ALVMNVS BOOK FVND 
 
MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 REV. C. A. BARTOL S NEW BOOK. 
 
 RADICAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 BY REV. C. A. BARTOL, D.D. 
 
 CONTENTS. Open Questions; Individualism; Transcen 
 dentalism; Radicalism; Theism; Naturalism; Materialism; 
 Spiritualism; Faith; Law; Origin; Correlation; Character; 
 Genius: Father Taylor; Experience; Hope; Ideality. 
 
 One volume, i6tno. Cloth* Price $2.00. 
 
 / 
 
 PROFESSOR PARSONS S NEW BOOK. 
 
 THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. 
 
 BY THEOPHILUS PARSONS. 
 
 AUTHOR OF " DEUS HOMO," ETC. 
 
 One neat i6mo volume. Cloth. Price $1.00. 
 
 " No one can know," says the author, " better than I do, how poor and dim a 
 presentation of a great truth my words must give. But I write them in the hope 
 that they may suggest to some minds what may expand in their minds into a truth, 
 and, germinating there, grow and scatter seed-truth widely abroad. I am sure 
 only of this : The latest revelation offers truths and principles which promise to 
 give to man a knowledge of the laws of his being and of his relation to God, of 
 the relation of the Infinite to the Finite. . . . And therefore I believe that it will 
 gradually, it may be very slowly, so utterly does it oppose man s regenerate 
 nature, but it will surely advance in its power and in its influence, until, in its 
 own time, it becomes what the sun is in unclouded noon." 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, $ost-paid> by the Publishers^ 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. 
 
MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE TO-MORROW OF DEATH ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE FUTURE LIFE ACCORDING 
 TO SCIENCE. 
 
 By LOUIS FIGUIER. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, BY S. R. CROCKER, i vol. i6mo. #1.75. 
 
 From the Literary World. 
 
 As its striking, if somewhat sensational title indicates, the book deals with the 
 question of the future life, and purports to present " a complete theory of Nature, 
 a true philosophy of the Universe." It is based on the ascertained facts of science 
 which the author marshals in such a multitude, and with such skill, as must com 
 mand the admiration of those who dismiss his theory with a sneer. We doubt if 
 the marvels of astronomy have ever had so impressive a presentation in popular 
 form as they have here. . . . 
 
 The opening chapters of the book treat of the three elements which compose 
 man, body, soul, and life. The first is not destroyed by death, but simply changes 
 its form ; the last is a force, like light and heat, a mere state of bodies ; the soul 
 is indestructible and immortal. After death, according to M. Figuier, the soul be 
 comes incarnated in a new body, and makes part of a new being next superior to 
 man in the scale of living existences, the superhuman. This being lives in the 
 eerier which surrounds the earth and the other planets, where, endowed with senses 
 and faculties like ours, infinitely improved, and many others that we know nothing 
 of, he leads a life whose spiritual delights it is impossible for us to imagine. . . . 
 Those who enjoy speculations about the future life will find in this book fresh and 
 pleasant food for their imaginations ; and, to those who delight in the revelations 
 of science as to the mysteries that obscure the origin and the destiny of man, these 
 pages offer a gallery of novel and really marvellous views. We may, perhaps, ex 
 press our opinion of " The To-Morrow of Death " at once comprehensively and 
 concisely, by saying that to every mind that welcomes light on these grave ques 
 tions, from whatever quarter and in whatever shape it may come, regardless of 
 precedents and authorities, this work will yield exquisite pleasure. It will shock 
 some readers, and amaze many ; but it will fascinate and impress all. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, by the Publishers, 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON 
 
THE 
 
 THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE AMBER GODS," " NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1872. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1872, by 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, 
 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 PRESS OF JOHK WILSON AND SON. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 1. 
 
 THE garden lay sparkling under the earliest light 
 of a June morning. A heaven everywhere a 
 field of rose and azure soared over it ; charming 
 bird-songs trilled from its thickets ; a breeze, that 
 was only living fragrance, rifled its roses, swept 
 up its avenues, and struck leaf and bough and 
 blossom into light before it stripped them of their 
 dewdrops in a shower. The Triton at the lower 
 end of the little lake sent up a shaft of water- 
 streams from his horn to catch the sunbeams and 
 sprinkle them over the surface beneath, and beds 
 of faintly blue forget-me-nots crept out to meet 
 the pickerel-weed and lily-pads, blue flags, 
 and bluer weed, and waxen-white lilies just un 
 clasping their petals, with here and there a float 
 ing ball of gold among them, where the breeze 
 dipped again in a shining ripple, and weeds and 
 1 
 
2 fflE THiEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 flags and lilies rocked and swayed before it. On 
 the one side, the sweet-brier, climbing a pear-tree 
 to reach the robin s nest, looked back with a 
 hundred blushing blossoms, and blew a breath of 
 delight to the damask-rose on the other. The 
 damask said good-morning to the moss-rose ; the 
 moss-rose to the red ; the red would have passed 
 on the cheerful salutation, but the pale- white 
 rose, upon its lofty stem, had been awake all 
 night, had looked into the sick man s -chamber, 
 and learned what the ruddy-cheeked flowers, 
 which hung their heads and went to sleep with 
 the birds, were not to know. Nevertheless, a 
 red-winged blackbird, lighting there and leaving, 
 shook it so that half its petals fluttered away in 
 pursuit ; a little piece of jewel-work of a hum 
 ming-bird darted by to join the frolic; a blue 
 bird dropped a measure of melody from the 
 spray where he was tilting, and followed after. 
 Every thing, in all the bright and blooming 
 garden, moved and glanced and blushed and 
 glittered. Every thing spoke of life and joy 
 and hope and health : nothing spoke of sad 
 secrets or ill deeds. Every thing told of beauty 
 and breath, the luxury of living : nothing told 
 of death, or desolation. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 3 
 
 A window-casement, looking out upon the 
 garden, had been ajar all night, perhaps : the 
 fresh morning breeze had pushed it open now, 
 had brushed the curtain from its fastenings, and 
 lifted it high in the air within, while rioting 
 round the room. You could see through this 
 open window that the appointments of the room 
 were costly : the carpet was like a soft and 
 springy depth of moss ; the bedstead was a mass 
 of carved mother-of-pearl, its snowy silken cur 
 tains, though heavy with their golden fringe, yet 
 fluttered and dappled by the wind ; on the wall a 
 solitary picture, a portrait set in a panel of unbur- 
 nished gold. 
 
 It was a woman s face there, a fair, white 
 woman, with hair of palest tint, so white 
 was she that you saw the tracery of blue veins 
 upon her temples and her throat : the large eyes 
 were scarcely bluer. Though dark brows and 
 darker lashes lent those eyes shadow and depth, 
 they had an inner splendor of their own, a light 
 that seemed to burn from the brain : they were 
 strong and searching eyes, rejoicing eyes, that 
 said although the heart should break the spirit 
 would be glad and safe. But the mouth was 
 another thing ; for albeit its lips were like some 
 
4 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 pulpy fruit, yet the smile that played around its 
 corners was full of melancholy. A face that 
 blended all its contradictions into one perfect 
 charm, a face to lure on its victims, to smile 
 and smile, and murder while it smiled. 
 
 There might have been other objects in the room, 
 but they were not in the line of the window ; one 
 only, a silver tripod, bearing a globe of red roses, 
 was to be seen. A level sunbeam smote through 
 them till they seemed to blaze with crimson fire, 
 and, dyed and suffused with all the ripe, rich 
 color, the radiance passed on and lay in a stain 
 of crimson glory on the pillow, as if it did not 
 dare to touch the ashen frozen face beside it 
 there ; or as if it spurned to simulate the deeper, 
 darker stain where the sleeper lay, lay with his 
 ghastly countenance turned toward that portrait 
 still, with his glazed eye open on it even now, 
 while no shadow fell between them, and nothing 
 stirred in all the room save the bright breeze 
 blowing in, tossing draperies and playing idle 
 pranks around the form that lay unconscious and 
 not to be stirred by its wayward will, the form 
 that lay as a murdered man lies, a man murdered 
 in his sleep, a dead man straight and stark upon 
 his bed with stiffened blood about him. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 5 
 
 The room where this hideous sight was to be 
 seen in the midst of so much splendor was on the 
 ground-floor: two great fir-trees stood up on 
 either side the casement to guard it, but there 
 was open view to whomsoever passed that way. 
 
 A lady came stepping down the marble stair 
 way on the hither edge of the terrace, a tall and 
 shapely woman with a gracious presence of her 
 own : a cambric handkerchief was loosely tied 
 over the locks of palest tint. She lifted her gown 
 from the dew and passed on ; she was not bound 
 toward the open casement ; the face she showed 
 the morning sun was the face of the portrait, the 
 same features cut as if upon an opaque gem, the 
 same cream-white skin, but the eyes were lustre 
 less to-day and sodden with much weeping. 
 
 Before the lady was quite lost to sight another 
 person had entered the bright enclosure : it was 
 the gardener, making along with his spade across 
 his shoulder. His way lay directly before the 
 open casement ; he passed it by with a half-glance 
 behind him ; started, after a few steps, as if he 
 had but just understood the sight he saw, went 
 back, put down his spade, went in. He was 
 within perhaps a single minute : when he came 
 out he was whiter than the thing he had left ; he 
 
6 JJJh JH. KJ- IN THh 
 
 caught a glimpse of the lady s garment as it 
 tered round a hedge, and ran breathlessly after 
 her. She turned at the sound of his footsteps. 
 
 " Mr. Beaudesfords " be cried. 
 
 " Has sent for me ? " she tiked eagerly. 
 
 "Mr. Beaudesfords" he began again, and 
 stopped, incapable, whether terror dazed him, or 
 some commanding instinct stifled thewords, and 
 gave him others first. " madame ! this note is 
 for you. I took it from his hand," he cried. 
 
 She reached her own for it, not heeding the 
 dark, dry imprint on a corner of the crumpled 
 scrap, gave one glance at an enclosure it con 
 tained, and held it then with no more quiver visi 
 ble in her fingers tlian if they liad belonged to a 
 statue of moulded clay. " Well, McRoy," she said, 
 " what disturbs you ? Wliat else i " 
 
 The gardener looked at her amazedly: her 
 repoae fMBied to petrify him. " And this, mad 
 ame," said he, slowly opening hus hand before 
 her as if he could do it no faster. " This little 
 knife ! " His teeth chattered in his head. 
 
 " It is mine," she answered him. " You Iiave 
 often seen me use it here. Where did you find 
 it?" 
 
 " It is the knife with which Mr. Beaudesfords 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 7 
 
 was last night murdered in his bed ! " he ex 
 claimed. 
 
 The white face flushed, flushed rose and redder, 
 till the swollen veins stood purple : then it grew 
 deathly, and the lady staggered and caught 
 McRoy s hand for support. " What ! " she tried 
 to say, " Beaudesfords " 
 
 "Ay, madame," he replied, "murdered. God! 
 how could ye ? " 
 
 She seemed either not to hear him, or else to 
 find it impossible to comprehend him. " Mur 
 dered ! " she gasped again, staying herself only 
 by that shaking hold upon his arm. 
 
 "Ay, ay, that s it: no more nor less, just 
 murdered ! But that s your knife : take it, hide 
 it ! For hark ye, Mrs. Beaudesfords ! t was your 
 hand closed my May s eyes, his own are staring 
 wide open by the same token. And I 11 keep your 
 secret." 
 
 Mrs. Beaudesfords was moving as the man 
 spoke, moving with trembling feet, giving her 
 self no time to listen to him, to glance at him, to be 
 appalled by him. " Alarm the house ! " she was 
 hoarsely crying as she fled. " Send Dr. Ruthven 
 here ! Rouse them ! Come, rouse them all ! " 
 And she swept past him, strengthening herself, 
 
8 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 in a terrible sort of grandeur, like one who en 
 counters fate and defies it. 
 
 The man gaped after her; then gulped down 
 whatever words he had been about to utter, and 
 ran in the direction of Dr. Ruthven s abode, 
 having the power to obey, but not to think, too 
 stupefied to say even to himself that here was 
 a woman whose course was to choose without a 
 tremor. 
 
 Mrs. Beaudesfords shivered, but never paused, 
 as she stepped across the sill of the open case 
 ment. Now it was clear daylight. Last night, 
 and with another purpose, she had crossed it 
 stealthily, and in the dark. She seized the bell- 
 rope, and rang a peal that might have awakened 
 the dead themselves, before she turned to view 
 the object that was so soon to be exposed to all. 
 She appeared to be in a measure stunned by what 
 she had heard, as if she either knew it too well 
 already, or else did not fairly believe it. The 
 sight might have made a stronger woman sicken. 
 As she caught the stolid stare of those icy eyes, 
 her limbs failed, and she fell senseless to the floor. 
 
 It was only a moment, and the .room was full ; 
 servants, sisters, mother, clustering together, and 
 almost as the summons of the bell had found 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 9 
 
 them. While these hung, terror-struck, over the 
 bed, breaking out in a bewildered wailing, others 
 rubbed her hands and temples. The will that so 
 seldom swerved came to her relief. She heard a 
 clanking kind of step on the hall pavement, and 
 she stood upon one side of the dead man s pillow 
 when Major Gaston stood upon the other. 
 
 Gaston did not utter a syllable. He stooped and 
 lifted the leaden hand, and let it fall again ; and 
 then he looked at her, bending there before him 
 as frozen and as pale as the face below. Perhaps 
 even in such a moment she could feel that his 
 gaze was on her ; but what matter ? With that 
 writing secured, she was safe. She might be a 
 murderer, since, doubtless, there had been seasons 
 when in her heart she had desired this death, 
 as much a murderer as the one who used that 
 little knife which a moment since she had found 
 herself still holding and had flung away like an 
 adder. Twice and thrice a murderer she would 
 rather Gaston thought her, than once a false wife. 
 Her husband s honor lay in that scrap of paper 
 hidden on her heart. She felt it as she breathed. 
 Gaston should never know what words were writ 
 ten there. She looked up and met his gaze with 
 a steady glance of those triumphant eyes of hers, 
 i* 
 
10 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 triumphant even over death ; and, while she 
 looked, the way was opened for Dr. Ruthven. 
 
 The old physician, shocked by his summons, 
 since he had left his patient in a comfortable state 
 on the previous evening, bent over the bed a brief 
 space, and gave a dozen breathless directions. 
 " This knife, eh ! The radial artery opened ? " 
 said he then. " Delicate operation for a night 
 attack, and a house full of people. Too delicate, 
 too much so, it couldn t have been. A night at 
 tack? He has not been an hour dead!" And 
 in the moment ere they could obey his orders he 
 had the gardener in to point out the exact position 
 in which the knife was found. Gaston took the 
 sharp toy from him, balancing it on his fingers, 
 examining the minutely carved handle with its 
 crusted stain. " Humph ! Just as I thought," 
 muttered the Doctor. " A little gash to let eter 
 nity in on a man s soul. Sorry for him ! ah, I m 
 sorry for Beaudesfords ! It may be yet Mrs. 
 Beaudesfords, dear lady, this is no place for 
 
 you." 
 
 She had pushed back the little stand with its 
 portfolio and pencils from the head of the bed, 
 unperceived in so common an action. There had 
 been need for some one to be calm, since all the 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 11 
 
 other women were shrieking and wringing their 
 hands. But now, slowly sinking on her knees, 
 and vainly endeavoring to hinder it, she was 
 shaking the bed with her hard, dry sobs. The 
 Doctor lifted her, and half helped, half bore, her , 
 from the room. Gaston never stirred. 
 
12 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 n. 
 
 WHEN the room had been quite cleared of the 
 weeping and wailing throng there, weeping and 
 wailing, not only from the loss of a dear com 
 panion and kind master, but from the sud 
 denness, the horror, and a hundred hysterical 
 emotions, Major Gaston still retained his po 
 sition beside the pillow, now half in the shadow 
 of a fallen curtain, and still looked down upon 
 the face that was turned toward the portrait, as 
 if that pictured eye it was that had frozen the 
 man to stone. His own glance followed that 
 dead stare, and rested on the beautiful breathing 
 canvas where the painted woman seemed to lean 
 from the frame and command both dead and 
 living to her worship. To her worship ? Wor 
 ship her who, finding her husband as she had 
 found him, still keeps her powers about her, rings 
 up the house, and neither shrieks nor raves in 
 maniac fashion ? Strong nerves were hers. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 13 
 
 Strong nerves were needed for this work last 
 night. Worship her who in his soul he be 
 lieved it loved another man, that man himself, 
 Gaston ; loved with all her passionate nature, 
 nature as proud as passionate, able to lend itself 
 to crime, never to shame ; who was beloved 
 again; who knew she was beloved again, for 
 had not Gaston s every pulse, every breath, every 
 glance, this three months past, assured her? 
 whose husband had seen the whole ; who by all 
 her hopes in life had reason to wish him where he 
 lay ; who was the first to find him where he lay ? 
 They who hide can find. Worship her who 
 once before he had seen it failed to blanch at 
 the sight of blood, when, without a tremor, she 
 held McRoy s May in her arms, as the child died 
 amidst the red torrents spurting under the sur 
 geon s steel; who had lopped the garden roses, 
 not a week ago, with that little knife of hers, 
 and had whetted it on the edge-stone of the lake 
 till it glittered in its haft, the haft in the like 
 ness of an ivory hand and arm : what a red stain 
 there was on that tiny hand now ! And on the 
 other hand her hand ? 
 
 Major Gaston could not have gazed on that 
 canvas before him, on that face with its enchant- 
 
14 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 ing sweetness, and have thought such thoughts : 
 they were not thoughts of his thinking at all, but 
 phantasms that thronged over him as if he were 
 walking through a dark, dank cavern, and all its 
 flitting bats and vampires flapped their wet wings 
 in his face. He remembered Dr. Ruthven s dec 
 laration, when he entered ten minutes since, like 
 some apocryphal thing he had read and half for 
 gotten a score of years ago, nor did he notice 
 what the man was about there now with the 
 sweat on his forehead. Not he to himself, but 
 something far outside, seemed to say that how 
 ever much in friendship or in zeal the family 
 physician strove to keep an ancient name from 
 shame, yet murder had been done, something 
 far outside, a thousand leagues outside ; for as 
 for him, gazing at the picture of that woman s 
 face, the currents of his heart, mounting higher 
 and higher, kindled their flame on his sallow 
 cheek ; all his blood beat toward her : in spite 
 of sin, or shame, or life, or death, he loved her ! 
 But Gaston could not have declared himself con 
 scious even of this : he stood like an automaton, 
 with every spring of his being played on by this 
 moment s cruel hand. The only thing of which 
 he was distinctly aware while he looked on the 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 15 
 
 lovely face, and the dead man lay beneath, was 
 the burden of a rude ballad that once the little 
 May sung to the three together, a song that 
 could have naught to do with such a scene as 
 this : 
 
 " Earl Castle s wife came down the stair, 
 
 And all her maids before her, ; 
 As soon as they saw her well-fared face, 
 They cast the glamor o er her, 0." 
 
 When the physician had tried vainly all his 
 usual methods of resuscitation, and had des 
 patched his assistants on the last resort, he came 
 and laid his hand on Gaston s arm. " You did 
 not believe me when I said this was no night 
 attack of an assassin?" said he, for the pres 
 ence of death did not so much awe the man who 
 dealt in it, and who knew it only as a kind event 
 that loosed the indefinable bond between soul and 
 body. "You did not believe me, sir?" 
 
 " God forbid that I should doubt you ! " shud 
 dered Gaston. 
 
 " My friend," said the Doctor, taking his hand, 
 and wringing it till it ached, " since I have often 
 spoken with you plainly for your soul s health, 
 let me tell you that there are different ways of 
 committing the same crime: this is one with 
 
16 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 accessories. Whosesoever deed it was, whose 
 soever, this hand I clasp, this hand of Arnold 
 Gaston s, is just as guilty as if it had driven 
 home the knife!" Then, at the sound of his 
 horse s feet, Dr. Ruthven went out hurriedly 
 and left Gaston alone. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 17 
 
 III. 
 
 WITH his victim. Gaston had been fond of 
 fancying himself the victim of Beaudesfords. 
 How could it be that fate had so suddenly turned 
 the tables ? 
 
 They two were boys together at the same school, 
 mates in the same barrack : if they had had no 
 sorrows to share, they had been one in every 
 pleasure. Gaston was a poor man with his way to 
 clear ; but had Beaudesfords millionnaire from 
 his cradle been born of Danae s golden shower 
 itself, he could not have lavished wealth around 
 him more loosely. So prodigal that every one 
 partook of his bounty, his friend could scarcely 
 avoid basking in the same sunshine that he did. 
 But Gaston was a proud man, as well as a poor 
 one : he liked to accept nothing without rendering 
 its equivalent ; and it was partly for that reason 
 that Beaudesfords, while squandering his income 
 when by himself, had reduced his personal expen- 
 
18 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 ditures to a Spartan level when in the society of 
 Gaston. Gaston had been the first of his class : 
 Beaudesfords, the second, looked up at him with 
 unmixed admiration. Beaudesfords had resigned 
 his commission : Gaston had retained his, and in 
 the frontier service had won a scar that Beaudes 
 fords, with joyous envy, considered a superior 
 decoration to the cross of the Legion of Honor. 
 Gaston, with a somewhat gloomy tinge of temper 
 ament, almost a stranger to success, hitherto 
 chained to his profession, and devoured by stifled 
 and unsatisfied ambitions, was regarded by 
 Beaudesfords young, rich, handsome, followed 
 by troops of friends as the one person in the 
 world with whom he would be willing to ex 
 change identities and circumstances. In return 
 Gaston loved him truly : he could do no less. 
 
 The two were on a fishing excursion round the 
 coast at the time they together met Catherine 
 Stanhope. The wind had fallen, and they were 
 rowing their heavy boat round a long ledge of 
 rocks before making its night-harbor, when they 
 saw this woman standing on the extreme point of 
 the ledge looking out to sea. Her gown and a 
 loosened tress of fair hair fluttered on a little 
 eddy of faint air; but she herself stood in the 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 19 
 
 sunset light unmoved, a marble statue flushed 
 and tinted by whatever foreign light was shed 
 upon it, as if her beauty were a beacon to warn 
 all sailors from so dangerous a coast. So beauti 
 ful was she, indeed, that the two friends raised 
 their oars by one accord while they gazed, turned 
 away, and looked back again to make sure that it 
 was no deceit of weary eyes. At her knees an 
 other figure sat, a younger girl, only less lovely, 
 but in utter contrast to the cool command of her 
 who stood: this small and clear dark face was 
 flushed, its eyes were fired, its short rings of 
 raven hair were wet with the dew of terror ; for, 
 coming to gather samphire, Rose and her sister 
 had been cut off from shore by the rising tide. 
 Rose cowered there half unobserved ; but it is safe 
 to say that of the two friends one not sooner than 
 the other was wild with love of Catherine Stanhope. 
 
 " Beautiful, by God ! " exclaimed Gaston. 
 
 " By all the gods ! " cried Beaudesfords, turn 
 ing on his seat. 
 
 "When was such a group seen before, two 
 such women " 
 
 " Ah ! I saw but one," said Beaudesfords. 
 
 " And yet the picture would be incomplete 
 without that carnation on the darker cheek." 
 
20 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 Beaudesfords laughed while he lowered his oar, 
 as if there had been disclosed a flash of his good 
 fortune in the future that eclipsed all the past 
 had given, since his friend had had time to see 
 the darker cheek, and preferred to linger on the 
 sight. The veil which Arnold Gaston s reserve 
 for ever wrapped about his emotion served him 
 in ill stead that night: a frank word, perhaps, 
 and the end had been otherwise. With the 
 sound of that laugh, Catherine s eyes fell from 
 their steady gaze where her soul had stayed pre 
 pared for all the ventures of eternity ; and she 
 beheld the two, the back of one as he bent 
 over his oar, the dark, eager face of the other. 
 This life again with all its warmth and bliss 
 rushed before her : all past joys, all future pos 
 sibilities, rose in a splendid hope and gleamed 
 for her out of Arnold Gaston s eyes, as he gazed 
 in her face, while the other oar dipped and glanced, 
 rowing steadily towards her. A cry would have 
 risen to her lips, but it died there : she only held 
 out her arms with an imploring gesture, and 
 awaited him. It was his arms that lifted to re 
 ceive her as the boatside grated ; but as instantly 
 he had dropped them, had sprung out on the 
 weed-imbedded rock, had passed Rose across to 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 21 
 
 Beaudesfords like a child, and then, as if the same 
 grasp had been profanation of the other, had held 
 her steady by her strong white hands he saw 
 how strong and white they were, each lineament 
 and curve was printed 011 his perception in as 
 brief an instant as that in which the sun sets 
 down every line and shadow as she stepped 
 across, had followed her, and pushed off again 
 with a laboring oar out of the way of the strong 
 current that rippled round the rock. But if 
 Beaudesfords ever thought about that swift scene 
 in its relation to any other than himself and 
 Catherine, he only remembered that it was Rose 
 whom Gaston had saved the first. 
 
 Rose began to cry. The statelier and serener 
 woman calmed her with a soothing touch. 
 
 " Mr. Beaudesfords" said she. 
 
 He turned in astonished silence, taking off the 
 cap and throwing back his tumbling yellow hair. 
 
 "You have forgotten me Catherine Stan 
 hope." 
 
 " Never ! " he cried. 
 
 " But it is ! " averred the little one, looking up, 
 her face a-glitter with tears and blushes. " And 
 I am Rose." 
 
 " That you are ! " said Beaudesfords, gallantly. 
 
22 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 "Rose in. Bloom, herself. But Catherine? Do 
 you suppose I could have forgotten you if I had 
 ever seen you ? When I knew Catherine Stanhope 
 she was fifteen and farouche" 
 
 What lovely woman ever forgave a slight to 
 her beauty, past or present ? What unconscious 
 one ever favored such bold addresses ? Beaudes- 
 fords learned that fact by an intuition. " ^nd 
 now you are affronted," said he ; " and I have no 
 claim upon your good-nature, since it was Gaston 
 and not I that brought you into the boat." 
 
 Gaston was running up the sail to meet the 
 rising breeze : the presence of these two women, 
 each so bewilderingly beautiful, was, to all ap 
 pearance, a matter to him of not half the moment 
 of the capful of wind which he essayed to catch. 
 
 " You used to speak of Gaston when you 
 stayed with us," said Rose, under her breath. 
 
 " He is Major Gaston now," replied Beaudes- 
 fords. 
 
 Just then the sail swung lazily round, and left 
 Gaston standing dark and clear against the setting 
 sun, while he bowed in answer to this intro 
 duction. Catherine turned, and again their gaze 
 met. Beaudesfords used to speak of his friend as 
 of a being impassible as the hills : he would have 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 23 
 
 - 
 
 spoken in other terms had he often felt the heat 
 of the fires that seethed within. But who would 
 have guessed them as Gaston raised his hand to 
 try the wind, saying, " Another tack, and we just 
 make it ! " 
 
 For the rest of the quiet sail no one wasted 
 many words, Rose quivering with excitement, 
 Catherine too grateful for her escape, too deeply 
 touched. Beaudesfords had mercy on them, and 
 spent his impatience on the boat as it wound in 
 and out a serpentine channel to the shore. But 
 perhaps none of them ever forgot that tranquil 
 motion on the still, broad stream, in which the 
 sunset colors burned and drowned, and over 
 which the evening star stole out large-rayed and 
 calm : evening bells came floating off from the 
 distant town, the light-house lamps began to 
 sparkle, a warm land-breeze caught them up and 
 baffled them with flower-scents for a time ; then 
 a salt smell of the sea was upon them in the 
 land-locked river-mouth, and a light and rushing 
 cast wind bore them up the sand, just as the night, 
 with all its flitting fire-flies up, had settled into 
 duskiest, warmest depth. 
 
 It was Beaudesfords who helped them out. 
 Then Catherine turned again and held her hand 
 
^ THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 to Gaston. " I shall not thank you," said she, 
 " because there are no words for such a service." 
 If Major Gaston tingled to his fingers ends as he 
 resigned that hand, none there would have known it. 
 
 " But you must come up with us," cried the little 
 Rose. " Mamma will never forgive us if we let 
 you go. She will want to kiss the hands that 
 helped us. Oh ! you saved our lives, you know ! " 
 
 " We never thought of any thing less," re 
 sponded Beaudesfords, taking no notice of her 
 grateful phrases, for the extremity had not been 
 serious, and doubtless other boats, in a port 
 where they were always darting about the water, 
 would have come to the rescue in season : it only 
 happened to be Beaudesfords that came the first. 
 " We never thought of any thing le"ss when we set 
 out," said he ; and so, ringing the changes on old 
 times with question and answer, they had gone 
 up the steep bank to the Stanhope cottage and 
 entered, and, in view of the alarm their protracted 
 stay had caused, had received a greeting from the 
 mother and her other daughter of welcome and 
 reproaches, kisses and tears. Gaston viewed the 
 scene from the doorway, Beaudesfords mingling 
 in it, and with assumed simplicity coming in for 
 his share of all ; and perhaps the glow of the 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 25 
 
 moment gave a warmer tinge to the feelings of 
 the Stanhopes in his regard than a year s en 
 deavor might have done, though he had once been 
 almost a child of the house himself. 
 
 Mrs. Stanhope was rather a stately woman : 
 her white skin Catherine had, her dark eyes Rose. 
 She was still a pretty woman, and had sufficient 
 spirit to cause the household to cluster round her 
 self for a centre. Her three children obeyed her 
 now as they did in their infancy ; that is to say, 
 Catherine implicitly, Caroline petulantly, Rose 
 not at all. She was an ambitious woman, desir 
 ing wealth ; and, since it was unlikely that Caro 
 line would ever leave her, she intended that the 
 marriages of the others should be brilliant enough 
 to cover her deficiency. Her husband had been 
 one of Beaudesfords guardians until his death. 
 A widow now, and with a small support, she knew 
 the value of money, particularly of Beaudes 
 fords , the accumulation of a long minority: 
 she knew the value of beauty, too, as a mer 
 chantable article, though doubtless she would 
 have rebuked such a -suggestion with scorn. 
 Nevertheless she had sighed that in her seclusion 
 the beauty of her daughters should go for noth 
 ing ; had more than once wondered if Beaudes- 
 2 
 
26 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 fords, taking his pleasure round the world, would 
 never remember his home of a single year suf 
 ficiently to seek it again ; and was not at last a 
 whit surprised when one morning, after he had 
 been a week in the place, Beaudesfords who 
 had come in and was scratching off some letters 
 on her writing-table looked up and said to her, 
 " Mamma Stanhope, I am going to marry Cathe 
 rine." 
 
 " With all my heart," said she. 
 
 "Do you think Catherine will marry me ? " 
 said Beaudesfords then, a little shyly and slyly. 
 
 " Oh ! that," said Mamma Stanhope, to make 
 the prize more precious, " that is quite another 
 thing. Catherine is whimsical : I cannot say. 
 You surely are the one to know." 
 
 " I surely do not know. This morning she is 
 kind to me, this evening she is haughty, to-mor 
 row she forgets I exist. You see, Mamma Stan 
 hope, if I had if I were like Gaston" 
 
 u Gaston, indeed ! " cried madame. " I will 
 bring her here this moment ! " 
 
 " No, no, no ! That would never do. But you 
 can judge, at least, if she would favor such a 
 suit. I have so little to offer in myself." 
 
 " Is that Rose calling me ? " asked the wily 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 27 
 
 woman. " The child troubles me more every day 
 than Catherine ever did in her whole life. Wait 
 here, and finish your letters. I will be back 
 directly." 
 
 Catherine and her sisters were alone in the 
 little sewing-room : they were plotting a gown 
 that should answer at once for the street, the 
 evening, and dinner. The mother entered, and 
 stood a moment watching them before she de 
 spatched the other two on some opportune errand. 
 
 " You will not need to turn a breadth three 
 times before saying which side is the less shabby 
 any more," said she then. " Beaudesfords wishes 
 you for his wife, Catherine." She would not 
 have played her cards so poorly had she felt a 
 trifle less exultation over her prospects, or dislike 
 of their employment. 
 
 "Me?" exclaimed Catherine, lifting her head 
 from where she stooped, while the blood blos 
 somed out in two red roses on her cheeks. 
 "Beaudesfords!" She sprang to her feet. 
 "When he has not known me a week!" she 
 cried. " Does he think, because his purse is full, 
 he comes into this house as if it were a market 
 of Circassian girls and orders his slave home?" 
 
 Beaudesfords had not finished his letters, 
 
28 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 neither had he written a word of them : he sat 
 there stripping his quill in pieces, when suddenly 
 the doorway darkened, and Catherine stood there 
 as blazing and brilliant as if a meteor had opened 
 and let her out, a baleful meteor. 
 
 Beaudesfords rose pale to confront her. He 
 was her mate for beauty as he stood, that was 
 clear: his stature nobler than hers, his profile 
 like that on those coins where the conquering 
 Alexander had his own likeness struck in the 
 name of Apollo, his gray eyes with no more 
 quailing in them than an eagle s, the clustering 
 brightness of his hair, she saw it all as she 
 stood there, her lips apart to speak, but the words 
 rising to them so bitter that they were not fit to 
 say. Beaudesfords, too, had a sharp arrow on the 
 string ; but in a moment he had conquered his 
 indignant feeling, and he went forward, and 
 taking her hand, while she was too much sur 
 prised to refuse it, led her to a seat. 
 
 "You are angry with me, Catherine," said he 
 then, " because I have wished to share my life 
 with you, whatever there is in it either of sorry 
 or glad ; because you had enchanted a week so 
 that I would have the same enchantment spread 
 over years ; because in this week I had found 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 29 
 
 your companionship so sweet that I wanted it for 
 ever!" But her lids fell, and her face grew dull, 
 for she cared little for compliment, nothing 
 for it from Beaudesfords, whom she remembered 
 as a careless, cheerful lad, while her sequestered 
 life had fostered every romantic tendency towards 
 the unknown and heroic. "Very well," con 
 tinued Beaudesfords : "it is possible you can 
 pardon me, and I will keep the rest to myself. 
 Of course it was presumptuous. I acknowledge 
 my transgression, and my sin is ever before me ! " 
 Then Beaudesfords laughed. He was a merry fel 
 low, and had never known what failure was: he 
 hoped still. " To keep it from being before me," 
 said he, " I must go away. But not till I feel 
 forgiven. Don t let me tire you with complaint. 
 Do I look like a disappointed lover?" 
 
 " No, Mr. Beaudesfords," exclaimed Catherine, 
 her chance having come, " but like a disappointed 
 purchaser ! " 
 
 " Before God ! " cried Beaudesfords, " I never 
 thought of my money ! I will give it all to Gas- 
 ton, if that will make me a lighter weight in the 
 contest ! " 
 
 What a flame leaped into Catherine s eyes ! 
 " If Major Gaston had the half of it, he would " - 
 
30 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 "Would what?" said Beaudesfords, in that 
 debonair way of his that seemed to 1-er insuf 
 ferable familiarity. 
 
 " Would never woo his wife in such a fashion ! " 
 
 Beaudesfords bent and touched her hand w ith 
 his lips. " Good-by," said he. " It is the kiss 
 of peace. Since the lips are forbidden me" 
 he hesitated half an instant, as if his own words 
 were a temptation to him; then lest, before he 
 knew what he was about, he should stoop and 
 hold and make that mouth his own, that fra 
 grant and delicious mouth, he turned upon his 
 heel and went out. 
 
 He came again though in the afternoon, and 
 Gaston with him. They -had picked up a little 
 girl with her basket of wild strawberries to sell, 
 and had brought her up to empty it on Mamma 
 Stanhope s table. 
 
 " We have sold such a boat-load of fish, and 
 lobsters, and crabs," said Beaudesfords, " that 
 we can afford to buy some berries. What a 
 work-a-day world it is where Gaston is ! " he 
 said, throwing himself back in the great chair 
 he had chosen, and his hands clasped behind his 
 head. u Such idle hours as those officers have in 
 their forts and frontiers Gaston could never 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 31 
 
 endure it, and so got a furlough to come and 
 earn his living. I suppose I ought to go away," 
 continued Beaudesfords, glancing half mischiev 
 ously at Catherine, for he was well enough aware 
 that all the family knew of his morning s mis 
 hap, and he had taken care that Gaston did. 
 " But look at my net profits of to-day," and he 
 threw two gold pieces on the table ; " and Gas- 
 ton has as much more, at least he had, before 
 he bought the berries, honest earnings. Do 
 you think we shall leave such a placer ? " And 
 he began to troll out, "Who 11 buy my caller 
 herrin ? " in as heart-whole a manner as ever a 
 costermonger cried his wares. 
 
 " Do you mean that you have actually sold your 
 fish?" questioned Rose, with her usual license. 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " In an age of bargain arid sale," added Gas- 
 ton, with something strange in his tone. Cathe 
 rine raised her eyes once more, and they met 
 those of Gaston, in a long-suspended glance. 
 She seemed mutely to answer a mute question: 
 the whole world might be at vendue, but she, 
 at least, was neither to be bought nor sold. A 
 moment after and she was wondering at herself : 
 wondering how it was that in a single week this 
 
32 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 silent man, whose reticence, perhaps, fascinated 
 one into discovering his thoughts ; this plain 
 man, whose scar caused you always to look into 
 his eyes that you might not see it ; this lonely 
 man, without a relative, and with no nearer 
 friend than Beaudesfords on earth, had already 
 become, as it were, a part of her own being. 
 
 That day had not been the happiest one, on 
 the whole, of Catherine s life. Her mother 
 had met her outbreak with a stern sense of 
 injury and unbending disapproval. Caroline had 
 awarded it no more favor : only little Rose 
 she would always be little, though she were a 
 woman grown had woven a chain of pansies, 
 and hung them on Catherine s hair, like the 
 benoitons of after-days, whispering a host of 
 naughty consolations ; and Catherine some 
 what martyrized, picturing to herself that un 
 varying success in life which had so spoiled 
 Beaudesfords that he had never dreamed of a 
 woman s withstanding him, and had dared his 
 whole hope on a single risk had made a noble 
 relief to her picture out of Gaston, proud, sad, 
 and majestic. 
 
 But when Gaston met her gaze just now, his 
 heart beating at first so exultantly, what made it 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 33 
 
 sink as quickly? Was it with an idea that he 
 was an honest man, deeply in debt, and with a 
 sufficient burden on his shoulders to meet his 
 obligations ? Was it with a conviction that his 
 great schemes and the work he had projected for 
 himself would not endure the rivalries of do 
 mestic life ? It could never have been with a 
 sense that he was a selfish man shrinking from 
 deprivations and responsibilities ! 
 
 " Yes, we sold them," continued Beaudesfords. 
 " Every fish had a piece of money in its mouth." 
 
 " Just as much as if it had been caught in the 
 brooks of the miracles," said Gaston. 
 
 " So you see we are inevitable as long as a 
 sturgeon leaps in the river, at least I am : 
 Gaston has some ridiculous idea of departure." 
 
 " Why, I thought Major Gaston had a fur 
 lough," said Rose, who had brought her little 
 macaw to the table, and was teasing her with 
 strawberries, thereby diverting the attention of 
 Mamma Stanhope, who coupled the claws and 
 beak with rents in her damask. 
 
 " A long furlough," said Gaston : " I have left 
 the army for a situation in the civil-engineer ser 
 vice, that I may pay my debts and draw a free 
 breath before I die." 
 
34 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " Mamma says good people do not get into 
 debt," said the more than half-spoiled Rose. 
 u That is the reason I have such a bill at the 
 milliner s. Good people are so stupid ! " 
 
 " You relish a suspicion of wickedness ?" asked 
 Gaston. " It does heighten the lights." 
 
 " Since Rose is not one of them," said Beaudes- 
 fords, " we will admit that good people are 
 stupid." 
 
 " And so are successful ones," said the little 
 witch. " They stand like Beaudesfords," depre 
 cating offence with her pretty smile, " in such a 
 glare of sunshine as to be commonplace ; like a 
 picture without perspective. Give me Hassan of 
 the Desert, somebody with a battle to fight 
 inside or outside ; for my ideal is " 
 
 " Grand, gloomy, and peculiar," laughed Beau 
 desfords. 
 
 " But you, Major Gaston " 
 
 " I am no darling of good-fortune certainly." 
 
 " Ah ! you are envious of Beaudesfords, I see. 
 Peste! I had much rather be a hero ! " and she 
 sent the macaw fluttering and screaming to his 
 perch, having covered Catherine sufficiently with 
 her chatter. 
 
 Beaudesfords laughed his assent again. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 35 
 
 " What are you talking of, Rose ? " cried 
 Mamma Stanhope. 
 
 " She has been reading French novels," said 
 Caroline. " And you are obliged to go at once, 
 Major Gaston ? " 
 
 " Not necessarily, but I have some prepara 
 tions" 
 
 " And two months to make them in," said 
 Beaudesfords. "He "is to explore one of the 
 great Central- American routes ; and the expedi 
 tion himself and a couple of Caribs does not 
 start until August. Do you remember when my 
 guardian took me on his pilgrimage down among 
 the thunderbolted hills and arrowy rivers of the 
 isthmus ? How wild Catherine was to go ! " 
 
 " Green and salad days," said Catherine, open 
 ing her lips for the first time since his entrance. 
 
 ".We told her women were in the way: they 
 could never stand, like Cortez and his men, 
 1 silent upon a peak in Darien. 
 
 "That was the time you found your coppers ? " 
 asked Gaston. 
 
 " Your what ? " said Caroline, in her thirst for 
 useful knowledge. 
 
 " Didn t my guardian ever tell you ? In one 
 of the old Spanish towns they were coppering a 
 
36 THE THIEF TN THE NIGHT. 
 
 ship ; and among the material, do you think, were 
 a half-dozen of the rarest paintings on copper, 
 stripped from some cathedral. I bought them 
 for a song ; and one a St. Veronica, I fancy 
 is such a likeness of Catherine, as she sits there, 
 that I swear the Inquisition couldn t get it away 
 from me ! " 
 
 Gaston s brow darkened. " Don t you see it ? " 
 asked Beaudesfords. 
 
 "It is plain enough ! " returned the other, 
 making his excuse for gazing till it lightened all 
 his gloom. 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Rose, " to tell a lady that her 
 face is plain enough ! " 
 
 " Suppose you come and see," said Beaudes 
 fords, impetuously. " Mamma Stanhope, it is not 
 a day s sail up the river. Take the demoiselles 
 and go up to Beaudesfords to-morrow with us : 
 with a fair wind, and the tide serving at day 
 break, we shall be there in time to dine, and come 
 down on the midnight ebb. I want you to see 
 how I have carried out my guardian s plans in 
 the improvements. You have never been there 
 since he and you came together to bring the for 
 lorn little wretch that you found crying and kick 
 ing on the floor down to the shelter of this roof. 
 What say ? " 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 37 
 
 Mamma Stanhope would have gone to the moon 
 if Beaudesfords had led the way. Catherine s 
 objections were hushed ; and before the eastern 
 stars had melted into the flames of sunrise the 
 boat had stretched its wings, and, laden with such 
 a crew as it never bore before, went flying zigzag 
 up the river that crept from gray to gold with 
 morning breaking on the banks, reaching its des 
 tination by noon, when, by Beaudesfords ukase, 
 the party scattered for a nap before they should 
 be summoned to a dinner for which a telegram 
 posted from the village had already prepared his 
 housekeeper. 
 
 Mamma Stanhope sunk among her pillows, 
 deep and downy as clouds, enjoying into the core 
 of her heart the sumptuousness about her, already 
 mistress of it in prospective, and sleeping the 
 sleep of the just. Caroline, of altogether too 
 common clay to keep awake when a luxurious 
 cushion offered its repose, followed her example ; 
 while Rose, like a tired child, had been dozing in 
 the boat itself. Only Catherine, with a grieved 
 and outraged sense of the indelicacy of bringing 
 her here to spread her price before her, the last 
 thing, assuredly, that Beaudesfords would have 
 thought of, was stung wide awake ; and, feeling 
 
38 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 the house to be as insupportable as a prison, she 
 threw her scarf over her head, and, wandering 
 down the garden, had strolled beyond, pausing 
 where a growth of lofty oaks spread a perpetual 
 canopy of glancing gold and emerald, while the 
 trunks made mighty colonnades down the long 
 and open woodland. 
 
 She paused, because Gaston stood there : un 
 willing to join him, and thinking he had not seen 
 her, she was about to retrace her way, when all 
 at once a distant voice, calling and commanding, 
 arrested her ; and then a great, open-mouthed 
 bay, a war-cry, resounded in rough music, and an 
 enormous mastiff, but one remove from the gray 
 wolf of northern forests, flashed past her, and 
 flew at Gaston s throat. She stood rooted for 
 that moment, while the man, bent backward in 
 the dreadful contest, seized the jaws of the mon 
 ster, wrenched them open from the heavy frieze 
 they had caught, and, with a blow of his fist that 
 resounded like a sledge-hammer, had felled the 
 brute to the ground. 
 
 He came up to Catherine, almost directly after 
 ward, as if nothing had happened. " Which ? " 
 said Mrs. Stanhope, when she one day told her 
 about it, " which brute ? " 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 39 
 
 " Which brute ? " said Catherine, coolly. 
 " Why, Gaston, of course." 
 
 " Were you much frightened ? " Gaston asked. 
 " The fellow has a grudge against me. I had no 
 idea the wolf had such a memory though. Beau- 
 desfords should not have let him loose with you 
 upon the grounds. He is one of the pets of the 
 place." 
 
 " You must come in and have your wound 
 dressed," she said quickly. " Some day you will 
 be going mad ! " 
 
 " Thank you, there is no wound to dress. He 
 has only torn my jacket and grazed the skin." 
 
 Beaudesfords came running up, white and 
 breathless. " My God, Gaston ! " he cried : " I 
 thought you were done for ! I saw the struggle." 
 
 " Oh, it was magnificent ! " said Catherine. 
 
 " Heyday! you should have been a Roman girl 
 to applaud at the great circuses, where you could 
 have seen men eaten up alive any day. Hurry 
 up to the house, Gaston. Mrs. Gray will make 
 all right. Is the flesh torn ? " 
 
 " The merest trifle. I hope I have not injured 
 the beast," looking back where the mastiff had 
 struggled up on his fore-feet. " But so warm a 
 welcome " 
 
40 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " I will settle his case. There is only one 
 penalty. If you will go up with Catherine." 
 
 " Does Mr. Beaudesfords value such a creat 
 ure ? " asked Catherine, as they moved away. 
 
 " Yes : I am sorry to say as much as anything 
 at Beaudesfords. He has belonged to him for 
 years, and at one time, when lost in the snow 
 between these hills, rescued him from death. 
 He has some human traits, however, jealous 
 of his master s friends and hating me." 
 
 " Is it so much a human trait to hate you ? " 
 
 " I will not be so melodramatic as to say so," 
 said Gaston, in a bitter voice that answered for 
 him. 
 
 They were walking rapidly, but stopped just 
 then at what seemed to Catherine the most 
 beautiful sight of all her life : it was a flight of 
 birds that darkened the air, that made a thou 
 sand lightnings in the sunshine, wings and wings 
 thicker than autumn leaves, scattering, uniting, 
 rising into heaven, rushing over them and win 
 nowing the air like grain till they became lost 
 and swallowed in the blue. 
 
 " Ah, how lovely ! " cried Catherine. 
 
 " They fly as if Epaminondas manoeuvred 
 them," said Gaston. " Strange that the resist- 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 41 
 
 ance of the air should shape their flight into the 
 very wedge to cleave it. Yes: every thing is 
 lovely at Beaudesfords. Every sound makes 
 music listen!" 
 
 It was only the echo of a pistol-shot, repeated 
 and repeated till it died in a silvery sough. 
 
 They turned, ere the echo expired : there was 
 a little puff of smoke dissipating under the oaks, 
 the mastiff had bounded and fallen over dead, 
 and Beaudesfords was hastening away. Cathe 
 rine shivered as she went in, finding herself 
 standing as it were between two such volcanic 
 foci ; and nothing being said about the mastiff 
 and his end, when Beaudesfords, gay and smiling, 
 reappeared to take Mamma Stanhope in to din 
 ner, she also, for many a day thereafter, said 
 nothing. 
 
 What a dinner it was ! These young women, 
 bred upon simple fare and in simple ways, could 
 hardly taste the wonderful viands in view of the 
 wonderful service, china, brilliant and brittle as 
 bubbles, the epergne a piece of jewelry, glasses 
 like rock-crystal, the frosted silver and beaten 
 gold ; and to think that it was all within Cathe 
 rine s reach ! Even Rose went over to the 
 enemy. Perhaps the exquisite Moselle, in whose 
 
42 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 sparkle you tasted the Muscat grape itself, 
 warmed Mrs. Stanhope s blood more generously 
 than was its wont ; for she fairly bubbled with 
 pleasure when her glance followed Catherine by 
 and by as she moved down the hall among the 
 pictures and bronzes and enamelled armors, re 
 membering how Catherine loved splendor and 
 queendom, the rustle of silk, the whiteness of 
 ermine. Beaudesfords eyes followed her with a 
 different thought. How sweet her presence and 
 her grace seemed in these great rooms where so 
 seldom of late years had there been any thing to 
 be seen better than wreaths of tobacco smoke ! 
 how sweet her voice in the halls that, in the in 
 tervals of long silence and disuse, had so seldom 
 rung with any thing but the hilarity of late car 
 rousals ! Gastoii, meanwhile, busied himself in 
 cutting little devils and dragons out of butter 
 nuts: he had no eyes for any thing but his 
 handiwork. 
 
 So at last the St. Veronica had been seen and 
 pronounced to be Catherine herself, so much so 
 that it vexed our young lady a little to leave it 
 in Beaudesfords possession ; then the grounds 
 had been travelled over and the improvements 
 lauded by Mrs. Stanhope ; the housekeeper had 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 43 
 
 repaired the rents in Gaston s jacket ; and in the 
 evening twilight they dropped down the river. 
 
 The gentle current bore them along slowly 
 at first, underneath a shaking sail, it was the 
 movement of a dream : then the tide ran down 
 more strongly, the breeze came in pursuit, and 
 they heard the river hissing behind them as it 
 closed over the gash their keel made. The stars 
 came out, and sparkled as though the wind fanned 
 their fires. Beaudesfords, alive with gayety, 
 seemed to sparkle back at them. Gaston, also 
 unbending, became genial again after his fashion : 
 soon he began to sing, sweet and sonorous 
 tones. Presently Catherine was singing too : his 
 breath came fast as he heard her, the voice was 
 so delicious, his own trembled, he grasped the 
 tiller more clos ely, as if he could control himself 
 by controlling another thing, and poured out a 
 volume of melody on which hers seemed to rise 
 and float like some white-winged sea-bird on a 
 sustaining flood. Beaudesfords leaned back, his 
 face in the starlight shining with enjoyment. A 
 school of shad followed in their wake, leaping 
 and flashing out of the dark stream. " See," 
 said Beaudesfords, in the succeeding silence, " all 
 the lurleys and creatures of the deep have risen 
 
44 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 at your song, are following after us, presently 
 will be aboard and sink us 1 It makes me shiver ! 
 Oh for a lanthorn and a spear, and such a break 
 fast of planked mermaid as you should have to 
 morrow, Mamma Stanhope ! " 
 
 "No more shad for us," replied Mamma, "un 
 less you want to make us phosphorescent. " 
 
 " We are sparkling enough now, you think ? " 
 
 " There is a bittern booming," said Gaston. 
 " We are almost home." 
 
 " What a run it has been ! " said Catherine. 
 " How sorry I am ! What is there more intoxi 
 cating than this swift motion by starlight ? " 
 
 "One thing only," said Gaston, between his 
 teeth and unheard. 
 
 " There is the cottage," said Mamma. " See 
 the dew on the hedges. Come, you sleepy chil 
 dren ! " for Rose and Caroline had, this last 
 hour, been little more than ballast. 
 
 " How the wind freshens down there among 
 the breakers ! " said Gaston, pointing at the white 
 line that fringed the river s mouth. 
 
 " It is like a dance of death by beautiful ghosts," 
 answered Catherine. 
 
 " Will you go on, Beaudesfords ? " 
 
 " Not I. Enough of this for one day. I have 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 45 
 
 always had my doubts if heaven wouldn t pall on 
 me." 
 
 " I never shared them," replied Gaston. 
 
 The boat touched the landing under the lee of 
 the steep hill which you climbed to the Stanhope 
 cottage. Beaudesfords sprung ashore, helped out 
 Mrs. Stanhope, and passed Rose and Caroline 
 along. 
 
 " But you," said Gaston to Catherine, " would 
 like to tempt that distance ? " 
 
 The rudder turned, the sail flapped and filled, 
 the painter slipped from Beaudesfords grasp and 
 plashed in the water ; and before Mrs. Stanhope s 
 warning voice could be lifted, Gaston and Cath 
 erine were flying out to sea. 
 
 Catherine stood forward by the mast, Gaston 
 sat in the stern ; but what a strange freedom 
 rioted through their hearts alike as they went 
 coursing over the channel, rising on the broad 
 tide-waves, plunging up and down in the chop 
 upon the bar, then soaring and sinking with a 
 large wild motion on the great sea-swells, while 
 silver thunders filled their ears, and tall foam- 
 phantoms rose and fell in misty whiteness every 
 where about them. Catherine was where she 
 had never been, in a narrow strait that wound 
 
46 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 safely between two cruel sandbars and horns of 
 rock, so that she found herself with tumultuous 
 waters before her and behind her, on this side 
 and on that, surrounded by stormy sea and starlit 
 darkness in the midst of the breakers. 
 
 Since Gaston knew his way in, he surely knew 
 it out, it never occurred to her to doubt him, 
 all was well if the wind held, if the mast held. 
 The moment was too splendid for fear. ; and fear 
 or not, they could not have heard each other 
 speak. On one side now the waves shot up 
 across the gloom in spires of silver ; on the other 
 boiled the whirlpool, a black pit of fire and 
 spume ; just beyond was the still and open water. 
 Suddenly a snap that Catherine never heard : 
 the tiller had broken, and sent Gaston reeling 
 from his seat, with the fragment in his hand ; 
 the boat staggered as if it had been struck by 
 death, then drifted broad on the breaker that in 
 another moment would have swamped her. But 
 before that moment came, Gaston had thrown 
 himself upon the floor, had thrust his long arm 
 through the tiller-hole to the shoulder, and with a 
 hand of iron had seized and held the rudder as 
 the tiller did. The boat hung and trembled like 
 a creature about to take some dreaded leap ; in 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 47 
 
 spite of his gigantic strength the cords knotted 
 and rose on his arm, and sent a pain grinding 
 through his body that he had reason to remember 
 for months; then the chasing wave came on, bent 
 to its fall, broke in a line of whiteness, rolled up 
 and caught them on its back and tossed the boat 
 over into safe water. Gaston twisted his arm 
 free, trimmed his sail, and, steering with an oar, 
 took the outer way through open sea, and so up 
 the winding channel and home again. 
 
 When it was all over, Catherine realized the 
 peril they had passed through ; but Gaston stood 
 with the oar in his left hand half behind him, and 
 looking forward so unconcernedly that she scorned 
 to do less. So she wrung the spray out of her 
 hair in silence, perhaps there would have been 
 a trifle too much flutter in the voice above all that 
 palpitation. 
 
 The boat went about, and they made the shore. 
 Gaston dropped the sail, threw over the anchor, 
 and handed her out, saying some trivial thing. 
 Then he went up the steep, dark-thicketed bank 
 beside her, where wafts of sweetness floated down 
 from the garden, and left her within the little 
 gate. She held her hand across : he took it for 
 a moment, still standing on the other side, tower- 
 
48 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 ing above her where she glowed like some tropical 
 blossom just opened on the night ; the shadows 
 of the tree-branches waved round them, only the 
 glint of a star broke through, the murmuring 
 river shone in a mystical glimmer below ; all the 
 world slept, the distant shrilling of the cricket 
 seemed but the silence singing to itself. It was 
 a spell of hush and midnight and dew, not broken 
 even when two faces bent together and the lips in 
 one long thrill and touch of passion drew the soul 
 from each other. 
 
 Sleep was slow in descending on Catherine s 
 eyes that night : he never made his pillow on 
 such flushed and burning roses as her cheeks. 
 The hours passed in a wild and happy forgetful- 
 ness, the deep dream of love and innocence that 
 the heart dreams with waking eyes. The face of 
 Gaston was the thing she saw, as it bent slowly 
 toward her ; his figure, as he stalked away into 
 the darkness. Let her have her night s pleasure 
 in remembering it, in her heart s beating up one 
 great throb of bliss, in feeling still that kiss upon 
 her lips : the next time that she saw Gaston she 
 had been for more than two years the wife of 
 Beaudesfords. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 49 
 
 IY. 
 
 GASTON did not come on the next morning, nor 
 in the afternoon. Instead of him, at night, 
 Beaudesfords came. Catherine heard his voice 
 trolling some catch as he approached : the color 
 sprang again to her cheeks, with the thought that 
 his silent companion was beside him. ^ 
 
 "It is insupportable ! " said he. "I never can 
 stay down there alone ; and 1 cannot go away, 
 you know ! I shall come up here, Mamma Stan 
 hope, bag and baggage. Gaston has gone, gone 
 when I had him safe for a month ! He would 
 not delay another day; said he had stayed too 
 long already ; and, having letters to write, he 
 could not make his farewell call, but charged me 
 to present apologies, and say every thing that 
 was necessary. So please consider it said." 
 
 " Major Gaston gone ! " exclaimed Rose. 
 
 "Isn t that a sudden thing?" asked Mamma 
 Stanhope 
 
50 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " And like all sudden things. I detest sur 
 prises : there never was a pleasant one. He goes 
 to Europe first, and then postr-haste to the isthmus. 
 Oh ! that s an immense nature of his, Mamma 
 Stanhope ! " said Beaudesfords, enthusiastically. 
 " Spurning indulgences, comforts, friends ; not 
 wishing for money, not caring for fame ; not even 
 hoping to associate his name with his achieve 
 ments, just rapt in his work for his work s 
 sake." 
 
 " I daresay," said Mrs. Stanhope. 
 
 " How you do idealize people ! " said Caroline. 
 " For my part, I pronounce him a spleeny man, 
 who wants the doctor ! " 
 
 " Too long already," repeated Catherine. But 
 she did not say it aloud. She stepped through 
 the window and down the garden, and stood in 
 the shadow where she had stood last night, too 
 much bewildered to think or feel till the pain rose 
 and stung away the numbness ; then heart and 
 brain had it out between them on that battles-field. 
 Around her were the same low-hanging branches, 
 the same flower-shaken odors, the same dusky 
 alleys ; below her the dewy bank, the dark-gleam 
 ing river, the wide, low landscape stretching on 
 in reach after reach of deeper shade ; but from it 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 51 
 
 all the meaning had been robbed. She went back 
 to the house at length, pale and tired ; hope and 
 joy had fallen slowly from her like a borrowed 
 investiture ; she was a desolate woman. 
 
 The summer passed. Beaudesfords had long 
 since followed Gaston s example, but Mrs. Stan 
 hope s table was heavy with the fruit and flowers 
 that every day arrived from him. If the truth 
 were told, there was not a great deal else on the 
 table ; for Mrs. Stanhope s property had suffered 
 a serious diminution by the opening to the public 
 of a bridge, which caused a toll-gate and turnpike 
 that had always rendered her good revenue to 
 become almost worthless. She was not the 
 sweetest counsellor and adviser to Catherine under 
 such circumstances, and only a dozen times a day 
 held up to her, in a mute and well-bred way, the 
 trouble, if not suffering, that her ridiculous tem 
 pers had inflicted on her family. For Caroline 
 had become now a confirmed invalid, scarcely 
 leaving her sofa, and requiring doctors and dain 
 ties and appliances far beyond her mother s 
 means of supply. Catherine walked through the 
 alleys of the chill November garden, with the fall 
 ing leaves rustling round her feet, and the wind 
 sighing in the branches. She sighed as well : no 
 
52 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 longer with sorrow of sore heart or rankle of 
 wounded pride, but with a heavy indifference, 
 since she found nothing in life worth the living. 
 Gaston s expedition had departed at last, and 
 Beaudesfords had dropped in upon them again on 
 his way home. He was talking to her mother 
 when she came in from the river-bank, with her 
 hands full of scarlet alder-berries and the satin 
 milk-weed, whose bursting down all starred with 
 the brown seeds, looked like a branchful of spar 
 rows, as he said, rising to take them from her. 
 A flare of the fitful firelight showed him her face, 
 grown white and thin. It pleased him, for an 
 instant, with the selfish fancy that she had missed 
 him ; and then it came over him that soon they 
 might all be missing her. The sound of the 
 autumn wind round the gables made his flesh 
 creep : he piled up the blazing brush in the chim 
 ney himself, and wheeled a screen between her 
 chair and the window ; but he saw, while he did 
 so, a dislike to have attention drawn to her in 
 that way. He began then some recital or other 
 to Mamma Stanhope, moving about the room in 
 his usual nervous manner when telling any inci 
 dent whose occurrence had excited him at all; 
 knocked the screen aside as he finished, told Rose 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 53 
 
 she looked like a little actress whose photograph 
 half the world was going crazy over, romped with 
 the Blenheim and the macaw, then paused on the 
 rug in front of Catherine to take breath, and to 
 compliment her casually on the improvement in 
 her appearance, till the color rose upon her cheek 
 indeed. 
 
 As he stood there, all at once a curious sound 
 above them of crumbling plaster and falling sand, 
 a puff of dust, and the great mirror over the 
 mantel had loosened, and was plunging down. 
 Catherine darted with upstretched arms, and 
 snatched a corner of the frame with all the force 
 she had. Beaudesfords had turned in a breath 
 and caught it with stronger hands: a second 
 later, and it would have splintered in his flesh 
 and crushed him to the floor. They managed to 
 hold it up between them till assistance came ; 
 then Catherine ran to her room for repairs, 
 and Beaudesfords to his inn for a change of 
 linen. 
 
 He came back undaunted though, directly, for 
 it was not much more than a dozen rods away ; 
 and, entering again, sat down on the cushion at 
 Catherine s feet, taking her white worsted skeins 
 on his own hands. They were alone ; for Mrs. 
 
54 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 Stanhope was attending to her tea-table, and 
 Rose had gone upstairs to see if Caroline would 
 come down. 
 
 Beaudesfords held his skein to the end without 
 a word. As he surrendered the thread, he look 
 ing up, she down, their glances met, and he 
 laughed. There are some people who always 
 laugh with any happy agitation. " I am going to 
 ask you a question," said he then, with just a trace 
 of hesitation in the voice, in spite of his audacious 
 eye. " Were you ever sorry for your evil be 
 havior on one morning of last summer ? " 
 
 She wondered what he meant for just a second, 
 when, being no coquette, with a full heart she 
 answered, " Never." 
 
 " Then, may I ask, why under the sun, or the 
 ceiling, you sprung to my rescue in that way, at 
 the risk of broken arms, just now ? " 
 
 She surveyed him with surprise. " I would 
 have done it," she cried, " for any clod that had 
 stood there." 
 
 " So ! But, Catherine, tell me one thing. Am 
 I positively distasteful to you ? " 
 
 " No, no, no," she answered him impatiently. 
 " I like you well enough." 
 
 " And you can look on my perpetual com- 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 55 
 
 panionship with nothing like pleasure ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " With nothing like pleasure," she replied. 
 
 He was standing now, but still looking at her 
 downcast face and heightened tint, the perfect 
 picture, eyes that were not to sparkle for him, 
 smiles that were not to brighten, lips that should 
 never be his. Before he knew what he was 
 doing, he had stooped and kissed them ; had 
 fulfilled his old, daring dream, and made the 
 mouth his own, the fragrant and delicious 
 mouth ; lips that another kiss, unknown to 
 any, had left sacred, whose touch was sac 
 rilege. 
 
 " I will never forgive you ! " she cried. 
 
 " I will never ask you ! " he replied, striding 
 off; but in a trice he was back again. 
 
 " At your feet," he said, throwing himself on 
 the low seat once more. " You would not de 
 spise so much a lover less humble. Gaston, per 
 haps. A man that takes your heart, and never 
 sues for it ! " He did not see her wince, nor 
 hang her head with a kind of shame, as he went 
 on. " But it was unpardonable. You cannot 
 overlook it. I should love you less, Catherine, 
 if you failed to resent such a liberty." 
 
56 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 All in a moment her head had fallen on her 
 knees, and she was sobbing as if she would break 
 her heart. Once before, indeed, she had failed 
 to resent such a liberty ! 
 
 Beaudesfords started to his feet, pacing quickly 
 up and down the room, returned, and took both 
 her hands in his. 
 
 u Catherine," he said, " I will not worry you 
 again with any wishes of mine. I had thought 
 that, possibly, if you went away with me, among 
 strangers, learning to lean upon me, to need me, 
 you might also learn to love me." After all, the 
 intonation came like a question. 
 
 She did not look up, nor say a word. What 
 she thought, who knows ? Comfort for Caroline, 
 peace with her mother, a future for Rose, the 
 wealth and splendor that she loved, sumptuous 
 ease, the certainty of honoring, the possibility of 
 more, since life was so arid, since he was so 
 kind. Still she never stirred. 
 
 Her silence made a hope spring up in his heart, 
 sweeter than any words, a charm, luring him on 
 to his ruin, he once said to himself when remem 
 bering it. Still silent, his arm was about her. 
 He had gathered her unresisting, unresenting, to 
 himself. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 57 
 
 " But you know I do not love you," she whis 
 pered, lifting her face at last with the tears yet 
 undried. 
 
 " I know, too, that if I do not make you, I 
 shall not deserve to have you," he said. " My 
 life is yours. You must ! You shall ! " 
 
 When the bell rung, and Mrs. Stanhope s voice 
 itself was heard in further summons, they crossed 
 together into the little tea-room. Beaudesfords 
 went behind Mrs. Stanhope, and, bending back 
 her head, gave her forehead a filial salute. 
 " Mamma Stanhope," he said, " there is going to 
 be a wedding here next month. You are all 
 going to live with me at Beaudesfords." 
 
 It was even as he said. There was a wedding 
 there. Catherine had no reason for delay, and 
 they all went to live at Beaudesfords. But when 
 his wife grew more white and thin with every 
 day, more listless and languid, failing to find 
 pleasure in her splendor, in the envy of her 
 friends, to like the lustre of her silks or the 
 glory of her gems, Beaudesfords took her away 
 alone with him into strange scenes and foreign 
 countries. Tender care, serene skies, enjoy 
 ment of all the novel pleasure that the Old 
 World has to give, beguiled her from herself at 
 3* 
 
58 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 length. She came home, when two years were 
 over, a woman full of health, with a gracious yet 
 commanding presence, more beautiful than the 
 vision of a dream, satisfied enough with life ; 
 and when she crossed the threshold, the first 
 person that she saw was Gaston. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 59 
 
 V. 
 
 " BEAUDESFOEDS ! " 
 
 " Gaston ! " 
 
 " The last man I dreamed of seeing here ! " 
 
 " The first that I desire to see ! You remem 
 ber my wife, Gaston ? " 
 
 How long ago it seemed to him since Gaston 
 had seen her ! He himself had been so nearly 
 happy that these two years were like a blessed 
 age, beyond which he could scarcely recollect. 
 He had known well in the beginning that Cathe 
 rine did not love him ; but when month by month 
 of their foreign sojourn went by, and under the sun 
 beams of his constant care her heart seemed to 
 open like a flower, with little acts of graciousness, 
 an intimate word, a clinging to his arm, a seat 
 reserved beside herself; when, into all the familiar 
 intercourse of daily life, sometimes there slipped 
 from her lips a half-endearing term, sometimes a 
 smile, once, he remembered, a caress, a slight 
 
60 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 and brief and trivial thing, yet a caress, then 
 Beaudesfords heart had lightened of all the load 
 it ever bore, and he believed that ere long he 
 should win her for his own indeed, that her heart 
 would be his, as his had so long been hers ; and 
 possessed of what he fancied to be an infinite 
 patience, he waited, and day and night his one 
 thought was her pleasure. But, in fact, Beaudes 
 fords had no patience at all : he had in its place 
 a plentiful perseverance. He had never been 
 called upon to suffer seriously : had he been, he 
 would have rebelled and fallen at once. He could 
 not suffer in his siege of Catherine s heart: it 
 must end but one way, he thought, and it was all 
 a precious endeavor. To serve those we love is a 
 delight. Beaudesfords then, during these two 
 years, had been happy in earning the wages of 
 bliss. The time seemed to him a period that had 
 no date behind it. He forgot that Catherine had 
 ever stood upon the verge of want, forgot that he 
 had ever conferred a benefit upon her. This 
 wealth and ease seemed to provide her natural 
 atmosphere ; and thus he almost forgot that Gas- 
 ton and she had ever exchanged a glance. 
 
 " You remember my wife, Gaston," said he. 
 " You remember her when you first saw her, 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 61 
 
 standing on that ledge of rocks ; " for the picture 
 she had made in standing there flashed back upon 
 him at the moment. " Ah, that was a thousand 
 years ago ! She was an airy nothing then," he 
 said : " now she has a local habitation and a name. 
 She is Beaudesfords of Beaudesfords now ! " 
 
 To all this Gaston replied not a syllable. He 
 only bowed lower and lower over a cold hand that 
 lay : in his one instant, and seemed to melt away 
 like a snow-flake ; and scarcely could it be said 
 that his brown face darkened with a deeper hue 
 than the mere bending gave it. 
 
 But across Catherine s memory flashed another 
 picture, the starlit midnight, with the swinging 
 shadows of its tree-branches, his lips that bent to 
 hers, her lips that rose to his ; and a bitter flush 
 of shame burst over throat and face, and dyed 
 them with a stain that Beaudesfords had never 
 seen before. Then she had passed on to receive 
 the welcome of the hurrying and clustering ser 
 vants, and to her mother s rooms, where Mrs. 
 Stanhope and her other daughters sat without 
 suspicion of the scene below. 
 
 Gaston had arrived at Beaudesfords only that 
 day. intending to take away with him various 
 articles of his property that, during his expedi- 
 
62 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 tion, had remained under the protection of its 
 roof. Mrs. Stanhope, who kept the house in her 
 daughter s absence, or rather kept the house 
 keeper, and who held one of the diplomatic prin 
 ciples of always treating a man as if you might 
 some day want to use him, now that there was no 
 danger, with Catherine safely provided for, and 
 out of the way besides, and with Rose too much 
 of Caroline s mind to be affected one way or the 
 other in a single day and night, felt the coming 
 of this adventurous gentleman to be a great light- 
 ener of the tedium she experienced in their splen 
 did but lonesome country-seat, could not forbear 
 reading to him, in her magnanimity, the latest 
 letters from her son and daughter, and urged him 
 to pass the night beneath the roof that had, in 
 truth, been wont to be as often his shelter as that 
 of Beaudesfords himself. She was as much sur 
 prised as everybody else when Catherine stood 
 smiling in the doorway, like the embodiment not 
 only of a great sunbeam, but of a whole sky full 
 of sunshine ; for Beaudesfords was a spendthrift 
 in surprises, much as he had once declared that 
 he detested them, and always contrived to swoop 
 down on his household when they thought him a 
 hundred horizons away. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 63 
 
 Beaudesfords, of course, would not hear of 
 Gaston s leaving ; on the contrary, he must stay, 
 stay indefinitely. Just back from his expedition, 
 what engagements had he ? None at all. This 
 was his home : he had no other. Did he under 
 stand that? Did he suppose that because he, 
 Beaudesfords, was married, his wife banished his 
 friends ? No : Catherine and he had but one 
 wish. The western wing, as of old, as much as 
 he wanted of it, should be in his undisturbed pos 
 session so long as he chose to occupy it or to 
 return to it : if ever he made another home for 
 himself, with a hearth-stone in it, and anybody 
 sitting beside the hearth-stone, well and good ; 
 but till he made it, and Beaudesfords didn t 
 believe he was a marrying man, till he made it, 
 the fiat had gone forth : bring his traps down to 
 Beaudesfords. 
 
 And so he did. 
 
64 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THERE was a world of work out of doors for 
 the master of Beaudesfords. A thousand things 
 were in arrears. Though Mrs. Stanhope had 
 done the best a woman could, her dominion ended, 
 to all essential purpose, with McRoy in the flower- 
 garden : her arms were not long enough to reach 
 the limits of the great estate, nor strong enough 
 to hold it in subjection. Beaudesfords and Gas- 
 ton spent day after day in dismissing and engag 
 ing, superintending, ordering, and seeing the 
 orders executed. Catherine, wearied with travel 
 apparently, kept her room in great measure. 
 Mrs. Stanhope s managing ways held all in order 
 about her ; while her lively, handsome face, and 
 Rose s bewitching little liberties, and Caroline s 
 languor and exactions, made the drawing-room 
 scenes any thing but tiresome. Still, there was 
 a great vacuum where Catherine should have 
 been. Beaudesfords too, when under the roof, 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 65 
 
 divided his time between her place of abode and 
 that of the others the others who had count 
 less things to say and hear in an unsatisfac 
 tory manner. And so, when at last it had been 
 decided that Gaston was to remain, and after one 
 or two weeks had given her rest, and afforded no 
 earthly reason for her longer absence, one day 
 again Catherine took up her sceptre, and began 
 to reign through her prime-ministers. 
 
 There was a low fire on the wide hearth, that 
 filled a small portion of the spacious drawing- 
 room with a rich and ruddy half-light : the rest 
 of it was remote in twilight and shadows. But, 
 just as the door swung open, a long frolicking 
 flame darted into life and shot up the chimney in a 
 flash that sent its ray straight to the spot where 
 Catherine stood, surveying the group by the fire 
 side, a revelation of light herself. The two men 
 looked up together ; and if she were not photo 
 graphed upon their memories for ever, as she de 
 layed that instant, it is because no photography 
 has any means of perpetuating such color and 
 such brilliance. She was in dinner-dress, wear 
 ing a heavy gold-colored fabric full of lustre and 
 sweeping from her in broad folds, and a knot of 
 vivid scarlet geraniums was at her breast. With 
 
66 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 her pale, gold-colored hair, with the sudden bloom 
 upon her cheeks, with her wide and shining eyes, 
 she seemed the very answering spirit of the flame 
 that had just shot up to the outside freedom of 
 stars and night. There was that about Catherine 
 always reminding Beaudesfords of light. Gaston 
 and Beaudesfords both sprang to meet her ; but 
 Gaston paused after the first motion, and it was 
 the other who led her to her seat and brought the 
 cushion for her feet. If Beaudesfords had shown 
 one atom less devotion, had demanded something, 
 refused something, not so lavishly have given all, 
 for a woman loves a master, not a slave ! 
 
 " Well, Mistress Beaudesfords," exclaimed 
 Rose, " welcome home ! If you re a good girl, 
 you may stay : you may sit at the head of your 
 own table ! " 
 
 " Many thanks," replied Catherine, slowly. " I 
 shall not deprive Mamma of her seat." 
 
 " Mamma likes it, though," said Rose. " It is 
 a remnant of authority. If we are naughty, she 
 cuts off our soup." 
 
 " I m sure, Catherine," cried Mrs. Stanhope, 
 " I shall never think of taking your place in your 
 house." 
 
 " As you please, Mamma," she answered, with 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 67 
 
 the air of one speaking on a disagreeable topic. 
 " It is so troublesome for you." 
 
 " Yes, yes, Mamma Stanhope," exclaimed 
 Beaudesfords, who would perhaps have liked to 
 see his wife the mistress of his house, but who 
 would not have her troubled even to humor his 
 fondest wish. " She is too worn and tired yet, by 
 and by, perhaps ! " And he turned to Catherine 
 his smiling, asking face. 
 
 It was a little thing, that matter of Catherine s 
 seat at table, giving the housekeeper her orders, 
 and overlooking her accounts ; but it involved a 
 greater one. To have assumed her place at once, 
 that would have been a sheltering rampart ; to 
 have directed the affairs of her household, it 
 would have impressed upon her the fact that it 
 was her household, the fact of how it became hers ; 
 to have been the mistress in Beaudesfords would 
 have given emphasis to its master. But she 
 shrank from all that, as if she had no right either 
 to the burden or the honor. " By and by, per 
 haps ! " repeated Beaudesfords. " By and by," 
 she answered wearily, and dropped her fan into 
 her lap. But Beaudesfords was content: with 
 him, so much was always the promise of more. 
 It was enough just to see her there. The stream 
 
68 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 of small talk rippled from the others, the fire 
 sparkled, he hovered here and there, restless as 
 some winged thing, now bending over Catherine, 
 now sparring for a turn with Gaston, now won 
 dering if dinner would never be served. Rose 
 joined in the sparring ; Caroline, even, had her 
 sofa wheeled up that she might lose none of the 
 hour s enjoyment. As for Catherine, she said 
 nothing ; she seldom said any more ; she was one 
 of those persons whose reticence is eloquence, hav 
 ing, besides, a language of lip and cheek and eye, 
 of hand and breath ; she listened to the utterance 
 of a philosopher or of a fool, and understood both, 
 be it said ; in truth, it was her comprehensive 
 ness that, when one was habituated to her beauty, 
 impressed the most ; too thoroughly womanly to 
 originate, she received every thing ; and whether 
 it were through some clear understanding, or 
 some fine instinct, or on a common ground of 
 perfectly developed humanity, the speaker always 
 felt that not a syllable was lost upon his listener. 
 When she did open her lips, her words carried 
 weight. Thus with Beaudesfords, well wont to 
 her ways, other women s speech indeed might be 
 silver, but Catherine s silence was golden. 
 
 Gaston sat with the bright tongs in his hand, 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 69 
 
 stooping forward, and building up an edifice of 
 the falling coals, watching the life run through 
 them and die ; and then dinner was softly an 
 nounced, and Beaudesfords called Gaston to 
 Catherine, and himself led Mamma Stanhope to 
 the contested seat. But that touch of Catherine s 
 hand upon his arm was so light that Gaston could 
 not feel it : the next moment it was withdrawn, 
 and she had taken her chair. By some ill-will 
 of circumstance, Mamma Stanhope failed to call 
 Gaston to her own right hand : he sat at Cathe 
 rine s, and the order of things was established. 
 
 " I don t know why it is," said Beaudesfords, 
 when they were again in the drawing-room, and 
 sipping their coffee, " but, faultless as I used to 
 think things were in this lodge, they never seem 
 one half so home-like as in your charming cot 
 tage, Mamma Stanhope." 
 
 " That is because there are none of our little 
 rooms, where, in turning round, you tipped over 
 the centre-table, and put an elbow through the 
 mirror," said Rose. " How can you be at home 
 in these great parlors, with their alcoves and 
 suites that may hold a thousand ambuscades ? " 
 
 " Why fear ambuscades with a soldier beside 
 you ? " 
 
70 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " And then the music," complained Caroline. 
 " It spreads into thin air." 
 
 " So ? " said Beaudesfords. " Let us see. 
 Catherine, if you would sing" 
 
 To his surprise she rose at once. Gaston had 
 just given his cup to the servant, and was stand 
 ing before her, leaning one arm on the mantel : 
 perhaps she did not care to dwell on the sight. 
 Ere he could offer to conduct her, a scale ran up 
 the keys of the piano : she had seated herself and 
 commenced playing. 
 
 " Frost-bitten," said Beaudesfords. " The tones 
 tinkle like icicles, as they fall from your fingers." 
 He lay in the great cushions of a lounge, their 
 soft carnation lending his face a flush, and deep 
 ening the tint of his yellow curls. Catherine 
 looked at him a moment, and thought of some of 
 the richly colored canvases she had stood before 
 in Europe. His head was something superb : 
 it had the look of some Capitolean god s ; such 
 youth and beauty had a kind of majesty next to 
 immortal majesty. Then, the piano facing down 
 the room, she raised her glance, and Gaston still 
 stood against the mantel, surveying her with his 
 darkening eyes, the plain face with its scar, its 
 ruggedness, its gloom. And the other went out 
 of her mind like a star in the night. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. ll 
 
 " The voice ! The voice ! " cried Beaudes- 
 fords. 
 
 " I have none to-night," said Catherine, after a 
 little while, as if she had just understood what 
 he had said. 
 
 " Not for this ? " was spoken beside her, and 
 Gaston s arm, reaching forward, set a sheet of 
 music on the rack. " You sang it on. the night 
 that we dropped down the river from Beaudes- 
 fords. Do you remember ? " 
 
 " I remember," said Catherine. It was the 
 .first sentence, save in brief greetings, they had 
 exchanged since that night. And for the second 
 time the color overspread her face, beheld by 
 Beaudesfords. He rose on one arm, and watched 
 her as she sang, as her voice soared, of a sud 
 den inspired by bitter strength, and penetrating 
 every heart with the wild sweetness of its inmost 
 tones. 
 
 Sorrow be all my sport ! 
 
 Since here no breast 
 Lends me its own support 
 
 And heaven s rest. 
 
 Sorrow be all my stay ! 
 
 For now no arm 
 Upholds me as I sway 
 
 From storm to calm. 
 
72 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 Sorrow be all my grace ! 
 
 No smile there is 
 To overrun my face 
 
 When flung from his. 
 
 O Sorrow ! lift thy sword 
 
 Whose lightnings shine ! 
 Destroy me at a word ; 
 
 For I am thine ! 
 
 Beaudesfords rose from the lounge, and began 
 to pace up and down the drawing-room. " Why 
 do you sing such songs as those ? " he said, as 
 she still turned over the music, and when Gaston 
 had strolled out to smoke his cigar on the veran 
 da. " They are the merest nonsense. It must 
 have been a love-lorn lassie who implored after 
 that fashion. My wife," his voice always loved 
 to linger over that word, " sing to me 
 
 His very step has music in t 
 As he comes up the stair. " 
 
 And he woke her in the night to know if that 
 silly song had any meaning for her, if she would 
 never find her happiness in loving him truly, if 
 she had indeed rather die than live his wife. 
 
 " You are very good to me, Beaudesfords," 
 said Catherine, unconsciously adopting the words 
 of the wife of Auld Robin Gray. " Do not fret 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 73 
 
 yourself imagining vain things. Are we not 
 friends. Do I not bear your name? Be con 
 tent, dear Beaudesfords." She laid her hand 
 upon his eyes, and lest the soft and seldom touch 
 should leave him he neither stirred nor spoke till 
 sleep took up the tale in one long happy dream. 
 
74 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 YII. 
 
 " CATHERINE," cried Beaudesfords, one wet after 
 noon a day or two subsequently, coming in with 
 his thumb and finger between the leaves of a 
 worn clasp-book, " you must hear Gaston s jour 
 nal : I must read it to you " 
 
 " Willingly," said Caroline, with her usual 
 backwardness. 
 
 " No, though : on the whole," added Beaudes 
 fords, " I will have Gaston read it himself, while 
 your needles fly did I ever see you sew before, 
 Catherine ? " And he looked at her a moment, 
 smiling with a pleased sense of the domesticity 
 of the scene ; for Catherine and her mother, in 
 pursuance of a salutary plan of the former s, a 
 plan for clothing certain destitute people in the 
 neighborhood, were engaged, each after her own 
 fashion, Mrs. Stanhope, that is, earnestly, as if 
 it were a debt she owed her own good fortune, 
 a pledge for her future ; Catherine dreamily, like 
 one who understands the idleness of trying to 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 75 
 
 cozen fate,* on the wicker of sewing-work which 
 had been brought down to the southerly parlor, 
 a room much used at Beaudesfords in the autumn 
 days, since all one side of it was a latticed win 
 dow opening on the bright beeches and maples 
 of the lawn, though to-day the glory of the trees 
 was only to be seen there flying in gusts upon 
 the gale that tossed them. " I have been poring 
 over it," continued Beaudesfords, " over what I 
 can make out of it ; for he writes a cursed short 
 hand of his own invention. Here, Cyril," as the 
 lad answered the bell, " ask Major Gaston if he is 
 too busy to join us in the morning-room." And 
 Beaudesfords planted the book on the mantel 
 shelf, and stood leaning over the fire while he 
 turned the leaves. " About as strange a record," 
 said he, " as if it had been kept in another planet. 
 To-day the guest of an emperor " 
 
 " Major Gaston ! " cried Mrs. Stanhope, the idea 
 of the thing causing the degree of the man s 
 consideration in the good lady s mind to rise per 
 ceptibly. 
 
 " Bless your dear soul, of a greater yet ! of 
 Christopher Columbus himself! " 
 
 " What in the world are you talking about, 
 Beaudesfords ? " said Caroline. 
 
76 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " Wait a bit, you shall see, * answered 
 Beaudesfords, fluttering the pages. " Here it is. 
 c My interview with the emperor to-day was all I 
 could desire. He received me with only a single 
 gentleman in waiting, and entered at once upon 
 the business in hand, examining my maps and 
 proposals with a swift scrutiny that showed an 
 amazing acquaintance with the subject ; and, 
 observing my surprise, he remarked that he had 
 had time to consider many things. I told him I 
 was not Yespucius or Columbus to eat my bitter 
 bread at the gates of princes, but that, engaged 
 to survey in the region for private interests of 
 another nature, I saw opportunity for vaster 
 things, and came to him as the only monarch 
 whose sight reached beyond the boundary of his 
 own kingdom. " What is good for the world," 
 said he, " is good for the empire," while he admit 
 ted with me that the cutting of Darien and Suez 
 would diminish the circumference of the globe 
 by at least one half, or, in other words, so far 
 as human progress is concerned with commerce, 
 would double the life of man. " A proud ambi 
 tion," said he. " to fulfil the hope of Columbus, 
 and make the east and west one," and he promised 
 the funds from his private purse to carry out my 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 77 
 
 plans in my own time, engaging only that when 
 completed they should be put in the hands of his 
 capitalists. " Certainly," said he, "whoever has 
 the canal that unites the Atlantic and Pacific 
 has the keys that were promised to Columbus in 
 his dream, the keys of the gateways of the sea." 
 A great man, holding Europe in the hollow of 
 one hand, and reaching out the other to grasp the 
 vital spot of the American continent, if in this 
 mighty age, when all the floods are out and 
 crowns and sceptres are floating down with the 
 raff, personal government can succeed at all, it 
 must succeed with him. So much for so much," 
 said Beaudesfords. " Here s the other, listen. 
 4 Gracias d Bios is far behind us. There Colum 
 bus gave thanks to God. For my part, I give 
 thanks to my own energy. And yet as I hear 
 the anchor-chains rattle down where his own did 
 once, and I look out on the low, palm-fringed 
 shore with its purple mountain-line beyond, doubt 
 less much the same now as then, I confess that 
 the. other had the better of me : he worshipped 
 an unknown power whose mere contemplation 
 engendered vast ideas and led him on towards 
 the " secret things of the sea that are bound with 
 such strong chains ; " and as for me, well, I am 
 
78 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 forced to remember what the man wrote to the 
 Queen, el mundo es poco. But here I am in his 
 domain, he makes me welcome, to-morrow we go 
 ashore, and I begin my work, a bequest he left 
 me perhaps, to make the Atlantic and Pacific 
 strike a balance, to bring the antipodes under 
 neath Greenwich meridian, to find by land the 
 u secret of the strait " for which he sought by 
 sea ; a part of that most immense of all the testa 
 ments when under stress of shipwreck he willed 
 away a hemisphere. Shall I link my name with 
 great thoughts, great deeds, great men, or is it 
 all another Spanish castle in the air ? 
 
 " Gaston with castles in the air ! " exclaimed 
 Caroline. " Well, tell us, Beaudesfords, did he 
 doit?" 
 
 " Oh ! he made his beginning. He made fa 
 mous headway till those little tempests in a teapot, 
 that they call civil wars down there, rendered it 
 impossible to proceed. But he will be busy with 
 his estimates and drawings here till the coast is 
 clear to resume " 
 
 u He s a modest man, isn t he ?" said Caroline. 
 " Offsetting Columbus with himself ! " 
 
 " Well Gaston hasn t much reverence. He 
 doesn t believe in the supernatural, you know. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 79 
 
 But he believes tremendously in humanity, 
 that s what this work means. And I suppose 
 it is exactly because he so fully appreciates that 
 single-minded old sailor that he aspires to put the 
 best there is in himself beside him, you see." 
 
 " Doesn t believe in the supernatural ? " ex 
 claimed Caroline, whose mind having received 
 one idea could not immediately accommodate 
 itself to another. " But you do, Beaudesfords ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes ! I believe in every thing," said 
 Beaudesfords, lightly, still turning the leaves. 
 " Wraiths and swarths, and the whole train of 
 hobgoblins. It requires more moral strength 
 and vitality than I possess to be sufficient to 
 yourself in the way Gaston is. I fancy I should 
 fall flat in the dust sometimes if I did not now 
 and then take the tonic of a religious idea. Here, 
 listen to this, Catherine. Night before last on 
 a shelf of rock, Heaven only knows how high in 
 heaven, a precipice climbing behind me into a 
 ghostly sky, a precipice dropping before me into 
 the bottomless pit for aught I know, a blast roar 
 ing over me On Mighty Pens, a suffocating whirl 
 of snow whose terrors embruted my guides 
 beneath the level of the mules, and in which, 
 without fire, without food, cold as a frozen corpse, 
 
80 THE THIEF. IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 I fought for breath till day dawned and fervent 
 heat made the way clear for us again. This noon 
 resting in the bowels of the earth, in the huge 
 fissure of an earthquake whose walls a century of 
 summers have been hanging with mossy curtains 
 of green lycopods, draperies of blossoms more 
 brilliant than the birds that haunt them, waving 
 heavily at the breath of a mysterious breeze blow 
 ing from nowhere to nowhere. One sunbeam 
 enters the place; far up on the brink a bamboo 
 feathers into a fountain of light in it ; then it falls 
 on a pool of still water that glitters as if it were 
 a sheet of quicksilver ; falls on tlie scarlet wings 
 of a flamingo flying down, a living flame ; falls on 
 a white ibis standing sleepily in the ray on the 
 pool s edge and shining like an apparition. In 
 the rent above my head, the sky, a vast height 
 up, burns with a violet tinge so deep and spark 
 ling that I could swear the stars themselves were 
 burning there in the midday. A fine cut, Nature 
 may have made it for my purpose. If we could 
 but foresee the oscillations of the crust and turn 
 them to our own uses, and with another throe open 
 it from sea to sea ! Science is a barbarian yet, in 
 the age of flints ; by and by will get beyond pottery 
 and the boiling-point perhaps, and then possibly we 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 81 
 
 may look to have the vibrations of the sphere s 
 surface reduced to a system, to find out a motive 
 for the capriccio. The eternal years of God are 
 hers, indeed, as well as Truth s, she needs them 
 all, she will do nothing in less. Government, 
 too, is in the same condition, no forecast, no 
 preordination : when my ditch is dug, there is its 
 barbacan, the long outlying fortress, the island 
 that is to take tribute of the nations, commanding 
 presently the argosies of the Orient as they flock 
 by, gathering into free ports the wealth of the 
 world, the richest thing itself on earth, and not 
 a hand reaches out to grasp jt ! But the Queen 
 of the Antilles must belong to the power that 
 holds the inter-oceanic strait ; or else, as the centre 
 of the great Republic of the Archipelago, another 
 Venice, rising in the west as that did in the east, 
 renewing, by one of history s reprisals, the 
 swinging of the pendulum, those maritime 
 glories which the older Venice lost when Vasco 
 de Gama closed the Alexandrian highway by one 
 which must be in time abandoned for this ecliptic 
 of commerce, she herself will possess it! Hm, 
 hm, hm," said Beaudesfords ; " now he is off on 
 his theories again : they won t interest you." 
 "But, my dear child," said Mrs. Stanhope, 
 4* 
 
82 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 much as if she had found a scorpion in the 
 house, " this man is a filibuster o ! " 
 
 " Gaston ? Oh, no ! He doesn t care the toss 
 of a copper for our politics, doesn t believe in 
 Manifest Destiny, thinks we are as given over to 
 stupidity as Spain is to sottislmess. Gaston has 
 the Napoleonic bee in his bonnet. But you can t 
 think, Catherine, how this diary renews my 
 youth ! " 
 
 " I should think it might," she said. 
 
 " Yes, indeed ! I see the same sights over 
 again that I saw when your father took me there. 
 Your father had some of these same fancies, you 
 know " 
 
 " The same with a difference," said Mrs. Stan 
 hope, sententiously. 
 
 " I remember one place in particular," con 
 tinued Beaudesfords. " The scent of that rose 
 in your breast reminds me of it. I wonder if 
 Gaston ever came across any thing of the sort, 
 the merest trifle, entering one of those dark 
 old cities after midnight, where the gates were just 
 matted in a white convolvulus that flowers all 
 night long, and where the streets were carpet 
 ed with scattered blossoms, pomegranate-buds, 
 orange-flowers, oleanders, jasmines, tuberoses, 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 83 
 
 frangipanis, that had been strewn there by a 
 religious procession to some shrine, and whose 
 fragrance rose alone in the moonlight still like 
 incense. Let us see Leon Granada a 
 hurricane that lost its way and whipped the fish 
 dead in the lakes, and flocks of wild cockatoos 
 into the houses, and strange white unnamed 
 beasts fawning out of the forest ah, here it is, 
 by all that s good ! The same ! Now, do you 
 know, Catherine, just having Gaston see that 
 same sight a dozen years after me, gives me 
 more idea of the antiquity of those Spanish 
 places, their unchanging age, doing the same 
 thing generation after generation, than re 
 membrance of all their three hundred years can 
 do!" 
 
 " It must be very interesting to you," said 
 Catherine. 
 
 " I was sure you would think so ! There, you 
 shall take the book," tossing it into her lap, " and 
 read it to yourself: you will enjoy it so much 
 more that way. You can make out enough of 
 it ; and I want you to see him as I do, for one can 
 never have such a chance again with a man who 
 is as silent as a sphinx ! I wonder where he is, 
 by the way. Not in the house, did Cyril say ? " 
 
84 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " There he is now, coining round the lawn with 
 Rose," said Caroline, rising on one arm to look 
 out. " How I should like a run in such a rain as 
 this ! But I never shall have it For mercy s 
 sake, what is Major Gaston carrying in his arms ? " 
 
 " Ah ? Oh ! a child, McRoy s May, isn t it ? 
 Now that s as it should be ! If Gaston had wife 
 and child" 
 
 " He wouldn t be Gaston," said Mrs. Stanhope, 
 breaking her thread with a snap. 
 
 " No : I suppose not," said Beaudesfords, half 
 sadly. " They would make too much light for 
 him." 
 
 " He ought to marry though, for all that," 
 added Mamma Stanhope, not without an anxious 
 glance at Rose in a juxtaposition that was not 
 agreeable to her. 
 
 "Of course," answered Beaudesfords, strolling 
 to the window. " A man is only half a man till 
 he completes himself by marriage. I told Gaston 
 yesterday that McRoy was happier than he, 
 McRoy, with his clod of a wife and sprite of a 
 child. She is a rare child, don t you think so ? " 
 
 " I have thought that perhaps we might edu 
 cate her, Beaudesfords," said Catherine. 
 
 " Why, so have I," said Beaudesfords, still 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 85 
 
 looking out the window, though the subjects of 
 their remark had disappeared round the corner 
 of the house. 
 
 " Here they come ! " cried Caroline. " Wet 
 through, of course. Do tell us where you picked 
 up Miss McRoy ? " 
 
 " Major Gaston found her running after a rain 
 bow," said Rose, glittering herself like her name 
 sake in a shower, " and he had snatched her up 
 under his cloak when I met them. I am not 
 wet" 
 
 " Don t stand a moment, Rose," said Mrs. 
 Stanhope, with displeasure. " I am surprised " 
 
 " Don t you fret, Mamma Stanhope. Cyril 
 took my overshoes at the door, and there s my 
 cloak, and I m quite as dry as Dryasdust. It 
 is the most absurd child," as Catherine laid aside 
 her work and took the little May on her knee, 
 while Gaston sat down by the fire and opened 
 the map for which he had gone out, " the most 
 absurd child," said Rose. " She was tired of 
 her hiding-place before we were half-way home, 
 and when Major Gaston said he certainly could 
 not leave her on the road, i Well, says she, I 
 suppose we must struggle on. you little old 
 woman!" cried Rose: "will you come and be our 
 little girl?" 
 
86 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " May can t spare herself yet," said the child, 
 archly, brushing her pretty hair out of her eyes, 
 hair like the " thistle-down tinted with gold." 
 
 " Not even to stay with us and hear the bird in 
 the piano sing all day long ? " 
 
 But May s lip trembled lest the sport were 
 serious. " I am my father s child," said she 
 gravely then. 
 
 " That she is," said Beaudesfords, " the apple 
 of McRoy s eye ! " 
 
 " His May apple," said Catherine, smoothing 
 the little locks. 
 
 " But I love you," added the child, as if to 
 soften her dissent; and putting one arm round 
 Catherine s neck, she kissed her cheek, a cool, 
 sweet, dewy kiss, but Catherine felt it like a drop 
 of blistering wax. 
 
 Beaudesfords stooped and kissed the child s 
 mouth after it, and then caught her on his arm 
 and began flourishing round the room with her 
 aloft, till, with shrieks of laughter and fear, her 
 little dimpled cheeks were red as peaches, and 
 her Scotch blue eyes were bright as stars. 
 
 " Beaudesfords," said Mamma Stanhope under 
 her breath, as Catherine gathered up her work, 
 and rose and went upstairs, " you will make 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 87 
 
 the child forget that she is only the gardener s 
 daughter." 
 
 "And so she is ! " exclaimed Beaudesfords, as 
 he held the door open for Catherine to pass 
 through. " The same in person, or will be if she 
 lives : violet eyes, and Hebe bloom, and all the 
 rest that Eustace and the poet went to see, a 
 sight to make an old man young ! Why shouldn t 
 I play with the gardener s daughter? Mamma 
 Stanhope, you forget about the grand old gar 
 dener and his wife ! Oh, God bless the children ! " 
 cried Beaudesfords. " How they brighten the 
 world for us ! " 
 
 " That is true," said Mrs. Stanhope. " Mine 
 have done so for me. My husband used to say 
 they held us in communication with the people 
 that are dead and those that are not born." 
 
 " Make us ourselves a part of the great per 
 fect race to come," said Beaudesfords, setting 
 down the child for Rose to give her to Cyril to 
 take home. 
 
 " Well, Beaudesfords," remarked Caroline, with 
 her faculty of always saying the wrong thing at 
 the wrong time, perhaps, on the assumption of 
 two negatives making an affirmative, thinking 
 two wrongs might make a right, " if you have 
 
88 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 no children to make you laugh, you Ve none to 
 make you cry." 
 
 " I wish to heaven I had ! " cried Beaudesfords, 
 hotly and forgetfully. 
 
 " To make you cry ! " 
 
 " Ah, sister mine," for Beaudesfords sunshine 
 gilded even Caroline, " love is our salvation, you 
 know ; and the love of children is a perpetual 
 breaking of sacramental bread ! " 
 
 " There is the dressing-bell," said Mrs. Stan 
 hope, who considered such conversation very 
 unprofitable. " You will be late for dinner, 
 Caroline." 
 
 " By the way," said Gaston, looking up from 
 where he sat toasting his feet at the blaze, " I 
 passed Ruthven on the road. He is coming up 
 here presently." 
 
 " He will stay to dinner, then," said Beaudes 
 fords. " So have your symptoms ready, Miss 
 Stanhope. I can t say I m glad you re not well, 
 my dear ; but we shouldn t have half so much of 
 Ruthven if you were ! " 
 
 " Thank you for nothing," said Caroline, as 
 her maid came for her cushions, and the ladies 
 left the room. 
 
 " Ruthven loves his rubber," said Gaston; " and 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 89 
 
 a partner like your good mother-in-law is after 
 his own heart. What is this, Beaudesfords ? " 
 folding his map, and then bending to pick up the 
 old morocco case of his journal from the hearth: 
 
 " So you have found me out ? " answered Beau 
 desfords, mischievously. " I gave the book to 
 Catherine. She and I are one, you remember. 
 You haven t a word to say ! " 
 
 Was it the blaze that burned so on Gaston s 
 dark cheek as the room darkened ? or was it the 
 reflection that from that day Catherine must be 
 coupling the thought of him with lofty ideas, 
 heroic enterprises ; with tropical magnificence, 
 with the music of the great South Sea singing 
 over the siren-caves that he had told of there, 
 with the antique Aztec cities he had explored, 
 with the traces of those mighty men who swam 
 on bladders down the falls and foam of mountain 
 rivers to the sack of Spanish cities; the colors 
 of Caribbean waters, the landscapes lighted by 
 volcanic fires, must couple him with all the 
 dark, rich mystery of such adventurous travel, till 
 something of the atmosphere of its scenes and 
 sights were made over to him, and he towered 
 transfigured in half their grandiose splendor ? 
 
 No: Gaston thought of nothing of the kind. 
 
90 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 He only thought that at that moment Catherine 
 was spelling out the record he had written, 
 Catherine, to whose eyes words to which Beau- 
 desfords was blind would stand in letters of 
 light. 
 
 And as for Catherine, when locked in her 
 room she hung above the book, it seemed to her 
 that the dark side of the moon had turned its 
 hidden things toward her. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 91 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THERE was only a day or two of this sort of life, 
 life that in its close domestic contact must not 
 last; and then nobody knew who first proposed 
 it the house filled with guests ; and all the 
 autumn days the gentlemen shot upon the mead 
 ows and between the hills, and the ladies beamed 
 and brightened at nightfall when they returned. 
 Gaston, for the present superintending the erec 
 tion of some great water-works in the vicinity, 
 came and went at his pleasure, now here, now 
 there. If, when the shooting was over, Beau- 
 desfords had ever enhanced his own value, ever 
 made a gap in the circle, by any such brief 
 absence ! 
 
 If the house was full of guests, it appeared to 
 be full of happiness too. Mrs. Stanhope was 
 happy in receiving guests ; Rose was happy as a 
 firefly might be supposed to be ; Caroline since 
 there was always some one to listen while she 
 
92 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 expatiated on her complaints ; Beaudesfords was 
 happy in giving happiness to all the rest; and 
 Gaston, even Gaston, looked as one looks who is 
 happy, yesterday he touched her hand, to-day he 
 wrapped a shawl about her, to-morrow he would 
 lift her into the saddle. And Catherine too, the 
 general tide bathed her, the tide was rising round 
 her that soon should touch her lips. 
 
 It was not, after all, an easy course that Cath 
 erine had to follow : indignation in remembering 
 how lightly she had once been thrown over ; the 
 ashes of an old fire rekindling day by day ; the 
 quiet affection and respect for Beaudesfords pull 
 ing her heart toward him with pity, honor, and 
 the duty that a woman owes her husband, each 
 a strong current of feeling ; and when all were to 
 be blended into one stream of right action and 
 pure emotion, it required a self-knowledge and 
 self-control that do not often enter into the ele 
 ments of any single character. Gaston, who 
 sometimes read one s thoughts, you would almost 
 say, watched her across all the phases of his own 
 experience, watched her too as a curious study, 
 nearly sure she would succeed, and then half 
 trembling with his certainty, if it could be said 
 that Gaston ever trembled. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 93 
 
 There had been a great snowfall at Christmas 
 time. All the guests were imprisoned at Beau- 
 desfords whether they would or no. When day- 
 dawned, the world was a white, pure thing, as 
 fair and dazzling as it might be on the resurrec 
 tion morning. 
 
 But on the previous night the storm had 
 whirled round the great house and rumbled the 
 length of the chimney-stacks, snapped off the 
 boughs of the old Beaudesfords oaks, and roared 
 abroad in a way to make a stout heart quake ; 
 had there been any bells to ring in the Christ 
 mas eve at Beaudesfords, they would have been 
 silenced in all the voices of the winds that swept 
 at large in fury. But within doors it had been 
 one glow of brightness and warmth ; fires had 
 blazed, lights had beamed, mistletoe and holly 
 lent their cheer, the windows shed out their lustre 
 on the driving whiteness of the tempest till all 
 the snow-flakes round them seemed but sparks 
 of fire ; gay games had been given to the younger 
 company ; music and dancing, and verses dram 
 atized on the moment, beguiled the elder. Cath 
 erine, too, moved round among the guests in a 
 warm, womanly way that was new to her : there 
 was a bloom upon her cheeks, a softer light in her 
 
94 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 eyes, so gentle, so smiling, so dreamy, she was 
 like those we read of in the medieval lays, whose 
 lives some sweet yet poisonous enchantment holds 
 in thrall. 
 
 " Where is Gaston? " suddenly asked Beaudes- 
 fords of Rose, as he met her in a doorway with 
 her arms full of fantastic finery for the charaders. 
 
 " Oh ! we shan t see Gaston- till to-morrow 
 night," she lightly answered. " He told me yes 
 terday he feared he should be detained at the 
 water- works, and would not return till Christmas 
 night." 
 
 " Christmas eve, you mean. You misunder 
 stood him, Rose of Cashmere : he told me 
 Christmas eve. He should have been here two 
 hours ago. I wonder if he has been so foolish as 
 to undertake coming on foot from the station." 
 
 " He is a perfect tramp," said Rose. 
 
 " Perhaps Have you heard the engine 
 whistle ? " 
 
 " No whistle but the winds to-night," gathering 
 up the trailing ends of a bit of silver damask. 
 
 " It can t be that he has He always chooses 
 the short cut, and that leads over the little bridge 
 that it takes all one s head .to cross in clear 
 weather." 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 95 
 
 " The old willow that lies from bank to bank 
 you mean ? " asked Rose, looking back. " He 
 would never think of it ! It makes me so giddy 
 in summer, when the brook is half dry ; and 
 now it is a roaring little icy cataract, and the 
 snow gathered on either side would mislead 
 every step. No, indeed ! Gaston won t come till 
 the great banquet on to-morrow night is spread : 
 he likes to keep people waiting too. So summon 
 all your fortitude, and live without him until then, 
 if you can! " And she flitted away. 
 
 They had spoken at the entrance of the con 
 servatory, as they passed each other there, Rose 
 laden with a pile of brocades rummaged from 
 forgotten wardrobes of the old Beaudesfords 
 ladies. Catherine was just within, directing 
 McRoy as he bound the wreaths and baskets 
 for those who were to interpret that fragment of 
 the old ballad 
 
 " Weep no more, lady, 
 
 Your sorrow is in vain ; 
 For violets pluckt the sweetest showers 
 Will ne er make grow again ! " 
 
 She turned her head unthinkingly, and only to 
 hear their voices ; then her hands grew cold as 
 
96 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 she listened, so cold and numb that the flowers 
 dropped from them unheeded, violets, purple, 
 white, deepest black and goldenest yellow, in a 
 rain of fragrance on the floor. 
 
 " He will get bewildered in all the dizzy tu 
 mult ! " she heard Beaudesfords exclaim in a 
 smothered voice. " He could not breathe an hour 
 in it ! I urging his return to-night ! Quick 
 there, Frye ! Have out every man on the place 
 ropes and lanterns ! " 
 
 He was hurrying, swift-footed, ere he finished, 
 to reach the hall, down whose length he has 
 tened and threw open the great door. A wild 
 white gust out of the fearful storm blew in, and 
 tore onward, devouring the lights before it ; but 
 not till Beaudesfords had seen as wild and white 
 a face across his shoulder, looking out with him 
 into the raging night. 
 
 The music, the laughter, the voices of the 
 clusters within the parlors, came on snatches, 
 from far away. " Gaston ! " he cried. " For 
 God s sake Gaston ! " At the same moment a 
 shadow took shape in that awful whiteness before 
 him, the awful whiteness of a midnight snow 
 storm which has neither darkness nor light, 
 and Gaston staggered up, fell again across the 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 97 
 
 doorstone, like an avalanche of snow; rose 
 half on the arm of Beaudesfords, half on the 
 relief of finding an end to his fierce and toilsome 
 endeavor, while Beaudesfords dragged him across, 
 and with all his force threw the door hack upon 
 the windy drifts, shutting themselves in once 
 more with light and rest ; then drawing him 
 down the hall to his own den like a whirlwind of 
 force and fury himself, while Catherine moved 
 back into the parlors, but not till Gaston too, 
 half dead with weariness as he was, had seen the 
 wild white face that searched the storm for him. 
 
 " I thought I had lost you this time, Gaston ! " 
 exclaimed Beaudesfords, as soon as he had made 
 the other swallow some champagne. " My God ! 
 I suffocated with you ! How black the world 
 grew to me of a sudden ! Life would not be 
 worth a rush without you, I found, in that second 
 before you rose. You and Catherine are my life ! " 
 
 Pale as Major Gaston s face was with fatigue, 
 it grew livid with Beaudesfords words. He had 
 not one murmur to reply. He closed his eyes 
 till the black lashes lay on the cheek below like 
 that of a corpse. His heart stood still, his head 
 fell forward and drooped upon his breast, as if he 
 were ashamed that even the universal air should 
 6 
 
US THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 see his face. He put away Beaudesfords arm, 
 and rose from his seat himself. 
 
 " So, you don t give me the slip after all ? " 
 cried Beaudesfords. " A moment since I 
 wouldn t have given that for your chances ! " 
 snapping his fingers gayly. " By Jove ! you ve 
 not nine lives, but ninety." 
 
 " I ve not crossed a hundred canons to founder 
 between here and the mill. Train snowed up," 
 he added, in a different tone. 
 
 " And you walked the five miles ? I will call 
 Frye, and you shall go to bed at once, and be 
 rubbed^ down like a racer ! " said Beaudesfords. 
 " Some more champagne ! How could you do 
 such a silly thing ! To-morrow a fever may 
 finish you ! Have you the strength of a Titan to 
 heave yourself through these hills of snow ? " 
 
 " Do nothing of the sort," said Gaston. " I 
 shall be well enough when I get my breath." 
 
 " And drenched, of course." 
 
 " That is soon remedied. Then a breath, I 
 say, and I 11 not " 
 
 " Call the king your uncle ? " Beaudesfords 
 stood before him, putting a hand on either shoul 
 der, and looking him in the face with those glad 
 and honest eyes of his. " But I thank God I 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 99 
 
 have you safe ! " he said. Then sounded a truce 
 to all emotion of that nature by ringing lustily 
 for Frye ; and in an hour Gaston was sitting at 
 one side of the drawing-room fire, renovated as 
 to his apparel, but pallid with his fatigue. 
 
 " Will you give Gaston some hot tea, Cathe 
 rine ? " asked Beaudesfords. 
 
 " Cyril shall," beckoning the passing servant 
 with the tray. 
 
 " No ; but take it to him yourself. It is only 
 a slight condescension. When a man is ill and 
 tired, and has no real home of his own, such 
 things touch." 
 
 "Perhaps, then, Mamma had best: she is 
 dispensing it." 
 
 " Nonsense, bonnibel ! we are making a great 
 affair out of nothing ! Show my friend another 
 spark of interest yourself." 
 
 Catherine took a cup that had just been filled, 
 and carried it across the room. 
 
 " You must drink this," she said softly, looking 
 not at Gaston, but at the cup. 
 
 " Thank you, no." He remembered Beaudes 
 fords, and his love, like that of a woman s. He 
 had been thinking he would leave the place. 
 He would have nothing at her hands. 
 
100 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " But you must, he says. It will perhaps hin 
 der a fever : you were so cold and wet. Or else, 
 indeed, you may die." 
 
 With her voice, that shook ever so slightly, 
 addressing him, her hand extended toward him, 
 her face drooping above him, so gentle, so lovely, 
 so near, her sweet breath touching his fore 
 head, with the mad quickening of his pulse, 
 shame, remorse, Beaudesfords, honor, were flung 
 off, he held his hand half-way for the cup as 
 he rose and stood before her, the fire behind 
 throwing out all his profile in a black relief. 
 
 " And if I do ? " said he. "Is there any thing 
 better than dying? If the cup holds life, 
 shall I drink it ? " 
 
 She trembled an instant as he spoke, with his 
 eyes bent upon her : then she had left the cup in 
 his hands, and was gone ; and Gaston drained it at 
 a breath. A simple thing ; but Beaudesfords, fol 
 lowing her with his glance to observe the graceful 
 action, saw into what earnest pantomime it 
 turned, and wondered as he saw. 
 
 Old Dr. Ruthven strolled down that end of the 
 room where Gaston sat alone. " My friend," 
 said he, " you must have some hell-fire in you 
 since all that snow and ice outside has not chilled 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 101 
 
 it ! " And Gaston, replying as curtly, strode 
 away to his western wing. 
 
 That night, when Catherine dismissed her 
 maid, she pulled away her curtains and looked 
 out with her brow bent upon the cold glass. 
 She seemed herself to be resting in a state of 
 well-being : within it was all so warm and rosy ; 
 but without a white frenzy of storm was rushing 
 by the pane, scourging it with sleet, mounting in 
 mighty gyres, and driving up a black immensity 
 of the midnight vault. War of wind and cloud, 
 darkness of desolation, the great cry of the ele 
 ments sweeping overhead through the gaping 
 gulfs of space. Of a sudden Catherine cowered, 
 a mere atom she ; then her sense of insignifi 
 cance, under all these prodigious forces of sky 
 and storm, opened out into a sense of sin and 
 tumult as vast as they, bloom and warmth 
 dropped from her, she shivered away to her pil 
 low, and wept there half the night long. 
 
102 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A FEVERISH dream in the gray of the morning ; 
 and then the day broke, the clear and crystalline 
 day, with calm and peace on all the outer earth, 
 with cheer and good-will at all its hearths. Joy 
 ous salutations floated to Catherine before she 
 left her rooms : daylight, that shuts the world 
 in upon itself and robs it of all large outlook 
 into heaven, shut Catherine in as well upon the 
 moment that was passing. 
 
 " No church to-day ! " cried Rose. " The 
 Beaudesfords teams are going out to break the 
 roads, the heavy drags. And Beaudesfords 
 says we may all go with them. Such sport!" 
 
 " All but me," moaned Caroline, who had en 
 tered her appearance at an earlier hour than 
 usual that morning, roused by the gay stir and 
 bustle of the house. 
 
 " No, indeed, Caroline ! I shall not go," said 
 Catherine. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 103 
 
 While she spoke, she saw the train of horses, 
 shaking off the music of their peals of bells, 
 the great dray-horses for which the Beaudesfords 
 place was famous, trampling past the window, 
 with the sledges that they drew well heaped with 
 rugs and skins. Beaudesfords had taken the 
 reins from the teamsters ; and Gaston, looming in 
 the light, rode the leader, a wild and powerful 
 creature, little accustomed to harness or to bridle. 
 
 " No, no, Catherine ! " cried Beaudesfords, as 
 she followed the others to the door, with an end 
 of her breakfast-scarf thrown across her hair. 
 " I cannot trust you on such a break-neck expe 
 dition! It is one of Rose s freaks, Rose and 
 Gaston s. She would chill to death : would she 
 not, Gaston ? " 
 
 " Cold withers japonicas," said Gaston, but 
 without looking up, while he curbed his prancing 
 beast. 
 
 " I did not think of it, dear Beaudesfords," she 
 answered. 
 
 Beaudesfords, standing aside while his guests 
 were crowding on the teams, flung his reins loose 
 one moment, sprang up the steps, and, as if gently 
 forcing her within, seized both her hands and 
 kissed them, and flew down again. She felt the 
 
104 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 pressure on those hands long after all the mad 
 caps were out of sight. 
 
 "I m sure I don t see the use of your staying 
 at home with me," exclaimed Caroline, " if you re 
 going to roam the house in this way, like an 
 unquiet spirit." 
 
 " Shall I read to you, Caroline dear ? " her 
 sister asked. 
 
 " As if Susette couldn t read to me ! No : I 
 want you to sit still and talk. I want to know 
 what you think about Rose and Gaston. How he 
 follows her with his eyes ! Mamma says it s a 
 sick whimsey. Do you think it is, Catherine ? 
 Beaudesfords has always promised Rose a hand 
 some portion ; so they can afford it. I like it. 
 Though of course that s no matter ! I like Major 
 Gaston : he s one of the Satanic sort, run 
 you through, and make nothing of it ; the Festus 
 lovers, though, that Rose says do not cut up into 
 good husbands. I wonder nobody ever thinks of 
 my marrying." 
 
 Caroline was complaining to the empty air. 
 Catherine had moved away from her as a ship 
 sails, moved down the long suite from the 
 breakfast-room, and out, and away. 
 
 " Well, I declare," groaned Caroline, lying on 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 105 
 
 Catherine s sofa, eating Catherine s dainties, and 
 sipping Catherine s coffee, " Catherine takes no 
 more interest in her family than if such people 
 didn t exist on the face of the earth ! " 
 
 Rose and Gaston ! Rose and Gaston ! Beau- 
 desfords had spoken of them ; so Caroline had. 
 Rose and Gaston ! Catherine kept repeating the 
 phrase as a bell tolls on the wind. The thought 
 of its association bewildered her. She held her 
 head in both hands as she went up and down 
 her own room. What was the pomp of that 
 place to her now ? She never noticed it, the 
 place for which Beaudesfords had ransacked 
 Europe, its satin flutings and Venice lace, its 
 paintings on sheets of gold and blocks of lapis- 
 lazuli, its vase that some Etrurian woman had 
 heaped with flowers three thousand years ago, its 
 tiny water-clock that had measured the hours once 
 for some Roman woman perhaps as wretched as 
 herself: she neither saw nor remembered any of 
 it. One thought only ruled her, a tent in the 
 desert would have answered just as well to think 
 that thought in. If only Gaston loved another 
 woman, how much more easily she might tread the 
 path before her. But she knew better ! she knew 
 better. And Gaston had no right to Rose, 
 
 5* 
 
106 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. . 
 
 too ignoble, too unworthy: if he were a good 
 man, he would not now be here. He never should 
 possess her ! Then came over her the quick doubt 
 lest she deceived herself by a mere sophism, and 
 were simply barring him about from escape, fearful 
 of Rose or any other woman. 
 
 As still she paced the place, when some hours 
 had elapsed, there came the rush of the sledges 
 and their bells, the trampling of the great dray- 
 horses, the chorus of gleeful voices. Catherine 
 fell on her knees behind the window-curtain and 
 looked out. She had all at once grown guilty 
 enough to need the shelter of those clinging folds. 
 It was Gaston only at whom she gazed, Gas- 
 ton, whose restive horse plunged and swerved 
 and reared in his long loose traces, while the 
 rider seemed a part of him, and pulled him up 
 till, poised in the air and outlined upon the 
 dazzling snow, both horse and rider might have 
 been hewn from black marble. Her eyes grew 
 to him, and gazed and gazed. What was the 
 force of this man ? What made it ? Where 
 lurked it ? Not beauty, for Beaudesfords had 
 that ; not goodness, for Beaudesfords life was a 
 sacrifice to others. His identity himself 
 only himself Gaston! She forgot the conceal- 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 107 
 
 ment of the curtain, bending forward, following 
 him. He looked up, and for one moment, bold 
 and steady, caught and kept those wild and eager 
 eyes. Then she sank upon the floor, and, her 
 face hidden in her loosened hair, grovelled out 
 of sight. 
 
 What time had passed, impossible to say. She 
 stirred at the sound of Beaudesfords foot and 
 voice, as he approached in search of her. He 
 was singing the hymn that they had heard in 
 church not many days before, absently forget 
 ting it was no festival song. He had a full, rich 
 tenor voice, that at other times it was a pleasure 
 to hear echoing through those long and lofty halls 
 in its clear, golden strains ; but now each note 
 pierced her ears like a stab : 
 
 " For me these pangs his soul assail, 
 
 For me this death is borne ; 
 My sins gave sharpness to the nail, 
 And pointed every thorn. 
 
 "Let sin no more my soul enslave; 
 
 Break, Lord, its tyrant chain ; 
 Oh ! save me, whom thou cam st to save, 
 Nor bleed, nor die, in vain." 
 
 He sauntered through the gallery, looking at 
 the handsome, honest faces of the old Beaudes- 
 
108 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 fords portraits that lined the wall, repeating and 
 dwelling on the last verse, unmindful what it was. 
 But as for Catherine, listening to him, she arose ; 
 and it was like a human being transformed to 
 some vile shape of elf or newt that the advance 
 of morning touches with a sunbeam and sets free. 
 She seemed to grow a loftier stature as she stood. 
 " I am not vile ! " she cried. " I will not live 
 in this bondage to sin. I will blot out this man 
 
 this Gaston. I will conquer, or I will die ! " 
 As Beaudesfords entered, and she faced him, 
 
 shaking out all her fallen locks of palest gold, 
 her cheeks vivid, her eyes flashing, she looked 
 
 more than she had ever looked before like 
 the spirit of some great rose full-blossomed in the 
 noon. He stood still, almost transfixed with the 
 sight of her beauty, that Blazed so upon him. 
 And, while he gazed, the voluptuous color faded, 
 and left the cheeks white, and only the eyes shone 
 out, so full of purpose and endeavor that they 
 were like the stars of heaven. And, while he 
 gazed, he thought he heard her murmur again 
 those words, unconscious that she spoke, 
 
 " I will conquer, or I will die ! " 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 109 
 
 X. 
 
 CATHERINE had Olympe in to arrange her fallen 
 hair, and then followed Beaudesfords below. He 
 ran lightly down the stairs, like a boy, glancing 
 back and calling her to hasten ; while she lin 
 gered, leaning over the baluster, and looking, in 
 her ermined wrapper and with the set bloom 
 upon her face, as if she had just stepped forth 
 from one of the old carved frames that lined the 
 walls, the last lady of Beaudesfords. Gaston 
 turned silently as she came in, and thrilled, per 
 haps, to think that all that unwonted color and 
 fire had kindled in the long look they inter 
 changed a half-hour since. 
 
 Catherine surveyed the joyous faces that clus 
 tered round the luncheon-tables, she listened to the 
 quips and cranks, and wondered what cross-pur 
 pose of fate it was that had overtaken her, and 
 wrought her life, which should have been as 
 smooth as theirs, into such a tangled snarl. A kind 
 
110 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 of fever burned within her, and gave her a parched, 
 dry, and dusty feeling : she was like one perishing 
 of thirst in the desert, with all manner of illusive 
 mirages of palm-plumed water-springs in sight, 
 for her heart ached for love, and there was Beau- 
 desfords , and it was nothing to her. Who could 
 help her? Rose, to be sure, pretty, laughing 
 Rose. But she had never dreamed of her sister s 
 trouble : why darken her innocent sunshine with 
 such shadows ? There was her mother. Un 
 fortunately Mrs. Stanhope was more foreign to 
 all the needs of Catherine s nature than if she 
 spoke another language ; she would neither sym 
 pathize, nor understand, nor overpower ; she 
 would be but indignantly scandalized, which 
 was only to her credit, she would have said, 
 had matters been explained to her. And as fgr 
 Caroline, that young woman in the whole course 
 of her life had never been of any more use to any 
 body than a rag baby. And then, as her rapid 
 thoughts ran on, while she shrank more silently 
 within herself than ever, feeling like a guilty 
 wretch among all these sinless people, if any 
 such there are, her eye lighted on Dr. 
 Ruthven. 
 
 Who has not had a family physician whose 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. Ill 
 
 touch was healing ; whose words were balm ; 
 whose kind, keen eye searched many a disease to 
 its seat in the soul ; whose smile was comfort ; 
 whose knowledge, though it compassed the world 
 and filled you with awe, was yet lost in his gen 
 tleness ; to whom one turned as to the dispenser 
 of life and death ; to whom one told those bur 
 dens of sorrbw no father-confessor ever heard ; 
 who was a staff to strengthen, an arm to uphold, 
 a god to give health ? Dr. Euthven was not 
 different from his order, a kind, brave, sagacious 
 gentleman. He had made his round of calls that 
 morning after the drags had broken out the roads, 
 and had been peremptorily brought back to Beau- 
 desfords by its master. Catherine looked at him, 
 and a course of action or of physic rose before 
 her mind. She never dreamed of the time when 
 another might go to him as she to-day intended. 
 A quick suggestion flashed upon her, of how 
 many subtle, gentle, viewless poisons he must 
 know, that would so soon medicine her to that 
 sleep unvisited by dreams of sin and struggle. 
 She crossed to his side and sat down, meaning to 
 lead him to speak of such secrets of his art. But 
 then came the thought that this trial was a tiling 
 of her destiny, after all : if she contrived to escape 
 
112 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 it in this life, in the next it might be all to endure 
 over again ; and since already she had suffered 
 the half of it here, why seek to renew the whole 
 there ? And so restrained by no other scru 
 ples, for Catherine, it is unnecessary to say, was 
 not yet a religious woman, she had found no 
 rock to cling upon when washed by overwhelm 
 ing seas she said nothing at all. 
 
 Perhaps the Doctor was pleased with the lit 
 tle compliment of her singling him from among 
 all these gayer guests: he was playing with his 
 dry wine and biscuit, and put them away as she 
 sat down between him and the fire ; for there was 
 nothing set about luncheon at Beaudesfords, 
 except the viands, and people did just as they 
 chose. He stretched out his artful hand and 
 took her wrist. 
 
 "Physician s privilege," he said. "What is 
 the meaning of all the red roses ? 
 
 Twould be no stranger sight to see 
 Red roses blooming in the snow. 
 
 A little fever ? " continued the Doctor. "I have 
 noticed in the way of my practice that in sum 
 mer all diseases are inflammatory, as you may 
 say ; in winter they all partake of a typhoid 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 113 
 
 character. My dear, there is nothing typhoid in 
 this pulse." 
 
 " Why should there be, Doctor ? " 
 
 " Your pulse is always a slow one, some 
 what heavy, different from that beating wire 
 which springs like a repeater in Gaston s wrist, 
 ah! ah! ah !" cried the Doctor suddenly, but 
 half under his breath. 
 
 Catherine snatched her hand away, angry and 
 injured. 
 
 " Have I sprung a trap upon your confidence ? " 
 said the unabashed old Doctor, looking over his 
 glasses. " My dear, we probe some things to 
 relieve them." 
 
 It was just at that moment, as Gaston had 
 sauntered to the other side of. the fender and 
 stood looking down at the two, with their drama 
 of one moment s span, that Beaudesfords who 
 had taken up an open book of ballads which 
 some one had brought from the library, and 
 laid, face down, upon the table strolled in be 
 tween them, and took up his position on the 
 rug, with his back to the fire, glancing through 
 the volume. 
 
 " The sweetest verse in the world," he said. 
 " Catherine, it always puts me so in mind of 
 
114 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 you," turning toward her, for the four were 
 quite by themselves on that side of the room. 
 "Do you remember it ? 
 
 1 Once I kissed Sir Cradocke 
 Beneath the greenwood tree, 
 Once I kissed Sir Cradocke s mouth 
 Before he married me/ 
 
 only it was not you, but I ! " 
 
 If Dr. Ruthven had held her pulse then, what 
 a leap he would have had to cry out at ! The 
 picture of that star-lit night, with Gaston s face 
 bending toward her own beneath the swing 
 ing tree-shadows, started so vividly before her 
 eyes that it seemed to dazzle her to tears : she 
 felt the tears springing up full and hot ; and, 
 holding them back till they almost scalded her 
 brain, she bit her lip in a sudden desperation, and 
 then the blood gushed out in a spirt. 
 
 At the sight, Gastori sprung to seize her with 
 a single impulse. Beaudesfords dashed down his 
 book. But Dr. Ruthven had been before them 
 both, had caught her handkerchief and pressed 
 it to her mouth as if the danger were from some 
 thing more than a bitten lip, had pulled her to 
 her feet, and pushed and helped her through the 
 door, and had her in her own room, with Olympe 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 115 
 
 running this way, and Rose that, and Mrs. Stan 
 hope the other, ere either of the two had entirely 
 recovered his senses. 
 
 " Only a hemorrhage," said the old deceiver, 
 reappearing after a few seconds for his prescrip 
 tion-book, which had fallen from his pocket. 
 " Only a brief hemorrhage. This extreme cold 
 produces a slight congestion. Frequent occur 
 rence. No danger, no danger with proper 
 care, that is. Must be kept perfectly still. No 
 company. Her own room. Beaudesfords, can 
 you send for this at once ? " And he handed 
 him the cabalistic scrawl which means so much, 
 but which in this case meant but a mild con 
 coction of harmless trifles. 
 
 " Give it to me," said Gaston, hoarse and 
 quick. 
 
 "No, indeed, Major Gaston," replied the Doc 
 tor, blandly. " We do not trouble our guests 
 with such errands." 
 
 Gaston drew back at once, as the sky blenches 
 before a light : he saw in that sudden light the 
 nature of the attack as plainly as Dr. Ruthven 
 did. Alarm, as those lips reddened, had, for the 
 first moment, blotted ballad and Beaudesfords 
 and every thing else from mind. 
 
116 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 Beaudesfords was throwing the saddle over his 
 swiftest horse himself, as Gaston sauntered back 
 again to the frightened groups that were gathered 
 in questioning and answering about the event, and 
 then, still as leisurely and unconcerned, sauntered 
 away to his quarters in the western wing. 
 
 " Hurry ! Hurry ! " cried Beaudesfords to his 
 apothecary, as he handed him the prescription, a 
 half-hour later. 
 
 " I should not suppose there was occasion for 
 any particular despatch," said the compounder 
 of simples, measuring out his drops with pre 
 cision. " If any one lies at the point of death, 
 a little red lavender, ammonia, and camphor- 
 water will hardly bring him back." 
 
 Beaudesfords took the vial, and, vaulting into 
 his saddle, was half-way home before the words 
 recurred to him. But they did recur, idly and 
 passingly, yet sufficiently to show that, though 
 he took no notice of them just now and they 
 had no peculiar significance for the moment, they 
 were pictured upon his memory for that future 
 period which should make them, and a hundred 
 other things of their kind, start out in a fiery 
 charactery. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 117 
 
 XI. 
 
 MAJOR Gaston s door having closed upon him 
 did not open for himself again on that day or the 
 next. The storm had prevented further advance 
 with the great water-works which had employed 
 him ; his servant brought him the black coffee on 
 which at that time he principally subsisted ; Mrs. 
 Stanhope had a tiny French dinner faultlessly 
 served for him alone each day, and regretted that 
 he was too ill to enjoy it ; she had feared he was 
 overworking himself, she said. She paid him a 
 visit ; but the smoke-permeated atmosphere, the 
 fearful confusion of the apartments, the tacitur 
 nity of the yellow Major, were combining influ 
 ences which caused the visit to be a short one, 
 and she felt herself excused from repeating it, by 
 sending the French dinner and the Doctor every 
 day in her stead. 
 
 " Hm ahem ! " uttered the sturdy Doctor, not 
 to be daunted by all the Majors in existence. " It 
 
118 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 is plain that the air of Beaudesfords does not 
 agree with you does not agree with you. And 
 the sooner you leave it the better." 
 
 " I am not ill," said the Major. " I wish you 
 and Mr. Beaudesfords would attend to your own 
 affairs. When I want a physician, I order 
 one." 
 
 " Perhaps the physician wants you." 
 " Well," turning on him suddenly, " what does 
 he want of me ? " 
 
 " Possibly to quit the place. Possibly such a 
 great healthy fellow hulking round is an eyesore, 
 eh ? Possibly, Gaston, possibly he takes a gen 
 uine interest in your health, which is not, after 
 all, such alarming health, you yellow fellow 
 need sea-air, and is sincere in advising you to 
 leave Beaudesfords." 
 
 " Do you advise Mrs. Beaudesfords to leave it 
 too ? or did you say Mm ? " with a sneer worthy 
 of the father of sneers. 
 
 " That is not your affair. However, I fear I 
 may have to order her a warmer climate." 
 
 " We might all go together then. A charming 
 party, Doctor ! " As Gaston stood before the fire 
 in the room that was growing dark, a strange 
 glow came into his eyes, and illumined his bitter 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 119 
 
 smile. He looked more like a thing of evil than 
 he was. 
 
 " Let me have your pulse, sir/ said Dr. Ruth 
 ven, possessing himself of it after the fashion 
 of medical men, before the patient knew how to 
 resist, and opening out his watch that had beat out 
 so many of its seconds over men s hearts. " Ner 
 vous system highly wrought," muttered Dr. 
 Ruthven. " Bromide of potassium dessert 
 spoonful every three hours. Nothing like it 
 mere magic. Now your tongue." 
 
 Gaston waited, before complying with this last 
 demand, which was apparently too humiliating to 
 be borne, till the Doctor had replaced his time 
 piece ; then he took him by the shoulder and 
 reseated him in his chair, so quietly but so 
 potently that there was no appeal. 
 
 " Now, sir ! " said he, " I told you I was 
 not ill. I keep my quarters, being absolute 
 master of them, thanks to not to you, Dr. 
 Ruthven ! " 
 
 "No, sir! Not by the holy poker, sir! Not 
 to me, you may take your affidavit ! " 
 
 " Life is not all play, even to me, Dr. Ruth 
 ven," continued Gaston, without noticing the 
 little man s outburst. " I draw my plans, clear 
 
120 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 up my details. The guests survive without me. 
 I choose to be alone just now, sir, because I am 
 working out a problem ! Good-morning ! " 
 
 " Good-evening ! " said the Doctor. " Don t 
 confuse the hours of the day, whatever you do. 
 I hope you will not forget the most important 
 quantity in your problem one which people 
 laboring under high nervous excitement are apt 
 to overlook. I, think you had better try the bro 
 mide, though. Good-night ! " 
 
 Then Gaston filled his huge pipe, and when 
 Beaudesfords came in, he could by no means 
 have discovered the whereabouts of his friend, 
 had it not been for the spark of fire glittering at 
 the mouth of the big bowl, and looking as much 
 like the single eye of some monster glowering 
 through the darkness as any thing that could 
 be imagined. 
 
 " Tartarus ? " said he. " Or the Black Hole ? 
 Ruthven said you were at work on your prob 
 lems : you must be extracting the root of all 
 darkness. Why haven t you rung for lights ? " 
 
 " Let me alone, Beaudesfords. I love the 
 dark." 
 
 ".Because your deeds are evil? Well land 
 at last a glimmer in the grate, that is; an- 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 121 
 
 chored that s a chair. Now, what did Ruth- 
 ven think of you ? " 
 
 " Thought I had better go away from Beau 
 desfords." 
 
 " Go away ! " cried Beaudesfords, starting to 
 his feet. " What ! is the air unhealthy here ? Is 
 it that ails Catherine ? " 
 
 " Not in the least. He spoke merely in relation 
 to myself. Life is too pleasant for me here. It 
 is time I was up and away on my rounds, like 
 the outcast Jew." 
 
 " Fie, fie, old fellow ! Don t put on your 
 misanthropes. Ruthven is only a good, pottering 
 soul fancies you rusting out. You never shall 
 leave Beaudesfords with my consent. See, we 
 are going to have a railway laid to the bay now. 
 The straight line, you know, lies across as many 
 pretty difficulties as anybody wants to overcome 
 in a summer s day. When the water- works are 
 opened and done with, you will have your con 
 tract to lay it out. What say to that ? "Head 
 quarters at Beaudesfords, and a year s job if a 
 day s. Some of our directors were here to see 
 me this morning about it. No danger for you of 
 rusting, even at Beaudesfords. It is I who should 
 rust without you. In fact, Gaston, though I 
 
122 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 wonder what existence would be to me without 
 Catherine, I wonder quite as often what it would 
 be to me without you ! I couldn t say it," added 
 Beaudesfords, like a girl, " if it wasn t as dark 
 as your pocket ! " 
 
 Poor Beaudesfords ! He could not have said it 
 at all, had Catherine ever given him the bliss of 
 being loved in return with the decimal of that 
 devotion which he lavished on herself. But he 
 was an effusive nature, and, having broken the ice 
 on the night of the great snow-storm by a tanta 
 mount assurance, it was necessary for him to 
 attest the fact again, and yet again, lest it were 
 only deemed the impulse of a moment. 
 
 But as for Gaston, he answered not a word. 
 And the two sat there silent in the darkness ; 
 Beaudesfords a little despondent about his wife, 
 but not positively unhappy, turning over a thou 
 sand things in his mind ; but Gaston, chafing 
 with hateful thoughts, finding it impossible to 
 speak, and yet every instant of the prolonged 
 silence getting more unbearable than the last. 
 Suddenly he was upon his feet, had snatched both 
 of Beaudesfords hands and wrung them, crying, 
 " What should such fellows as I do, crawling be 
 tween earth and heaven ! " had pushed him back 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 123 
 
 again, found his own hat, and stalked from the 
 room. 
 
 " That was just like Gaston ! " said Beaudes- 
 fords to Catherine, when he was detailing to her 
 the conversation and its close, on the same even 
 ing, alone with her in her own sitting-room. 
 " To sit mulling over my words, when I had for 
 gotten all about them, and suddenly to burst out 
 in such a blaze ! What a soul he is ! Noble 
 from heart to lip ! One of those men that wear 
 the purple, that were born in it, porphyro- 
 gene ! When was there ever such a man before ? 
 It is no wonder that I love him, Catherine ! You 
 are not jealous of him, eh ? " with a smiling side 
 long glance. 
 
 " Jealous of Gaston ! " 
 
 " Ah ! true. How is it possible ? I think you 
 are better to-night, Mrs. Beaudesfords," gazing at 
 her again a moment as he spoke. " There is such 
 a color on your cheeks, such a light in your eyes, 
 that I have half the mind to bring him up here 
 to tea." 
 
 Catherine looked at herself in the great glass 
 as he spoke : it was an image but little like a sick 
 woman s that she saw there, with that triumphant 
 flush and brilliance which had risen as she had 
 
124 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 heard Gaston praised, as she had felt that he was 
 not altogether vicious, a short-lived rapture on 
 such false foundation. If he were not vicious, 
 why did he linger here ? 
 
 " You seem so much improved indeed," con 
 tinued Beaudesfords. 
 
 " No, no, no ! " cried Catherine, hastily. " I 
 mean the Doctor said," she added, " that I must 
 see no one, that " 
 
 " He was right," interrupted Beaudesfords. " I 
 am an idiot. Happiness makes a man lose his 
 senses, they say ; and since I see you look so well, 
 I feel like snapping my fingers at fate." 
 
 " Do not talk so, Beaudesfords," said Catherine. 
 " Read to me. There are the new books that 
 came to-night. I had them brought on purpose, 
 because you like to open them so, and I like to 
 see you." And Beaudesfords, cutting the leaves 
 of one at random, plunged into poetry of such 
 bewildering waste of passion and power, such 
 mad melody and rhythm, that, seeing Cathe 
 rine fall asleep, worn out with all the emotions 
 that had their battle-ground every day in her 
 heart, he stole softly from the room, and then 
 took the great staircase at three leaps, with the 
 book in hand, that he might break in upon Gas- 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 125 
 
 ton s quarters, and waking him from his black 
 apathy revel there with Swinburne, in a sym 
 posium of splendid image and luxurious music 
 till midnight. 
 
126 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE winter days went slipping by, and Beaudes- 
 fords still kept the place filled with guests, and 
 Catherine still kept her room. Beaudesfords 
 would have recalled his invitations and dismissed 
 his friends, but Catherine would not listen to it : 
 she had double reason indeed to wish his house 
 and his hands full, just now, that he might be 
 diverted from too close attention on her retire 
 ment. One would have thought that, having 
 tried that experiment of seclusion in the early 
 days of her return home, its failure would have 
 answered. But she had no option about it ; for 
 Dr. Ruthven, though small in body, was the 
 greatest tyrant that ever ruled. She was not 
 obliged to complain of any symptoms, Dr. Ruth 
 ven did that for her : he made her walk up and 
 down in the open air on her high balcony, that 
 commanded such a wide outlook of country ; took 
 care that her diet was all as it should be ; and by 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 127 
 
 degrees, when he had seen that her room was 
 darkened rightly, all hi an unostentatious way, 
 and as a physician is wont to do, he invited up 
 one guest and another to wile away an hour, to 
 let her know the gossip below ; while Beaudes- 
 fords had a company of musicians brought from 
 a distant city, that, stationed in the hall, made 
 delicious murmuring of violin and flute, not for 
 Catherine alone, but for every one that chose to 
 listen. Gaston threw open his doors sometimes, 
 and suffered the spell of music to work, if per 
 chance it might cast out his devils ; but it needed 
 a mightier magician even than music to effect so 
 much as that. 
 
 Gaston, meanwhile, had shut himself up dur 
 ing these three weeks in his own apartments as 
 well : it seemed possible that he intended to re 
 turn only when Catherine herself returned ; and 
 as Caroline and Mamma Stanhope plied her with 
 the details of all transactions below, so at least 
 Catherine interpreted it. He did not choose to be 
 eluded by any such evasion as her mock illness : 
 he meant to force her back by staying away him 
 self till she came. It seemed to Catherine cruel, 
 even then, cruel on Gaston s part, to stand so 
 between her and safety, safety, which meant 
 
128 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 virtue, peace, heaven. Dr. Ruthven did not need 
 much feigning in his meddlesome and benevolent 
 device ; for the conflict of feeling left Catherine 
 every day more pale and worn, every night more 
 feverish and impatient. 
 
 She was just stepping in one evening from the 
 balcony, that opened from her sitting-room and 
 extended far enough down one side of the house, 
 blank just there of windows, to allow her a sort 
 of promenade, and Olympe had removed her 
 wrappings and carried them away, when Beaudes- 
 fords tapped upon the door, peered in, and then 
 put his head and hand back in the hall, and drew 
 in Gaston after him. 
 
 " She doesn t look like a martyr to disease, 
 does she, Gaston, with such a rose-petal of a 
 cheek ? Dr. Ruthven is a tyrant. Death to all 
 tyrants, say I ! I shall have you downstairs to 
 morrow, my lady. Good heavens, how cold 
 your hands are ! " 
 
 " I have just come in from the balcony," said 
 Catherine, losing the color the wind had fanned 
 up on her cheek. But she did not tell him that 
 when she came in her hands were warm and well. 
 
 Tea was served for the three ; and Rose flitted 
 in and made them four. Catherine leaned back 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 129 
 
 in her chair, growing whiter and whiter, and, 
 while Rose and Beaudesfords fenced out their gay 
 dialogue, gave no response of word or smile. 
 
 It seemed to her as if fate were fighting against 
 her, as if she felt the game go on between good 
 angels and bad, herself the stake ; %nd when she 
 glanced up, and Gaston stood before her and bent 
 from his height and said some gentle thing in a 
 tone whose tenderness was all the more enhanced 
 because that tone was usually so haughty and so 
 brief, she shuddered to think she saw the dark 
 angel in person, to think how he possessed her ; 
 and then she thrilled and thrilled to look at him, 
 all her soul seemed welling up into her eyes, she 
 could not move them from their fascinated gaze, 
 her hands trembled and her lips, her head fell on 
 one side, and she would have swooned had not 
 Gaston himself caught her, and had not the knowl 
 edge of his touch acted like an electric stroke to 
 call her back to herself, to this strange being of 
 hers, half-filled with such wild joy as she looked at 
 him, half with as wild abhorrence of herself, and 
 bathed, besides, all through and through with 
 pity for Beaudesfords, and sorrow. She used to 
 think she was insane, that some evil spirit acted 
 through her, since she found it so impossible to 
 
 G* 
 
130 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 reconcile her conscience and reason with this 
 passion of her senses and her heart, to understand 
 why in herself alone the flesh and the spirit so 
 contended. She ought to scorn him, she said, 
 since he betrayed her ; she ought to hate him 
 that he lingered here to torment her; and in 
 stead but she would not utter to herself that 
 pitiful instead. Only she had not the strength to 
 forbid Beaudesfords to bring Gaston any more 
 to the room, to keep her eyes off him with their 
 greedy gaze when he was there. Only all the 
 time she hated bitterly those honest, happy Beau 
 desfords women on the wall ! It was a kind of 
 rapt and trance-like happiness while he remained : 
 after he was gone, came the misery and shame. 
 Once it occurred to her to ask herself what had 
 become of her resolve of that bright Christmas 
 morning, the resolve that she would conquer or 
 she would die. Well, she answered, she could 
 not conquer, but perhaps she could die ! Heaven 
 help her and let her die ! 
 
 Gaston came now with Beaudesfords every 
 evening. Dr. Ruthven knew nothing about it. 
 He sat opposite Catherine, the little tea-table 
 between them : he waited on her in a dozen 
 trivial ways, and the blind Beaudesfords felt 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 131 
 
 nothing but delight in believing that the friendship 
 between his friend and his wife was springing up 
 so sweet and strong. Every night Gaston brought 
 some large and lovely flower, freshly full-blown, 
 from the green-house, and gave it to her: their 
 hands touched as they gave and took, loitered 
 perhaps one trembling moment ; and while she held 
 it and gazed down upon it and caressed its petals, 
 it half seemed to her that it still was Gaston s 
 hand she held. She was weak and pale, tender 
 and appealing: a man s heart would have been 
 stone which in some way in those days she did 
 not touch. And yet she could hardly hold herself 
 to be like any polluted thing ; for Gaston s very 
 tenderness was so lofty ; he never used word or 
 expression beyond that silent manner, in appear 
 ance so full of deep respect ; yet, for all that, 
 she knew the truth,. his tone told it, his de 
 laying eyes enforced it. In fact, she was ceasing 
 already to make any effort, fancying herself 
 controlled by some fatal charm, questioning if she 
 should not take what bliss she found, shutting 
 her eyes and glad to be drifting drifting. 
 
132 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 CATHERINE had kept her own rooms for about five 
 weeks, for sometimes she lacked the inclination 
 and sometimes the courage to go down, nor had 
 Dr.. Ruthven, still maintaining his fiction, yet 
 given his consent that she should do so, when 
 Candlemas came came to break the back of the 
 winter, as some one said. The January thaw had 
 just passed over all the white world, and the 
 snow-covered expanse of the long lawn and level 
 field beneath her windows had been washed with 
 the rain, and flooded and frozen in an icy glare. 
 Beaudesfords and Gaston sat round the little tea- 
 table with Catherine, having left Mrs. Stanhope 
 and Rose with enough upon their hands below. 
 There came a rap upon the lower door, and May, 
 the gardener s little daughter, entered timidly and 
 presented Mrs. Beaudesfords with an offering from 
 her father, a single scarlet blossom, the offshoot 
 of a rare plant that the gardener had been secretly 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 133 
 
 fostering and urging for a surprise ; since Mrs. 
 Beaudesfords in her floral fury, as her husband 
 used to call it, had often worked with McRoy in 
 the conservatory, and had established with him 
 a pleasanter acquaintance than with her other 
 servants. 
 
 She took the fiery flower, and set it in a glass 
 before her, where it seemed to throw a lustre 
 round the table, while Beaudesfords detained May 
 with a shower of little silver pieces, and set her 
 to singing her particular gypsy ballad which was 
 always such a delight to him for its oblivion of 
 the laws of prosody and ballad-making in general, 
 and which the child sang with such an abandon 
 ment to the tune and want of understanding of 
 the burden that the effect reached that one step 
 from the sublime. Beaudesfords and Gaston, 
 leaning back in their chairs, laughed a choral 
 accompaniment, which, however, in nowise dis 
 concerted the little girl, who, with her eyes 
 fastened on the scarlet flower, still sang on 
 unconcerned, an old ballad, once perhaps in the 
 Scottish manner, but which, in its passage through 
 the memory of May s grandmothers and great- 
 grandmothers, had lost much of its rhyme and 
 nearly all its reason. 
 
134 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " There were seven gypsies in a gang, 
 
 They were both brisk and bonny, O ; 
 They, came to the Earl of Castle s house, 
 And the songs they sang were many, O. 
 
 Earl Castle s wife came down the stair, 
 And all her maids before her, O ; 
 
 As soon as they saw her well-fared face, 
 They cast the glamor o er her, O. 
 
 They gave to her a nutmeg brown, 
 
 And also of the ginger, O ; 
 She gave to them a better thing, 
 
 The ring from off her finger, O. 
 
 The Earl would hunt in Maybole woods, 
 For blithesome was the morning, O, 
 
 Following the deer with the yelping curs, 
 And the huntsman s bugle sounding, O. 
 
 Earl Castle s wife came down the hall 
 To have a crack at them fairly, O ; 
 
 And oh ! she cried, I will follow thee 
 To the end of the world, or nearly, O ! 
 
 So take away my silken gown, 
 And bring a highland plaidie, 0; 
 
 Though kith and kin and all had sworn, 
 I 11 go with my gypsy laddie, O ! 
 
 When our good lord came riding home 
 And spiered for his fair lady, O, 
 
 The tane she cried, and tither replied, 
 She s away with the gypsy laddie, O ! 
 
 Oh, saddle me my milk-white mare 
 Because she goes so speedy, O ! 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 135 
 
 I 11 ride all day, and I 11 ride all night, 
 To overtake my lady, O ! 
 
 How could she leave her children three, 
 
 How could she leave her baby, O, 
 To follow under the greenwood tree 
 
 Along with a gypsy laddie, ! 
 
 He rode beside the river s bank, 
 
 With its waters black and dreary, O ; 
 
 When he espied his wedded wife, 
 She was cold and wet and weary, O. 
 
 And we were fifteen well-made men, 
 
 Although we were not bonny, ; 
 And we were all put down but one 
 
 For a fair young wanton lady, O !" 
 
 All this poured forth to a charming tune, and 
 with a voice like a bird s. Gaston and Beaudes- 
 fords saw only subject for merriment in song and 
 singer. But Catherine leaned back, all hurt and 
 humbled, while she sang, as if the hand of inno 
 cence had touched her guilt. 
 
 It was just at that moment that a thousand 
 lights seemed suddenly to strike up the ceiling 
 and drown the soft radiance of the shaded lamp 
 in a myriad dancing flashes ; and before Cath 
 erine knew what had happened, Beaudesfords had 
 wrapped her great fur mantle close about her and 
 had thrown open the casement, and she was lean- 
 
136 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 ing over the balcony s edge with May beside her, 
 and was gazing down where all the lawn and 
 level field were alive with twinkling sparks, ruby 
 and emerald, azure and golden, that, borne by 
 almost viewless shadows, circled and recircled 
 and wove a tracery of brilliant flourishes till the 
 whole field was brocaded with trailing lines of 
 light. It was Candlemas ; and Beaudesfords was 
 keeping it in this fantastic way, having marshalled 
 guests, tenants, and servants into his use for the 
 pretty spectacle. 
 
 " How lively, how beautiful, how silent ! " cried 
 Catherine. 
 
 " It is the dance of the daedal stars, " said 
 Gaston. 
 
 "It is the Feast of the Purification of the 
 Blessed Virgin," said little May, using the phrase 
 she had caught from a servant s lips. 
 
 As Catherine heard the simple words last 
 spoken, she shivered despite herself. How re 
 mote from her were beauty and purity, the festi 
 vals of holy people, the worship of holy women ! 
 All at once she was forlorn as some lost soul 
 might be when gazing from the outside of a 
 star upon the world of happy people moving 
 there. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 137 
 
 " You are cold ? " exclaimed Gaston, and he 
 readied his arm across to gather about her the 
 heavy cloak that had slipped down where its rich 
 fur was unconsciously trampled by May s clumsy 
 little feet. He gave it a sudden wrench to set it 
 free, without thinking what he did : the child, 
 leaning half over the low railing in her eagerness, 
 lost her balance, pitched forward, and throwing 
 up her hands with a sharp scream plunged head 
 long down upon the ice below, that glittered 
 harder and colder than a rock. 
 
 As Catherine sprung forward to snatch at her, 
 and snatch in vain, she was caught back herself 
 with a smothered word ; and for an instant her 
 forehead felt the fierce pulsation of Gaston s heart 
 as it rocked beneath, while he too bent to learn 
 the fate of the thing that lay in a little quiet heap 
 below, and to which Beaudesfords, springing 
 across the rail and swinging himself down, had 
 dropped in less time than it takes to tell. 
 
 But as soon as Catherine had comprehended 
 the thing, it was but a half-dozen seconds first, 
 she broke from that restraining grasp, and 
 sweeping through her room like the wind, was 
 down the stairs, and out upon the ice with Beau 
 desfords, and in again, the child in her arms ; 
 
138 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 while Gaston, moved by some impulse new to 
 him, had started for the Doctor. 
 
 " my God ! " she cried. " If I had not been 
 keeping my room, this would not have happened ! 
 If Gaston had not pulled up my cloak for me, it 
 could not have happened ! Am I a murderer, a 
 murderer with all ? " 
 
 It was Beaudesfords that heard her, too sorry, 
 too much agitated, too busy in getting splints and 
 bandages from the maids and Mrs. Stanhope and 
 the housekeeper, to heed the meaning of any 
 exclamations at such a time as that. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 139 
 
 XIV. 
 
 THE terrible touch of pain, beneath Dr. Ruthven s 
 hand, brought back the child to life, only for her 
 to lose consciousness again, unable to bear its 
 burden. The broken bones, one of which had been 
 bruised almost to fragments, were set at last, and 
 the child was put to rest in Catherine s bed, if 
 rest there might be for her ; and Catherine hung 
 over her night and day, refusing to yield her 
 place to servants, sleepless and tireless, sup 
 ported by the one wild fear lest the child should 
 die and the blood be on her head. Gaston 
 himself never imagined the real reason of her 
 devotion: he supposed it to be but the natural 
 treatment of a child by any woman. He only 
 saw that Catherine through it all was very calm 
 and composed where his own hand would have 
 shaken. McRoy and his wife were as useless as 
 two children themselves. They came into the room 
 and sat stupidly staring at their child, and then 
 
140 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 broke out into sobs and cries till they had to be 
 taken away. Catherine was father and mother 
 both to the suffering little thing that lay in her 
 bed. The sudden horror had awakened her from 
 her lethargy ; she saw the precipice to which the 
 current on which she reposed had been bearing 
 her ; she was alert and alive on her own behalf 
 with watchful fire. 
 
 The guests had left the house to its hosts. 
 Gaston roamed up and down the empty apart 
 ments like a shadow, galloped off to the water 
 works and back again at all unseasonable hours, 
 as heated and unquiet as the blast of a sirocco. 
 Caroline betook herself to her bed, and required 
 in one day more nursing and attendance from 
 Rose, her mother, and the maid, than the child 
 whose life hung in the balance and whom 
 Beaudesfords and Catherine never left required 
 in all her illness. Catherine watched the Doctor s 
 face at morning and night, as if her own salvation 
 depended on it : for May grew worse with pain 
 every hour, and at length, after a night of agony 
 in which it seemed as if day might never dawn, 
 or could only dawn in the blackness of death 
 when it did come, Catherine left Beaudesfords 
 with her charge, and ran over the crisp, white 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 141 
 
 fields to bring the Doctor herself, as the day began 
 to issue gray and pallid from the night, Beau- 
 desfords unable to detain her, and feeling sure the 
 clear cold outside air was only a needed tonic. 
 
 u Bring every thing 1 " she cried. " I am 
 afraid I don t know what I fear ! It may have 
 mortified you will have to amputate Oh, if 
 she only lives, no matter how, Beaudesfords will 
 adopt her, for my sake, we will make her our 
 own child! Doctor, you must, you must save 
 her ! " 
 
 " I do not know," said Dr. Ruthven, when he 
 had examined the cause of alarm, and stepped 
 into the adjoining room, " if it is best or not. 
 Her parents should decide. Beaudesfords, call 
 McRoy." 
 
 But the man had been waiting without, sum 
 moned by Catherine as she returned to the house. 
 The Doctor went up to him, and laid his hand on 
 his shoulder. " My poor man," he said, " if I 
 perform this operation, in which, God granting, 
 the child shall feel no particle of pain, she may 
 live, crippled, it is true, but well and happy, 
 and cared for by these kind friends. If I do not 
 perform it, she cannot live till night." 
 
 "And why are ye waiting?" whispered the 
 
142 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 gardener. " Haste ! haste, man ! Be quick with 
 you, and life and death hanging from your 
 hands!" 
 
 " Oh, you are right, McRoy ! " cried Catherine, 
 though in no loud key. " But there is something 
 to make us hesitate. She may not have the 
 strength ; and though she will not suffer she 
 will not suffer, she may die before it is done." 
 
 " But there is a chance?" he asked, looking 
 with strange, scared eyes from one to another. 
 
 " A chance," said Dr. Ruthven, " a chance, 
 not a certainty, but a hope." 
 
 " Then out with your knife, sir, and never 
 spare a thrust ! Every cut will strike my heart, 
 but I shall have my child when all s done, my 
 dear, my little May ! We shall have her back 
 have her back ! " And staying only to see Cath 
 erine s arm beneath her, while strengthened 
 by the fresh air she had inhaled in her run across 
 the fields, and by her longing for the child s life, 
 Catherine herself held the napkin and the blessed 
 ether, he was away to bring his wife, and wait, 
 out of hearing of a groan, till the word of joy or 
 of despair should be spoken. 
 
 As the gardener went down, Gaston met him 
 on the stairway. His face, so whitened, and lately 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 143 
 
 grown old and furrowed, struck Gaston as if he 
 had seen a ghost. Instead of seeking his own 
 apartment, he went boldly onward, drawn, he 
 knew not by what instinct or what fear, and 
 paused in the inner doorway, and remained there 
 looking on the scene, whether he^had no right 
 to shelter himself from one stroke of that knife, 
 
 whether it was destined that he should see 
 Catherine hold the child without a tremor, while 
 the warm blood gushed upon her and offended 
 her. Not. a soul spoke, no one stirred, there was 
 not a breath of sound, save that made by the swift 
 movements of the Doctor. When it was all over, 
 the bandages bound tightly down, the napkin 
 taken away, and the Doctor had swallowed a glass 
 of raw spirits to steady his hands, that had no 
 innate love of surgery, and after their work was 
 done began to shake like two leaves, then the 
 child opened her eyes, wide and quiet, and gazed 
 up at Catherine. " The angels will look like you," 
 she breathed: " I shall be one of them. Then I 
 
 shall take care of you. I would like to 
 see my father." 
 
 As if he had heard the half-articulate breath 
 through walls and doors, McRoy was in the room, 
 as it seemed, with a single bound, and down be- 
 
144 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 side the bed with his head on his child s heart. 
 May placed both her pretty hands in his hair, held 
 up her face to Catherine for a kiss, a trembling 
 kiss, and Catherine closed her eyes. Then the 
 mother, who had followed her husband, all dazed 
 and numbecfc? 1 sat down in Catherine s seat, and 
 gazed before her into the emptiness, and uttered 
 at last a loud, wild cry. The Doctor went to her, 
 knowing better how to solace her than any other 
 could ; and Catherine passed through the doorway 
 where Gaston stood, and looked him level in 
 the face with eyes that said, " Your work and 
 mine ! " 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 145 
 
 XY. 
 
 WHEN little May had been laid to her long rest, 
 and the great house was still once more, the 
 early days of March were beginning to blow their 
 whistling breath, the snow had slipped from the 
 hill-sides to the valleys, and McRoy s crocuses, 
 to which he seemed to give his whole soul, had 
 peeped up like risen spirits of the last summer 
 from their white shroud beneath the windows and 
 around the paths. Catherine had not kept her 
 room another day : in fact, she dared not be left 
 alone. She worked with her mother and sisters, 
 she stood silently beside McRoy as he delved, she 
 marched across the fields for miles with Beaudes- 
 fords. Beaudesfords said just such a sudden, 
 nervous shock had been the thing she needed. 
 If Gaston always came in for the end of these 
 rambles taken by the two, and the quick walk 
 home, Catherine never spoke to him a sentence 
 beyond the ordinary courtesies of the occasion. 
 7 
 
146 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 She fancied that he was silently establishing a 
 right in her because of that mutual work of 
 theirs, because of that confidence shared between 
 them, and unknown to others. She rebelled 
 against it, and never referred to the dead child ; 
 nor did she linger in his company, or suffer him 
 to seek her own. In spite of all she had felt in 
 the past or still felt in the present, the idea of 
 even that partnership with Gaston was revolting to 
 her. If, ah, fatal if! if she loved him, sh e 
 loathed him too. She was not sure she did love 
 him, of the two it was not his happiness that 
 she preferred : she never raised her eyes to look 
 at him, she never listened when she heard his 
 voice. As she became aware of this in her con-~ 
 stant self-examination, she was glad, with a sort 
 of stifled gladness, half believing she was about 
 to overcome ; and then as suddenly she feared that 
 these were the effects of her will and not of her 
 nature, that, if she refused to raise and rest her 
 eyes on Gaston s face, it was because the image 
 of that face was so deeply fastened in her soul 
 that she had no need to raise her eyes to see 
 what inwardly they so perpetually brooded 
 over. 
 
 Spring was hastening forward now in all the 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 147 
 
 land: the rivulets and runnels had burst their 
 icy scales asunder, and fringed their banks with 
 such a callow green that they seemed the very 
 highways by which she came. There was that 
 delicious promise in the air that lightens every 
 heart, and that ineffable fragrance that always 
 precedes the full breaking of the blossom : the 
 hope and happiness that start new-born with 
 every year pervaded all the household at Beau 
 desfords, all save Catherine. Beaudesfords 
 himself was as full of mounting gayety as the 
 tree-twigs are of sap hurrying to burst into leaf 
 age. Gaston sparkled in face and eye with joy 
 of the fresh weather, with a new determina 
 tion. Do you know what the determination was ? 
 He was going away when the water-works 
 were finished. 
 
 For Catherine s part, she followed Beaudesfords 
 about till Rose and Mrs. Stanhope made merry 
 over such manifestations of devotion ; and Mrs. 
 Stanhope stroked her sleek fur every day, con 
 gratulating herself that she had known what was 
 for her daughter s welfare better than that daugh 
 ter herself had known. But in reality Catherine 
 had wished to endeavor so to accustom herself 
 to him that she might find it impossible to do 
 
148 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 without him. She appealed to him on every 
 trifle ; she went to him with a thousand solici 
 tudes and confidences ; she studied his pleasures 
 as she had never done before ; she tried with all 
 her might to keep him ever before her, to make 
 him the subject of her waking and her sleeping 
 thoughts. Never had she been so humble, so 
 small in her own estimation. She wondered 
 one day, in looking in upon it, how she could 
 ever have been of a large and lofty type enough 
 to fill the ideal of the pure and passionless Ve 
 ronica, the bride of Heaven himself. And after 
 every thing was done, the whole endeavor and 
 humility, the dark, scarred face would rise before 
 her eyes and shut her out from all the world save 
 that, as she had seen it first when standing with 
 death at her feet, on that point of rock in the 
 midst of the swelling waters. This life again 
 then swept in a wave of warmth through all her 
 blissful veins, and hope and heaven gleamed for 
 her out of Arnold Gaston s eyes. Or else some 
 dream of the night, some lawless dream, where 
 Gaston reigned supreme, would lighten up a 
 livelong day with an insane happiness, till 
 night again came, night and that intense inner 
 loneliness which now had become so unbearable 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 149 
 
 to her, and in which peace and happiness were 
 lost with every thing else but horror. 
 
 April, with all its blue sky and silver showers, 
 had come and gone. It was May Day itself in 
 deed ; and Beaudesfords had stolen out to the 
 woods for the sweet and spicy May-flowers which 
 he loved, and with which he meant to surprise 
 Catherine on his return. He forgot the disastrous 
 end of the last surprise that had been studied 
 with a flower. Perhaps he would have arranged 
 it otherwise had he remembered ; for there was 
 just that atom of superstition about him to give 
 salt to his caprices. One thing and another busied 
 all the rest that morning. Catherine took up a 
 book that she had seen Beaudesfords reading, 
 it was one of her devices by which, if Gaston were 
 only away, she would have studied herself into 
 all due regard for Beaudesfords, and went with 
 it into the conservatory, wandering through the 
 alleys of the great, green palm-trees there, and 
 sitting down at last in the warm and enervating 
 atmosphere, impregnated with its deathly sweet 
 scents and dyed with blossom tints of deepest 
 azure and sharpest scarlet. 
 
 It was a version of an old Middle Age legend ; 
 and she had opened it at that place where the 
 
150 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 knight, conscience-stricken with his own treachery 
 to his king and friend, bids the lady farewell, 
 and crosses to his castles in the remote land, 
 remorse running at his stirrup. Catherine read 
 the chapter listlessly, not taking much impression 
 from its quaint old English, when suddenly a 
 finger was stretched before her on the page, 
 the finger of a brown and nervous hand following 
 along the lines, and Major Gaston read out 
 those words in which the betrayer of his friend 
 speaks to his mistress in an eternal parting. And 
 then, before the passage ended, his voice trembled 
 and stopped, and Catherine saw a great tear drop 
 upon the leaf. She turned her head slowly, and 
 looked up at the reader where he leaned one arm 
 on the stem of the tree, and the broad banana-leaf 
 spread its green shelter over him and hung its 
 clusters, like bunches of blood-tipped javelins, just 
 beyond. Since he was going then, since it was 
 all over, since this was the last, the last, the 
 first and last ! His head bent towards her, as 
 once before it had bent, towards her face up 
 turned like a flower to the sun, and then a rustle, 
 a foot-fall, a form, McRoy, perhaps. Catherine 
 started and picked up her fallen book, as Beaudes- 
 fords stooped to lift it for her. 
 
THE THIEF. IN THE NIGHT. 151 
 
 She rose trembling and defiant to confront him ; 
 but he tumbled the great pink bunches of the 
 May-flower into her arms, looking at them with 
 such an innocent face that she was simply amazed 
 into silence. "Just see how the native, wild 
 savor dissipates all these foreign scents, so rich 
 and so unreal ! " he exclaimed, as the wood-flowers 
 asserted their sovereignty. " It is like a morning 
 cock-crow scattering ghosts." 
 
 It was indeed. In the second that Catherine 
 stood there, inhaling that delicious breath, she 
 remembered all the days of her youth and her 
 innocence, countless truant noons when she was 
 a child and Beaudesfords a boy, and they went 
 wandering beneath the dark woodside shadows 
 and burrowing in the moss and leaves to bring up 
 f[\Q long brown wreaths loaded with their pink 
 tufts of beauty. How her father had kissed her 
 face all over once when she ran in with her hands 
 full of the fragrant treasure ! And these false, 
 false kisses for which a moment since she would 
 have pledged her soul, oh ! they stung, they 
 stung ! How he kissed her, her father, whom 
 she had worshipped, and when she was young and 
 innocent ! She gathered the armful of flowers to 
 her heart, and bowed her face down and hid it in 
 
152 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 the perfume of the soft petals. " Oh, Beaudes- 
 fords! how good you are to me!" she cried, be 
 fore she knew it, lifting a streaming face and 
 hurrying from the spot. 
 
 If Beaudesfords had till now been blind, he was 
 so 110 longer! That face of Catherine s raised 
 to the bending one above, that sudden start, that 
 defiant turn, those streaming tears, those words, 
 were like so many flashes of light. Slight 
 things, but all that were needed. For in an 
 instant a fabric rose before him complete from 
 basement to battlement, a cloud-built castle, 
 that, try as he might to puff it away, still hung 
 before his gaze, and out of whose every window 
 Catherine looked with eyes of love on Gaston. 
 
 Without delaying to exchange a word with 
 his remaining companion, Beaudesfords followed 
 Catherine from the conservatory, and then plunged 
 into his own den, up and down whose floor he 
 walked or bounded, like a caged leopard, half 
 the day. He was neither stunned nor stupefied, 
 but awake and receptive to his very pores : he 
 was writhing with pain at mistrusting Gaston, 
 with pain at Gaston s treachery to him. with 
 anger, with grief, with love for Catherine. That 
 night on the river, when she and Gaston in the 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 153 
 
 boat ran down among the breakers, took a new 
 meaning. If they had only told him at that time, 
 that time not yet three years ago, before it had 
 been too late ! He would have forgotten himself; 
 he would have compassed heaven and earth for 
 them. It hurt him more than it maddened him. 
 And then how was it possible to have such fears 
 and fancies concerning his white-souled wife ? 
 Why had he exposed her to temptation ? What 
 woman ever withstood Gaston ? Oh, if she had 
 come to him and confided in him and begged him 
 to take her away again, how he would have for 
 given, how he would have helped ! Ah, why not 
 leave the world and them together ? Then, in 
 hasty contradiction of all this, he endeavored to 
 become convinced, as one thing started up after 
 another in his memory, that blush, that staining, 
 branding blush with which his friend and wife 
 had met on the day when she returned to her 
 home and found him there ; that face, that wild, 
 white face, that on Christmas Eve searched the 
 storm with him ; their earnest pantomime a 
 little after ; her singing, and her saying, and her 
 silence ; her sudden illness and as sudden recov 
 ery ; looks, sighs, tears, surprises, deeds, that 
 they were suspicions, base suspicions, and ground- 
 
154 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 less. He raged and raved and spurned himself, 
 a husband and a friend, for entertaining them. 
 He recalled all Catherine s sweet submission of 
 late, as she had followed him, yielded to him, 
 humored him, studied him. He saw at least the 
 effort : he felt as though he were the guilty one, 
 since except for him no effort would be needed. 
 He passed through into what had once been his 
 own sleeping-room, the beautiful and spacious 
 place with its casement opening on the garden 
 and guarded by two giant firs ; and when he was 
 weary of gazing at the St. Veronica hanging 
 there, now more than ever like Catherine, as 
 he thought, he went out at last, declaring that 
 he must have been mad, merely mad, nor could he 
 insult his wife or Gaston by another doubt. 
 
 But suspicion is a serpent that, once startled, 
 has its head erect and hissing ever afterwards. 
 
 Beaudesfords bent his steps to the river : 
 the fresh air playing there would blow off all 
 these megrims, he said. He waved his hand to 
 Catherine in going, as he looked back at her 
 sitting on her balcony, where she saw the long, 
 large landscape bathed in the afternoon clearness 
 of May ; where she saw Gaston floating in his 
 boat, and following in and out the windings of 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 155 
 
 the stream. A shadow darkened Beaudesfords 
 face, and swept away again, as a cloud sweeps its 
 shadow over any sunny clover-field. He beckoned 
 Gaston to take him on board ; and shaping their 
 course up-stream, where the river ran in rapids 
 between the hills, the smooth outside of which 
 rapids they were wont to skirt, and then come 
 down like an arrow on their bosom, they were 
 soon out of sight. 
 
 Catherine had just risen to go in, an hour later, 
 when the boat came slipping down again before 
 the wind ; and she paused, standing there half- 
 turned, to watch its great white sail take on the 
 sunset tints, listlessly, and with little interest in 
 that, it seemed to her, or in any thing else in the 
 world. She saw the rosy flush catch the sail, as 
 she paused ; she saw the windy flaw from the 
 hills following fast behind it on the surface ; she 
 saw the boat rock and careen as the flaw struck 
 it, saw it dip its sail far over and down ; she saw 
 the two men in the water, struggling through the 
 stream for shore, and one she saw go down, 
 and one, the fair head, the fresh face, .Beaudes 
 fords , stood safe and whole upon the river-bank ; 
 and had a bullet pierced her brain, she could not 
 have dropped more instantly. Had she kept con- 
 
156 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 trol of her pulses one moment longer, she would 
 have seen Beaudesfords dash in and down again, 
 and bring up his companion to the capsized boat s 
 edge, till together they loosened the rope that had 
 entangled and held him under, and together 
 reached the shore once more, rather in glee over 
 the adventure than in gloom over such an approach 
 to disaster. " Cannot a woman faint with joy on 
 finding her husband safe, as soon as with despair 
 at finding his rival drowned ? " asked Beaudesfords 
 of himself by and by, when he had heard of Cath 
 erine s mishap. Yet reason with such willing 
 sophistries as he might, something told him that 
 sophistries they were ; and from that day there 
 was no more rest for Beaudesfords. The uncon- 
 sidered atoms that had floated formlessly in mind 
 and memory had taken shape and consciousness. 
 It was the last setting of the crystal. " It is 
 strange," said he to Gaston, in bidding him good 
 night, " that we need oblivion half our life in 
 order to endure the other half." 
 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 157 
 
 XYI. 
 
 EVERY one within the walls of the great house 
 of Beaudesfords felt now some ferment going on 
 there : with the unconscious as well as with the 
 conscious ones a strange agitation seemed to be 
 everywhere present. Hearts beat and temples 
 fluttered, and all alike had that sensation of pre 
 sentiment which we feel in beginning to -dread 
 the neighborhood of some unknown evil. 
 
 It was not Gaston now that wrought out prob 
 lems, but Beaudesfords, who, watchful as a lynx, 
 was constantly putting two and two together : as 
 if by some clairvoyant sympathy, he heard, he 
 felt, he saw every thing ; no tone, no glance, es 
 caped him. One thing alone escaped, the fact 
 that Catherine desired of him the support and 
 protection he had sworn to afford her, desired 
 him to save her. But Beaudesfords was mortal, 
 and bitter things began to work within him and 
 bring his better nature to naught. 
 
158 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 Catherine had seen now, with the positive 
 assurance of one who comes face to face with 
 a terrible consequence, that Gaston must go, 
 if rest, if any feeble goodness, if Beaudesfords, 
 if life were hers, Gaston must go. Meanwhile, 
 Gaston seemed to have changed roles with Beau 
 desfords : it was he who had become restless, and 
 almost gay, and irresolute withal, as the other 
 never was ; for still that determination of his 
 hung on the cloud like a bow of promise, and 
 because he meant to go he regarded himself as 
 magnanimous as if he had already gone. 
 
 They were out-doors in the mild May weather 
 almost constantly. Mrs. Stanhope, desirous nev 
 er to grow so old as to be excluded from her 
 children s pleasures, sent carpet and sewing-chair 
 out on the green grass-plot. Even Caroline had 
 a heap of afghans and cushions spread on the 
 wicker garden-seats, where, after the sun was 
 high, she reclined in elegant valetudinarianism, 
 and fretted because Catherine and Beaudesfords 
 were so stupid as to have no company in such an 
 Italian season ; while Rose and Catherine fol 
 lowed McRoy through the aisles and avenues, 
 trimming and training, the one delighted, the 
 other soothed, by helping bud and blossom to 
 burst out freely into such happy sunshine. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 159 
 
 Rose came up the garden one of these pleasant 
 afternoons, followed by an artistic vagabond, who, 
 wayfaring from town to town, had stopped at 
 Beaudesfords to beg for a repast. She made him 
 leave his basket of rude images in the path while 
 she should take him round to Mrs. Grey, to be 
 refreshed in the housekeeper s hospitable domain, 
 and then came back herself to lift the cover from 
 the basket and explore its contents. 
 
 " I always had a fancy for this sort of thing," 
 said Rose, " and so had my lady Beaudesfords 
 when she was plain Catherine. Caroline, now, 
 was too grand: she would none of them" 
 
 "Give her parian or give her death," said 
 Gaston. 
 
 "But give me parian or give me plaster. Yes: 
 to tell a secret, when Catherine and I have been 
 in bliss over the sumptuousness of our parlor", 
 decorated by a cream-colored Dante, price twenty 
 cents, standing on a bracket, first painted green 
 and then smeared with yellow-dust as a true and 
 original bronze, then Caroline, with malice afore 
 thought, has been known deliberately to smash 
 the said Dante, and to wish she could do it 
 again ! " 
 
 " I m sure I did ! " said Caroline, with a 
 
160 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 flicker of energy. " They were always nonsen 
 sical caricatures, false to art, and only true to 
 poverty, which I detest ! " 
 
 "Maybe," said Rose. "But Catherine and I 
 love them. Catherine s own room here is half 
 full of them. Do you know, Mrs. Beaudesfords, 
 that sometimes you put me in mind of that Nea 
 politan beggar-girl who married a prince, and ate 
 so little at table that they watched her, and found 
 she secreted many and various crusts about her 
 self, and when she entered her closet divided 
 these crusts among the empty chairs and lounges 
 there, and then humbly went round the room on 
 her knees and begged of each chair and table its 
 crust, and retiring into a corner with her gains 
 munched away upon them to the tune of a hearty 
 appetite?" 
 
 " Were poverty and Stanhope Cottage so much 
 sweeter than the present?" asked Beaudesfords, 
 with sudden rudeness, and in so sharp a tone 
 that every one had turned. 
 
 " Not poverty," said Catherine. " But Stan 
 hope Cottage was always sweet, though never so 
 sweet as Beaudesfords has been." 
 
 "And is not!" 
 
 " Dear Beaudesfords," she answered gently, but 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 161 
 
 courageously, " perhaps there is something wrong 
 here, some unnatural element just now, or else 
 we should all be so happy in this heavenly place, 
 being alive and well, and with such beautiful 
 weather." And she went back to lopping her 
 roses ; while Beaudesfords repeated her words, 
 " Some unnatural element " and strolled down 
 the path, his chin upon his breast. 
 
 " Beaudesfords is dyspeptic," said Gaston. " I 
 have seen the time myself when an apple-dump 
 ling changed the face of creation." 
 
 Rose sprang down the path after him at the 
 words, and brought him back with her to inspect 
 the basket. "It is absurd to say you have dys 
 pepsia," she cried. " Don t you dare to be ill ! 
 There is enough fever round already. The houses 
 down in the Great Wood are all reeking with 
 typhus." 
 
 " My poor boy," said Mrs. Stanhope, with more 
 motherliness than she was accustomed to exhibit, 
 and putting her hands in his curls as he knelt 
 with Rose, " I am a little worried about you now. 
 I am afraid you are not well." 
 
 " Don t agitate yourself about me, Mamma 
 Stanhope," he answered, with a quick change of 
 manner, taking her hand and kissing it. " You 
 
162 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 are far too good to me. I never had a mother 
 of my own. But you are dearer than a dozen. 
 What a kind and wise little woman ! But, for 
 all that, you have made some mistakes in your 
 life." 
 
 " Come, come ! " cried Rose : " will Catherine 
 suffer you to sentimentalize over Mamma Stan 
 hope in this way? A man cannot marry his 
 grandmother ! Lose yourself in these treasures, 
 my friend. Shakespeare for a dime ; Caesar at 
 half the money. Such is fame ! What a feast 
 of plaster and flow of pennies this would have 
 been for us once, Catherine, when it cost us such 
 arguments to decide how to spend our allowance 
 of fourpence-ha penny, and an image-boy was a 
 messenger of the gods ! Look at this Madonna ; 
 and here is Rachel herself. Think of the price 
 less PhMre for two shillings ! " 
 
 " The chiefest pose in all the 4 slim Hebrew s 
 repertory for two shillings," repeated Gaston, 
 looking over their shoulders. 
 
 " And dear at any money ! " cried Beaudes- 
 fords, rising. " Tell me the value of any repre 
 sentation of perjury and passion ! Are unfaithful 
 wives so rare that they should be preserved and 
 sealed like flies in amber ? What was Phedre ? 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 163 
 
 A woman possessed by supernatural evil, as an 
 other woman was possessed by seven devils. Pos 
 sessed by Venus, maddened by Yenus her sole 
 claim that she is the ideal and apotheosis of every 
 woman that has been, that is, that ever will be 
 false to the husband to whom she pledged her 
 faith ! " As he spoke, he flung down the little 
 image that he had held, and with his foot crushed 
 it to fragments, then gathered up the fragments 
 at a stroke and tossed them into the little lake, 
 the wind of their motion whistling by Catherine s 
 face as she sat upon the edgestone that bounded 
 its border in that portion, while sharpening her 
 knife, and not once glancing aside or up. Gaston 
 saw the dull, determined look settling over her 
 features, as the waters flashed to meet the broken 
 fragments ; and Beaudesfords saw it too, and 
 stood and stayed to survey it a long, scornful 
 moment. She slowly raised her eyes, aware of 
 his: he might have read in them her indignant 
 protest, her asseverance of truthful endeavor, 
 her prayer for help, but he saw there only a 
 defiant declaration. 
 
 " Well, my friends," continued Beaudesfords, 
 directly, before they had well taken breath after 
 his outbreak, " tell Mrs. Grey to pay our wayfarer 
 
164 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 for my spoliation ; and, as we have had enough 
 of heroics, I think I will go and explore into the 
 nature of this fever-district that Rose tells us 
 about." 
 
 " Now, for pity s sake, do be careful, Beau- 
 desfords!" cried Caroline. "Don t be bringing 
 home the infection, and having us all down with 
 the disease ! " 
 
 " Entertain no fears," said Beaudesfords. " Do 
 you want I should promise you that, henceforth, I 
 will myself monopolize all the ill things, as here 
 tofore I have monopolized all the good things, of 
 this life?" 
 
 Hope departed from Catherine as she heard 
 Beaudesfords saying these taunting things. She 
 had been asking herself on that same afternoon, 
 if, since she could do no better, it were not 
 even best to go to him herself, to say to him: 
 " My friend, a year ago we were so happy to 
 gether! I reverenced you, my affection grew 
 with the days. Now a fatal influence overshadows 
 us : not a passion, since I will not yield to it ; not 
 a love, since I despise it, since I detest myself and 
 its object equally. To-day it seems that all is lost 
 but honor. Yet you, by taking me away, can 
 save to me peace, happiness, reason." Possibly 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 165 
 
 she would not have shaped her cry in any such 
 grandiloquent phrase ; but that would have been 
 its meaning ; and he, perhaps, at any other time, 
 would have received it kindly, since he had mar 
 ried her knowing love was absent, accepting then 
 her own terms, and feeling not the full right to 
 complain if his mistake worked woe. But now, 
 when there had been made such a revolution of 
 all the old sweetness in his nature, while he was 
 in this vindictive and savage mood, she, not 
 wholly innocent, dared not appeal to him: she 
 feared him, and would have abased herself in the 
 dust before him, uncertain if he would not trample 
 upon her. 
 
166 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 IT was a wild week to Catherine. She recalled 
 without ceasing what Beaudesfords had said of 
 PhMre ; and it appeared to her that she was only 
 a modern counterpart of that wretched being her 
 self, weakened with the dilution of civilized blood, 
 but as wanton, as wicked, as demon-driven. She 
 moved about the house, possibly more stonily cold 
 than ever, but glad at least that her mother and 
 sisters were too deeply occupied with their own 
 preparations for approaching gayeties to give 
 heed to the tragedy taking place beneath their 
 eyes. 
 
 And would Gaston go if she implored him? 
 It came to that at last. Very likely provided 
 she went with him. What could she do but die, 
 hunted to the death by both these cruel men ! 
 
 But had Gaston no gratitude, no love for Beau 
 desfords, no noble side that would give her the 
 help which now she dared not ask from the other ? 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 167 
 
 Was it to be believed that, if she begged of him 
 this one and only thing, if she besought him 
 not to drag her into certain misery, but to leave 
 her, he would refuse it ? As she thought of it, 
 forgetting that the entreaty was confession, it 
 grew already real to her, the words she would 
 say, his reply, their farewell, or peradventure 
 no reply, nothing but absence, peace then, and 
 by and by eternity. Her brain grew clear as 
 if filled with a great light, she fell into her first 
 unhaunted slumber for many a weary midnight, 
 and it was on the next day that she wrote, 
 wrote in the whirl of that inner tumult in which 
 she had lived of late, which made it impossible 
 for her to question or weigh, to wonder if, instead 
 of love, it were not rather hatred, and pity 
 because of the hatred, that this man made her 
 feel when she desperately folded her paper, to 
 consider if she were not ruled by a mere fascina 
 tion of habit, to ask what it meant that she should 
 seek thus to preserve Beaudesfords peace at the 
 cost of Gaston s. It is true that it occurred to 
 her that the woman who had the strength to make 
 such a request had also the strength to recover 
 herself without any request at all, but she put 
 the thought away : she chose to write ; it was the 
 
168 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 single sacrifice that she would make to Gaston 
 to whom she had no right to sacrifice at all. 
 
 Only one person saw that note. It was not 
 long. But could it have been any thing else than 
 an outpouring of all that which had scorched and 
 seared her heart and soul ? Imploring Gaston to 
 grant her prayer by all their mutual emotion, by 
 all their gratitude to Beaudesfords, did not the 
 prayer itself attest whatever the eagerest lover 
 longs to hear? Perhaps, since this was all, the 
 first word and the last, she said, as once in the 
 conservatory she had said or dreamed before, 
 greeting and farewell, perhaps since this closed 
 all the rest, and rolled the stone against the tomb, 
 she wrote what, an hour later, she would have 
 given her best hopes of the hereafter not to have 
 written at all. For whether the words were pas 
 sionate acknowledgment of what once was but 
 now existed no longer, or whether they were 
 slight and feeble phrases of request, to her 
 proud soul, when the reaction came, the mere 
 pencilling of them seemed a shameful crime. 
 She did not direct her note, or seal it: it was 
 unnecessary when Gaston was to receive it from 
 herself. She never paused to think how dangerous 
 a step she had taken, nor that black and white 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 169 
 
 are inflexible witnesses, but went down to dinner 
 with the note hidden in her handkerchief, 
 wearing a radiant face, persuaded she was safe. 
 
 Catherine had remembered that it was Beau- 
 desfords who always rose from table to hold the 
 door open while Mrs. Stanhope and her daughters 
 passed out, on occasions when the gentlemen 
 lingered over their wine, as lately they had fre 
 quently done. And, sitting next Gaston, when 
 she rose she laid the note upon his hand as it 
 rested along his knee just beneath the cloth. It 
 seemed to her, as she performed it, so cowardly 
 and contemptible and reprehensible an action, 
 that she sickened. Her heart gave a deadly leap 
 as she left the note : she grew so pale that Gaston 
 himself had sprung to the door before Beaudes- 
 fords had more than risen ; and then Beaudesfords, 
 undisturbed and cool, resumed his seat. But as 
 he did so, the little note, that had fluttered to the 
 floor unheeded, caught his eye : he stooped and 
 raised it, uncertain to whom it belonged. He 
 glanced at Catherine ; and with the glance, as if 
 a whole revelation had been suddenly made, he 
 took his wallet out and dropped the note therein, 
 and hid it again in his breast-pocket. 
 
 Catherine had seen it all. She hesitated an 
 8 
 
170 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 instant at the door, hesitated in that gracious 
 and slow-moulded way of hers : she turned to go 
 back and demand it, but at that moment two gen 
 tlemen were conducted through the hall to Beau- 
 desfords den, as his private business-room was 
 called ; and before she could gather wits or words 
 Beaudesfords had excused himself to Gaston, and 
 had passed out through another door to join the 
 strangers. And Catherine felt that she had signed 
 her own death-warrant. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 171 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 WHEN Beaudesfords appeared in the drawing- 
 room some two hours later, his face was as pale 
 as Catherine s. He had been using camphor- 
 water freely, and he shook an atmosphere of it 
 around himself from his handkerchief as he lifted 
 the curtain of the inner room. 
 
 " I should think you were a whole hospital- 
 ward!" cried Caroline. 
 
 " Are you ill, Beaudesfords ? " asked Mamma 
 Stanhope. 
 
 " Not exactly. A little." 
 
 " You ate nothing, I noticed," she began, with 
 her stately sort of bustle. " You" 
 
 "I have been down in>the typhus-district. It 
 is the reason I was away from home last night." 
 
 " Oh, Beaudesfords ! " cried Rose. " And those 
 strangers were " 
 
 " My lawyers. I sent for them as soon as I 
 discovered the malignant character of the disease 
 where I had been." 
 
172 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " How absurdly you talk ! As if " 
 
 " I have been making my will, little Eose in 
 Bloom. I sent for them the lawyers in case 
 of accident. Since dinner the accident became 
 a certainty" 
 
 " What on earth do you mean, Beaudesfords ? 
 A certainty ? " cried Caroline. 
 
 " To me ! Perhaps not to another. On the 
 whole, I don t know that a man can have a more 
 enjoyable occupation than that of making his 
 will. He disproves the old adage that you can t 
 have your cake and eat it too ; for he gives away 
 every thing, and keeps it notwithstanding." 
 
 " But, my dear boy," said Mrs. Stanhope im 
 peratively, " I can t listen to any such badinage. 
 Lawyers and wills and typhuses ! Those wretched 
 people down there in the Great Wood have 
 preyed upon your feelings, and wrought you into 
 a nervous headache that you would persuade 
 yourself, as all men do, must be incurable. 
 You will drink this strong tea and be better." 
 
 " Thank you, Mamma Stanhope. You are as 
 good as a doctor. Nevertheless, I shall have 
 Ruthven, and I shall take my own old rooms 
 again, the St. Veronica suite, you know, so 
 that if I have brought home the confounded in- 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 173 
 
 fection, as Caroline prophesied the other day, 
 Catherine may be safe." 
 
 " Oh, Beaudesfords ! " cried Catherine. And 
 then she stopped, for it came over her in a burn 
 ing rush from head to foot where it was possible 
 he might have read those last three words. " Oh, 
 Beaudesfords!" she cried again. But she dared 
 say no more ; for, in spite of his pleasantry, his 
 eye was as glittering as an eagle s. But if he 
 were ill, and she were to be shut out in this way, 
 she stood up suddenly, and as suddenly sat 
 down again, believing that she was growing 
 wild. 
 
 " By the way, Gaston," said Beaudesfords 
 then, " I have left you the St. Veronica." 
 
 Gaston answered nothing. 
 
 " The St. Veronica and half my fortune, old 
 boy. It is not your fault if you survive me. The 
 other half I leave, as the will says, to my dear 
 and honored wife." 
 
 Gaston and Catherine alone understood the 
 sarcasm of tone and speech, knowing its every 
 word was studied. 
 
 Then Beaudesfords set down his teacup, and 
 arose. 
 
 " If you will send for Ruthven, Mamma Stan- 
 
174 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 hope," said he, " I will go to my quarters. Good- 
 by, little Rose, I think you would be sorry if 
 any thing happened to me. That is the polite 
 euphemism, is it not ? Don t follow me, friends. 
 I am to be left alone. Frye sleeps in the room 
 beyond, and sleeps soundly too, the door is 
 closed, and I ring if I need him. I want no at 
 tendance, please. Be sure that I am obeyed." 
 
 " But, Beaudesfords I believe you are de 
 lirious already ! " exclaimed Caroline. " What 
 sort of directions for a man threatened with a 
 fever ! Why, when I am sick, I want every 
 body ! " 
 
 " Be sure that I am obeyed," replied Beaudes 
 fords, in his gentlest, firmest tone. " Make as 
 merry as you may, till I return to make merry 
 with you. Good-night." He lifted the silken 
 curtains, and they fell behind him heavily, swing 
 ing and subsiding in their long folds ; and as 
 Catherine watched them, it flashed upon her, 
 with swift portent and premonition, that over 
 Beaudesfords bright head they were never to 
 part again. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 175 
 
 XIX. 
 
 BEAUDESFORDS had scarcely entered the so long 
 unused room, which now, according to his pre 
 vious order, he found prepared for him, and 
 which once he had fitted lip in a splendor of boy 
 ish caprice, saying that, if the St. Veronica could 
 no longer hang in a cathedral niche, she should 
 at least look down on private and lay magnif 
 icence, when there was a tap upon the door, it 
 was pushed open, and Catherine had entered. 
 
 Her first glance showed her Beaudesfords bend 
 ing over a portfolio that lay on a little stand of 
 writing-materials near the head of the bed, while 
 he hid his wallet doubtless with her note in it, 
 she believed between the portfolio leaves. She 
 hardly noticed the corpse-like whiteness of his 
 face, nor the peculiar rigidity of his movements, 
 as if the nerves of volition were strained to their 
 last pitch of endurance, so in the instant did she 
 long for some word wicked enough, some cabalisni, 
 
176 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 witchcraft, diabolism, strong enough to possess for 
 her the thing that wallet held, to destroy it, to 
 annihilate it, that note! That writing which 
 was not to save her happiness, but to ri^in Beau- 
 desfords ! That writing which, at this moment, 
 appeared to her to be a lie, and the record of a 
 lie, from beginning to end ! It may be that the 
 actual longing was strong enough virtually ; for 
 all at once, as if relieved of a nightmare s press 
 ure, she asked what odds it made to her how 
 long Gaston stayed in the place ? Was she not 
 the wife of Beaudesfords, honored and honoring, 
 seeking his happiness ? Could she not entertain 
 his friends, one or another, indifferently ? Did 
 not his very right to her duty, his right as a hus 
 band, give him the dignity and manhood she 
 loved ? What nobility he had displayed, what 
 loftiness, glad now to die and give the thing he 
 valued most to the one who would have spoiled 
 him of it, magnanimity of which the other man, 
 little better than a beggar on his bounty, no better 
 than a traitor to his faith, was destitute and 
 naked ! And as she saw Beaudesfords nature 
 take its peerless proportions, Gaston s shrank to 
 a recreant shape, and disappeared in nothingness. 
 It seemed to her as if some lightning-stroke had 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 177 
 
 struck her, and remade her in that swift moment, 
 as if she had been born again another woman 
 with another heart ! If she could only get back 
 that note unread, that lie unuttered, if now she 
 could but be Beaudesfords own, henceforth and 
 for ever ! 
 
 " Catherine ! " exclaimed her husband, coming 
 towards her. " Here ! when I forbade it ? " 
 
 " Oh, Beaudesfords, if you will only let me 
 stay!" she cried, clasping her hands. 
 
 " When I forbade it ? " 
 
 " I cannot have you ill and keep away myself," 
 she said hotly. " I must be with you ! I am 
 your wife ! I claim my right ! " 
 
 " You are my wife," he said. " And it is fit 
 you should remind me of it." 
 
 " Do not speak to me so, Beaudesfords ! If you 
 are ill, I must I must take care of you ! Oh, 
 Beaudesfords, if you love me ! " 
 
 " And you dare you dare to say it ! " 
 
 Catherine never could rehearse that scene 
 exactly to her own memory, as mere remem 
 brance. Trying to recall it, she no longer remem 
 bered, she lived it ! She -was in it, it wrapped 
 her like the whirlwind, she breathed it over 
 again. Again she heard his voice in her ears, 
 
 8* 
 
178 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " And you dare, you dare to say it ! " Again 
 she was caught in his arms, pressed close, close to 
 his convulsive heart; her face, her hands, her 
 cheeks, her forehead, her mouth, covered with 
 great passionate kisses. " Good-by, good-by, my 
 darling! " she could hear him murmur, all bitter 
 ness melted away. " God knows, God knows I 
 love you ! " and the door was locked between 
 them. 
 
 She crouched there beside the door, listening 
 to his hurried walk, that never ceased till Mrs. 
 Stanhope brought Dr. Ruthven to the place. 
 The one was allowed entrance, the other excluded 
 by a sign and without a word, for Beaudesfords 
 had his own idea, in sending for the Doctor, 
 intending perhaps that to-night s illness should 
 answer for to-morrow s discovery ; and Catherine 
 heard no more, except as the Doctor told her. 
 
 Beaudesfords was ill, Dr. Ruthven said ; a 
 slight attack ; nothing serious, though ; no typhus 
 whatever. His nerves had been wrought upon 
 by something or other till he was half beside him 
 self. He must be humored: that had been always 
 necessary with a- Beaudesfords. It had been one 
 of his crotchets, ever since he was a boy, to isolate 
 himself if he were ill. The wild creatures of the 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 179 
 
 woods felt the same. It only showed how near he 
 was to Nature.. He would ring if he wanted any 
 thing : at present, he demanded to be left abso 
 lutely alone. If he should become any worse, 
 they would need to reason with him. Meanwhile, 
 a composing powder. Then Dr. Ruthven recom 
 mended, with a somewhat ominous voice, that 
 servants should be stationed in Frye s room, to 
 hear if Beaudesfords expressed a wish, or to assist 
 Frye, if need were ; and he promised to be in 
 again by daybreak, for the Doctor had reached 
 that age when men think it a merit in them to 
 rise before the sun. And, after that, the good man 
 went home, persuaded that, as he could detect 
 nothing alarming ailing his patient, Beaudesfords 
 was only preparing, by the aid of his slight indis 
 position, a fright for Gaston and my lady that 
 would do them both good to the end of their 
 lives, and heartily willing to co-operate with him 
 to the extent of his deceptive abilities, which, as 
 he had already proved, were not small. 
 
 It was a June night of heavy dews. As the 
 starlight entered and made her a companion of 
 strange shadows, Catherine walked silently up 
 and down the hall, hearkening every now and 
 then for some word or signal from within the 
 
180 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 room. But none came ; and the hours grew long 
 and longer, while silver clocks chimed them to 
 one another all down the suites of rooms, and up 
 the distant stairways. The light burned till 
 broad day in the western wing. Mrs. Stanhope 
 and Rose came gently down, to see how all was 
 going, when midnight had just passed. Catherine 
 sent them back, and still walked along the tufted 
 mattings, with her weary thoughts and the star- 
 cast shadows for companions. Not a sound, not 
 a murmur, not a breath, came from the sick 
 man s room. Beaudesfords slept, she said to 
 herself : he would waken in the morning, after 
 such refreshing slumber, waken well. If only 
 she could get that note of hers before he should 
 have read it, he would waken well and happy. 
 He had not read it yet, she said. She felt confi 
 dent of that : his honor did not sit so lightly on 
 Beaudesfords as to let him open a paper belonging 
 to another. There had not come a rustle to indi 
 cate as much, since she had waited there ; and 
 what time had he had before ? Forgetting what 
 he had said in the drawing-room about an acci 
 dent s becoming a certainty, or else not having 
 comprehended then the meaning of his words, 
 forgetting, too, that a goaded and crazed curiosity 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 181 
 
 might be as potent an element as honor, forget 
 ting, in the agitation of the hour, that that note 
 had not been addressed to another or to any one. 
 Her solicitude began to take the shape of a mania 
 concerning the thing. If she could but get it 
 back in her possession, what a bright and cheerful 
 day lay before her ! What a life ! What useful 
 ness, and what delight, to wander hand in hand 
 with her husband down its slope ! How she 
 would go to Beaudesfords herself, without a 
 blush, and tell him this secret -of hers, this 
 thing that she had learned since purple twilight 
 had shut down over all the rosy world ! She 
 walked the long hall more proudly, with an 
 assured step. She answered the mute challenge 
 of those phantom-like portraits on the wall, with 
 their dim eyes following her in the starlight, 
 she also was an honest, happy Beaudesfords ! Not 
 once did she think of Gaston : she only wept that 
 she had delayed her happiness so long. 
 
 Then Catherine questioned with herself if it 
 were not practicable for her to obtain that note, 
 after all. If he slept, and she stole it from the 
 portfolio, and he never knew for years and years 
 the danger they had escaped ! The idea was no 
 sooner hers than she commenced making it a 
 
182 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 fact, going swiftly up into her own sitting-room 
 where Olympe slumbered loudly, half slipped 
 from the great chair, and preparing a similar 
 piece of paper to put in its place when she should 
 have laid hands upon the original. 
 
 Down again : all was still. Softly opening the 
 long hall casement and creeping across the ve 
 randa, over the steps, and out upon the dewy 
 garden-paths. She remembered that Beaudes- 
 fords had set his own casement ajar : she saw it 
 now as it swung half-open, guarded by its two 
 mute sentinels of towering trees. She was sure 
 then that he slept. Nothing disturbed the hush 
 of night that hung over the garden. The Triton 
 blew his horn, and its water-drops flashed faint 
 and far into the little lake ; the leaves rustled 
 gently and viewlessly among themselves ; now 
 and then a dew-drop fell and pattered from one 
 to another ; now and then a puff of wind shook 
 them all to fragrance, and passed. The great 
 heavy-headed roses slept beside the way; the 
 honeysuckle s perfect breath enriched the wind 
 that crept across the alleys. Overhead the large 
 soft summer stars seemed to wheel in a languid 
 dream. You could fancy that from their vast 
 heights they already saw the morning dawn, 
 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 183 
 
 but here it was cool, dark, dewy, and delicious 
 night. Catherine swept through the dew-sweet 
 alleys, her gown gathered about her, pushed fur 
 ther open the casement that she sought, stepped 
 in. The light burned dimly there, would ex 
 pire ere long. She could just see Beaudesfords 
 by the faint ray, as she stood there a moment, 
 while the same ray fell on her face and form 
 framed by the night behind ; could see him lying 
 back upon his pillow, with his eyes closed, and 
 breathing the heavy breath of one who forgets 
 fatigue. Noiseless, with haste, she stole to the 
 little stand near his bed, tore open the portfolio, 
 found the wallet except for some bank-bills 
 empty. She stifled the cry that rose to her lips, 
 ah, he knew all, then ! She turned, and would 
 have gone ; but something, that irresistible finger 
 of fate, it seemed to her, when by and by its re 
 membrance gave her a sort of solace, compelled 
 her for one moment yet to stay, to bend above 
 Beaudesfords, careless whether he woke or not, 
 to press her lips gently, lingeringly, long, upon his 
 forehead, and then, without a look behind her, 
 she stole away as she had come, through the still 
 and sleeping garden, while the cry of a watch 
 dog was answered by that of some more distant 
 
184 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 farm, till the hillsides swallowed all the baying 
 echoes in silence. 
 
 When the sound of her last footfall had ceased 
 upon the path, Beaudesfords slowly dragged him 
 self up to the dull light and held there, to read 
 its script once more, the paper in his hand, a 
 letter written and addressed to her, enclosing in 
 its leaves that fatal note which she had come to 
 seek and come too late. He felt still that soft 
 and lingering kiss upon his forehead, a kiss of 
 pity, forsooth ! and he desired no pity. Yet, in 
 spite of that, he held his hand a little while above 
 it, as if the common air might wipe its seal away. 
 
 " Catherine," Beaudesfords had written, " I 
 can refuse you nothing. And is there any thing 
 of which I would rob Gaston ? See, I have 
 discovered at last the secret between you. I 
 should have known it earlier. If I stole my 
 knowledge I am about to pay the old penalty 
 of theft. It was my fault that I ever came be 
 tween you. I am going now to leave you. My 
 darling, I have found life sweet, how sweet! 
 God, how sweet ! Yet I can bear to sur 
 render it, because after this there is another, 
 and there, there, there, you will be mine ! 
 Though your beautiful flesh be his, your soul 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 185 
 
 shall be mine ! through all the ages of eternity 
 shall be mine ! I am assured of it, I can wait 
 for it, I shall have bought it with my blood ! " 
 
 He lay a little while, when he had finished 
 reading it, with the letter underneath his face, as 
 if in itself it were something dear to him. Then 
 he half rose, seeing the candle flicker and fearing 
 lest the light should die first and leave him to 
 make failure in the dark, a moment too late, 
 for, as he thought of it, the flame fell. He sank 
 back, and as one hour and another went by he 
 lay there in the dusk till twilight began to sift 
 across it, a twilight, he felt, that was to usher 
 in no common day for him, but was rather the 
 aurora of that divine dawning whose day was to 
 have no end. The world had already begun to 
 recede from him, the agony of renunciation had 
 passed into an obscure aching, at last that in turn 
 was stilled : he had abandoned all ; and now his 
 great freeholds, his manhood and strength and 
 beauty, his wife, his friend, his troops of friends, 
 could not with all their intertwisted fibres hold 
 his spirit down. It was not indifference that pos 
 sessed him, it was eagerness, eagerness to be 
 up and away. Now in the misty mood of this 
 soft half-light, before the sunlight should make 
 
186 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 the bright earth an actual thing once more, he 
 must make haste to be gone : he took up the tiny 
 knife that lay sharp and glittering beside him, 
 stretched out his bared arm with its hand clenched 
 till the veins stood forth large and livid, and then 
 the knife had done its work and had fallen on the 
 coverlet, and a purple stream was gushing silently 
 down and away with his life. He had grasped 
 the folded letter in his other hand, and he lay 
 now with his eyes upon the sweet rejoicing eyes 
 of the St. Veronica, shining softly and dimly as 
 a ghost in the gloom, before him and above him 
 on the wall. " It is my expiation," said Beaudes- 
 fords to himself. " I do no wrong now it can 
 not be. I did wrong then, two years ago and 
 over : I forgot every one but myself, now I for 
 get myself. They, too, will forget me, they 
 will smile and be happy, the summer weather 
 will make them glad again, the winter snows 
 shall not chill them. Me, only, shall they chill, 
 cold long before. God bless them oh, God 
 bless them ! Ah, ah, how softly you desert me, 
 treacherous life! Drop by drop, and one drop 
 leaves me here, and between that and the next 
 I go for the light fails the day dies I see 
 nothing but that face, sweet face, stamped in 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 187 
 
 upon my soul, shining out of the dark Cathe 
 rine whom I love " 
 
 The morning wind had long since begun to 
 breathe far off in the listening night: now it 
 quivered up the river-course and ruffled all the 
 forest and the field, crept along the garden-aisles 
 and under all the bosky shields of lightening 
 green, trembled through the boughs of the great 
 guardian firs as though through mighty harp- 
 strings, blew in the open casement and lightly 
 lifted all the yellow locks upon that ivory fore 
 head. Then it swept out again into the garden, 
 waiting in the gray of dawn with its fragrance 
 and freshness and sparkle ; for every thing there 
 told of motion and life and joy, and here all 
 things waited for Death. 
 
188 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 XX. 
 
 THE snowy silken curtains had been loosed from 
 their cords of gold, and only swayed gently in the 
 breeze that crept through the blinds, sweeping 
 their heavy fringes along the floor, and filling the 
 room with a soft and sacred gloom, as Gaston 
 still stood there gazing down at Beaudesfords 
 lying in the filtered light which made the atmos 
 phere about him seem like that of some other 
 world. The house was without a sound ; for 
 Caroline s hysterics, and Mrs. Stanhope s heavy 
 steps to and fro in her own room, were hushed 
 by closed doors and distance. Beaudesfords lay, 
 as he had been left in Dr. Ruthven s hurried 
 absence, like one who sleeps upon his pillow, and 
 not yet robed in the final habiliments, for the 
 people had said, in their ghastly jargon, that it 
 would be easier to clothe one in that condition 
 to-morrow than to-day ; nor had the warmth of 
 life quite ebbed in these two hours. That horrid 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 189 
 
 sharpness which the features of the dead, the 
 faint, and the cataleptic share alike, had slowly 
 and entirely passed away, the eyelids had partially 
 closed, an utter calm lay on the white face, and 
 something so like a smile had settled round those 
 chiselled lips, that it seemed now far more the 
 sweet slumber of fatigue than that eternal sleep 
 which knows no waking in the flesh. There was 
 a majesty about that prostrate form with which 
 not all the helplessness that wraps the dead could 
 do away, that abandoned helplessness which 
 cannot give back look for look, which is forced 
 to suffer the reading of secrets hidden once by 
 bloom and smile and sparkle, but now all plainly 
 written to the eye that knows the cipher, that 
 helplessness which leaves the dead at the mercy 
 of the gazer, exposed to love or scorn alike. 
 This majesty of Beaudesfords was something now 
 superior to clay or to corruption : as if the monarch 
 of creation, Death, which is the life everlasting, 
 held his state in such dust that day. 
 
 But while he gazed upon this mould of death, 
 a living flame seemed to have heated Gaston s 
 memory : every day, every hour, every word of 
 his intercourse with Beaudesfords started up in it 
 complete, and their black shadows stalked through 
 
190 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 this fiery furnace, as if to assure him of their im 
 mortality, and of the fact that he should never 
 be forgotten by them in their haunting power. 
 The wrongs he had done the dead man looked 
 him in the face with their evil eyes, the treachery 
 to his friend upbuoyed all these wrongs like an 
 element to which they were native, a heavy, 
 leaden element into which they could never sink 
 and drown fathoms deep. Beaudesfords long 
 service of loving-kindness became like the fester 
 ing wound of a poisoned blade, one sharp and 
 bitter agony of remembrance. Such confused 
 and terrible images were shaping themselves in 
 his mind, like the phantasmal outlines of those 
 wavering exhalations that rise from regions of 
 stagnant marshes, that he began to fear lest his 
 reason reeled already, and he should expiate 
 his folly and his sin in a mad-house. 
 
 But through it all, as I have said, through the 
 frenzy of sorrow and shame and dread and pas 
 sion, one thought domineered, kept piercing him 
 again and again with its thrill of delicious pain, 
 every thing whirled and centred about it, every 
 thing came back to it, he opened his arms and 
 took it and hugged it to his heart : it was this, 
 that whether Beaudesfords lived or Beaudesfords 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 191 
 
 were dead, Catherine and Gaston loved each 
 other ! 
 
 Whether Beaudesfords own will had put a 
 period to the light of day that shone for him, 
 or whether Catherine s strong, firm hand it was 
 that had guided home that little knife, the deed 
 was done, the barrier was down, there was nothing 
 now between the two, the way was clear before 
 them for all earthly bliss ; and when Death took 
 them, dearest delight of all ! their dust should 
 mingle into one dust. For beyond death Gaston 
 never looked : he believed nothing but the evidence 
 of the senses. " There is a sixth sense," said a 
 witty Frenchman, " the sense of the ideal ; and 
 d Holbach had but five senses. " Gaston had no 
 more. He had never seen the grand shadows of 
 futurity with any eye of faith : to him the here 
 after was only a vast void. He meant all the more 
 to suck the honey from each moment as it became 
 the present : he needed to hear with his own ears 
 the voice of some actual angel of the resurrection 
 declare, " And yet the dead do rise ! " 
 
 Perhaps Gaston was trying himself too far in 
 calling up this throng of dark and sad recollec 
 tions, of intentions rosily glowing with hope and 
 rapture, while looking down on that still face 
 
192 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 below, which he, and none other, had robbed of 
 life. But he knew that, so long as he lived on 
 the solid earth, that face, the immaterial counter 
 part of that face, must hang like a dreadful mask 
 perpetually between him and the world ; and if 
 now, at its first and strongest, he met it and 
 blunted all the anguish it could yield, it would 
 afterwards become of no more import than any 
 face-cloth tossed aside by the rifler of a grave. 
 But, when Gaston said that, a taunting voice 
 seemed to speak close beside his ear, and tell him 
 that he was not rifling a grave, he was filling 
 one ; and then another voice returned, like a 
 mocking antiphon, that he was rifling it even of 
 its good name. For was he not suffering Beau- 
 desfords name to be sent abroad on the winds 
 blasted with the stigma of suicide ? And that 
 when he knew, and none better, that yonder white 
 hand upon the wall had severed the vein, that 
 yonder face, that blotch of beauty in the portrait 
 there, had darkened while the deed was doing. 
 If it was not thus if but there Gaston s cour 
 age stayed he had loved Beaudesfords strange 
 contravention of his being, he loved him still 
 he feared to think of what it could have been that 
 had spurred his own hand to such a thrust, he 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 193 
 
 absolutely dared not look at that moment when 
 Beaudesfords staggered out of the world because, 
 finding his wife worthless and his friend false, 
 the foundations of life gave way beneath him. 
 The surprise and the contempt of this dead man 
 were strokes that he alive had no courage to 
 meet : he evaded all the subject by fastening 
 upon that hand in the portrait ; a white hand, 
 but red last night, he said. And what of that ? 
 he said. We make the act hideous by the name 
 of murder ; but what signifies a name ? Was 
 life, after all, so precious a boon for himself, 
 he had never until now found it worth the keep 
 ing, so cruel a loss, a matter of such moment, 
 that its taker must needs be a fiend? A fair 
 fiend here, ah, heavens, how fair! how sweet 
 the smile, how exquisite the grace, how rare the 
 tints ! those locks of palest gold, that sapphire 
 sheen in the eye, that bloom upon the cheeks like 
 a wild-rose grown in happy shadow, those lips 
 that pouted for their lover s kiss ah, once, 
 once ! Be she however false, be she however 
 base, be she twice as foul as she was fair, in spite 
 of sin or shame or life or death he loved her ! 
 It was time that Gaston looked to his reason lest 
 it reeled. Stone walls never shut in from further 
 9 
 
194 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 outraging the world a fitter subject than this man 
 when he had lost his last perception of right or 
 wrong ; when honor, that runs along the flashing 
 of a soldier s sword, had ceased to have an exist 
 ence for him ; when virtue had become a thing of 
 no account ; when the embrace of a presumed 
 murderess allured and did not repel him ; when 
 the moral leprosy, engendered by the mind s 
 familiar contact with possible sin in the future, 
 had penetrated the brain with its foul loathsome 
 ness and disease, till it had lost polarity and 
 meridian, and did not know heaven from hell. 
 
 The bright breeze, creeping over the bosom of 
 the blossoms in the garden, came bustling into 
 the room again, lifting the drapery of the case 
 ment, and bringing Beaudesfords word of the 
 beautiful world outside, of the world he had re 
 nounced but two hours since, of the cedarn alleys 
 full of shadow, where he had wandered when 
 first his heart swelled with love for Catherine, 
 of the flowers whose fragrance was not so fra 
 grant in his fancy then as Catherine s lips, of the 
 birds whose most delicate melody was less me 
 lodious than her voice had been, but all of which 
 he had held dear to him with the strong love he 
 had of the vivid real earth, and God s hand 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 195 
 
 visible there. The breeze blew lightly in, it 
 curled among the silken curtains, it lifted the 
 lock on Beaudesfords marble forehead, mocking 
 life as it could ; it poured its gay message into his 
 silent ear, it made all the room fresh and sweet 
 with its burden. But Beaudesfords heard and 
 Gaston heeded nothing, the one in his white icy 
 slumber, the other in his black hot reverie. And 
 while the breeze blew and rioted there, and shook 
 down the petals from the silver tripod of red 
 roses, a footfall had sounded on the carpet, 
 not that step light as the breeze itself on the 
 summer turf, but the heavy foot that has 
 stumbled upon a grave; and Catherine stood 
 again on the other side of that still sleeper, 
 with all the curtains looped away between them 
 from the carved pearl of their supports. 
 
 Gaston did not glance at her at first : he was 
 still gazing at the portrait over her head, the por 
 trait full of such palpitating color, such beauty 
 and such life. For many minutes after he was 
 aware of Catherine s presence he still kept his 
 eyes on the painting, with a vicious intensity, till 
 the lovely face might have been fixed, as if with 
 fire, upon their retina. When at length he 
 lowered his gaze towards Catherine herself, the 
 
196 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 earth seemed to move from where he stood, 
 seemed to quiver ever so slightly beneath his 
 feet that failed him ; for whether it were some 
 power from his body, some faculty from his 
 mind, some person from his world, something 
 had vanished: what it was, he had no means 
 of conjecturing ; his heart was not beating, but 
 trembling; his memory appeared all at once to 
 encumber his mind like dead stuff, beneath the 
 paralyzing potency of this inexplicable sensation. 
 For that vision of a woman standing before him 
 was an unfamiliar thing : it was no longer 
 Catherine ; or, if it was indeed the person of 
 that portrait, it was she repeated in what ghostly 
 medium, beneath the ray of what unearthly spec 
 trum ? Where had fled the radiances, the warm 
 flesh-tints, the glory about her that always re 
 minded you of light, as if a star had opened to 
 let her forth ? This woman was whiter than the 
 form beneath her hand, only the violet eyes 
 looked out as if all heaven were shining into 
 them. 
 
 It was the briefest space ere Gaston had him 
 self in hand again, a space only long enough to 
 shiver in ; one of those lingering, curdling shivers 
 with which gossips say that some foot treads on 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 197 
 
 the sod that is one day to bury you from the 
 sight of the sun. But what had given him his 
 bewildered pause was the recoil with all his 
 thoughts surging on in their certainty in this 
 new woman s face, as if day after day had lied to 
 him, as if sunshine had grown blood-red, as if 
 the earth were but a cloud and vapor, the 
 doubt, the dread, that she could never have done 
 this deed, that Catherine could never have loved 
 him. " Catherine ! " he cried, and paused. 
 
 He had never called her so before. But it was 
 her name ; and there are times when people for 
 get their ceremonies. A simple word; but its 
 intonation bore such hope, such determination, 
 such a claim, such proud, quick, pleasured confi 
 dence, that its sound was an offence. 
 
 She had not heard him at the first. The full 
 meaning of it did not overcome her till Gaston 
 called her name the third time. Then she looked 
 up, calm as only those are who rise great on great 
 events, and meet life or death even-handed, an 
 equal, asking no odds. "I think you forget," 
 she said gently, " that you speak to the wife of 
 Beaudesfords." 
 
 " His widow," said Gaston. 
 
 "Death cannot widow me of Beaudesfords," 
 
198 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 said Catherine, gently still. " 1 shall always be 
 his wife." 
 
 " No more, no more ! " suddenly cried the other, 
 his dark face dark as a thunder-cloud, his eye 
 heavy with lightnings and with rain. " Not his, 
 but mine, oh, mine! " 
 
 Was this the haughty Gaston, the self-repressed 
 and silent man? Or was the so-long-pent lava- 
 stream of that volcanic nature, now that the 
 barrier was destroyed, pouring forth fused with 
 its fierce central fire. It was not Catherine, 
 though, that asked the question, far too highly 
 wrought herself to wonder at the same thing in 
 another. She only drew back a little, with a 
 quick anger as if her husband had been hurt 
 through her, an anger that passed like a mere 
 flash upon the great stress of the so much stronger 
 emotions with which she had been overwhelmed. 
 And as for Gaston, he had not meant that any 
 temptation should betray him to such lengths ; 
 he had not meant to see her, to speak with her, 
 much less to claim her, for days or even months 
 to come ; he had a tigerish quality that loved to 
 dally with its prey ; and, so far as he had any plan 
 of action at all, it was the scheme of commanding 
 reverence from the fickle falsehood of a weak soul 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 199 
 
 for the superior strength of that manly nature 
 that was constant to its friendship through all 
 the labyrinths of passion ; and it may be that he 
 had besides a certain mantle of decorous and 
 noble behavior to assume and deceive even him 
 self. Yet now, when all these contending forces 
 of rage and grief and horror, and desire and fear, 
 overmastered him> he was not the demi-god he 
 had believed himself to be: he had no more 
 resistance than if an alien power from far with 
 out had seized him and bent him like a straw to 
 its wicked will. 
 
 " Not his, but mine ! " cried Gaston once again ; 
 for now that the first word had been spoken, the 
 first glance given, he could not break too boldly, 
 too utterly, the seal of his past silence. " We 
 have endured, we have suffered. You are no 
 longer bound, the world, the whole world is 
 before us, mine while life lasts ! " he said exult- 
 ingly, and the great scar along his face leaped 
 into light. 
 
 " And then ? " asked Catherine, choking down 
 the tremor in her tone, and speaking because it 
 was time she should be heard, as even her exalted 
 mood could perceive, and although it were in that 
 presence. 
 
200 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 "And then one dust! an everlasting sleep in 
 one another s arms ! " he exclaimed, with a smile 
 as triumphant as a sunburst. 
 
 " Thank God! " she said, more to herself than 
 him. " It never could have been. I never could 
 have cared for him ! " and her involuntary shud 
 der of disgust shook even the chill hand she held. 
 
 "Stop!" said Gaston, bending forward, and 
 using such effort at control, in order to be calm, 
 that it seemed to him it was turning him into 
 iron. " Do you mean to say you never loved 
 me?" 
 
 " Never !" answered Catherine, firmly. And her 
 face flushed crimson and then grew white once 
 more, as she blushed beneath the sting of such 
 words spoken to Beaudesfords wife. u Never ! I 
 will speak the truth, though it is here and now. 
 Speak it," she said solemnly, " because it is here 
 and now; as if this heart, on which I lay my 
 hand, were God s altar." For Catherine, in the 
 suffering of the night before, albeit unconsciously, 
 had done with reserve. In reaching her right 
 place ; in recognizing the love whose silent growth 
 had uprooted the noxious parasite and weed ; in 
 remembering, and gladly remembering, that she 
 was the wife of Beaudesfords ; in seeing now that, 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 201 
 
 though the bonds of flesh dissolved, the marriage 
 of the spirit could never expire, she stood upon 
 a plane as far above this man and his words as 
 heaven is above the earth. She had sinned in 
 soul, but she had struggled ; she had overcome ; 
 and he had only tempted. " If ever any delirium 
 disturbed my fancy," she said, " I saw it long 
 before this horror happened, saw it for a de 
 lirium, detested it, escaped it. I escaped it. I 
 have never loved I know it now I have never 
 loved any one but him, my husband, so lofty, so 
 generous, so brave, so good, so pure ! Oh, Beau- 
 desfords, what is death between us ? " she cried, 
 forgetting Gaston s existence then. " You waited 
 for me so long, surely we can wait a little longer ! 
 Married for the moment only here ? oh, it were 
 sacrilege, with all eternity to be happy in ! Near 
 er, nearer now than we ever were before, our love 
 hallowed in heaven as it never was on earth, 
 not death, not fate, can separate us, we are 
 one! I shall hear and know and feel you in 
 every breath I draw, in every thought, in every 
 pulse, summer mornings will seem to bring 
 you back to me, no night will be too high, with 
 its heaven full of stars, for me to find you, for 
 oh ! I love you, Beaudesfords ! Beaudesfords, I 
 love you ! " 
 
 J 9* 
 
202 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " Stop ! " exclaimed Gaston again. He shut 
 his teeth together a moment, as he listened, and 
 writhed in strange torture. If this were Cathe 
 rine, he could not then resist the impression that 
 he was another than himself. " And yet it was 
 your hand," said he in a voice that she had never 
 heard before, " your hand that prepared the way 
 that set us free that opened for us both, last 
 night, a path to paradise ! Your hand that did 
 this" 
 
 " What ! " murmured Catherine, in an awe 
 struck whisper, losing thought for the instant even 
 of Beaudesfords loss. "Do you" 
 
 Gaston pointed at the sleeper in his bed. His 
 gesture denied the need of words. 
 
 For a moment she returned his gaze, speech 
 less, with a kind of faint sickness. Not at the 
 accusation ; for the remembrance of the gar 
 dener s words in the morning, which she had 
 disregarded and forgotten, had rushed over her, 
 and been spurned. " And is it possible, then," 
 she said, " that you can believe, can entertain 
 you Gaston his friend Oh, you betrayed 
 him ! But can you think that I, his wife that 
 for the sake of any lawless love, though it were 
 an archangel s, I could take my husband s life ? " 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 203 
 
 " Which you did," he said. 
 
 " And if I did, which, my God ! declare to 
 be the lie it is ! is any man so base as, know 
 ing her, to take to his arms that adulteress in 
 desire, that murderess in deed ! Oh, go, go, go ! 
 leave such a place as this ! " she commanded, in 
 that hushed, clear tone of hers. " Oh that his 
 last rest should be profaned by words like these ! " 
 and suddenly she faced him with "her appalling 
 whiteness and fire. " Go from the room ! " she 
 said. " Your presence is an insult to his ashes. 
 Should you meet him in the world to come, one 
 glance of his pure eye must needs annihilate 
 you. Beneath contempt. Too low for hatred. 
 Nothing! Oh, Beaudesfords, come back, come 
 back ! " she cried, as Gaston tottered off, like one 
 who has been struck, from where he had ap 
 proached her. " Do not leave me in this cruel 
 world alone! Come back, or take me with 
 you, Beaudesfords, my own ! " And she fell 
 upon her knees, hiding her head against his cold 
 heart, and wetting it with torrents of hot tears, 
 the first tears she had shed, creeping up to lay 
 her mouth on his lips, pouring between them 
 the warm breath of her breast, that labored on 
 his with sobs. 
 
204 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 While the silence in the room was broken by 
 nothing but those sobs, and Gaston towered 
 there, at the foot of the bed, as immovable and 
 rigid as if he had been cast in bronze, there were 
 voices in the garden. It was the voice of Rose, 
 who, while the other women had hidden them 
 selves away with their grief, had been unable to 
 follow them, but still hovered round the spot, 
 now wringing her hands in a bewilderment of 
 terror, now blind with bursts of weeping. She 
 had gone down the garden, gathering, as she 
 went, an armful of the great day-lilies, hardly 
 knowing what she did, connecting them with a 
 vague idea of that sacred chamber, and adding 
 her heavy tears to the dew, of which the sun had 
 not yet robbed their white and gold lustrousness. 
 And then she had waited at the lower paling, 
 quivering with hope and fear, and comprehending 
 that Dr. Ruthven s hasty departure, after his 
 orders to Frye to have the cordials at hand, and 
 the hot flannels and ammonia and strong spirits 
 ready for renewed effort, meant quick return and 
 mighty possibilities. And suddenly she had cried 
 out, as she saw him leap from his saddle at the 
 nearest gate, saw through her wet eyes not one, 
 but twenty Dr. Ruthvens, with as many parcels 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 205 
 
 in as many arms, darting up the path, and never 
 pausing at her ejaculation. 
 
 Perhaps the old Doctor was thinking within 
 himself that, if all Nature took the disastrous 
 thing so sweetly, if the garden that Beaudesfords 
 had tended still blushed as brightly, the flowers 
 bloomed, the winds, the skies, were just as fresh 
 and fair, it must be because they were in the 
 secret of God, and knew this thing that we call 
 death to be no such blot upon the universe at all. 
 But he was aware of thinking of nothing save 
 that one moment s delay was ruin. 
 
 " It s the last resort ! " he cried, hurrying on 
 without staying, and not glancing at her enough 
 to notice the eagerness that sparkled through her 
 weeping eyes. " It s our dear boy s last chance. 
 I couldn t trust any of the blundering idiots, 
 after I had sent them for it: but if I can get 
 some cordial into his stomach with this tube now, 
 and then apply the battery, such things are 
 possible," he mumbled defiantly to himself, as he 
 went, while Rose hung breathless on his words. 
 "Faint with loss of blood, suspended anima 
 tion, twouldn t be the first instance, Boer- 
 haave gives a case of six hours. The battery 11 
 do no harm!" 
 
206 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 " Oh, Doctor ! " Rose began again, as well as 
 she could for crying. " I ve been standing on 
 fire. It doesn t seem like death in there, for I 
 looked in, and Gaston was the only dreadful 
 thing to see. And Mrs. Grey oh, Doctor! 
 Mrs. Grey just told me how he had a fall years 
 and years ago, and bled so " 
 
 " Good God, and I forgot it ! Oh, I m an old 
 man ! And he lying like death then for hours. 
 Don t lose a breath ! " exclaimed Dr. Ruthven, 
 springing forward as though he were twenty years 
 younger, though you would have said he could 
 move no faster than he was already moving. 
 " Frye ! Where s Frye ? Help me here ! Every 
 thing at hand ? Don t let us have any false 
 alarm. Quiet, quiet! But Heaven grant " 
 
 And suddenly Catherine sprung to her feet. 
 " Call Ruthven ! " she almost shrieked. " Send 
 for him ! Bring him ! " And just at that moment 
 the casement s blind flew open, and the flood 
 of glad light fell in and overlay the flame of her 
 scarlet cheeks, and spread around her head like a 
 glory. "Oh, come here ! come here ! " she said, 
 as Dr. Ruthven himself hastened through from 
 the garden. " His heart beats ! it beats beneath 
 my hand ! oh, it beats, I tell you ! and he breathes, 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 207 
 
 he breathes, I felt him ! Oh, Beaudesfords, you 
 are not dead ! Speak to me, look at me ! " 
 
 Dr. Ruthven came up behind her while she 
 clung there, and took her like a child, and seated 
 her in a great sleepy-hollow of an arm-chair. 
 " Let no one speak in this room again while Death 
 and I wrestle," his manner said, but he uttered 
 not a word ; for he had straightway forgotten 
 every thing in that physiological passion that lit 
 up for him the dark places where matter and 
 spirit antagonize, yet join, as he strove to kindle 
 the blood once more, to renew the breath, and, 
 charging the battery along the whole course of 
 the nerves, to strike them into action, till one 
 wheel catching on another the entire machinery 
 should be in motion with that life which Bichat 
 asserted to be, after all, only the totality of the 
 functions ! 
 
 You might as well ask the great angels who 
 watched the Almighty hands fashion that red 
 clay upon Aornos, when the first man entered into 
 the sacrament of life, as have asked Catherine 
 what took place in the long hour that followed 
 Dr. Ruthven s return. It always seemed to her 
 as if she had entered, during that time, into 
 the secrets of eternity; as if she had herself 
 
208 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 been newly baptized from the fountain and source 
 of being ; as if she had been a witness of some 
 awful rite of preternatural powers, and had seen 
 behind the hollow masks of life and death the 
 form of indestructible spirit ; as if she had been 
 shown the hidden mysteries of creation, and God 
 had led her by the hand out of darkness into light. 
 She was never exactly the same woman, she 
 had watched a soul come back from the vast 
 shadowy brink, and seize its body. Some strong, 
 crystallic current, too, had changed her from an 
 amorphous existence into the perfect jewel, so 
 to say. There was always something sweetly 
 solemn in her face in those after-days : hap 
 piness had been purchased at a price that ren 
 dered it too costly for any thing but serious and 
 conscious use. She never felt that she could 
 afford to be happy in the irresponsible way which 
 belonged to the birds and breezes and Rose. 
 
 But now, when at last a long tremble vibrated 
 through Beaudesfords frame, when a shiver shook 
 his ashy lips, when the blood rushed into them 
 and left them again, when the great, gleaming 
 eyes opened bewilderedly a moment, closed, and 
 then lifted again, and lay resting on the blue 
 splendor of Catherine s, she believed heaven had 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 209 
 
 descended into the room, that the Lord of Life 
 was working miracles there ; and she stood trans 
 fixed, just as she had sprung forward with her 
 clasped hands, and seeming to receive her own 
 existence only from that smile which, from its 
 faint beginning, grew and overspread the face 
 of Beaudesfords with the old brilliance and beauty 
 of earthly life. 
 
 They neither felt nor remembered, for the while, 
 the presence of any other than themselves in the 
 place : for him, the shadow of the grave slowly 
 drawing off still obscured all but her ; for her, 
 all being, all identity of others, was lost in the 
 light of Beaudesfords gaze, as sunlight drowns 
 the stars. They knew the meaning in each 
 other s soul as their eyes hung there : he read 
 her love, her confession, her prayer; she heard 
 his answer ere the prayer was spoken. His lips 
 were murmuring. " Come to me," he tried to 
 say. She was there, sobbing out, " Oh, Beau 
 desfords, I am not fit to touch you ! " hiding her 
 face beside his, silent and breathless then, while 
 he whispered : " I could not move, I could not 
 stir, the weight of my grave was on my breast. 
 But I heard it all, all you said to him. I 
 should never have come back to life, had it 
 
210 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 been different, had you not made such pulses 
 leap, had you not proved your faith to me, 
 had you not set my heart beating to yours, oh, 
 Catherine, my wife ! " 
 
 NQ one heard them. Dr. Ruthven was crying 
 aloud, without a qualm. Frye, faint with joy 
 and fear, and his exertions in behalf of the mas 
 ter he had served from a child, had sunk upon 
 the floor. Only Gaston looked at them, with a 
 wild and burning look. 
 
 Not enough strength had returned to Beaudes- 
 fords to let him move his head. But, as if that 
 look compelled them, his eyes wandered round 
 and rested now on Gaston s. Wide and fervid 
 eyes, full of fevered light, large drops of lustre, 
 they surveyed him ; and their recognition was as 
 blasting as the recognition of the judgment-day. 
 No smile upon the lips, no softness on the brow, 
 no woman-like reproach, no sorrowing loss, only 
 that great, grave gaze that took the measure 
 of the man s perfidy. It was the last blow, the 
 blow that Gaston could not bear. He had met 
 much that morning. The shock when Beaudes- 
 fords death was announced seemed to have re 
 versed the currents of his blood. His head had 
 whirled when he so suddenly found Catherine 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 211 
 
 free. His temples had been beating like trip 
 hammers ever since his self-assurance that the 
 deed was hers, ever since he felt that, despite 
 crime or shamelessness, his passion was the same, 
 as dear and dearer. He had believed her hand 
 red with guilt, and found it stainless. He had 
 believed that Catherine s kisses were ripe for his 
 gathering, remembering, with long, piercing 
 thrills, one night beneath the starlit shadows 
 of the swinging tree-branches, the lips that bent, 
 the lips that rose : an innocent night of a youth 
 too long fled to be condemned, and he had 
 seen those kisses showered upon another man, a 
 dead man. He had seen that dead man speak 
 and gaze Great God ! how dead men gaze ! He 
 raised his hand to his head in a distracted way, 
 could he never rid himself of that stare ? Must 
 it hang there for ever before him, like a dazzling 
 sun obliterating all the rest of the world ? A 
 slow tear gathered in Beaudesfords eye. Gaston 
 recalled vacantly, as he saw it*, that the dead 
 never weep, nor yet the dying. Just as vacantly, 
 too, he recalled the fact of those glass spheres, in 
 whicK an imprisoned drop of water changes and 
 sublimes and swells to scalding vapor, till it 
 bursts and shatters its shell to atoms ; and in a 
 
212 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 spasm of suffering it seemed to him as if that 
 tear were something bursting in his own brain. 
 He turned away, as the pain passed, with a low, 
 idiotic laugh, no longer a man, but a maniac. 
 
 When, by and by, Beaudesfords went about the 
 place again, a harmless creature followed him 
 like a hound, never happy out of his sight, one 
 who had forgotten his own name, and remembered 
 nothing but Beaudesfords . If Catherine needed 
 a punishment and a humiliation, she had it ever 
 before her. They kept the forlorn wretch with 
 them ; Dr. Ruthven giving him especial care 
 from day to day. The western wing was still 
 his domicile when he needed quiet, but at all 
 times he was a member of the household ; and, 
 though strong servants waited on him in his own 
 apartments, he never needed other restraint than 
 a pleasant word of Beaudesfords . He knew none 
 but gentle influences, sweet faces, the music of 
 soft voices. He sailed with them upon the river, 
 he hunted with Beaudesfords through the fields 
 and woods. One day, when Beaudesfords had 
 fallen upon his gun in vaulting across a hedge, 
 lying for the moment quite still and faint, and 
 had then suddenly opened his eyes, this follower, 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 213 
 
 who had stood gazing at him, began to quiver from 
 head to foot, and fell down before him, calling out 
 for his forgiveness and mercy, taking up his 
 thread of life where he had lost it, in that wonder 
 ing look of Beaudesfords clear eyes, and Gaston 
 was himself again, himself with a mighty change, 
 the dross was gone. And in the long hours of 
 that noon, as they sat there, the two friends, lov 
 ing each other with a love passing that of woman, 
 made all bright between them. Thus a fleet 
 season sped, and Gaston was a reasonable man 
 once more : one atom too noble and too nobly 
 trusted to cherish any sentiment of ill-will or any 
 thing but veneration towards the woman who 
 once swayed soul and sense alike, a strange 
 being, with his dark, scarred face and iron-gray 
 head ; a man with all his youthful fires and furies 
 burned out of him, content enough with fate, and 
 thankful for the sunshine that fell on him as he 
 sat in the garden at Beaudesfords. One person, 
 though, never ceased to observe him ; for McRoy, 
 the gardener, when he. relieved his mistress of 
 his suspicions, was nevertheless unable to believe 
 Beaudesfords, as the latter assured him, that, 
 being ill and with a disordered mind, which was 
 certainly no more than the truth, he had inflicted 
 
214 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 the wound with his own hand. He could not 
 find it in his heart to credit the statement ; and, 
 as long as his lamp of life held out to burn, he 
 would have turned its vigilant ray on Gaston, 
 had not Gaston hindered such necessity when his 
 old ambitions began to throb, as they did before 
 that dream of passion clouded his days ; and, 
 drawn by the subsidence of revolution on his 
 former field of action, he departed for the tropical 
 regions, where he is still at work with a scheme 
 as grand as the mountains he shall pierce and 
 the seas he shall unite ; while McRoy s inspection 
 is turned over to the purlieus of the garden and 
 the sparrows. 
 
 That garden at Beaudesfords is still more 
 beautiful than, any painted scene of a fairy 
 spectacle. It is no wonder that Gaston loved 
 his chair and cigar there ; that Mrs. Stanhope s 
 netting and Caroline s sofa are as much a part 
 of it as the standards and the annuals ; that the 
 family fairly live there the livelong summer 
 through. The broad beds of geranium still blos 
 som in it like flames of sunrise fallen on the grass ; 
 the fragrant flower-fence spices the air all day; 
 the roses revel together, and climb the trellis, and 
 look back with blushing faces where the bees are 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 215 
 
 swinging in the great blue-bells of the campanula ; 
 the sun-soaked cedarn alleys are still leading 
 away into misty shadow ; the wind is still ravish 
 ing every bud of its odors ; the Triton is still 
 blowing the sparkling water-streams from his 
 horn, rocking the pickerel-weed and arrowhead 
 and golden lilies on the ripple that he makes ; 
 birds are twittering, leaves are rustling, a woman 
 is singing : 
 
 " The winds in the reeds and rushes, 
 The bees on the bells of thyme, 
 
 The birds on the myrtle-bushes, 
 The cicale above in the lime, 
 
 And the lizards below in the grass, 
 
 Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was 
 
 Listening to my sweet pipings." 
 
 But sweeter music still than breezes make or 
 bird-song chirrups through the place : it comes 
 from where a golden-haired urchin sits upon the 
 edgestone of the shallow lake, fishing with a pin, 
 and soaking his bits of shoes into a pulp ; it 
 comes from where Beaudesfords strolls up the 
 path with a couple of cherubs on his shoulders, 
 lovely, laughing, rosy things, whose voices are 
 the most delightful melody, as they shower their 
 little handfuls of blossoms on the mother, who sits 
 in her low garden-seat among the violets, where 
 
216 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 presently they are tumbled, or as they pretend 
 a tuneful fright of the dark-eyed, peach-bloomed 
 little woman that frolics round them. 
 
 " Do you know," said Beaudesfords to his wife, 
 on the evening of one of these summer days, after 
 the garden was still from the joyance and music 
 of these voices, " do you know that, though 
 this happiness is so deep, so real, so intense, it is 
 a very different thing from my old ideal of happi 
 ness ? I have grown so still, J think that that 
 time I died I must have been made over." 
 
 " It is not that you are more still," said Cathe 
 rine, " but only that you are at rest." 
 
 " Yet there is no buoyancy left in me : my 
 bubble is all from the outside. If you were not 
 at my hand, if these little airy creatures dropped 
 me, I should sink." Without, the summer stars 
 were trembling in the warm and rushing wind ; 
 within, the soft, low breathing from the room be 
 yond seemed to rise and fall with the beating of 
 their own hearts. You could not hear that regu 
 lar, sweet sound without seeing the picture of the 
 rosy little faces bathed in their dewy sleep. " Lis 
 ten," said Beaudesfords, " while we look out on 
 this infinity that almost tempts one away, listen 
 to the murmurings of our anchorage on earth. 
 
THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 217 
 
 What contradictions we have in us, set in such 
 perfect peace, so slight a thing may break it, 
 after all, it makes me tremble!" 
 
 " No, no," she answered him. " You and I 
 have been through the Valley of Death, there 
 was nothing there to tremble at. We can trust 
 our future and our darlings in the hand that has 
 been so tender with our past." 
 
 " Let us go and look at them," said Beaudes- 
 fords. And, kneeling beside the little beds, they 
 thanked God for their lot, and, while the seasons 
 pa^s and old age comes, for the perpetual youth 
 in life which children bring. 
 
 10 
 
 Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son. 
 
ARTHUR HELPS S WRITINGS. 
 
 1. REALMAH. A Story. Price $2.00. 
 
 2. CASIMIR MAREMMA. A Novel. Price $2.00. 
 
 *. COMPANIONS OF MY SOLITUDE. Price $1.50. 
 
 4. ESSAYS WRITTEN IN THE INTERVALS OF BUS 
 
 INESS- Price $1.50. 
 
 5. BREVIA Short Essays and Aphorisms. Price $1.50. 
 
 From the London Review. 
 
 "The tale (REALMAH) is a comparatively brief one, intersected by the 
 conversations of a variety of able personages, with most of whose names 
 and characters we are already familiar through Friends in Council. 
 Looking at it in connection with the social and political lessons that are 
 wrapt up in it, we may fairly attribute to it a higher value than could pos 
 sibly attach to a common piece of riction." 
 
 From a Notice by Miss E. M. Converse. 
 
 "There are many reasons why we like this irregular book (Rcalmah), in 
 which we should find the dialogue tedious without the story ; the story dull 
 without the dialogue; and the whole unmeaning, unless we discerned the 
 purpose of the author underlying the lines, and interweaving, now here, 
 now there, a criticism, a suggestion, an aphorism ; a quaint illustration, an 
 exhortation, a metaphysical deduction, or a moral inference. 
 
 " We like a book in which we are not bound to read consecutively, whose 
 leaves we can turn at pleasure and find on every page something to amuse, 
 interest, and instruct. It is like a charming walk in the woods in early 
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 soft moss ; now to a shrub brilliant with showy blossoms ; now to the gran 
 deur of a spreading tree; now to a bit o*" fleecy cloud; and now to the blue 
 of the overarching sky. 
 
 "We gladly place Realmah on the book-lined wall, by the side of 
 other chosen friends, the sharp, terse sayings of the Doctor ; the sug 
 gestive utterances of the Noctes ; the sparkling and brilliant thoughts of 
 Montaigne ; and the gentle teachings of the charming Elia. " 
 From a Notice by Miss H. W. Preston. 
 
 " It must be because the reading world is unregenerate that Arthur Helps 
 is not a general favorite. Somebody once said (was it Ruskin, at whose 
 imperious order so many of us read Friends in Council, a dozen years 
 ago?) that appreciation of Helps is a sure test of culture. Not so much 
 that, one may suggest, as of a certain native fineness and excellence of 
 mind. The impression prevails among some of those who do net read him, 
 that Helps is a hard writer. Nothing could be more erroneous. His man 
 ner is simplicity itself; his speech always winning, and of a silvery dis 
 tinctness. There are hosts of ravenous readers, lively and capable, who, 
 if their vague prejudice were removed, would exceedingly enjoy the gentle 
 wit, the unassuming wisdom, and the refreshing originality of the author 
 in question. There are men and women, mostly young, with souls that 
 sometimes weary of the eerials, who need nothing so mucn as a persuasive 
 guide to the study of worthier and more enduring literature. For most of 
 those who read novels with avidity are capable of reading something else 
 with avidity, if they only knew it. And such a guide, and pleasantest of all 
 such guides, is Arthur Helps. * * Yet Casinrir Maremma is a charming 
 book, and, better still, invigorating. Try it. You are going into the country 
 for the summer months that remain. Have Casimir with you, and have 
 Realmah, too. The former is the pleasanter book, the latter the more pow 
 erful. But if you like one you will like the other. At the least you will rise 
 from their perusal with a grateful sense of having been received for a time 
 into a select and happy circle, where intellectual breeding is perfect, and the 
 struggle for brilliancy unknown. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of adver 
 tised price, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTOK. 
 
By the Author of "Happy Thoughts." 
 
 MORE HAPPY THOUGHTS. 
 
 By F. C. BUENAXD. One volume. Uniform with "Happy 
 Thoughts." Price $1.00. 
 
 " We want to read Mr. Burnand s book when we are en rapport with 
 the author. If we are bothered in mind, or uncomfortable in feeling, we 
 can hardly appreciate justly the wit and humor of these happy thoughts ; 
 but, if the mood is pleasant, we shall find them diverting and laugh-pro 
 voking beyond measure. Their wit is a peculiar wit, breaking out here 
 and there in little jets, and manifesting itself in unexpected spasms; and 
 their humor is something suggested rather than expressed : yet we cannot 
 help sympathizing with the genial spirit of the volume. In every page to 
 which we open, we find some fancy or thought to entertain and delight us, 
 and something to touch our best nature ; and we like the book, if it is not 
 as solid as a history or a treatise on science." Providence Journal. 
 
 OUT OF TOWN. 
 
 By F. C. BURN AND. One volume. 16mo. Uniform with 
 " Happy Thoughts." Price $1.25. 
 
 This is a very humorous story of a continental tour, and includes also 
 a burlesque description of "Bradshaw s Guide." 
 
 HAPPY THOUGHT HALL. 
 
 By F. C. BURNAXD. With One Hundred Illustrations by the 
 Author. One volume. Square octavo. Cloth, neat. Price $4.00. 
 
 The author continues in this book his " Happy Thought " vein, with 
 illustrated descriptions of his characters and of his new country-house, 
 " Happy Thought Hall." 
 
 Mailed, postpaid, by the publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
THE HANDY VOLUME SERIES. 
 
 MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS propose to issue, under the above 
 heading, a Series of Handy Volumes, which shall be at once various 
 valuable, and popular, their size a ino-t convenient one. their typogra 
 phy of the very best, and their price extremely low. They will enter 
 tain the reader with poetry as well as with prose; now with fiction, then 
 with fact; herewith narration, there with inquiry; in some cases with 
 the works of living authors, in others with the works of those long since 
 dead. It is hoped that they will prove to be either amusing or instruc 
 tive, sometimes curious, often valuable, always naudy. Each Volum* 
 will, as a rule, form a work complete in itself. 
 
 THE HANDY VOLUME SERIES. 
 l. 
 
 HAPPY THOUGHTS. By F. C. BURNAND. Price in cloth. 
 
 $1.00; paper covers, 75 cents. 
 
 2. 
 DOCTOR JACOB. A Novel. By Miss M. BETHAM EDWARDS 
 
 Price in cloth, $1.00; paper covers, 75 cents. 
 
 3. 
 
 PLANCHETTE; or, The Despair of Science. Being a full 
 account of Modern Spiritualism. Price in cloth, $1.25; paper 
 covers, $1.00. 
 
 EDELWEISS. A Story. By BERTHOLD AUERBACH. Price 
 in cloth, $1.00; paper covers, 75 cents. 
 
 5. 
 
 REALITIES OF IRISH LIFE. By W. STEUART FRENCH. 
 Price in cloth, $1.00; paper covers, 75 cents. 
 
 6. 
 
 POEMS OF RURAL LIFE. By WILLIAM BARNES. With 
 12 superb illustrations. Price in cloth, $1 25. 
 
 7. 
 GERMAN TALES. By BERTHOLD AUERBACH. Price in cloth, 
 
 $1.00. 
 
 8. 
 
 A VISIT TO MY DISCONTENTED COUSIN. A Novelette. 
 Price in cloth, $1.00. 
 
 9. 
 MORE HAPPY THOUGHTS. By F. C. BURNAND. Price in 
 
 Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 Other volumes mil follow the above at convenient intervals. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, BOSTON. 
 
THE WRITINGS 
 
 OF 
 
 JEAN INGELOW. 
 
 LIBRARY EDITION. 2 vols. i6mo. Price ....... $3.a 
 
 BLUE AND GOLD EDITION. 2 vols. 32010. Price .... 2.5* 
 
 CABINET EDITION, i vol. iSmo. Price ........ 2.2 : 
 
 ILLUSTRATED EDITION. Square Svo. Price ...... IO.CK 
 
 This superb volume, acknowledged to be the best specimen of woodcut illus 
 trating ever attempted, comprises the first volume only of Miss INGELOW S Poems, 
 and is embellished with one hundred designs. 
 
 SONGS OF SEVEN. Illustrated, i royal Svo volume. Price 2-5( 
 SONGS OF SEVEN. Cheap illustrated edition. i6mo. Illu 
 
 minated paper cover. Price 20 cents ; cloth, neat, price o.3< 
 
 fftiss Sttffclofo s Nefo ^oems 
 
 THE MONITIONS OF THE UNSEEN, AND POEMS OF LOVE 
 AND CHILDHOOD. With 12 superb illustrations. I vol. 
 i6mo. Cloth, neat. Price ........... i.$c 
 
 STUDIES FOR STORIES, FROM GIRLS LIVES. Price ... .2[ 
 
 STORIES TOLD TO A CHILD. Price .......... 2j 
 
 ,, ,, ,, ,, Second Series. Price ... ,2\ 
 
 A SISTER S BYE-HOURS. Price . . . ........ 21 
 
 MOPSA THE FAIRY- Price .............. i[ 
 
 POOR MATT; or, The Clouded Intellect. Price ..... o.6< 
 
 These editions of Miss Ingelovfs Poetical and Prose Writing. 
 are the only authorized American Editions, and are issued wilt 
 her sanction, by her Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, 
 
 BOSTON 
 
MARGARET. 
 
 By SYLVESTER JUDD. One volume. Price $1.50. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM SOME NOTABLE REVIEWS. 
 
 From the Southern Quarterly Review. 
 
 " This book, more than any other that we have read, leads us to believe in the 
 possibility of a distinctive American Literature. ... It bears the impress of New 
 England upon all its features. It will be called the Yankee novel, and rightly ; for 
 nowhere else have we seen the thought, dialect, and customs of a New England 
 Village, so well and faithfully represented. . . . More significant to our mind than 
 any book that has yet appeared in our country. To us it seems to be a prophecy 
 of the future. It contemplates the tendencies of American life and character. 
 Nowhere else have we seen, so well written out, the very feelings which our rivers 
 and woods and mountains are calculated to awaken. . . . We predict the time when 
 Margaret will be one of the Antiquary s text-books. It contains a whole magazine 
 of curious relics and habits. . . . as a record of great ideas and pure sentiments, w 
 place it among the few great books of the age." 
 
 From the North A merican Review. 
 
 " We know not where any could go to find more exact and pleasing descriptions 
 of the scenery of New England, or of the vegetable and animal forms which give it 
 life. ... As a representation of manners as they were, and in many respects are 
 still, in New England, this book is of great value." 
 
 From the London Athenceum. 
 
 "This book, though published some time since in America, has only recently 
 become known here by a few stray copies that have found their way over. Its 
 leading idea is so well worked out, that, with all its faults of detail, it strikes us as 
 deserving a wider circulation. . . . The book bears the impress of a new country, 
 and is lull of rough, uncivilized, but vigorous life. The leading idea which it seems 
 intended to expound is, that the surest way to degrade men is to make themselves 
 degraded ; that so long as that belief does not poison the sources of experience, 
 all things even the sins, follies, mistakes, so rife among men can be made 
 to work together for good. This doctrine, startling as it may sound at first, is 
 wrought out with a fine knowledge of human nature." 
 
 From the A nti-Slavery Standard. 
 
 " A remarkable book, with much good common sense in it, full of deep thought, 
 pervaded throughout with strong religious feeling, a full conception of the essence of 
 Christianity, a tender compassion for the present condition of man, and an abiding 
 hope through love of what his destiny may be. . . . But all who, like Margaret, 
 dream dreams, and see visions, and look for that time to come when man shall 
 have worked out his own salvation, and peace shall reign on earth, and good-will 
 to men, will, if they can pardon the faults of the book for its merit, read it with 
 avidity and pleasure." 
 
 From the Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 " This is quite a remarkable book, reminding you of Southey s Doctor, per 
 haps, more than of any other book. . . . Margaret is a most angelic being, who 
 loves everybody and whom everybody loves, and whose sweet influence is felt 
 wheiever she appears. She has visions of ideal beauty, and her waking eyes see 
 beauty and joy in every thing." 
 
 From the Christian Register. 
 
 " This is a remarkable book. Its scene is laid in New England, and its period 
 some half century ago. Its materials are drawn from the most familiar element.? 
 of every-day life. Its merits are so peculiar, and there is so much that is original 
 and rich in its contents, that, sooner or later, it will be appreciated. It is impossi 
 ble to predict with assurance the fate of a book, but we shall be much mistaken 
 if Margaret does not in due season work its way to a degree of admiration seldooa 
 attained by a work of its class." 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed^ prepaid, on receipt of pricc^ 
 by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. 
 
GEORGE SAND S NOVELS. 
 
 MAUPRAT . $1.50 
 
 ANTONIA 1.50 
 
 MONSIEUR SYLVESTRE 1.50 
 
 THE SNOW MAN 1.50 
 
 THE MILLER OF ANGIBAULT 1.50 
 
 Front the Cleveland Leader. 
 
 Miss Vaughan has shown herself to be perfectly adapted to the work she has under 
 taken. We search in vain through the entire list of translations from the French, 
 published in this country and England, for a volume which more satisfactorily reveals 
 one s remembrance of it in the original than the one now under consideration. Antonia 
 is not one of the great works of its authoress, the best of whose fiction is to our mind 
 the most consummate romance that France has yet produced ; but is by far the most 
 elaborate and perfect in its finish. . . . The scene is principally in Paris, the Paris of 
 Louis XVI., and the action occurs just prior to the French Revolution. The hero is 
 a poor unknown artist, the heroine a countess, beautiful and exalted in station, but, 
 withal, a woman of the purest type- The beautiful garden which encloses the home 
 of the heroine is exquisitely painted, and in those enchanted shadows there is portrayed 
 the birth and development of a love as passionate and pure as ever was pictured in 
 romance. . . . Uncle Antoine, the marplot of the story, is strongly and admirably 
 drawn ; and the Countess and Julien Thierry are two of the most perfect lovers in any 
 literature. The tale derives its name from that of a rare and perfect flower, cultivated 
 by Uncle Antoine in the enchanted garden, and whose growth and blossoming are 
 woven with exquisite art into the development of the story., 
 
 John G. Saxe, in Albany Evening Journal. 
 
 Undoubtedly the woman who by her writings has exerted the widest, probably the 
 most potent, influence upon the men and women of her time, is she who, under the nom 
 de plume of " George Sand," has given to the world in her own sparkling French 
 tongue, and, through translations, in almost every modern language which lias a litera 
 ture, such powerful and fascinating works as " Mauprat," "Antonia," and a host of 
 other works, the very names of which suggest by their number a fertility and industry 
 almost as remarkable as the extraordinary genius which inspired them. For many 
 years no writer was so little understood, or rather, so thoroughly misunderstood, botfi 
 in England and America. Not unnaturally, the immorality, the flippancy, the persi 
 flage, of most contemporary novelists of France, were attributed to the writings of 
 Madame Dudevant by people who had read nothing, or only the earliest and most 
 objectionable of her novels. For a time, therefore, she was any thing but popular, 
 and presently fell into neglect. Novel readers who sought only for the sensational, 
 indifferent to the moral quality of their intellectual pabulum, were disappointed in 
 finding instruction and the noblest philosophy where they looked hopefully for pru 
 riency or romantic excitement ; while the higher class of readers was warned away 
 by hearing, in endless repetition, the charge of eccentricity in her life, and dangerous 
 morality in her books. Even prejudice has commonly some foundation, and it is not 
 to be denied that both in her earlier life and literature there is much to reprehend* 
 much, indeed, that she has lived herself to condemn, and, as far as might be, to coun 
 teract. What all but a few failed to learn was the sincerity, the benevolence, the deep 
 philanthropy, of this wonderful woman, who, with such sad and disheartening experi 
 ences of life, lost no faith in God or mankind, and who, with such fervor of language 
 and eloquence of diction as no French woman had ever before employed, still kept to 
 her work of trying to make the world happier and better by inculcating in the more 
 vraisemble and fascinating pictures the noblest lessons of hope, courage, purity, and 
 practical benevolence. The foregoing remarks were suggested by the excellent edition 
 of the best of the novels of George Sand, remarkably well translated into English, 
 which is now appearing from the press of Roberts Brothers, Boston. " Mauprat " and 
 " Antonia " have already appeared ; and others, carefully selected, will presently follow. 
 We have just concluded the perusal of the latter, a charming love story, which we have 
 found no less attractive t lan " Mauprat ; " and so commend it to the public. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. 
 
417636 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY