norine said, with a flash 'ack eyes. r t ''THE MILLS OF THE GODS," ETC. 217 "Perhaps so. From all I hear you should know best. But if stern justice is to be meted to us all, after your merciless fashion, then Heaven help us ! If vengeance can gratify you, Mrs. Darcy, you may rest well content. He has sunk as low as his worst enemy could wish. But — you might have spared Helen." Cold, cutting, the words of rebuke fell. He arose, gathering up his papers, his face set and stern. Her face drooped — she covered it with her hand, and turned away. " She at least had never wronged you," Richard Gilbert pitilessly went on. " Have you made her any happier, Mrs. Darcy, by taking her husband from her ? In spite of his myriad faults she loved him— she trusted him, and so, neither poverty, hard work, nor neglect could make her altogether miserable. You led him on— led him on from the first, in cold blood, working for your revenge. And when you had crazed his brain by your smiles and fair words, and allurements, you brought his wife here to overhear the passion you had labored to inspire. You madden her in turn, you take her from him, you order him from your presence like a dog. You took from him the one good angel of his life— his wife— and gave him up boldly to the devil. He has earned it all, you have your revenge, but— as I stand and look at you here, I wonder — I wonder Myou can be Norine Bourdon." A dry sob was her answer. He had poured forth the words, passionate reproach in his voice, passionate anger in his eyes. And she had shrank away before his just wrath like a guilty thing. "His home is a gambler's hell^his food and drink are the liquid fire called whiskey ; his associates are the 10 2l8 NORINE'S REVENGE. scum and refuse of the city. Mrs. Darcy, I wish you joy of your wo.kl " «' Spar^ mc," she faltered. Mr. Gilbert looked silently for a moment at the bowed figure, then took his hat and turned to go. " I beg your pardon," he said, very quietly. " I had no right to speak at all. My only excuse is, that I will not so offend again. How is Helen ? " " As she always is. She says nothing ; she lies and suffers in silence. Will you not see her ? " " Not to-day ; it is painful to me j I can see it is painful to her, poor child. Good-afternoon, madam." He bowed with formal coldness and was gone. So I she had had her revenge, but was the "game worth the candle" after all ? Is revenge ever worth its cost, she began to wonder. " Vengeance is mine, I will repay." Yes, yes, she was beginning to see it all? And— Christianity apart — re- venge, as we wreak it, after our poor light, is so apt to recoil on ourselves. So, Norine sits by the window now, thinking over this pleasant interview and " chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies." Much more bitter than sweet. Until she had lost Richard Gilbert's good opinion utterly, she had never known how she prized it. jc'resently glancing back from the darkening day with- out, at some lustier shout than usual of Master Laurie, she finds Helen's large, mournful eyes fixed upon her. She rises, crosses over, kneels down by the sofa, and kisses tenderly the wan cheek. " My dear," she says, " what is it ? " " Is — ," she falters, " is there any news of him f " i ''THE MILLS OF THE GODS" ETC. 219 " No news — only the old story. Nellie I Nellie 1 I begin to think I have done grievously wrong." " How, Norine ? " " By bringing you here that night. I have been sinned against, but I have also been sinning. I had taken the fortune he prized so highly ; I should have been content with that. But I was not. When I returned there was no thought of him in my mind, except the hope that we might never meet. We did meet, and when I saw his growing admiration for myself, I — Nellie, forgive me if you can — I did encourage it. I wonder at my own wicked- ness now ; I am sorry, sorry, sorry. I know I should never have brought you here that night. Badly as he treated you, you were happier with him than you are now. And I parted you. Nellie, forgive me 1 " Something that was almost color flushed into the pale face — something that was almost light into the blue eyes. The soft lips set themselves firmly. " There is nothing to forgive. I thank you for having brought me here that night. Sooner or later I would have known all. And I was not his wife he said — you were — not I. ' In any case, I will have a divorce.' Have you forgotten those words ? ' I never cared for her — I loathe her now — I married her for her dower.' Have you for- gotten that f He deserved all. I don't blame you. We are only human, and I say again I am glad I know. I suf- fer, but no blame attaches to you for that suffering. He was treading the down-hill road before you came ; he is only finishing the journey as it wou^i^ave been finished in any case. I hate myself for my own misery. I hate myself that I cannot tear every thought of him out of my heart. But I think of the past, and I cannot." 220 NORINE'S REVENGE. She broke clown suddenly, violently, passionately almost, for the first time, into wild, hysterical weeping. Norine took her in her arms, her own tears falling, and let her sob her sorrow out. The paroxysm was brief as it was stormy. She drew herself away suddenly, and buried her face, among the pillows. " Doi 't mind me, please," she said ; " don't talk to me. I am ashamed of my own weakness, but — " Norine kissed her very tenderly. " I am glad to see you cry, Nellie— anything is better than this dry, stony grief. I will take the babies down to supper, and send you up yours. And Nellie, dear, you must eat it j remember we start on a journey to-morrow." The journey was to Kent Hill, where they were to stay over Christmas and New Year. Norinj had made one flying visit already — had been clasped in Aunt Hetty's . arms, had kissed Uncle Reuben's sunburnt cheek, had heard Uncle Joe's husky " Right glad to see you back, Norry," and— thai, was all. She took the old place, and, after one twilight talk, the past was never referred to. Truthfully and simply she told them all, not even except- ing the darkest part — her own revenge bitterly repented of when too late. Now she and Helen and the children were going down for a long visit. One other guest there was to be— one who had spent every Christmas at Kent Hill during the past four years — Mr. Gilbert. " Christm'^s wouldn't seem like Christmas now without him," Aunt Hetty said. " I don't believe there's his equal in wide America. ^ gentleman from top to toe, if there ever was one yet." The children Aunt Hetty took to her motherly heart at once— Helen's pale lips she kissed, and Helen was at 1 *'THE MILLS OF THE CODS," ETC. 221 liomc in five minutes, as thougii she li;i(l known them for years. It was siicli a blessed, restful place — the tired heart drew a great sigh of relief, and felt half its weary load lifted off. For Norine — she was almost the Norine of old, flying up and down breezy stairways, in and out breezy rooms, the old songs rippling from her lips, until the thought of the pale, widowed wife down stairs made her check them. Then came winter — the first fall of snow— the first gay sleighing. Little Laurie was wild with delight — even Helen's pale lips learned to smile. Kent Hill was working a transformation. Christmas drew near, and among Norine's pleasnnt duties came that of decorating Mr. Gilbert's room, '.he old guest chamber, where he had spent so many happy, hopeful nights in the time when he had loved her. He despised her now. Ah, what a wretch she had been ! He would despise her always. Well, she deserved it all ; it didn't matter ; but — and then a heavy sigh finished the thought. She was learning the value of what she had lost when too late. Christmas arrived — Mr. Gilbert arrived. And Helen's wistful eyes looked into his face, and asked the question her lips were too proud to shape. " There is no news," he said softly, as he bent over her chair ; " only the old news. He is well — that is the best I can tell of him." No more was said. Norine, proud and humble together, rather avoided him. Still they were of necessity a great deal togetlier, indoors and out, and, in the genial glow and cheerfulness of the Christmas-time, the reserve of both melted. It began to be like old times — the bright color, the gay laugh, the light step, the sparkling eyes, the sweet 222 NORINE'S REVENGE. singing, made Norine the very Norine of four years ago. And Mr. Gilbert — but Mr. Gilbert was ever quiet and undemonstrative ; his calm, grave face told little, except that he was quietly happy ; that you could see. Christmas passed, New Year passed, Mr. Gilbert went back to New York. And suddenly a blank fell upon Kent Hill, sleighing and skating lost their zest — the weather grew colder, the dull country duller, and Mrs. Darcy, at the close of January, abruptly announced her intention of returning to New York also. " If you are willing to come, Nellie," she said; "of course if you would rather remain — " "I would rather go," Helen answered. "I have been happier here than I ever thought to be again, but I would rather go." That settled it. They went. And on the seco'id of February Mrs. Darcy donned velvet and sables, and se^" off for Mr. Gilbert's office. Was it altogether for Helen's sake — altogether for news of Helen's husband? Well, Mrs. Darcy did not ask herself the question, so no one else per- haps has any right to do so. Looking very fresh, very stately, very handsome, she came like a bright vision into the lawyer's dingy office. A little desu) .ory talk then — playing with her muff tassels, she asked the old question : " Was there any news of him ? " " Yes," Mr. Gilbert answered this time ; " there is news. He has been very ill ; he has been in a hospital ; some blow on the head received in a drunken brawl. I hunted him up the day he was discharged. A most pitiable object I found him — penniless, friendless, and still half dazed from the effects of the blow. I took him to a respectable ''THE MILLS OF THE GODS," ETC. 223 boarding-house, paid a montli's board in advance, and ob- tained tlie landlady's promise to look after him a little more than usual. He is there still, but gone back to the old life. I fear all hope for him is at an end." Norine's face had fallen in her hands. " May Heaven forgive me my share in his ruin I Oh, Mr. Gilbert ! it may not be yet too late. Who knows ? I will go to him— I will beg his forgiveness— he shnll return to his wife and children. Give me his address"— she started impetuously to her feet, her face aglow—" I will go at once." He gave it to her without a word, written on a slip of paper. As she took it, she paused and looked at him with clasped hands. " Mr. Gilbert," she faltered, " if— if I do this m\\ you forgive me ? " He laid his hand on her shoulder, almost as a father might, more moved than he cared to show. " I forgive you now," he answered. She left the house, entered her carriage, and bade the coachman drive to the address. Then with a glow of new hope, new happiness at her heart, she fell back. Yes, she would atone for her sin— she would labor with all her strength to reform Laurence Thorndyke, to win forgiveness from Heaven and her friends. Fifteen minutes brought her to the street. Before one house a crowd had col- lected, a suppressed murmur of infinite excitement run- ning through the throng. " It is the very house we are looking for, ma'am" said the coachman, opening the door. She could not tell why, but some swift feeling of evil made her get out and join the crowd. wm 224 AVJiLXETS REVENGE. "What is it ? " she breathlessly inquired. " Man jumped from a three-story window and killed him- self," was the answer. She pressed forward, her hand on her heart — very pale. " Why did he do it? " she asked. " Del. trem., ma'am." "Jim jams, misses." " Delirium tremens, madam," interposed a gentlemanly man, touching his hat. " He jumped from that upper win- dow, stark crazy, not five minutes ago. Very sad case- very sad case, indeed. A gentleman once. I knew him well. Uis name is Laurence Thorndyke." CHAPTER XXII. "the way of thk transgressor is hard." IHE stood for a moment faint, sick, stunned, unable to speak or move ; then she pressed foiward, still without a word, through the throng. All made way for the beautiful, richly-robed lady with the death-white face and dilated eyes. "Wife," one whispered, falling away. " Not his wife — his sister," another conjectured. " Neither," a third said. " I know her. It's Mrs. Hugh Darcy, his late uncle's adopted daughter. He has no sister, and his wife left him long ago." It is doubtful if she heard ; it is certain she never heeded. All she felt or knew was that Laurence Thorn- dyke lay yonder on the blood-stained flags, dying hard. She was kneeling beside him — a bleeding, mangled heap, crushed almost out of semblance of humanity. " Laurence ! Laurence I " she gasped. " Oh, Heaven 1 not dead ! not dead I " " Not dead, madam," a pitying voice answered — " not dead yet. I am a physician, and I tell you so. He is insensible at present, but consciousness will return. You know him ? " " Know him ! " She looked into the grave, compassion- ate face with dazed eyes. " Know Laurence Thorndyke ? What is it you intend doing with him ? " she asked. 10* (1 T 226 A'ORIJVE'S REVENGE. The medical man shrugged his shoulders. " Send him to Bellevue, I suppose, unless some friend steps forward and takes charge of him. They won't want him there " — signifying the boarding-house — " again. And if he is sent to a hospital, I wouldn't give much for his chances of life." " There is still a chance, then ? " "Well— you know the formula, 'while there's life there's hope.' With the best of care, and nursing, and medical aid, there may be one chance in a hundred for him. With hospital care and attendance, there's not a shadow." Then for the space of five seconds a pause fell. The city street, the gaping, curious crowd around her faded away, and there arose before Norine a far different and never-to-be-forgotten picture — a desolate autumn evening ; a gray, complaining sea, creeping up on its gray sands, a low, fast-drifting sky lying over it, and on the shore a girl standing, reading a few brief lines in Laurence Thorndyke's writing— lines that branded her as a thing of sin and shame for life — that broke her heart as she read. And now — her enemy lay here at her mercy. Why should she lift a finger to save him ? Why not let him go to the hos- pital and take his chance ? All that man can do to ruin a woman, body and soul, he had done — why should she lift a finger to save him now ? She thought all this in a moment of time. The tempter stood at her side and rekindled all the pain, and hatred and horror of him. Then her eyes fell upon the crushed, bleeding, senseless form at her feet, and she turned from the dark thoughts within her with horror of herself. " Well, madam ? " the voice of the medical m;in said, a little impatiently, " how is it to be ? You evidently know " THE WA Y OF THE TRANSGRESSOR," &'C. 22/ this unfortunate young man — shall he be removed to the hospital, or — " " To my house ! " She rose suddenly, her self posses- sion returning. " And I must beg of you to accompany him there. No efforts mur>t be spared to restore him. Carry him to the carriage at 3nce." Men came forward, and t\ie insensible figure was gently lifted, carried to the carriage, and laid upon the cushions. Norine entered, and took his head in her lap. The doctor followed. " Home ! " she said to the coachman, and they drove slowly back, through the busy streets, to the quiet, red- brick mansion that for years had been Laurence Thorn- dyke's home. " How should she tell Helen ? " All the way that thought filled Norine. Through her the wife had left the husband. Was Death here to separate them still more effectually .' Would he ever have come to this but for her ? In some way did not this horror lie at her door ? In all the years that were to come could she ever atone for the wickedness she had done. As she sat here she felt as though she were a murderess. And once she had loved this man — passionately loved him. " Fiercest love makes fiercest hate." He had cast off that love with scorn, she had vowed revenge, and verily she had had it ! Of fortune, of wife and child, and now of life, it might be, she seemed to have robbed him. " Oh, forgive me my sin 1 " her whole stricken soul cried out. They reached the house, the coachman and the physician lifted the still senseless man and carried him to an upper chamber. Summoning her housekeeper to their aid, Norine '-■ 55t ^11 1*^ w.i^Oi.iugig ;,; 228 NORINE'S REVENGE. left them and went in search of the wounded man's wife. She found her in her own room lying listlessly, wearily, as usual, upon a sofa, gazing with tired, hopeless eyes at the fire, while her little children played about her. Kneeling before her, her face bowed upon the pillows, her tears fall- ing, her voice broken and choked, Norine told the story she had come to tell. In the room above her husband lay, injured it might be unto death. " If he dies," Norine said, her voice still husky, her face still hidden. "I shall feel, all my life-long, as though I were his murderess. If he dies, how shall I answer to Heav- en and to you for the work I have done ? " Helen Thorndyke had arisen and stood holding by the sofa for support, an awful ghastliness on her face, an awful horror in her eyes. Dying ! Laurence dying ! and like this ! "Let me go to him I" she said, hoarsely, going blindly forward. " You are not to blame — he wronged you beyond all forgiveness, but I was his wife and I deserted him. The blame is mine — all mine." She made her way to the room where they had laid him. On the threshold she paused, faint almost unto death. The yellow, wintry sunshine slanted in and filled the chamber. Upon the white bed he lay, rigid and ghastly. They had washed away the clotted blood, and the face was entirely un- injured. Worn, haggard, awfully corpse-like, it lay upon the pillows, the golden, sparkling sunshine streaming across it. " Laurence ! Laurence ! Laurence ! " At that anguished cry of love and agony, all fell back before the wife. She had crossed the room, she had fallen on her knees by the bedside, she had clasped the life- less figure ill her arms, her tears and kisses raining upon 4 ff « THE WA Y OF THE TRANSGRESSOR," Gr-C. 229 the still rigid face. All was forgotten, all forgiven, — the bitter wrongs he had done her. Nothing remained but the truth that she loved him still, that he was her husband, and that he lay here before her — dying. Dying ! No need to look twice in the physician's sombre countenance to see that. " He will not live an hour," he said, in answer to No- rine's agonized asking look ; " it is doubtful whether he will return to consciousness at all. There is concussion of the brain, and several internal injuries — any one enougli to prove his death. Mortal aid is unavailing here." Dying ! Yes, even to Norine's own inexperienced eyes the dreadful seal was yonder on the face among the pillows His wife's arm encircled his neck, her face was hidden on his bosom, a dull, dumb, moaning sound coming from her lips. He lay there rigid — as if dead already — all uncon- scious of that last agonized embrace of love, and forgive- ness, and remorse. The doctor left the room, waiting without in case his ser- vices should be needed. Norine dispatched a messenger to Mr. Gilbert, another for a clergyman. He might return to reason, if only for a moment before the spirit passed away. " He cannot — he cannot die like this 1 " she cried out, wringing her hands in her pain. " It is too dreadful ! " The doctor shook his head. " Dreadful indeed. But ' the way of the transgressor is hard.' He will never speak on earth again." Richard Gilbert came, almost .is pale as the pale remorse- ful woman who met him. It was the physician who en- countered and told him the story first. He entered the room. Norine stood leaning against the foot of the bed. 230 NORINE'S REVENGE. Helen still knelt, holding her dying husband in her arms, her face still hidden on his breast. One look told him that the awful change was already at hand. And so, with the three he had wronged most on earth around him, Laurence Thorndyke lay dying. Out of the hearts of the three all memory of those wrongs had gone, only a great awe and sorrow left. For Norine, as she stood there, the old days came back — the days that had been the most l)lessed of her life, when she had given him her whole heart, and fancied she had won his in return. Old thoughts, old memories returned, until her heart was full to breaking ; and she hid her face in her hands, with sobs almost as bitter as the wife's own. The moments wore on — profound silence reigned through the house. Once doctor and clergyman stole in together, glanced at the prostrate man, glanced at each other, and drew back. Priest and physician were alike powerless here. The creeping shadow that goes before was upon that ghastly face already Death was in the midst of them. Without opening his eyes a sudden tremor ran through the senseless form from head to foot. Helen lifted her awe- struck face. That tremor shook him for a moment as though the soul were forcibly rending its way from the body. Then he stretched out his limbs and lay still. wmmms^- mm 1 V !* ^ ^' r- '^■/^^- 1 ^« ■,:'.; -J ^ '''1 CHAPTER XXIII. "JENNIE KISSED ME." IT is a bright but chilly May clay. In the lux- urious sitting-room of Mrs. Liston-Darcy a coal fire is burning, and in a purple arm chair before this genial fire Mrs. Darcy sits. She is looking very hanasome as she sits here, the bril- liant morning sunshine streaming across her dusk beauty and loosely-rippling hair — very handsome in her rose-pink wrapper, with a soft drift of lace about the slim throat and wrists. Very handsome, and yet a trifle out of sorts, too ; for the dark, slender brows are contracted, and the brown, luminous eyes gaze sombrely enough into the depths of the fire. She sits looping and uniooping in a nervous sort of restlessness the cord and tassels that bind her slender waist, one slippered foot beating an impatient tattoo on the hassock, her lips compressed in deep and unpleasant thought. About the room, great trunks half-packed stand ; in the wardrobe adjoining, her maid is busily folding away dresses. Evidently an exodus is at hand. " I cannot go — I shall not go until I see him," she is thinking ; " it is only what I have richly earned, what my treacherj- of the past deserves, but it is none the less hard to bear. I cast off his love once, trampled his heart under my feet ; he would be less than man to otTer it again to one so treacherous and un'vorthy. And Nellie is an angel 232 NORINE'S REVENGE. — who can wonder that he loves her? It is my just pun- ishment when I have learned how good, how tender, how noble he is, to see her win him from me— when I have learned to love him with my whole heart, to see him give his to her — to lose him in my turn." She rises with an impatient sigh and walks up and down the room, trying to crush out the bitter pain of loss— the envy and rebellion that 7t'/7/ arise within her as she thinks of Helen Thorndyke the wife of Ricliard Gilbert. For it has come to this— that society begins to whisper Helen will speedily doff the weeds of widowhood for the pale flowing robes of the bride. It is the second May following Laurence Thorndyke's tragic death, one year and seven months have passed, and the most desparing of widows will not despair forever. For the last half-year, in a quiet way, Helen has been going out a good deal, and is very much admired. And yet no wife had ever grieved more deeply, passionately and truly than Helen Thorndyke in the first dark months following her husband's death. Remorse had added poignancy to her natural grief and horror of his dreadful end, and she had suffered how greatly, only Helen herself will ever know. But that is nearly two years ago, and Helen is but four- and-twenty, and " Time, that blunts the edge of things, Dries our tears and spoils our bliss." Time had brought its balm to her, and she could eat, drink and be merry once more. A great peace has fol- lowed that tragic time, friends surround her, and foremost and warmest among them, Richard Gilbert. In the little cottage, presented her by Norine, where *' JENNIE KISSED ME."" 233 Helen and her little ones dwelt, the lawyer was a very frequent visitor. When Mrs. Thorndyke's doors closed to all others they opened to him. And there Mrs. D.ircy, a daily comer, met him at least two or three times each week. It h.id been her wish, after Laurence Thorndyke's death, that the stricken young widow should still make her home in her house, but this Helen had refused. She wanted to be alone, to hide herself somewliere away from all eyes, and Norine had understood the feeling, and gifted her with the pretty, vme-covered cottage outside the city's noise and turmoil. There, with her babies, Helen dragged through those first miserable months, and lived down her first bitter agony of remorseful despair. When the summer, with its fierce, beating sunshine came they left the city's scorched streets and sun-bleached parks, for the cool breezes and country sweetness of Kent Hill. Thither Richard Gilbert, by invitation, followed. The close intimacy between him and Helen never waned. The children clung to him, and crowed with delight at his coming. He seemed never to weary of their small society. Was it altogether for all their own, or a little for their mother's sake, Norine wondered, feeling her first sharp, jealous pangs. He spent a month with them, then went back. And when September, cool and delicious, came refreshingly to New York, the two handsome young widows, with the two little children, followed. In society that winter, Mrs. Liston-Darcy, the millionaire's heiress, was admired enorp-^usly. Not alone, for her bank stock ; for her o.wn bonnie black eyes and rare piquant loveliness. Many men bowed down before her, younger, handsomer, more famous men than Richard Gilbert, but her answer was to one and all the same. None of these 234 NOR INK'S REVENGE. men touched her heart, to none of them was she inclined to tell the story of her own dark past. It was a bond between herself, and Helen, and Mr. Gilbert. In spite of herself she had learned to love him, to know him, to value him. She turned her wistful eyes to his face, but those dark, lustrous looks had fooled liim once — he was not the man to make himself any woman's puppet, and dance as she pulled the strings. He saw nothing but that she was rich, far beyond all riches of his, more beautiful with every passing year, surrounded by young and handsome men, ready to marry her at iny moment. She had flung him off, unable to love him years ago. Was it likely that old, and gray, and grim, she could care for him now ? He laughed, in a dreary sort of mockery, at the bare tho Vt. Love and marriage had gone out of his life for he must be content with Helen's trust and friendship , ..ilsome more favored man bore her off, too, with her children ; until they also outgrew childish loves. That the world coupled his name with hers, in t/nit way, he absolutely never dreamed. Another May had come, and Norine, wearied of it all, and full of nameless restlessness, took a sudden resolution. She would go abroad. In travel she would find change and peace, and when Helen became his wife she, at least, would not be here to see it. As she walked up and down, deep in her own somber thoughts, the boudoir door opened, and Helen herself came in — she was passing these last days with her friend — came in looking tall and stately, and very fair in her trailing black dress, and most becoming widow's cap. " Mr, Gilbert has come, Nory," she says. " Will you go down or shall he come up ? " 1 ''JENNIE KISSED MFJ' 235 A lovely rose pink flushes into Norinc's face. She keeps it averted from Helen as siic replies : " It doesn't matter, does it ? " with elaborate careless- ness ; " he may as well come up. I wish to speak to him on legal business. Susan, you may go for the present." So Susan goes, and Mrs. Thorndyke returns to the drawing-room and tells Mr. Gilbert, Norine will see him up stairs. He goes up stairs, and appears presently be- fore the mistress of the house, rather paler than usual if she did but notice it. "Good-morning, Mr. Gilbert," she says, coming forward with outstretched hand and a smile. " I heard from Lis- ten you had returned to t