1 HE 
 
 ARQU1S 
 
THE 
 
 MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "THE AMBER GODS," "THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 1882. 
 
Copyright, 1882, 
 BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS: 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 I. 
 
 IN the intense lights and shadows of the high 
 noon of a summer day there is a consciousness of 
 the fulness of life, the brooding power of creation, 
 absent from all the purple pencillings of twilight, 
 the blushing promises of dawn. 
 
 One could hardly be more sensible of this than 
 when rocking in a boat off Coastcliff that day and 
 gazing at the hillside known by sailors out at sea. 
 One saw there, midway in air, the cottage with its 
 many gables and its quaint casements full of flow 
 ers and blowing clouds of muslin, with its grapery 
 and orchid-house at hand, half hidden in its 
 honeysuckles, in the sweetbrier that intoxicated 
 the air about it, in the white rose of that perfect 
 race whose presence is a patent of nobility, that 
 climbed almost to the low roof and thrust its 
 blossoms of living perfumed snow in any win- 
 
6 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 dow that gave them passport. And all around 
 the cottage were the gardens between their walls 
 once mortised with earth, in whose interstices 
 every threadlike grass had sprung, and over which 
 a web of vines was thrown, falling and catching 
 and clinging everywhere in green content. There 
 were alleys of shade, with the boughs pleached 
 overhead and with moss beneath the feet; there 
 were spaces purple with the periwinkle and the 
 pansy ; through them all a brook danced down the 
 hill, a fall of sunshine, of amber- colored ripples 
 and creamy foam. Ending in front upon the 
 strand into which ran the elm-fringed highways 
 of the town under the hill, behind the house they 
 climbed in terraces and sloping stretches of blos 
 som till the blazing beds of geranium vignetted 
 the whole in fragrant fire against the sky. Far in 
 the upper air a hawk, soaring on motionless wings, 
 sailed in his superb flight till distance wrapped 
 him, and the fleeting breeze darkened and bright 
 ened every leaf and spray as it followed in pur 
 suit. One felt, in looking there, the presence and 
 suggestion of nothing but abounding life, life 
 overflowing in color and warmth and splendor. 
 
THE MAEQUIS OF CARABAS. 7 
 
 But was it life indeed ? Was it life or death 
 that ruled the spell in that charmed spot ? The 
 spirit of the hour answered, as a wind from the 
 sea lifted the curtain like the banner of a con 
 queror, and a sheet of glory cast up from its silver 
 panoply filled the room with the sudden light on 
 which two great violet eyes for the first time 
 opened. A robin lit upon the white rose stem and 
 swelled its throat to warble a rapture of song. 
 Then the wind swept out again with the tidings, 
 to the geraniums that might have deepened all 
 their flames, to the hyacinths tossing loose their 
 mist of sweetness, to the breast-high hedges of 
 spicy box which little hands should one day part, 
 and into whose sheltered nests a little face should 
 peer, rustling and rioting among them all with 
 debonair freedom ere it fled back to the swinging 
 sea. And the weary, happy mother within laid 
 her cheek on Adelaide s and led her away down 
 the pleasant path of her earliest dream. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 II. 
 
 FROM noon deepening into afternoon above a 
 sea bloom-bathed in veils of vapor; from sunset 
 smouldering in the west and outblazing in a double 
 world of scarlet glory ; from pensive summer twi 
 light sown with stars, whose cool air is a bewilder 
 ment of odor in this garden, with its beginnings of 
 new being in such peace and gladness, the mind 
 will wander across many an horizon of calm and of 
 commotion, through many an arching heaven full of 
 varying weather, over the tumultuous tract where 
 the crowded surges of a sudden storm are crushing 
 among themselves as the mid-sea tempest-* drives 
 northward on its way, ere it pauses in the night of 
 this same noon on low equatorial waters weltering 
 weightily in the midnight darkness of the after- 
 storm. 
 
 A vessel rides there. So dark herself as to be 
 unguessed, she seems but a high value on the 
 shadow of the night. If she flies a flag at all, it is 
 
THE MAKQUIS OF CAKABAS. 9 
 
 duskier than the ragged cloud that floats before 
 that struggling star and extinguishes its spark. She 
 carries no light fore or aft. A swift and sharp- 
 stemmed craft, she is a thing that hides herself in 
 the elements, that haunts horizons and that min 
 gles with the tints of evening, an outlaw of 
 the waters. 
 
 She rests now in the havoc that the tropical fury 
 has wrought, that she may discover into what 
 neighborhood she has been driven, and make some 
 slight repair. The sighs that rise from below 
 might fill her sails and waft her slowly on, the 
 moans there might betray her ; but they that guide 
 her helm take care no stranger comes near enough 
 to regard the one or the other, and her head has 
 been steadily pointed toward the low lagoons of 
 the coral reefs, where her freight shall be dis 
 charged and her gold counted down. As she lies 
 deep in the sea, one wave rolling after another 
 turns up its broad back of phosphorescent light, 
 and for an instant all her blackness starts out on 
 the gloomy field of the night the skeleton of 
 shrouds and yards with something ominous of all 
 disaster in their every line and is lost again in 
 
10 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 the swallowing shadow. Around her is the deso 
 lation of the flying hurricane ; if she is spared, it 
 is through the kinship of cruel things, as evil an 
 agency herself as the hurricane. Warm puffs of 
 wind wander over her as she rocks, wind whose 
 heavy wings are yet wet with the rain ; but lately 
 cries were borne upon it and the dead shocks of 
 the minute-gun. But the dark thing hidden in the 
 gulfs of the night had given no answering sign. 
 And again there were cries from this side and from 
 that, as if spirit voices mocked at her through wind 
 and whirlwind. Sometimes now, as a long wave 
 runs down to lift the keel with a different mo 
 tion from that of the sullen swell on which it rides, 
 those that lean over the side see, in the clear and 
 lighted depth of the hollows, fragments of a wreck 
 floating by ; once, indeed, a naked hand and arm 
 rise in the gleam and are drawn down again, a 
 ship s figure-head it may be, for directly afterward 
 the word El Rey is spelled out in the wave as if 
 with letters of fire. But this other is a human 
 face, with hair swimming out about it in long rays. 
 Now an empty spar goes by and drives downward 
 between the sea-ridges. For many minutes noth- 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 11 
 
 ing follows; and now another spar slides down 
 the side of the advancing crest. A form is lashed 
 to it with stout bands, a half-drowned woman, 
 on her bosom a little child, its face nestling in 
 her throat. As the warm wave bursts and scatters 
 its blinding showers, upbuoyed upon the next she 
 bends her head again above the little one to break 
 the blow of the spray, it may be she does so 
 still, no longer consciously, but by the instinct 
 that will only die when she does. 
 
 The nameless craft sits so low in the water 
 that the boat-hooks in the hands of two men 
 in the main-chains grapple the spar and hold it 
 a moment. 
 
 " Unsafe unwise, Captain," one of those above 
 them says to another. 
 
 " I will ! I swear I will ! " 
 
 " Think twice, my Captain," urges the smooth 
 voice. "Always best to let them go by. No 
 funeral of ours." 
 
 " It s a white face and a woman s face, rare sight 
 for the Nigkflrird" If the speaker s voice was the 
 more brutal it was the more honest too. " It s 
 a white face and a woman s face, and a face 
 
12 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 that loves life ! " lie cried. " As for the rest, who 
 knows ? " 
 
 " No one, indeed. And no one cares to know. 
 The thing is out of rule. The men have a right to 
 mutiny, exposed to this danger. And they always 
 take their right." 
 
 The Captain surveyed him a moment. " Lend a 
 hand, Ladeuce," he demanded then, as if nothing 
 had been said. "Here Jasper! Jasper!" And 
 with the help that came at this command the bulk 
 rose slowly up the dark side, plunged back again 
 into the surge with the stout bands severed, and 
 the woman and the child lay upon the deck. 
 
 It was but a moment before these waifs of 
 wreck were within the cabin, underneath its 
 guarded lamp, plied with such restoratives as 
 were at hand. But for one of them the rough 
 effort was presently in vain. A murmured name 
 in the ear of Ladeuce, who had carried her, a half- 
 breathed sentence, a lifted hand, and the woman 
 still gazed up at the rude brows knit above her, 
 but her countenance was only a mask of clay. 
 The child, whose pulses but lately had been beat 
 ing so feebly against her silent ones, was left to 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 13 
 
 the mercies of men who seldom knew mercy ; and 
 it was not many minutes before her shotted 
 shroud was wrapped about her. She carried 
 with her to her shifting grave no evidences of 
 her identity that Ladeuce could sequester, no 
 ring upon her finger, no shred of linen inscribed 
 with delicate charactery or crest. 
 
 When Ladeuce returned to the cabin the child 
 was in the arms of the Captain; his little limbs 
 were chafed in spirit by the man s coarse hands, 
 and some warming fluid was forced between his 
 lips. Ladeuce stood by in silent scorn. Would 
 the child have gone with the woman but for 
 his own misjudged interference ? Would the 
 boy work more or less mischief here ? Would 
 that ring, that torn shred of linen, give further 
 clue to relationship or rank than the words that 
 had been whispered to him ? Was there by pos 
 sibility a ransom in the case ? 
 
 Meanwhile the boy had suddenly lifted his 
 long-fringed lids over two eyes large enough and 
 dark enough to betray a southern lineage, and, 
 meeting the eager glance of the man that held 
 him, a smile had burst out upon his face, as if 
 
14 THE MAKQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 some splendid flower should open all at once, and 
 he held up his little arms and uttered an un 
 intelligible babble that was mere music. "It 
 warms the cockles of my heart ! " cried the Cap 
 tain, as the whole thing struck straight to some 
 spot in that savage organ which had been unfilled 
 before. " I might have had one of my own I 
 might have had one of my own," he muttered to 
 himself, stung by something of that same in 
 stinct which makes the tigress die for her whelp. 
 " Hark ye, Ladeuce ! " he exclaimed then sud 
 denly, in tones there was no gainsaying while 
 on board the Nightbird : " And Jasper, here ! 
 This is my son. I adopt him for my own. I 
 call him by my name, Dominique Dacre, from 
 this day forth and forever ! " 
 
 "A good name enough till he comes to his 
 own," said Ladeuce. And something dropped into 
 his pocket from his opening hand ; when the 
 Captain s heartstrings were knit into the life of 
 this boy he might take it out again. " A good 
 name enough till he comes to his own." 
 
 " He shall never know another," the Captain 
 answered. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 15 
 
 "Well, a name that will fetch his purpose," 
 said Ladeuce. " Will you add mine too ? " 
 
 " No joint-stock property," replied the Captain 
 good-humoredly. " It s a case where two are 
 company and three a crowd. And besides, 
 where did you come "across that name yourself ? 
 It never was given you in baptism." And the 
 Captain laughed as he had not for a twelvemonth, 
 and tossed up the child with a face for the mo 
 ment as kindly as if no chains were clanking just 
 below. 
 
 " It never was," the other said. " I ve a name 
 of my own. Perhaps 1 11 wear it again when I m 
 done with the Nightbird. It s Brown, or Gray, 
 or Green, or Black, any good colored name," said 
 he with a low laugh. " But as for Ladeuce, they 
 gave it to me with their lingo in the Levant, and 
 it answers for the business as well as another, - 
 as well as Kidd or Ketch." 
 
 The Captain threw the child into Jasper s 
 arms while he poured out a bumper of brandy. 
 " What s to be done with the boy now, Jasper ? " 
 he asked. " The little dog was bom to live." 
 
 " What is of more consequence," said Ladeuce, 
 
16 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 " is what s to be done with him when the Night- 
 lird is lying low." 
 
 " That is my lookout," said the Captain ; " when 
 the time comes I 11 give my orders. All you have 
 to do is to obey them. You 11 have it soon your 
 own way," he added quickly and in a different 
 tone. " A few more heavy freights, a few years 
 further on I ve hated it from the first I shall 
 turn longshoreman and leave the ship to you, 
 Ladeuce." 
 
 " I 11 ask no more." 
 
 " Here s to the Nighfbird s luck then," cried 
 the Captain, lifting his glass to the ray of the 
 bull s-eye that fell over the three men and the 
 child between them, "when you are making 
 the runs, and I, wherever I hang out, am dividing 
 the profits." 
 
 "If we don t all hang out to more purpose 
 first," said Ladeuce, with his low laugh again. 
 
 " Too near the wind, too near the wind," said 
 the Captain. "Meanwhile I ll keep my son with 
 me. Now, Jasper, see what you can do for the 
 boy below." 
 
 And as Kome drew half her wolfishness from 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 17 
 
 the stream that curdled the milk of human kind 
 ness in her first ancestor s veins, so no one can 
 say how much of his wild moods Dominique 
 owed to the woe-worn princess of some fierce 
 desert race, the melancholy and the fever of 
 whose captivity mingled like fire with the young 
 current of his blood, while the slave-ship shook 
 loose again her dismal sails and floated over those 
 dark waters, once haunted by the buccaneer and 
 now by her, till she was lost in the murk of the 
 night. 
 
18 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 III. 
 
 BRIGHTLY as they did the day, fifteen years 
 before, when Adelaide was born, the gardens 
 bloomed about the cottage on the hill, and still 
 the perfume of heliotrope and of carnation and 
 honeysuckle filled the air with an under-heaven 
 of sweetness. 
 
 But Adelaide, in the freshness and dew of her 
 youth, with a freak of this flower s fire and that 
 one s color, was something finer than the garden 
 grew ; the velvet of her cheek had the sweetness 
 of the rose, the midnight stars that looked down 
 on the violets where she had trod wore something 
 of the lustre of her eyes. She approached life 
 with a keen interest in it. But if she looked 
 upon it as a drama in which she was to play a 
 part, it was without a thought of the world s 
 applause, .but only of the silent audience of God 
 and her own soul. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 19 
 
 Adelaide was accustomed to the rude life of 
 the coast, the fisheries, the storms, the calms. 
 Much of her mother s property and of her own 
 was in shipping, where it had been left by her 
 father s death. Going now and then with her 
 mother to their agent in the city, fifty miles away, 
 she knew their ships and barques as old John the 
 gardener knew his flowers. This was the Winged 
 Victory, that made voyages to the Farther Indies ; 
 this was the Ship of State, that did business in 
 the Pacific; this was the clipper Puck, that car 
 ried cotton from New Orleans to Liverpool, light 
 as a cork and swift as an arrow ; these dark oil- 
 soaked hulks were whalers; this crowd of sloops 
 and schooners brought revenues from the seas 
 about the Georges and the Labrador. Sometimes 
 with a glass she saw the Winged Victory slide 
 by on the sea-line, and all her fancies followed 
 it, its long curves, its splendid figure-head, its 
 strange and rich outlandish freights, its name, its 
 destinations, all belonging to the other side of the 
 globe and to dreams remote from daily life. She 
 could not help the feeling that the Winged Vic 
 tory was more her property than all the others 
 put together. She did not believe it was be- 
 
20 THE MAEQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 Qause her mother, indulging a poetical side of 
 her nature, added another pearl to her daughter s 
 necklace every time the ship came in, almost 
 the only extravagance of which the mother, who 
 spent her substance in certain Confederated Chari 
 ties, was guilty. 
 
 It was towards nightfall of the southerly tem 
 pest, whose force the fishing schooners faced as 
 cattle face the wind upon the hills, and that 
 had shut in the day and the sea with flying 
 scuds of spray, that Adelaide flung on her cloak 
 and went with Gascoygne down to the lighthouse 
 and the sea. Nobody thought to gainsay her, and 
 Allia made haste to follow her. "It is delightful," 
 said Adelaide, making herself heard through the 
 uproar, "these drenching showers that take you 
 for a part of nature, and fall on your face as if you 
 were a leaf yourself. When we are out-doors in 
 this weather we are a part of the storm. See the 
 bough of that tree swing in the wind. I am go 
 ing to swing my cloak in that same way. Ah, it 
 would be delightful, I mean, if one did not have 
 to think of the mackerel-men out among the 
 shoals, the green seas washing over their decks 
 and their sailors clinging to the " 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 21 
 
 " What makes you think of them then ? " asked 
 Allia. 
 
 " I don t, much. I feel too light-hearted. I feel 
 as if some beautiful thing were going to happen 
 to me." 
 
 "Animal spirits," said Gascoygne, who just now, 
 iii the warmth of his medical studies, referred 
 everything to physical causes. 
 
 Twilight had fallen, and lights glanced in the 
 town as they came down the shore. The rain had 
 nearly ceased. At intervals around them the 
 strokes of the sea, the grinding of the broadsides 
 on the breaker, the shriek of the shelves of sand 
 as they tore away from the bluff, made a tumult 
 which had a fascinating terror as the darkness 
 deepened, till suddenly, through all the storm 
 shadows, sailed up a dull red flash smothered in 
 stantly in the waves and the weather. It came 
 so full upon their faces that they all drew back 
 before it. 
 
 " A ship in distress ! " cried Gascoygne. " The 
 packet-ship ! " 
 
 "And close in shore," said Adelaide. "I won 
 der," she exclaimed presently, "if a boat can be 
 launched " 
 
22 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 "No sooner said than done," said Gascoygne. 
 " There they come round from the town with their 
 lanterns, the hardy fellows. Now, if I leave you, 
 can you get home alone ? I will bring you some 
 flotsam and jetsam if I find any," and he was 
 running to join the group that hurried to the 
 lighthouse ledge, and whose loud welcome came 
 back on the gust ; for Gascoygne, with his practical 
 sense, the gymnast and waterman of his college, 
 too, was no mean accession to the volunteers of 
 an instant. 
 
 " I hate shipwrecks ! " cried Allia, as the two 
 were blown up the hill. " It is singular that there 
 always is a shipwreck whenever I come to Coast- 
 cliff." 
 
 " We get them up to order," said Adelaide. 
 
 " I don t know how it happens," persisted Allia, 
 " I only know it does happen. Now I have come 
 to stay you ll be having drowned people in the 
 parlors ! " 
 
 "That would be dreadful," said Adelaide run 
 ning backward. " Don t you think it is lighter ? 
 The moon must have come up. The storm is cer 
 tainly lifting, except these slaps of rain," as one of 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 23 
 
 them struck her. " Turn and look at the sea in 
 the moon that has broken from the cloud. Oh, 
 such a white and black splendor ! And there is 
 the wreck. I can see it distinctly, with all its 
 ropes and ratlines." 
 
 f * It looks like a gallows ! " 
 
 " Ah, how majestic and dark," cried Adelaide, " in 
 the midst of the white fury ! And when you know 
 it is so crowded with eagerness and fear. There 
 goes a rocket ! A great green shooting star. They 
 are pulling the cables across. I am so glad the 
 moon has come out, for with the darkness the 
 scene is robbed of half the horror ! " 
 
 " It will go in again. There, it has gone ! Why 
 will you talk about such things, Adelaide ! Here 
 I am trembling in every nerve." 
 
 " You have such a tender little heart! And it is 
 shocking for us to be so satisfied here while not 
 a mile away they are holding their lives by a 
 thread." 
 
 " I m not satisfied. I wish there was no such 
 thing as death. I don t see why it was made. 
 I hate it ! " cried Allia. 
 
 " So do I," said Adelaide. " I should like to live 
 
24 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 forever on this happy earth. And yet the people 
 there " 
 
 At the door she paused again, while the moon 
 scattering the clouds once more ran out on their 
 long rifts, lighted the terrible beauty of the tossing 
 sea, and gave its brilliance to the dying storm, 
 lingered and looked back, perhaps in some dim 
 way aware that fate was busy with her in that 
 hour. 
 
 It was later in the evening that she was stoop 
 ing at the hearth to adjust the embers there, the 
 light spreading over her face, when the door was 
 flung open and Gascoygne s voice was heard, and 
 the tramp of feet, and her mother and Miss Grey 
 and Allia were greeting a shaggy fellow whom Gas- 
 coygne designated as Captain Dacre, and a drenched 
 and bare-throated boy by the name of Dominique, 
 and the boy had turned and stood bending before 
 her, transfixed as it were in his gaze. 
 
 Dominique had lived till this night like a young 
 barbarian, in the enjoyment only of his sensations ; 
 men and women had been shadows passing to and 
 fro. All at once danger had unsealed his eyes and 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 25 
 
 he had found two beings in whom life was as liv 
 ing a flame as in himself, the one when, as he clam 
 bered hand over hand across the cable, a splendid 
 face shone up out of the sudden moonlight that 
 lit the dark hollows of the roaring breaker over 
 which he passed, and Gascoygne, who had waded 
 and swum out with ropes round his waist as far as 
 his strength held, had his arms about the boy, 
 helping him to shore. The way in which the mys 
 terious and dreadful shadows underneath yielded 
 this golden head and eager face was to Dominique 
 one of those things stamped from without as in 
 separably as if projected from an interior experi 
 ence. And now Adelaide, made magnetic for the 
 moment, perhaps, by the intensity of his own emo 
 tion, as a magnef lends its power to steel, with the 
 glow of the fire overlying all other glow, and the ! 
 pitiful violet eyes fastened on his own, seemed 
 to him, despite all that might have crossed his 
 path, the first woman he had ever seen. 
 
 " The strangest part of it all is," said Gascoygne 
 as they separated at length, he and his cousins, 
 when they had stood a moment listening to the 
 slow drip of the sodden lilac-trees, " that when I 
 
26 THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 
 
 saw a shape just beyond, growing more and more 
 distinct, and finally the moonlight burst over that 
 white face with its wet hair and the great wild 
 eyes of the boy, I felt as if the storm and I to 
 gether had made him ! " 
 
 His feeling echoed in the young girl s heart. 
 She had some unworded impression that Domi 
 nique was a being of new existence, as if it were 
 impossible he could have any consciousness in his 
 sixteen years of which she was not already a part. 
 And all night long that face, as she had gazed up 
 at it when kneeling beside the fire, that white and 
 beautiful bending face, hung over her dreams in 
 the guise of varying moods, as the reflection of a 
 star hangs in the water when the tide com.es in, 
 and sparkles and shifts and changes, and is another 
 and yet the same anew for every wave that breaks ; 
 and all night long she lay plastic in the hands of 
 those dreams that mould us like fate, and come to 
 us but once in all our lives. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 27 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE stranger to Captain Dacre found about him 
 an air of rude grace, half brusque, half deferen 
 tial, that was not unattractive. The familiar found 
 in voice and manner a gentle pathos that touched 
 the heart. He was a man apparently warmed 
 with a single sentiment, the love of his son. 
 During the days of residence at the cottage that 
 were enforced by the consequences of his expo 
 sure, he yielded to certain confidential impulses, 
 urged by his nervous excitement, in a way that 
 made the household know him better than by 
 years of casual acquaintance. As he saw the sim 
 ple life of the family, as he watched the younger 
 ones out-doors, he became possessed with longing 
 for such training for Dominique, to whom all that 
 his wealth had yet been able to give was life at 
 some watering-place, where fine ladies made a pet 
 of the boy for his beauty. What might not such 
 companionship do for him now, a youth with 
 
28 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 such nobility and leadership as Gascoygne, a girl 
 with such spirit and such sweetness as Adelaide ! 
 For Dominique s good had been the end of this 
 man s aims from the moment when the child s 
 innocence had pointed a contrast with sin, that 
 had controlled him until a stronger power had sud 
 denly appeared to him, like a Face in the dark, 
 and made him the subject of one of those swift 
 Wesleyan conversions that transform a whole na 
 ture and a whole life. For Dominique he had 
 changed his business upon the sea, had eventually 
 left all business there, had wandered about the 
 world in search of gentle influences, had studied, 
 as he could, manners and books. For Dominique 
 he had made himself a gentleman. He did not 
 feel a hypocrite now in resolving to render Mrs. 
 Stuart his friend by assuming that the thing was 
 already done. "I cannot be grateful enough for 
 the shelter you have given me, a stranger," he 
 began, on the morning of the day he felt he must 
 go away. 
 
 " I should have no right to such a pleasant home 
 as mine, if it were not always open to those in 
 trouble," said Mrs. Stuart, turning on her finger 
 
THE MAKQUIS OF CARABAS. 29 
 
 the ruby ring that she wore as Eegent of the Con 
 federated Charities. " And it must, it must," she 
 said, " have been a fearful day that of the wreck 
 
 an awful hour that night." 
 
 " It was," said Captain Dacre. " And yet my 
 nerves are cast in iron. I have led a life that 
 does not spare the nerves an adventurous life 
 
 for several years commanding a cruiser of one 
 of the South American States " which was per 
 fectly true. " I have done much that all the red 
 gold of Guinea would not tempt me to do again," 
 looking up quickly under his lowering brows, 
 " and the life of a sea-faring man is at best one 
 of dangers, but I have known few hours like that 
 night s, when I thought to leave Dominique alone 
 or be left alone by him. When," said he pres 
 ently again, " one has passed the flush of his years 
 desperate deeds and he are not friends. Death 
 wears another face from that when his blood was 
 strong with the strength that likes to defy. And 
 although I trust I have made my peace for 
 whatever errors And then too," said Captain 
 Dacre, coming back to the table that he had left 
 and leaning his arms upon it, while he sat look- 
 
30 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 ing at her in a way that was pure simplicity, 
 "and then too, I felt I must live to atone to 
 Dominique for the wrong I have done him in 
 making him my soa" 
 
 "And I have thought the same about Ade 
 laide ! " cried Mrs. Stuart, looking up at the ivy- 
 wreathed picture of the girl which Gascoygne s 
 pencil had filled with something of the life and 
 lustre of her young beauty. "If she had a 
 stronger mother I wonder if all parents feel 
 the same ! Your wife is no longer living ? " 
 
 "I have not no, Mrs. Stuart. Dominique s 
 mother was lost at sea," in a dry, hoarse tone. 
 
 " That is so sad. And what a handsome lad he 
 is ! " glancing at the group in the garden path. 
 
 "Is he not? And so warm-hearted. True as 
 steel. A trifle too quick but we lose our 
 spirit full soon. I am going to make a confes 
 sion," said the Captain. " I am superstitious. 
 Sailors are apt to be. I do not know but the 
 storm tossed me here, a vagrant, to some end. 
 Could I remain where intercourse like this is pos 
 sible for him and educate my boy ! I may have 
 neglected duty in affection. He sailed with me 
 
THE MAEQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 31 
 
 while I was in the service. He can handle a ship 
 as well as I can myself, quite as well, but as for 
 books his mind is virgin soil, or nearly so." And 
 the end was that they went to look at the Lonely 
 Beach House five miles away, over the bridge, 
 and along the causeway winding round the head 
 of the salt meadows that stretched far off beyond 
 the wood to lose their green and russet tints in 
 the sparkle of the sea. 
 
 It was a stone building, much the color of the 
 dunes around it ; over it a group of oaks twisted 
 their boughs in contortions that told what gales 
 had whipped them. Behind it, redeemed from 
 almost impassable meadow, lay a fallow field and 
 an old plum orchard. In front the water was 
 smooth, but on either side the half-mile-long 
 reach of quicksands and shallows frothed the sea 
 white in stillest weather. 
 
 " Is it not dreary ? " said Adelaide, when she 
 and Dominique rode there first together. " Oh, so 
 desolate ! In the storms the surf sends spray over 
 the window-glass. It would be sad to live there." 
 
 " It would be fine ! " 
 
 "Do you know what is going to happen if 
 
32 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 your father takes it? You will ride over every 
 day and study with Miss Grey. She knows so 
 much. Mamma says she completes the circle of 
 the arts and sciences. And she will always be 
 with us. Allia is half her charge." 
 
 Dominique was silent a moment, and then he 
 turned and seized Adelaide s hand. " It makes 
 my heart beat ! " cried he. " We shall read from 
 the same book." 
 
 " I am so glad to be alive," he said, as he and 
 Adelaide strolled in the lower terraces of the 
 gardens on the hill that night. " I never thought 
 a week ago, as Death leaped after us in every 
 surge, that I should be here now, drawing such 
 sweet breath in your garden, where I have crossed 
 half the side of the world to be, Adelaide. I shall 
 call you so ? It is so beautiful a name." And 
 the two young beings lingered there listening to 
 a distant echo, while the brook bubbled its sweet 
 monotone, the flowering terraces shook out all 
 their perfumes, and the moonlight spread floods of 
 silver around them, all unthinking that they stood 
 no longer on the outside, but had entered into the 
 great mysteries of life. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 33 
 
 V. 
 
 DOMINIQUE S attendance upon Miss Grey was ex 
 emplary, but it by no means lightened that lady s 
 labors. Whatever gifts came by nature Domi 
 nique could make th most of but was the thing 
 to be conquered by trouble, he measured it and the 
 consequence of its absence, and made up his mind 
 to do without it. He held his side of the book 
 properly, it is true, but he looked at Adelaide. 
 When Miss Grey urged his father s desire, he 
 would bend over the page with determination, 
 puzzle himself into a frantic perplexity, then the 
 volume would spin through the air, and he would 
 stalk from the room and be seen no more that 
 day, while his penitence on the morrow was only 
 exceeded by his ignorance. At other times, when 
 Adelaide was at the point of tears over the gloom 
 of her problem, Dominique would dart to the cen 
 tral pang, make all as clear as light, and Ade 
 laide s recitation would be perfect while his was 
 
 3 
 
34 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 only laughing uncertainty. " Why should I learn 
 how to demonstrate that Kectilineal figures which 
 are similar to the same rectilineal figure are also 
 similar to one another ? " he would say. " It 
 stands to reason that they are. And what earthly 
 purpose does it help for me to prove that Similar 
 solid parallelepipeds are to one another in the 
 triplicate ratio of their homologous sides ? And 
 as for the Series of prisms of the same altitude 
 that may be circumscribed about any pyramid 
 such that the sum of the prisms shall exceed the 
 pyramid by a solid less than any given solid I 
 wish I knew the man that invented that precious 
 stuff; I d make a prism of him. At any rate, if 
 he was n t the rest of it, he should be black and 
 blue ! " Then, in the midst of lessons, he would 
 troll some catch boasting precisely opposite ac 
 complishments, and Miss Grey in despair would 
 recommend Captain Dacre to apply his boy to 
 anything but books. 
 
 But Captain Dacre was inexorable. He had 
 found books a refuge when he forsook active life. 
 If Dominique could not learn everything between 
 their covers, he should know where to go for what 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 35 
 
 he might want in them by and by. He spent 
 half his own time poring over books, or in his 
 little laboratory, gathering what he could, to give 
 back to Dominique in any way in which he could 
 assimilate it. And it was no new effort ; ever since 
 his aroused heart had changed his whole manner 
 of life, he had had the single hope that his con 
 tact might not be worse for the boy than death by 
 drowning would have been at first. Once in every 
 week, too, he spent a day and night at the cottage, 
 giving some instruction in navigation, and, if the 
 stars shone, a sailor s lecture in astronomy, where 
 alone he was better posted than the encyclopedic 
 Miss Grey. The superintendence received from 
 Gascoygne, in the latter s vacations, however, was 
 a relief to the Captain, who feared to place Domi 
 nique among men, suffering new pain in the 
 thought that, if his treatment were hurtful, even 
 that was a consequence of his own career, and 
 Dominique might in fact be ruined because Cap 
 tain Dacre had been. And then he subjected the 
 boy to cautious probing, to discover if he had any 
 of that strength by which, if ruin came, he* could 
 climb out of it on God s hand. 
 
36 THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 
 
 But Dominique knew nothing of all these 
 thoughts and fears. He was happy; that was 
 enough. He was punctual at the cottage on the 
 hill, sometimes sailing across from breaker to 
 breaker, sometimes rising at dawn and walking 
 the five miles, his white face flushed with pleasure, 
 and coming in laden with wild treasures, treas 
 ures over which old John, the gardener, who, like 
 all the rest of Coastcliff, had followed the sea in 
 his youth, and although apt to his business now, 
 was, and always would be, strange to the wild- 
 wood, bent his broad back with satisfaction, study-- 
 ing their novelty with many a self-contained 
 chuckle, while wiling Dominique into relations of 
 his boyish life, before the wreck of the packet-ship. 
 
 They had grown so used to Dominique at the 
 cottage now, his joyous vagaries, his sullen moods, 
 his sunshiny penitences, that they would as easily 
 have known how to do without one of themselves 
 as without him. He made a variety in their 
 feminine lives, to which, in Gascoygne s absences, 
 old John the gardener and Thomas the coachman 
 had never been equal. He had no lack of slight 
 Social graces on occasion, remnants of his gay life 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 37 
 
 at springs and bathing-places , and Mrs. Stuart had 
 been even heard to say, that if she had had a son she 
 should have wished him exactly like Dominique. 
 He was very gentle after that remark, but perhaps 
 could not help taking Adelaide out in his boat and 
 rewarding the mother, who could see them with 
 the glass, by tacking to and fro on the edge of the 
 breaker till she was cold with fear, and had to 
 warm herself with a fever of letter-writing con 
 cerning the Confederated Charities, in which Ade 
 laide became but one of a host of children and 
 cares. 
 
 When the winter came, the boat was discon 
 tinued in favor of a donkey over the road, on 
 which Dominique was often the first to break the 
 drift, but where the wind driving across the 
 meadows as often had blown a way clear for him. 
 The snow was always a delight. He had a team 
 at the door, whenever allowed, to take some 
 one fleeting across country to fantasias of bell 
 music. " It makes me feel as if my heart were 
 swept and garnished," he exclaimed to Adelaide. 
 "" The whole earth is so Clean it looks spiritualized. 
 Now I understand what my father means. It is 
 
38 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 so white you might see its wings." Sleighing 
 done, he mounted his donkey and plodded home 
 over the bridge and the long causeway with its 
 dark meadows ribboned in crystal, and then out 
 of the keen air into the shelter of the wood. He 
 always delayed a little there. There was a pine 
 feathering into the intense blue overhead; there 
 was a huge hemlock shaking down layers of snow 
 from its bent shadow ; there were the seed vessels 
 of wiry weeds and the red-berried wayside stems 
 rising through the crust, the crust in whose 
 hollows there were nothing less than copperas 
 crystals for color, and there was a sort of hush 
 through all the place. Or sometimes the sky was 
 white and the snow was falling through the wood 
 softly and hesitatingly, and it seemed as if he 
 could lie down and let the gentle flakes cover him. 
 When he rode out of the wood into the sea wind 
 that scattered about the beach the icy fringes of 
 the surf, this tranquil spell broke. He urged 
 forward, he sang to drown the resounding wave ; 
 he felt, as he withstood the wind, a victor over the 
 elements. Then the windows of the dining-room 
 opened on him, and the Captain, always watching 
 
THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 39 
 
 for him there, saw him flying onward, his dark 
 hair blown back, his cheeks ruddy for the mo 
 ment, and felt beforehand the embrace that never 
 was forgotten, and the long evening in which the 
 boy would tell him all his day, and he in turn 
 would rehearse his fancies in the firelight. 
 
 As they watched the blue flames flickering up 
 the flue, Dominique, wondering about things, spent 
 many a speculation over fire. " I don t know 
 where it comes from," once he said. "Look at 
 that fork leap from the black lump. Where was 
 it before ? Where will it be presently ? It is 
 like our life, father. Sometimes I think it was 
 the sunshine shut up in the earth when coal was 
 made. I should like to have been born before 
 God finished the earth. What if we could see 
 him make a star ! " 
 
 " It is clear to me as though I did," his father 
 said. "For had I seen chaos divide, should I 
 have been the wiser, have known where matter 
 came from and what spirit was ? I ve been 
 thinking to-day," said the Captain, "of an old 
 belief, I Ve heard, that matter is eternal as spirit, 
 and of the fight between them. Matter seems to 
 
40 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 me in perfect order wherever it is pure matter, in 
 stars and flowers, say ; and in man alone, where 
 matter is united with spirit, is there any clash. 
 So that in this warfare of God and matter, this 
 endeavor to reduce matter to the subjection of 
 spirit, man is the battle-ground. And then the 
 thought comes to me, Dominique, that if every 
 seeker who searches a mystery, every mechanic 
 who spans space, works to God s aid in the rough, 
 then they who work in their own portion, reduce 
 their own bodies to obedience, are as much nearer 
 to his purpose as if they were fighting by his side. 
 Eh, Dominique ? " 
 
 " That we sha n t know," replied his son, stirring 
 the fire. " But we might know just how the world 
 was made ; how coal, how diamonds, came about ; 
 where clouds learned colors ; what we are here at 
 aU for." 
 
 " I please myself puzzling about it, and I think, 
 do you want to hear what I think ? Well, then, 
 what if, eternities ago, it came into God s heart 
 to make man, to be loved, to see the beauty of 
 the universe, to share the joy of being ? What 
 ever the reason, here was the chance to bring 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 41 
 
 matter into subjection, while the Lord was to 
 strike sparks off from his fulness, as one might 
 say, and work them through this other element that 
 we call matter. And so, before man should come, 
 there were countless centuries to make the star 
 on which he was to live, to mould it, to sun it. 
 As for man himself, how, just with lying there, 
 resting in God s thought, a cherished expectation 
 wrapped in the eternal Father s heart, his pos 
 sibilities must have increased in comeliness, must 
 have grown sanctified ! I hope it s not as if I 
 were burrowing behind unspoken words." And 
 the Captain crossed himself, with an old habit 
 that he had, a sense of un worthiness following 
 him through all his best endeavor. 
 
 " Well, father," said Dominique, who liked this 
 lesson better than his books, and found it less 
 troublesome. 
 
 "Well," said the Captain. "Look now at the 
 lace-work of muscles on your hand. But trifles ! 
 Dream, then, of the thinking needed to arrange 
 the whole frame with its perpetual machinery, its 
 beauty, its strength, to make it as fair to see as 
 blest to be." 
 
42 THE MAKQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 "Perhaps it wasn t done by thinking," said 
 Dominique. 
 
 " Very likely. Where was the need of thinking ? 
 Could there be perplexity or confusion in the mind 
 of Him whose first essence was order ? It was all 
 a gentle sequence. There are those that, looking 
 on the huge fossils, say practice betters. To my 
 seeing, in the clumsiest foot of the most prodigious 
 of them all there s the full design of the perfect 
 foot at last, only life was adapted to its condi 
 tions, a honey-bee s foot not wasted on the creature 
 that wallowed in mire. I love to think of that 
 mysterious time when the Spirit of God moved on 
 the face of the waters, Dominique, before those 
 wondrous six days when he stripped off veil after 
 veil, and brought out, fiat after fiat, the force of 
 his completed work," said the Captain, reconciling 
 matters in his own way. 
 
 " It is like one of the Talmud legends that Miss 
 Grey tells us." 
 
 "But that s apart," said the Captain. "You 
 understand, Dominique, that, it being best to make 
 the earth for man, it was to be made to develop 
 the good in him ; and who has found out better than 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 43 
 
 yourself this summer that that is done by the ex 
 ercise of our faculties ? So in the earth there must 
 be this and that, but most of all coal, coal to 
 get out, more precious than gold, and without 
 which even the iron must rest in its bed. So," 
 continued the Captain, " there may have been a time 
 when the shining water- world wore only a girdle 
 of island gems, then a time when a belt of forests 
 circled the earth, and down in the valleys our des 
 tined fuel, for you and I, Dominique, were as 
 much in that first idea of man as Caesar, those 
 forests lifted their green heads into the warm wind 
 less weather, into the white fog that kept the sun s 
 hot rays diffused and brooding, sucking in carbon 
 from the heavy air, giant stems growing in rankest 
 swamps and crowned with clouds of shining leaves, 
 leaves pencilled as if with graver s tools in the 
 mine to-day. Then how to store this fuel ? How 
 but to let the waters in over it, either through slow 
 sinking of the marshy rafts, or by. rending crusts 
 and disturbing seas that rush to find their level, 
 and when drawn off leave above the forest tops 
 fresh soil for new growth, till, layer laid on layer, 
 the rocks heave in convulsion above it all, press it 
 
44 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 close and its exhalations with it, then let the earth 
 drive her fires through it till the work is done ?" 
 
 " And then ? " urged Dominique. 
 
 " Why then, the earth being one treasure-house 
 inside, other ages draped it with greensward, tented 
 it with blue sky, and breathing beings came to 
 walk upon it." 
 
 "Yes, man came in with the roses," Adelaide 
 says. 
 
 " The man the Maker planned for and wrought 
 for. And all this only leads to one thought. In 
 the beginning there were plants, simple plants, 
 it was only when their, decay furnished the 
 material that plants with flowers came. When I 
 see how the white violet that Adelaide loves is 
 streaked with purple lines always the same, when 
 I catch the snowflakes on my sleeve, when the 
 speaker in the lecture-desk tells me this chalk is 
 made of shells too tiny for the seeing and each as 
 perfect as the stars in heaven, why then I see that 
 the Lord who made it must love beauty, his least 
 thought beauty itself. And what is beauty but fit 
 ness, and how much of that has man ? And I say 
 man is not yet complete ; part of the work s to do, 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 45 
 
 himself to do it ; and then I have this fancy, 
 this. Do you mind, Dominique, there are folks 
 believe in the millennium, when God reigns upon 
 the earth a thousand years ; man himself is to be 
 made anew, do you think the earth must not 
 be new as well ? There shall be, it says, a new 
 heaven and a new earth. But how s this earth 
 that was made so well, how s this earth to gain a 
 grace ? 1 11 tell you. This earth was of the crude 
 matter ; this man was of the crude matter. Man 
 dies ; his body turns to dust. Do you think the 
 dust is no fouler that has been the keeping of a 
 foul spirit ? And do you think the dust that has 
 had a clean soul in it, that has wrought with it for 
 purification, and has been penetrated with truth 
 and trust and sacrifice, won t keep a little of such 
 contact in it, won t be heroic dust ? Ah, Domi 
 nique, when man, made from dust that meant noth 
 ing, returns to a dust that means everything, that 
 means virtue and faith and love, when the whole 
 round earth is made only of mouldering hero-dust, 
 there 11 be a soil fit for the Lord and his saints to 
 walk on, and matter will have gone under in the 
 fight!" 
 
46 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 By this time, perhaps Dominique was asleep; 
 and if the silence woke him, there was a game of 
 draughts, or a descent into the little laboratory, 
 where they went through the Captain s last chem 
 ical experiments, after which nothing satisfied 
 Dominique, while he himself made ice burn and 
 blanched red roses white, but to bring Adelaide 
 and Allia over to the Lonely Beach for delighted 
 spectators of his magic. 
 
 Every night before sleep these two companions 
 went the round of the traps set in the plum- 
 orchard. Once they found a little red fox shivering 
 there, with his bushy tail frozen into the snow ; at 
 another time a white arctic owl a puff of feathers 
 opened his eyes like yellow flames upon them. 
 By and by the wild geese, flying low, clanged their 
 music overhead as Dominique took his last look 
 at Orion and the night ; and then Spring, with her 
 breath-betraying violets, was close at hand. It 
 was a happy, innocent boyhood. And when Cap 
 tain Dacre looked at Dominique s radiant smile, 
 he wondered if much might not be counterbal 
 anced by his gift of such happiness and innocence 
 to a life snatched out of storm. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 47 
 
 VI. 
 
 THREE springs had painted the soft blue and 
 rosy reaches of the sea before the door, had echoed 
 its resounding song, as Dominique s sail took the 
 wet winds of the outer depths, or hung loosely 
 when the boat slipped up between the breakers to 
 the Lonely Beach, Adelaide still his most frequent 
 companion on the water. 
 
 One sunset he had kept her out too long ; the 
 flushing heavens behind them, the moon swim 
 ming up the hollow of the sky, the murmur of the 
 waters of far horizons lifting around them its 
 vast music, the breath of the salt seas blowing 
 freshly about their temples, all had tempted them 
 to linger for yet another tack, as the boat went 
 about and the sail shot out on the running, rope 
 and filled like a cloud, to make the eastern shadow 
 beyond that lane of glory in the moon-swale. 
 But now they knew Gascoygne must be waiting 
 on the shingle to take Adelaide up the hill. " I 
 
48 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 think," said Dominique, " I must have some of the 
 old sea/-people s blood in my veins ; hardly your 
 vikings, maybe those Portuguese sailors who first 
 slipped out of sight of shore. There is no pleas 
 ure like sailing. When you ride, you master a 
 horse ; but when you sail, you master the great 
 sea itself, you make the winds your slaves. And 
 just to go slipping from crest to crest, soaring and 
 sinking, it is like flying between the stars ! 
 Should you like to live upon it ? How great, how 
 glorious that life will be some time, Adelaide, 
 some time when we can always be together ; when 
 I never need bring you back to shore ! " 
 
 Then he left her and Gascoygne picking their 
 way over the wet stones in the moonlight, Gas 
 coygne, who had some shadow of trouble in his 
 face, and would not put an arm about her for help, 
 and his boat went dipping across the bay, and 
 slid at last up the long shallow of the Lonely 
 Beach. 
 
 How joyous and unsullied he was ! He went 
 up towards the house slowly. The shadow at the 
 rusty iron gate he hardly saw till he was there. 
 It was the Captain, leaning there with his head 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 49 
 
 between his hands. Dominique stole an arm 
 round his shoulder. 
 
 " Is that you, Dominique ? " said his father pres 
 ently. " I was thinking of you. Gascoygne tells 
 me to-morrow is the last examination for entrance 
 to your classes. You are to go up with him. 
 There is your world that you long for." 
 
 Dominique heard him with a throb. The world 
 that was enchantment, yet Adelaide to leave, 
 and this lovely life. 
 
 " All our pleasure here is over," said the other 
 sadly. -The tone smote Dominique. He drew 
 his arm more closely round his father s neck, and 
 nestled his cheek to his in the outgrown boyish 
 way. 
 
 " Indeed, I do not care to go," he said. 
 
 "It is settled," answered the Captain. "All 
 settled. I will drive you over in the morning, 
 one more long hour to ourselves. Leave me now, 
 Dominique; it is chilly, and you are wet." And 
 as Dominique obeyed, the man s head dropped into 
 his hands again, and he was murmuring to him 
 self. " My sin has found me out," he said. " My 
 sin has found me out ! " 
 
 4 
 
50 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 But Dominique ran in lightly, and only paused 
 to glance into the old dining-room and see in what 
 state the table lay. There was a low fire in the 
 grate, two or three embers of driftwood sending 
 now and then a phantom of flame up the chimney. 
 A man sat beside it, resting his elbows on his arm 
 chair, and tipping his fingers together before him 
 in the tuneful measure of some pleasant thought. 
 He looked up suddenly with a pair of piercing 
 eyes and a smooth smile that, instead of spreading 
 over his face as smiles do, like sunshine, cut into 
 it like a knife. 
 
 " Aha ! " said he. " And who may this be ? 
 Dominique ? Come here and let me have a look 
 at you. The Captain did n t tell you I was here, 
 I 11 dare swear ! You may have heard him speak 
 of me, my lad. My name is Ladeuce." 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 51 
 
 VII. 
 
 WHEN Captain Dacre flung his servant the 
 reins and went around the corner of the house 
 next day, he was greeted by his old Lieutenant 
 from the gallery. "A sightly place you have," 
 said Ladeuce, " though that s a bad harbor, with 
 those breakers. However, you Ve no use for that 
 any longer. But you re like all the rest of us old 
 sea-dogs, and can t do without the water. Most 
 sailors ashore, I find, must have their patch of 
 ground," he continued, as the Captain still made 
 him no reply. " You take yours out in that old 
 plum orchard, looks as if our friend Robert 
 might have buried plunder there. You re not 
 troubled with too much company here. I don t 
 know that I ever saw a more capital place for a 
 retired pirate " 
 
 If Ladeuce had not retreated a step he would 
 have had the word knocked down his throat. 
 
52 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 " You object to the phrase ? " he said coolly, 
 recovering himself. " But I believe it is piracy 
 before the law. However, we must regard appear 
 ances. I used to remember that when I saw you 
 at Congress Hall with Dominique, and thought 
 of those barracoons on the African coast. You 
 didn t see me. I was there but briefly just to 
 keep you in sight." 
 
 " Ladeuce, what do you want with me ? " said 
 the Captain. 
 
 "I don t know," answered Ladeuce, biting off 
 the end of a fresh cigar, " that I want anything 
 of you in this mood. When you remember what 
 you are, I may give you a point in the law. But 
 do not disturb yourself. I am in no hurry." 
 And leaning over towards the Captain he added, 
 " I have come to stay." 
 
 " You have come That is impossible ! " cried 
 the other. 
 
 " Not at all, since you see me here," said the 
 Lieutenant. " And here I mean to stay while it 
 suits me. I shall make forays into the neigh 
 borhood of towns and cities. I have some ven 
 tures yet upon the sea. I may take a trip or so 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 53 
 
 now and then. But what more natural than that 
 I should tie up with my old Captain ? I have 
 come to help you, though it is late in the day," 
 said Ladeuce, with a laugh that showed all his 
 white teeth, "I have come to help you bring up 
 Dominique." 
 
 The Captain shuddered in spite of the warm 
 noon. " Ladeuce," he said presently, " you and I 
 have nothing in common " 
 
 " Except our memories," laughed Ladeuce again. 
 
 "When we parted, the terms were generous 
 enough for you to keej) your word and leave me 
 unmolested." 
 
 " Attractions," said Ladeuce, " sometimes over 
 ride promises." 
 
 " I desired then," said the Captain more quietly, 
 " only to escape from what might injure or dis 
 grace the boy. Afterward, if fire would have 
 purified me, I should be clean to-day, for I lived 
 in the torments of hell-fire with my remem 
 brances." 
 
 " I always thought you were a tender-foot, 
 Captain." 
 
 " Here in this haven," continued the Captain, 
 
54 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 " I have found peace and rest. What will you 
 have and begone ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Ladeuce placidly. " I have told 
 you I have come to stay." 
 
 " And I have told you it cannot be." 
 
 " It is. I am here. You do not want the fiasco 
 of turning me out ? You want no exposure ? 
 Caramba! I am an old friend. I conie and I 
 go. I shall, perhaps, hinder you from making a 
 milksop of Dominique. Can he play ? Can he 
 put on the gloves ? Can he fence ? Has he any 
 of the arts of the Spanish gentleman? Perhaps 
 he will take a run with me on the Nightbird " 
 
 "The NigUUrd!" 
 
 " The same. Did you think she had laid her 
 bones on the reefs ? Not at all. She carries live 
 cargoes into the islands for me yet, and will this 
 many a day " 
 
 " Not she ! She shall never carry another ! I 
 gave you no deed of her. She is mine. I thought 
 she had gone to pieces a dozen years ago. You 
 shall bring her up and burn her in the offing here, 
 or by heaven," cried Captain Dacre, " I will hang 
 you at her yard-arm yet ! " 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 55 
 
 "Softly, softly, my Captain," said Ladeuce. 
 " If we talk of ropes ends there are always two 
 ends, you know. And one of us will not be exe 
 cuting that dance on nothing without the other. 
 The Niglitbird is yours, to be sure. I am ready 
 to yield you account any day. And if you don t 
 want this blood-money, as I heard you call it, 
 will you then tell me on what else you are living 
 now ? What bought this place ? What furnishes 
 your table ? What sends Dominique on his costly 
 errand now ? " 
 
 "It is true," said Captain Dacre, white as 
 ashes. 
 
 " Then let us stop sentimental humbug, if you 
 please ; and if you don t," said Ladeuce. " When 
 you are ready to throw up your fortune and ship 
 before the mast, I may believe you have seen the 
 error of your ways. Till you are, no reproaches 
 concerning mine. You have a fancy to be a fine 
 gentleman, you .don t make much of a fist at it. 
 I, also, have taken great pains with myself; you 
 will not be ashamed of me. For the rest, do you 
 forget our old proverb, - Quien tien tienda, que 
 atienda? He that has a shop let him keep it. 
 
56 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 The Niglifbird will run her regular trips, sometimes 
 from the Guinea coast to the Windward Islands, 
 and sometimes, when the barracoons are not filled, 
 with a conspicuously innocent lading of palm oil 
 and gums and ivory, and sometimes with one, 
 not quite so innocent, of French brandies, entered 
 in the dark up among these ports. She s not a 
 hundred miles away from us, as the crow flies, now. 
 As for me, I am your friend, a Southern gentleman 
 with plantations in Central America. Personally, 
 I have my reasons for putting up with you off and 
 on as I choose. I always meant tq. It s enough 
 for you to know, and say, that I find myself in 
 need of a physician, and fancy yours. If you con 
 duct yourself so that any think me unwelcome it 
 is all up with you. And when you see your Night- 
 bird blazing out there in the stream, you may 
 know it s all up with me. Then, and not till then. 
 I give you till to-morrow to think of it." 
 
 " I do not need it," said Captain Dacre, corning 
 back from where he had stood facing sea and sky 
 as if searching the horizon for help. " You have 
 me in your power. But, Ladeuce, I was your 
 friend in the old time " 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 57 
 
 "Ah, that s the way I like to have you talk, 
 my Captain ! We were good friends in the old 
 time when we knew danger together ! You would 
 say " 
 
 "About Dominique. Plainly, it would kill 
 me I don t know but it would kill him to 
 find " 
 
 " That you made your money as a kidnapper 
 and slaver in the African and West Indian waters. 
 Well, give yourself no concern. I make no prom 
 ises. No digo nada. But I hold Dominique as 
 much my charge as yours. He s a fine-looking lad. 
 Have you ever had a hint as to who he is ? " 
 
 " He is Dominique Dacre ! " thundered the Cap 
 tain, forgetting all the rest in this new face of the 
 foe. " He is that, and nothing else." 
 
 Ladeuce gave a long whistle. "Well, let us 
 drink his health, as we did in the little cabin a 
 dozen and a half years ago and more, when he 
 became that. What ! No liquors in the house ? 
 Well, well, we must reform all that." 
 
 The sunshine was never brighter than it lay that 
 day glittering on the bosses of the great sapphire 
 shield with which the sea opposed the sky ; but to 
 
58 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 Captain Dacre, as be walked away, the world 
 was wrapped in impenetrable gloom. 
 
 He had taken his boy from sea and storm only 
 that Lacleuce might ruin him. 
 
 Look which way he would, it was dark. What 
 if he gave up everything, his house and books, 
 his stocks and shares, Dominique must give up 
 his education as well then. And if he abandoned 
 study, was it likely he would not drift to leeward 
 in all things ? And if he gave up fortune, learn 
 ing, and the rest, would he not also have to give 
 up Adelaide ? And that Dominique should one 
 day marry Adelaide had been the Captain s waking 
 dream. 
 
 And what if he defied Ladeuce ? The man had 
 but to denounce him. Well, neither imprisonment 
 nor death was much to him, there were those 
 who would walk in prison with him as they had 
 with Peter and Paul. But could he break the 
 boy s heart ? Just entering life, full of courage 
 and hope and pride, surrounded by friends, should 
 he suffer this disgrace ? He himself could endure 
 his old confederate s presence that was now poi 
 sonous to him, the sword of disclosure hanging 
 
JE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 59 
 
 ., even the keeping of the ill-gotten 
 jough every piece he spent should sear 
 ^ul, as it had long done ; but Dominique s 
 .ie and career should not be marred. And for 
 his penalty, although he could meet scorn, al 
 though he could meet death, could he meet the 
 boy s clear eyes when he should know his past ? 
 No ! If it came to that, God must let him die, 
 the punishment would be more than he could 
 bear. 
 
 It was no wonder the world looked dark to the 
 man. It lay in the shadow of his evil deeds. 
 
60 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IT was a week or two after this that Adelaide, 
 driving to the Lonely Beach, left the carriage, as 
 she often did, to gather an armful of the bindweed 
 on her way, and the others drove on, while Cap 
 tain Dacre presently came down to meet her. 
 
 " Now where have you kept yourself ? " she 
 cried in her sweet, familiar way. " Have you 
 been plunged in grief for Dominique s loss ? We 
 thought perhaps you had gone with him, when 
 you did not come on Wednesday. Ah," as she 
 caught sight of Ladeuce seating the others on the 
 gallery, "you have a friend with you. I am so 
 glad you have a friend ! " And then she went up 
 with the Captain through the old plum orchard. 
 
 " It seems to me," she said, " that you are too 
 grave about Dominique." 
 
 " And to me," he answered her, " that you are 
 too gay." 
 
 " Oh," she cried, " I miss him so ! But it is 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 61 
 
 best he should be gone, you know," she added, 
 with her transforming smile. " He will return so 
 much richer than he went." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I ought not to care. He has life be 
 fore him, and mine is behind me. I am like one of 
 these old knotted plum-trees, ready for felling." 
 
 " You are lovely if you are like a plum-tree, 
 with singing things sheltered in the boughs, and 
 sweet fruit dripping honey. Do you think you 
 are like a plurn-tree ? " she said, with her arch 
 laugh. " Let me tell you, your plum-trees want to 
 be scraped. Mamma will add you to her charities, 
 and send old John over to do it." 
 
 "She added me to her charities long ago." 
 
 " Speaking of charities, do you know Gascoygne 
 has come home with his degree ? Mamma has 
 infected him. He is going to practise in Coast- 
 cliff. He does n t need to practise at all, and so 
 he will only take the poor. I tell him he ought 
 to have a ruby ring ! " and she laughed in gay 
 mischief. 
 
 "Adelaide," exclaimed the Captain, "if I had 
 you here all the time I should bear Dominique s 
 loss better." 
 
62 THE MARQUIS OF C AH ABAS. 
 
 " I believe you are making love to me," she said. 
 And she took the old man s hand and raised it to 
 her lips with a pretty motion, half reverence, half 
 caress. 
 
 They came up through the broad hall and out 
 upon the gallery where the others sat, Ladeuce 
 rising to receive them. How resplendent she was, 
 as she stood there, with the light of the sea upon 
 her brow and its color in her eyes ! But it was 
 not the bloom of the face, the blackness of the 
 dropping hair, the lovely lines and tints within the 
 oval, that made her charm. It was something 
 shining from the eyes and from the smile, as if the 
 interior sunlight illumined the face from the soul. 
 Whatever it was, it was something antipathetic 
 to Ladeuce. He did not blench before it, although 
 the fearless gaze in its first instant seemed to pene 
 trate his disguises. He hated it. And Adelaide, 
 for her part, felt a shuddering repulsion from this 
 dark fellow of the flattering tongue. " What is he 
 doing with the Captain ? " the half-unconscious 
 repulsion whispered. " What is he about Domi 
 nique for ? What will Gascoygne say to him ? " 
 while the icy sweetness of her manner benumbed 
 his flatteries. 
 
TEE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 63 
 
 " The girl for Dominique, eh ? " was what La- 
 deuce s antipathy was just as quietly suggesting. 
 "My dear, I shall put a spoke in that wheel." And 
 he turned to Allia with a suavity that little damsel 
 had not met before. " If I had known," said he, 
 "that my old friend was in such snug quarters 
 and visited by youth and beauty, I should not 
 have stayed so long away from him tossing about 
 the world." 
 
 " I can t think of any one s wanting to come to 
 Coastcliff that could go anywhere else," answered 
 Allia, with a look of the great brown eyes that 
 always gave you the impression of the moon just 
 rising. 
 
 " All ! so you want to see the world with those 
 eyes, is it ? And what part the most, may I 
 ask ? " 
 
 "The part," said Allia, "that is different the 
 most from Coastcliff. The people that are unlike 
 these." 
 
 " The people ? The common " 
 
 " No, indeed," said Allia. " "What do I care for 
 the common people ? I see enough of them here. 
 My cousin tires me out with them. I mean " 
 
64 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 " The people that continue history. Oh, indeed. 
 Then you would enjoy some of the pageants that I 
 have seen. A coronation, now " 
 
 " Have you ever seen a coronation ? " said little 
 Allia breathlessly. 
 
 " Upon my word I think a circus finer ! " 
 laughed Ladeuce, "except that the clowns wear 
 the fine garments and the jewels are real." 
 
 "They have such splendid jewels, I suppose, 
 those people. Dominique says there is a spirit in 
 jewels. He and his father tried to make them 
 in the laboratory, and they could n t, because they 
 had to leave the spirit out." 
 
 "Ah, I have some pretty stones I must show 
 you if you are interested in such things. I am 
 quite a collector in a small way, moonstones and 
 tourmalines ; " and then, as he saw the increasing 
 sparkle of Allia s glance, " though why," he added, 
 " one should speak of jewels with such eyes shin 
 ing on him " and then the elder ladies, rising, 
 closed the business of the moment. 
 
 It was long before Captain Dacre returned this 
 call. Perhaps he never would have done so at 
 all if Ladeuce had not declared his own in ten- 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 65 
 
 tion of visiting a physician and taking the cottage 
 on the hill by the way. Once there, however, 
 it was easy going again, and he did not always 
 ask the Captain to go with him. Gascoygne, just 
 through with his studies, did very well for a phy 
 sician, and gave him good reason for his visits. 
 
 " A little trouble with my heart," said Ladeuce 
 lightly to the Captain. " Well, it has always been 
 a susceptible organ. I know there s a little trouble 
 with it, and all along of that pretty witch up 
 there." 
 
 " Adelaide ! " cried the Captain. 
 
 " Adelaide go hang ! " said his Lieutenant. 
 " Has my lady any smiles ? She will have none 
 of them for me. Dios mio ! These airs and 
 graces make you laugh when you. know you have 
 one s fate in your hand. Cierto ! I will bring the 
 haughty hussy to terms ! But the other. Come, 
 now, my Captain, where have you seen such a 
 skin the color of ivory, such lips like a cleft 
 pomegranate ? " 
 
 Captain Dacre s blood was running cold. " La- 
 deuce," said he, " I am an old man." 
 
 " You are a sly dog, that s what you are. You 
 5 
 
66 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 are that old rat of the fable, who retired from the 
 world in a rich Stilton cheese. Do you think to 
 have it all to yourself? Tate! I have an eye 
 for beauty, too, and I m not as old as you are. 
 And I fancy," said Ladeuce, getting up and look 
 ing himself over in the mirror, " that beauty has 
 an eye for me. You must acknowledge, Dacre, 
 that, I m not an uncomely sort of fellow. I ve 
 one face for shore and another for sea. No man- 
 of-war s-man of all those accursed British frigates 
 could recognize the bearded sailing-master of the 
 Nighfbird in this smooth face. And then I ve 
 taken a leaf from your book. I go to the Springs 
 between trips to the Capital. I study men and 
 manners. I study women. I wonder what the 
 lovely lady in my arms, whose head rests on my 
 shoulder as we waltz, would say if she saw me 
 landing my live cargoes off the Ojo de Toro reefs ? 
 Oh, I improve my time," as he still had no reply. 
 " When on the off trip I m putting my brandies 
 and cordials aboard, I run up to Paris, or over to 
 London. I visit the theatres, the galleries, the 
 races. I see life. I mean that Dominique shall 
 see it, too. And I ve paid particular attention 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 67 
 
 to Spain, as I sailed, as I sailed. " And Ladeuce 
 hummed the old air, while he watched the Cap 
 tain, who was busy at the table over his charts 
 and compasses, and with great beads upon his 
 forehead. "Naturally it interests a Cuban im 
 porter," and he laughed. " You have not been in 
 Spain yourself? Then you don t remember the 
 old gallows on the cliff where they hung a sailor 
 for abducting the child of a hidalgo, as you sail 
 into port at Eivarra ? " 
 
 " What are you driving at, Ladeuce ? " asked 
 the Captain, feeling the sharp gaze overlay him. 
 
 " At nothing," laughed the other. " Have I so 
 much artifice that you must look for second mean 
 ings in my words ? I am but beguiling the time 
 for you in my poor way till Dominique shall come 
 again. Do you dislike to hear of Spain ? You are 
 in a fair way to hear, a good deal of her from my 
 lips. I love the land. She is the mother of our 
 fortunes. I hope some time to leave this business 
 which, if it keep your blood stirring with its ex 
 citements, has dangers in it dangers in it, and 
 spend much time there. More than one night off 
 duty have I managed to sleep in her old palaces on 
 
68 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 this pretext or the other. It is contact with those 
 dons that has polished off my manners so, perhaps. 
 And then, on the whole, it is pleasanter walking 
 in Spain than in countries where one feels the 
 rope dragging from one s neck impede the gait. 
 To be sure, one is really safe anywhere unless 
 denounced unless denounced. But how is one 
 to know at what moment an enemy may be upon 
 him ? Do you think I mean that I am your 
 enemy, Captain ? " said Ladeuce, in his silkiest 
 tone. "On the contrary, on the contrary, you 
 never had a better friend, unless you thwart my 
 purposes." 
 
 It was in this fashion that Ladeuce beguiled the 
 time till Dominique should come again. 
 
THE MAEQUIS OF CARABAS. 69 
 
 IX. 
 
 IT was wintry weather when Dominique re 
 turned full of the life of his classes. "It s no 
 wonder Gascoygne is the man he is," he said. 
 " I ought to have been in them long ago. And if 
 it was n t that I want you for a sheet-anchor here 
 you should have been with me, too, father. What 
 times we should have had spelling over those 
 things together ! " 
 
 " Ah, you Ve gone beyond me now, Dominique, 
 I fear. But I Ve not wasted all my time ; I Ve 
 found a new arenaria, very interesting." 
 
 " You must tell me about it. And it s good 
 you have the Lieutenant with you, anyway," said 
 Dominique, measuring the pale old man with a 
 tender glance. " I thought of it often when away. 
 If you had not I should have wanted you to close 
 the Lonely Beach and go over to Adelaide s." 
 And then the young autocrat was in the saddle 
 and galloping on the way to Adelaide s himself, 
 Ladeuce beside him. 
 
70 THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 
 
 Adelaide came swiftly down the hall to meet 
 him, with her usual wont. She had a pot of red 
 roses in her hand. As the sunlight fell on her 
 through the jewelled glass of the hall skylight she 
 was a radiant object, with her gleaming eyes and 
 smile. Dominique s heart bounded to see how 
 .beautiful she was. 
 
 " What shall I do ? " she cried gayly. " And 
 both my hands full." And in another moment 
 the roses would have gone had not Ladeuce thrust 
 himself forward. 
 
 " I, at least," he said, " must have the roses, if 
 he is to have the hand ; " and Adelaide drew back 
 involuntarily. " You will not let me relieve you 
 of such impedimenta ? " he said. And there was 
 for a minute some awkwardness in her endeavor 
 to avoid his touch as his hands replaced her own 
 on the little blue jar, which fell and broke into 
 fragments. In that minute Mrs. Stuart and Miss 
 Grey had come to greet Dominique, and had drawn 
 him into the blue morning-room where Gascoygne, 
 whose practice was not yet imperative, had been 
 puzzling with Miss Grey over the notation of a 
 piece of ancient music. But seeing, from where 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 71 
 
 he sat, Adelaide s heightened color, Gascoygne hur 
 ried into the hall, to find that she had cut her 
 finger with an edge of the glazed ware ; and, while 
 some one obeyed her call to sweep up the bits, he 
 bound her finger with the aid of his pocket-case, 
 and came back with a red rose from the ruins in 
 his buttonhole, while Adelaide ran up-stairs to 
 repair her toilet. 
 
 If she would have gone to Dominique when she 
 came down, she was hindered by seeing him sit 
 there with Ladeuce s arm about his shoulder, as 
 he detailed some affair of his student-life to Miss 
 Grey ; and she went instead and looked over the 
 shoulder of Gascoygne, who had returned to the 
 old music- written parchment. " I can t tell what 
 I am going to do," she said in a low tone to Gas 
 coygne, " if that man persists in coming here. It 
 is out of my power to be friendly ; and I hate to 
 speak of his behavior to Allia or mamma, for the 
 dear old Captain s sake. And oh, I hate to see 
 him so with Dominique ! " 
 
 "Why not speak of it to Dominique?" said 
 Gascoygne. "I had intended to." 
 
 "Of his father s friend! I couldn t. But it 
 
72 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 is disturbing to see him about Dominique," she 
 repeated. 
 
 "I am afraid," said a soft voice behind them, 
 " that you will have to endure it." And they 
 turned to encounter Ladeuce, who had left the 
 others and gone into the hall for a bit of rough rose- 
 pink coral that he had brought for Allia, and now 
 stood in the shadow of the portiere at the other 
 door. It was just as he spoke that Dominique 
 left Miss Grey and approached Adelaide, who, half 
 turned to stone by the incident, was unable to 
 reply a syllable to the gay bright words addressed 
 her. 
 
 " What has happened to you, Adelaide ? " said 
 Dominique. " What " 
 
 At that moment Allia came dancing into the 
 room, reminding one both of the pet leopard some 
 Roman lady may have had, and of the broken 
 bits of sunlight that children flash about from 
 mirrors. " Where is Dominique ? " she cried. 
 " How glad we are to see you back ! And did 
 you bring Mr. Ladeuce over ? I want to thank 
 him for the coral. Oh, Mr. Ladeuce, was it you 
 that just sent it up to me ? There s nothing 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 73 
 
 like it in all Coastcliff. I suppose Adelaide 
 will be wanting it to make this blue and white 
 room look more like a piece of china than ever. 
 But I shall have it cut up into a necklace. How 
 many creatures have worked how many years, 
 Miss Grey, to make those beads for me ? " 
 
 As they rode down the hill, Dominique turned 
 to Ladeuce. "I wonder if it is I that have 
 changed ? " he said. " Certainly this is not the 
 same place I left " 
 
 "The same with a difference," said Ladeuce. 
 "The difference that your friend Gascoygne has 
 been poaching on your preserves." 
 
 They rode on in silence, Dominique of a sudden 
 full of strange thoughts, his chin upon his breast, 
 and as the Captain, shut up with a lame foot, saw 
 the two come riding on together, badly as he had 
 held himself to be abused by fate when alone with 
 his lieutenant, he felt willing to spend the balance 
 of his life alone with him in a dungeon, provided he 
 could thus keep the man away from Dominique. 
 
 But there was no such thing as keeping him 
 away from Dominique. He must out and tramp 
 with him across the frozen meadows, he must 
 
74 THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 
 
 over to the yards and see about the boat build 
 ing there for him, he must be telling him by the 
 fireside strange stories of a life and adventure far 
 outside his skies, he must join him in his visits 
 to the Stuarts, where Dominique had already 
 found him established on easy terms. For Mrs. 
 Stuart s strong point was her confidence in hu 
 manity ; and having admitted Captain Dacre to 
 the fulness of friendship, a castaway, of whom 
 she knew nothing, she would not have entertained 
 an idea of different treatment of his guest. As 
 for Miss Grey, ignorant of all but her books, 
 she regarded Ladeuce as one regards a new speci 
 men, and in what slight measure he entered her 
 thoughts it was only to be labelled and classi 
 fied. Adelaide, indeed, had little to say to him ; 
 nothing, in fact, since, meeting him in the lower 
 fishing-town by twilight, she had experienced from 
 him, before he recognized her proud carriage, the 
 same impertinence with which he had been cajol 
 ing a group of bare-legged fisher-girls, and had 
 passed without appearing to observe him, not 
 confiding the incident to Gascoygne till it was 
 too late for him to take notice of it. It was Allia 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 75 
 
 who made the man most welcome. Eeared in a 
 seclusion foreign to her inclinations, his expe 
 rience was like the gateway of the world, his flat 
 teries were the homage that was her due, and his 
 small curios, which her cousin might have seen 
 no harm in her accepting, had she known of all 
 of them, satisfied her sense of accumulation, and 
 fed her love of luxury with ideas of a luxury 
 beyond her. 
 
 All this seemed well enough to Dominique. 
 The Lieutenant was his father s friend, and a very 
 fascinating man besides. He had seen the world. 
 How was Dominique to know of the storm of 
 sorrow and shame raging in the breast of the 
 Captain at the impossibility of doing anything else 
 than connive at the introduction of this contra- 
 bandista into a gentle family ? the Captain, who 
 in his youth had drifted into a bad business inci 
 dentally, had pursued - it thoughtlessly, had aban 
 doned it eagerly, had repented it bitterly. 
 
 What did not seem so well to Dominique was 
 this frozen manner of Adelaide s that had grown up 
 since his departure, and was entirely new to him, 
 that he did not once associate with repulsion from 
 
76 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 Ladeuce, that after a half-dozen more experiences 
 of it, Ladeuce having lit the darkness by a flash, 
 meant to his excited fears that Gascoygne and 
 she were about to enter a charmed world to 
 gether and leave him, like a moth, to flutter round 
 the lighted window of their happiness. 
 
 He had been so full of the joy of life that 
 he had hardly stopped to name his perceptions. 
 Yet the thought that Adelaide should be a part 
 of any one but himself struck him like a blow of 
 cold, sharp steel. He went about suffering with 
 his wound, unaware that his own manner reacted 
 on hers and made other demeanor difficult to 
 her. But whatever it all meant, and however it 
 all came about, it served to throw Dominique back 
 upon Ladeuce. Let the happy people on the hill 
 alone ; they were of a different race from him, a 
 vagabond of the water world ; he would stay with 
 his kind. It was his first experience of trouble, 
 and it went hard with him. If this was all there 
 was of life, was it worth while to have it ? He 
 had no anger with Gascoygne; Gascoygne de 
 served all the happiness there was in the world, 
 only he could not stand by and see him enjoy it. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 77 
 
 It all fitted admirably with the ideas of La- 
 deuce, however. " A very suitable arrangement, 
 that of your friend Gascoygne and the girl Ade 
 laide," he said. " The young man will settle to 
 a good country doctor s practice, and his wife will 
 keep his dinners hot for him. As for you," said 
 Ladeuce, " you have to see the world." 
 
78 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 IT was not much of the world that Dominique 
 saw in the next week. He stayed at home with 
 his father, he walked the beach with Ladeuce, 
 listening to the man s strange stories that breathed 
 in his ear a sort of forbidden music. He did not 
 go at all to the cottage on the hill, where he had 
 been wont to present himself every morning. The 
 consequence was that, after some days, the sleigh 
 came over with Adelaide and her mother, Allia 
 and Gascoygne. "I suppose I must put up 
 with the man," Adelaide had said to Gascoygne. 
 " I can t let the Captain slip out of our lives in 
 this way, and he suffering with his foot. And if 
 we don t go to-day, I don t know when we can. 
 Mamma has a meeting to-morrow, and there is 
 snow all along the sea that will be driving in by 
 night." 
 
 The snow was driving in before night ; but La- 
 deuce being absent in the town they had such a 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 79 
 
 delightful, old-time day that there was no resisting 
 the Captain s urgency that they should stay and 
 dine, and brighten the gloom of the increasing 
 storm which their fine spirits hardly let them heed 
 till the sudden twilight fell like a pall. When the 
 Lieutenant came in he was shaggy with the snow, 
 and reported the weather all he could make way 
 against. 
 
 Gascoygne went out to the stables at once. 
 " We have been foolish to stay," he said with 
 vexation, as he returned. " But it is of no use to 
 fret now. If we attempt to get back we shall be 
 snowed in half-way, where it would be impossible 
 either to go or come. The storms in this bay 
 are as swift as typhoons. We shall have to 
 claim your hospitality, Captain Dacre, for the 
 night." 
 
 And there was never man more delighted than 
 Captain Dacre to afford it. It gave him some 
 thing of his former peace to have these familiar 
 friends about him so again. It seemed to him, 
 every time he looked at Adelaide s sweet face in 
 the flowers with which he kept the great glass 
 recess filled, or by the firelight of his hearth, while 
 
80 THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 
 
 the storm roared on outside, as if possibly he 
 might overcome his evil genius, after all. 
 
 Dominique went hesitatingly and sat by Ade 
 laide. Mrs. Stuart bustled about with the man 
 and maid making arrangements, the white hand 
 with its ruby as busy as a witch in the gale. Gas- 
 coygne walked up and down, looking out every 
 few turns at the storm. The wind wailed about 
 the house; they could hear the scream of the 
 breaker and its thunderous pounding on the beach 
 below the long slope, the hiss of the flying spray 
 that almost swept the windows, the far, wide 
 booming of sea beyond sea ; but the early darkness 
 was black and impenetrable except where the snow 
 whirled and fled by like sparks of fire. The Cap 
 tain sat quietly on the opposite side of the hearth, 
 that faint ray of old content upon his face. " The 
 storm outside," he said, "makes our safety and 
 warmth inside so much safer and warmer. The 
 darkness makes our fire so much ruddier." 
 
 "These storms," said Dominique, "follow the 
 inner storms with a strange attraction. When I 
 am at unrest I like to be out in them, as if I be 
 longed to the weather." 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 81 
 
 " You are not at unrest now then," said Ade 
 laide, with her calm smile. 
 
 "No," he said. "I should like everything to 
 pause forever just here." 
 
 " The storms are like a great story to me," said 
 the Captain. " I always think of the latitudes 
 one has travelled over to get here ; the palms it 
 uprooted before it twisted these oaks ; the heated 
 air that rose over the hot- water regions for cooler air 
 to rush in and take its place, ploughing down the 
 Gulf, rushing from the Carolinas and making the 
 gale off Hatteras, whistling into the vacant space 
 from Delaware and Chesapeake till the tempest 
 works havoc on the Eastern Shore, then room for 
 the cold blast from the Canadas to sing in, till we 
 have the northeaster roaring the whole length of 
 the coast against the wind, and growing fiercer 
 every moment of the fight. Eh ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Dominique, " and there comes to be 
 then a personality about a storm, as if it had a 
 supernatural life of its own were a great ele 
 mentary agency; and it makes your heart beat 
 when you think that you, that any man with a 
 rope and stick, can face it and master it, as a thou- 
 6 
 
82 THE MAEQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 sand little coasters are doing now only give 
 them sea-room." 
 
 " It might make your heart beat in a different 
 fashion," said Ladeuce, " if you had seen some of 
 the tempests that Dacre and I have tussled with 
 down in the hurricane region. Do you call to 
 mind one, my Captain, when we brought up a 
 drowning woman and child from the wreckage 
 floating by us ? There were a thousand furies 
 abroad that night. It makes you pale to think of 
 it, I see. Tush, tush, it s over now, and I Ve seen 
 almost as bad a one conjured up by a Fantee on a 
 West Indian reef with the bead I just gave Miss 
 Allia, a little Voodoo devil, I think it is." 
 
 " You don t mean so ! " exclaimed Allia. 
 
 " I don t mean that it is a little Voodoo devil, or 
 I don t mean that I have seen the storm ? There 
 is no accounting for these Obeah mysteries ; you 
 can show this bead to any black in the tropics and 
 he will fall to trembling " 
 
 " I rather think," laughed Allia, " I had better 
 not wear it." 
 
 Why, the very man who gave it to me he 
 was a slaver " 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 83 
 
 " A slaver ! " cried Adelaide forgetfully. " And 
 you know such men ! " 
 
 " One falls in with everybody in beating about 
 the world." 
 
 " Enough, Ladeuce ! " said the Captain with sud 
 den roughness. " Enough ! " 
 
 " You see the power of the little fetich for your 
 self," said the man again, after his sharp glance 
 and laugh. " What a storm it is beginning to 
 arouse in Miss Allia and the Captain ! If she 
 threw it in the fire I ve no doubt you would 
 see a flame flash up the chimney, with a black 
 devil a-top of it, that would make your hair 
 stand on end. Oh, yes, I have fallen in with 
 slavers, Miss Adelaide. And there might be 
 worse men." 
 
 " Never ! " cried Adelaide. 
 
 " Never ?" 
 
 " I should think it would be about impossible," 
 said Dominique, poking the fire. 
 
 " Prejudice ! I have been entertained on board 
 their craft and 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed Adelaide again. " You 
 have broken the bread of such creatures ! " 
 
84 THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 
 
 " A cosmopolitan takes the world as he finds it. 
 You would not break their bread ? " 
 
 " Oh no ! " she cried, with her face white and 
 her eyes glowing, as if feeling herself degraded 
 by the address of one who would. " I should die 
 with the first morsel ! I should hope to, indeed ! 
 The bread of barterers in flesh and blood " 
 
 " You meet every day, and with no shrinking, 
 some man who sells rum or opium, who barters 
 in souls, who makes widows and orphans. Now 
 you know nothing about it," he said, modulating 
 his tones. " The slaver follows his business with 
 no more idea of wrong than the men in your 
 bay have when they come in with a cargo of 
 herring " 
 
 "Nonsense, Lieutenant," said Dominique. 
 " There you go too far. Men cannot traffic in 
 flesh and blood and not know it. Men cannot 
 dip their hands into the horrors of the middle 
 passage, cannot pursue the vilest, most loathsome 
 business in life, and not be corrupted. Faugh ! 
 I agree with Adelaide. I would as soon touch 
 the hand of a leper ! " 
 
 Ladeuce laughed again. " How impetuous you 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 85 
 
 are! You go off half cocked Ah! What is 
 this, my Captain ? You are the color of palm 
 oil and ivory ! " And they all started to see the 
 Captain bending over the fire, pale as clay and 
 muttering to himself. 
 
 " It revolts him," said Ladeuce. " He has sen 
 sibilities." 
 
 "Let me alone," said the Captain hoarsely. 
 And only Ladeuce guessed with what difficulty 
 that backward motion of the uplifted hand was 
 kept from hitting the face above him and cutting 
 the smooth lips against the teeth. 
 
 Dominique came quickly to his father with a 
 glass of wine. " You have taken a cold," he said. 
 " We will all have champagne with you. The 
 Lieutenant has taught us drinking habits. We 
 will have a little concrete summer to drown out 
 this bitter winter. Are you all right now ? I 
 am glad Gascoygne is here. You are not going 
 to be ill ? I never saw you really ill." 
 
 " I am all right," said the Captain, with shaking 
 lips. " Let me be let me be. A sudden chill. 
 My foot. If I snatch a minute s sleep you will 
 pardon me, Mrs. Stuart ?" And Mrs. Stuart had 
 
86 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 hurried for a cushion, and Adelaide, springing to 
 her feet, had already brought a sofa blanket and 
 had sat down on a low hassock at his side, 
 holding his hand, that had a strange thrill in it. 
 " Now sleep," she said, " and we will talk as if 
 you were miles away. Do you .want me to sing 
 to you first ? " And she loosened the roses from 
 her breast and pinned them on his coat, and, tak 
 ing his hand again in hers, sang the old Scotch 
 songs he liked so well that she had sung all the 
 tune out of them for her own ears long ago. And 
 only Dominique, who stood with his hand on his 
 father s head, heard him murmuring, "Ah, it is 
 too much, too much ! All these innocent things." 
 " I heard that last air once on the Sierras," said 
 Ladeuce gently, when she ceased, "as I came 
 across. I had an errand into Catalonia, a 
 thread of romance I was following up. I shall 
 always associate it, not with Scotch lads and 
 lasses and the Castle o Montgomerie, but with 
 the old castle of the Marquises del Eiviero, 
 the Marquis Angel del Eiviero y Zumalaxericas, 
 to give you the long and short of it. That is 
 what the name of the Marquis in this generation 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 87 
 
 would be if he were in possession or were in exist 
 ence. But they don t know where he is. They 
 don t know where he is," repeated Ladeuce slowly. 
 " I passed some nights once in the castle among 
 its frowning mountains. I had access to family 
 papers. And such estates as are his for the tak 
 ing ! Mines of cinnabar and coal, vineyards and 
 wheat fields and cork forests in old Spain, sugar 
 and coffee plantations in Porto Rico, and quar 
 ries of wonderful marbles in the Tsla de Pinos 
 revenues of doubloons that have piled together 
 year by year. There is no richer hidalgo in all 
 the kingdom. And what blood flows in his veins ! 
 It is the blood of kings. Heroes lift their hands 
 whenever he does. Ojald ! Some day the young 
 Marquis will come to his own." 
 
 " The what ? " asked Mrs. Stuart, who had been 
 nodding herself. 
 
 " The Marquis Angel del Eiviero y Zumalaxeri- 
 cas. Thanks. I like to roll the syllables." 
 
 " Is he young ? " asked Allia. 
 
 "He ought to be just turned of twenty-one, if 
 he is alive at all," said the raconteur. " And what 
 a career waits for him ! A dozen titles of his own, 
 
88 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 an old grandee of Spain. Jewels fit for crowns. 
 Castles in the hills and summer palaces by the 
 sea. Not a pleasure in Christendom but at his 
 service. Not a princess in Europe but might 
 take his hand. What fiestas he will have to 
 remember " 
 
 " What nights we had in Egypt/ " said Domi 
 nique idly. 
 
 " And how do you know he will come to his 
 own ? " asked Allia. 
 
 "I don t believe he can stay away," said La- 
 deuce, lifting his eyebrows. " Probably kept in 
 ignorance by those that mean well ; but murder 
 will out, you know. He will learn to love luxury 
 
 he will gravitate to his own." 
 " If it is his own, I hope so." 
 
 "And there is something picturesque, is there 
 not," said Mrs. Stuart, "about such rank and 
 wealth and all its appanage old halls your 
 fathers trod, old banners they bore to battle " 
 
 "And old gold they didn t spend. For my 
 part, I only wish I were twenty years younger 
 and able to prove myself the Marquis Angel del 
 Kiviero y Zumalaxericas." 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 89 
 
 " And for my part," said Dominique, " I am con 
 tent as I am, and only wish this evening were to 
 last a hundred years. You may be your Marquis 
 of Carabas and welcome, Lieutenant. I had much 
 rather be the son of an old sea captain, sitting 
 here and hearing the storm and the sea tear up 
 and down the beach in these great organ tones. 
 I think you will have to stay here a week at least, 
 Adelaide." 
 
 " I think we will all go to bed," said the Cap 
 tain, staggering to his feet. " This gale takes the 
 vitality out of us." 
 
 But after they had gone to their rooms, long 
 unoccupied, although rude comfort had been im 
 provised there, Dominique lingered in the low 
 glow cast by the fire through the place, lost in 
 revery. What had so suddenly changed his 
 wintry atmosphere till it was warm and sweet 
 as the breath of the old lemon-tree, of the olean 
 der and jasmine, stealing towards him from the 
 recess ? He did not know that Adelaide s own 
 spirit had risen, as if from the body of death, 
 in the absence all day of that gaze which some 
 times hovered over her like a carrion-crow over its 
 
90 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 prey. He only knew that the sun had come out 
 across what had seemed a gray waste ; that he saw 
 the way plain before him to Adelaide ; that, if he 
 should die to-night, life would have repaid him for 
 all, since he had found what he thought destroyed. 
 Did he not feel now, hours afterward, the beating 
 of her heart when, the music-box still singing out 
 its tune, he had thrown his arm about her and 
 waltzed down the cold stone hall on the way to 
 dinner ? Did he not still thrill with that touch 
 of her fragrant hair as he did then ? Did he not 
 remember the tender bloom in her great sea-blue 
 eyes, the tremor in her hand as she reached it up 
 to him when he sat on the arm of his father s 
 chair saying he wished the evening were to last 
 a hundred years ? He reproached himself for the 
 happy moments he had lost lost ? Not, lost if 
 they changed that amorphous affection of hers 
 into the crystallic force of a passion ! Before she 
 slept that night, Adelaide heard his voice rising 
 through the house, on the sub-bass of the long 
 roll of the sea up the coast, in a song where every 
 now and then the music broke into her name 
 like the foam-crest of a passionate wave, with its 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 91 
 
 burden of devotion and despair, a burden which 
 might have been the heritage of some wasted life, 
 long since forgotten, waking and singing it out 
 within him, which could have been no fear now, 
 or sorrow of his own. For in Dominique s heart, 
 this night, nothing but a wild new hope, as much 
 like joy as hope, was fluttering and beating its 
 wings, ready to spring into limitless heaven. 
 
 The storm had blown out its fury when they 
 rose in the morning. The sun shone in an azure 
 heaven where the wind huddled a white flock of 
 clouds before it; the sea was swinging in huge 
 sapphire rollers, and throwing a spray of frozen 
 spume far up the beach and the long slope be 
 low the windows ; the old plum orchard and the 
 twisted oaks glittered in crystal; the world was 
 white far back over the meadows, and the farmers 
 with their steaming oxen were breaking out the 
 roads, which they had grown into the habit of 
 doing for the Captain, who had not only become 
 the friend of each one among them, but who was 
 so important an aid in the matter of their taxes. 
 The harnesses were lengthened with straps from 
 the Captain s team, the horses were put in tandem, 
 
92 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 the better to tread the narrow road, the merry 
 party went out into the peaceful world of snow 
 and sun, the horses floundering and plunging, the 
 sleigh tipping, the drifts powdering about them, 
 but Dominique riding the thill-horse and taking 
 them safely through, his satchel under their seats, 
 on the way back with him to his classes. 
 
 " Dominique," his father had said to him when 
 alone, on the morning he started, " you pleased me 
 last night when they talked and thought me sleep 
 ing. You showed you despised wealth. Have 
 you ever considered that there is something less 
 noble than work, in living on another s earnings, 
 in living even on your own earnings of the past, 
 while you have life and health and strength ? 
 What if we gave what we have to those that need 
 it more, and started freshly in life, you and I ? 
 There are not two better mariners afloat than we, 
 and I have furbished up all I ever knew and 
 spent nights in studying the new charts. If we 
 kept enough to buy a coaster to begin with, we 
 could pay for it from our earnings, presently, in 
 carrying deals or coal or fish, or running packet. 
 What do you think of it ? " 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 93 
 
 " I think you are a little beside yourself," said 
 Dominique gayly, "with last night s pleasure. 
 And I think, moreover, that you had better come 
 up to me as soon as I am settled and have a go 
 at my mathematics." 
 
94 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 XI. 
 
 IT was not Captain Dacre that went up to Domi 
 nique. It was Ladeuce, who, bidding the Captain 
 good-by for a while, installed himself in lodgings 
 at Dominique s elbow and began to make himself 
 indispensable, not all at once, but by degrees, not 
 to the young man s mathematics, but to his pleas 
 ures. And why not? Why should Dominique 
 distrust his father s friend ? Why should he stop to 
 think twice of the right or wrong of a thing with 
 him ? Theatres ? Oh, he had always gone to the 
 theatre. But behind the scenes that was a new 
 world. That was to be a man about town. And 
 behind the scenes at a ballet ah ! here life be 
 gan. Wines ? horses ? play ? sumptuous dinners 
 with good comrades ? Now things went more 
 swiftly. Splendor ? spendthriftry ? Ladeuce paid 
 the bills. Were not things always within bounds ? 
 Was there not a certain elegance about it all ? 
 Did Ladeuce suffer degeneration into vulgarity in 
 
THE MAEQUIS OF CARABAS. 95 
 
 his lessons in the love of luxury ? The man was 
 charming, the pleasures were alluring, young 
 blood is hot ; and in Dominique s blood, with its 
 tropic currents, with what answered for the milk 
 of the old Komaii wolf, to dream was to do, to 
 wish was to possess. His swift senses swept him 
 away on the eddy into the vortex before he knew 
 his foot was wet. The love of Adelaide ? Ade 
 laide would be there still when he went back to 
 her, and was he going to be a poltroon and hesi 
 tate about seeing life for the sake of any lily-liv 
 ered girl ? His father If all Ladeuce hinted 
 were true, his father had seen life long ago, and 
 would know it was but passing through an expe 
 rience of his own. His letters home had never 
 been frequent ; why should they be more so now, 
 since neither asymptote nor hyperbola, straight-flush 
 nor ante, would particularly please the readers ? 
 And as for the sequel but why follow him ? 
 One day it would all be a bad, a hideous dream 
 and delirium. Just now it was a wild and reckless 
 career of Those who loved Dominique would 
 not have wished to call it sin, and, every night s 
 madness followed by every morning s remorse, how 
 could they call it pleasure ? 
 
96 THE MAEQUIS OF CAKABAS. 
 
 There were throughout this period some vaca 
 tions at home, where the old Captain, relieved from 
 his incubus, followed his simple interests in his 
 laboratory and among his flowers, with his one 
 day and night weekly at the cottage 011 the hill, 
 thoughtless of the possibility of those experiences 
 that caused the name of Ladeuce to be unmen- 
 tioned by his son. Only to Adelaide s eyes was 
 change apparent, She knew by subtile instincts, 
 whose whispers cannot be muffled, that it was 
 another in Galahad s armor ; and as she looked for 
 his coming over the sea or over the land, from her 
 flower-hung window on the hill, her heart was 
 often sore with its suspense and sorrow. 
 
 The Captain was paying his weekly visit on the 
 hill, one autumn afternoon, when all things were 
 rich in that sweet decay of sodden leaf and golden 
 haze with which the dead year rises and simulates 
 a mockery of summer for a while. The yellow 
 leaves of the vine about the casement flickered 
 in the last sunbeam, but, within the room, it was 
 already twilight, twilight so dim and deep in the 
 corners that it was no wonder some one, coming in, 
 should stumble over an unseen footstool and fall 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 97 
 
 upon a lounge. " It is all right," said Dominique. 
 "< Where he fell, there he lay. I wonder if 
 Sisera had had a champagne breakfast before he 
 fell " 
 
 " Is that you, Dominique ? " asked Captain 
 Dacre. " Why, where did you come from ? " 
 
 "Came from the table an hour ago or so. 
 We ve been celebrating the day. No day in par 
 ticular ; just this day ; any day ; the day on which 
 we find ourselves alive and radiant with health." 
 
 " What nonsense you are talking, Dominique ! " 
 said Allia. 
 
 "Very far from nonsense," said Mrs. Stuart, 
 with her usual sublime oblivion of facts. " Any 
 day or every day is a day on which to be thank 
 ful under all circumstances." 
 
 " So," continued Dominique, " I thought I would 
 put the benediction on by coming down here. 
 Where is Adelaide ? " 
 
 " I am here," said Adelaide, without moving. 
 
 " Sweet and cold. But it sounds like a bird 
 singing in the dark, that voice. Do you remem 
 ber, father, that bird in the night in the Southern 
 forests, with the voice like a tolling bell ? You 
 
 7 
 
98 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 don t like to talk of the Southern forests ? And 
 there are pleasanter things than the voices that 
 sound like tolling bells, the still small voice, 
 for instance. Fate will always overtake you," 
 cried Dominique. " Sometimes in disaster, some 
 times in self-accusation, sometimes in the voice of 
 the woman you love. This fate that people call 
 providence, and that is only the attraction of cohe 
 sion and gravitation, the setting of crystals, the 
 moving of particles into place, wrong righting 
 wrong as two negatives make the affirmative, fate 
 that follows poison with death and death with 
 hell " 
 
 " Dominique, what are you talking about ! " 
 
 "Of fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute/" 
 said Dominique lightly. " This fate that you be 
 lieve lies in wait for us, as much as I do, this 
 vengeance that overtakes the broken law " 
 
 " Sometimes I am afraid I do," said the Captain, 
 leaning forward with his chin upon his cane. 
 "But it s a sad thought. I banish it. Those 
 that have sinned, fear " 
 
 " It is an irreligious thought," said Miss Grey. 
 " It does away with the over-ruling hand." 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 99 
 
 "Yet had I never seen the thing," said the 
 Captain, " never seen the vengeance fall like a 
 bolt upon the lightning " 
 
 " How is that ? " said Dominique. 
 
 " Oh, years ago. A mere matter of my ex 
 perience." 
 
 " Make it a matter of ours." 
 
 " It s but a trifle, although it had effect upon 
 me. No, no ! not a trifle ! " he exclaimed then 
 suddenly with the thought of it. " It was a 
 shock, a blow, a terrible hurt. Let me tell you. 
 I was exploring for parties who had projects con 
 cerning a canal between the two oceans, I and 
 three others, I carrying, as it chanced, a good sum 
 of money not belonging to me. One night I 
 woke, as you will sometimes when evil things 
 cross your line of life, in a wet chill ; and I found 
 myself, except for my Indian boy, alone in the 
 forest. My three companions had fled, and they 
 had taken the boat with them, and they had 
 taken that money. My blood was cold, and my 
 heart stood still. Eobbed of trust-money, and 
 nobody would believe the story. It was absolute 
 ruin, I just beginning life. I would rather have 
 
100 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 died. I lay on my face and wished I had died, 
 and life was strong in me, before I joined myself 
 to those men, men whom I had chosen, and 
 whose fortunes I would have made. And, think 
 ing of their treachery, my heart began to beat 
 again, beat like a cannonading in my ears, and 
 my blood to surge over me in hot, tingling flashes. 
 I must follow them. I must find them. I 
 woke Sanchicho, and fired him with my own 
 fury belike, and we plunged on our way towards 
 a spot where he thought we might find a canoe. 
 I remember now that all around us in the moon 
 light lay some strange old ruins, the remnant of 
 a city, may be, whose people had blown to dust 
 ages gone, a mighty staircase that led the way 
 to some altar just underneath the stars, a tower, 
 a doorway, half guessed in the wild growth that 
 had taken possession of them, the fig and caper 
 growing from the clefts, the cactus uncouth as 
 idols, and all like the phantom of a place, a night 
 mare dream of ruins rather than ruins indeed. 
 But, although we sheltered ourselves in a vacant 
 chamber from the tempest that burst before morn 
 ing with wind and rain, I did not look twice at it 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 101 
 
 then. I was ruined ; my good name was gone ; 
 I must be after it. As well chase a bubble on 
 the Chagres Eiver! By noon the third day we 
 found a boat at the camp of some mahogany 
 cutters, and, Sanchicho steering, we fled along. 
 There was a freshet in the river from the rains 
 of the swift night-storm ; the current was tremen 
 dous, and carried us between mountain- walls and 
 under forest-tangles, as it carried all the drift it 
 brought down, rafts of boughs and underbrush 
 knotted with vines growing and blossoming, here 
 a macaw still on her nest in the hollow stem, or 
 here a frightened marmoset. We penetrated a 
 canon, where a mountain had been split to let the 
 river through. The rock went up into the mid- 
 sky, sheer precipice on either side ; the water 
 slipped on like oil, still, black, awful. Just 
 before us, and just over the water, all the way, 
 flattered a fleet of butterflies, silver-blue and rose 
 and olive, a swarm of them like flying flowers. 
 There were some rapids. And all at once we 
 were out in a broad bay of the river under the 
 noon sky, among palms feathering off in sunshine, 
 along the shore, above the wild citron-trees and 
 
102 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 thickets of blue and scarlet passion-flowers, birds 
 flashing like flames between blossoms that looked 
 like birds themselves, sweet scents floating from 
 every leaf, parrots and monkeys chattering on the 
 boughs, snakes twining and glittering in the sun 
 like a mailed work of jewels, and the water an 
 enamel of blue and silver, such overflowing life 
 and beauty as if the Maker of it had given way 
 to sun and earth and water to see what they 
 could do. In the vast sky above a buzzard 
 floated with his balanced wings in that flight finer 
 than that of any other bird of the air, as if he 
 were a part of the great motionless heaven. And 
 suddenly an eddy snatched the boat and swirled 
 us up against a huge uprooted ceiba-tree floating 
 down the stream, its branches half veiled with 
 the black funereal moss that trailed after it through 
 the water, and twisted in and out with the white 
 flowers of the vanilla vine. Scared by our com 
 ing, three filthy buzzards rose into the air. And 
 I saw then the sight that curdled my blood as 
 never before. They rose from three corpses, 
 three corpses caught in the branches, stripped 
 and torn and reeking in the sun. The bolt had 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 103 
 
 fallen with the lightning. They were the corpses 
 of the men that robbed me." 
 
 " And did you get your money back ? " asked 
 Allia presently, as the Captain, still shuddering 
 with the memory, paused. 
 
 " Oh, no. And I was reckless. I never went 
 back myself till I had made the money in other 
 ways, and paid the last real of it. Do you think 
 I would not have paid that money ? Not if I 
 had had to sell my soul fox it as it may be 
 I did," the Captain added half under his breath. 
 
 Perhaps Adelaide heard him, though, for she 
 put out her hand and let it rest a moment on his 
 where they clasped the cane, her hand that was 
 not trembling simply because the Captain had en 
 deavored to divert attention from Dominique. 
 
 " It was an experience, indeed," said Miss Grey. 
 "And what opportunity for study of fauna and 
 flora, if you had taken advantage of it. It is a 
 pity, certainly, that you made no more note of 
 those ruins that moonlight night. Very probably 
 the ruins that are searched for now " 
 
 " The mystery of reverend eld searched by 
 babes ! " cried Dominique. " I have been talking 
 
104 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 of joining a party in the search myself. Odd if 
 I should be treading your old hunting-ground, 
 father. The thought of it stirs my heart as if I 
 were the child of some of those early Spanish 
 conquistadores, and had their blood beating out 
 their old sensations in my veins, 
 
 Cortes and his men 
 Silent upon a peak of Darien. 
 
 I know just how it seemed to them when first 
 they saw those ruins, overgrown then for ages, 
 lifting those altars built on flames, those statues 
 gigantic and grotesque, those vast communal 
 chambers, into the breathless blaze of that burn 
 ing blue. It could not have seemed to them 
 that they were on this planet, with the pleas 
 ant Spanish land behind them, the Moorish 
 arch and fountain; they were in the bright and 
 dark spots of the moon itself. And what race of 
 giants was this that could build and disappear 
 and leave intact, with their kinsfolk of the casas 
 grandes up in the wild Apache country, with their 
 kinsfolk clown in the old paved roads that run 
 across the South Sea Islands and that no man 
 built, with the tracks they left of a civilization 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 105 
 
 whose aims, I fancy, were as much more than 
 ours as the stars are more than star-dust, a 
 civilization in which there were no rich, no poor, 
 no laws that let one man build his happy fortunes 
 on the shoulders of the hapless million, that make 
 the condition of crime and then punish the crime ; 
 but where the common interest made community, 
 and every man was king and every man was 
 commoner 1 " 
 
 " Pretty civilization that, Dominique ! " said his 
 father. "A dea d level of mediocrity. I don t 
 wonder there are none of them left. Such a race 
 would wither of too much sunshine, like grass on 
 the steppes. You want your big stems for shade 
 and shelter to the undergrowth that will bring up 
 big stems in its turn. A civilization of equality 
 is not only government by the mob, but it is the 
 creation of dwarfs. You want great men, men 
 of original conception, of enterprises, of achieve 
 ment, to span rivers, to develop continents, to 
 undermine oceans, to finish the earth; men of 
 individual wealth to show what can be done with 
 wealth, to bring art to its glory, to make life 
 endurable to those that have not the force to 
 
106 THE MAKQTJIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 make it so for themselves, for there will always 
 be the weak stems. You want men to rule, and 
 men to obey ; the most of us are only made to 
 obey " 
 
 "I deny it!" cried Dominique. "All that 
 comes from the religious system, this worship of 
 colossal superiority on a throne that gives pres 
 tige to all other thrones. These gods, these 
 entities, are great to us because we look up to 
 them from our knees. Let us rise ! We are the 
 gods, and there are no other!" 
 
 "Dominique!" cried Miss Grey. 
 
 " He loves to hear himself talk," said the Cap 
 tain. " Some time he will see that the universe 
 is governed, will see the glory of leadership, the 
 virtue of loyalty. Community and equality are 
 pretty terms of poetry, but power is poetry itself. 
 A man of power is a vicegerent of the law by 
 which the stars move in their courses. A man 
 of power, even of irresponsible power " 
 
 "Nero, for instance," said Allia, who loved a 
 little mischief. 
 
 " Nero ! " cried Dominique, rising on one arm, 
 in another outburst of that groundless enthu- 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 107 
 
 siasrn which walks the earth without touching 
 it. " Nero ! I suppose you mention his name 
 as a reproach to power. The man who wears 
 a crown of thorns through history, the great 
 imperial martyr, libelled and slandered and out 
 raged, the focal point of million-fingered scorn. 
 Perhaps he had the vices of his time, but who else 
 rose above the level of that time with his great 
 ness, his ideas, his energies ? The fact is, he was 
 a Greek by nature ; art appealed to him, music, 
 painting, the drama. The old Eoman was in an 
 tagonism to all that, and hated him for it. When 
 they reviled him for inventing his h} r draulic organ, 
 for singing to his lyre, they forgot how the king s 
 messengers, seeking Achilles, 
 
 Found him set, 
 
 Delighted with his solemn harp, which curiously was fret 
 With works conceited through the verge ; the bawdrick that 
 
 embraced 
 
 His lofty neck was silver twist ; this, when his hand laid waste 
 Action s city, he did choose as his especial prize, 
 And, loving sacred music well, made it his exercise ! 
 
 Well, the Greeks themselves did not revile 
 him. The cities of Greece sent him the victor s 
 crown for minstrelsy and song. And then what 
 
108 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 a creature of splendor he was ! When he trav 
 elled, it was with a thousand baggage- wagons, his 
 mules shod in silver, and the African slaves, their 
 drivers, clad in scarlet and bound with bracelets of 
 gold. Yes, he had ideas. He established the na 
 tional theatre that the magistrate might not ruin 
 himself for the people s pleasure; he declared 
 Greece a free country ; he projected the canal be 
 tween the Ionian and ^Egean shores; he found 
 Eome a city of alleys and wooden hovels, so to 
 say, and he left it with broad thoroughfares, gar 
 dens, and palaces. Granting he did fire Eome? 
 It was but to rebuild it as became Eome. He 
 played on his lyre while it was burning ? What 
 else should he have done? Eun with the ma 
 chine ? I notice that he opened his own imperial 
 gardens to the houseless, that he lost his own pal 
 ace, that he paid from his own purse for porticos 
 to the new dwellings, for a clear space of ground 
 round every house, that he gave rewards in order 
 to hurry the work of reconstruction, that he built 
 on stone arches to do away with the use of 
 wood, that he led private springs into a public 
 channel for a reservoir in case of fire again. Did 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 109 
 
 he burn the city for the sake of spending that 
 treasure ? But he did worse than fire Kome, he 
 polluted the head-waters of the Martian aqueduct. 
 Ah, what a wretch was that, to take a bath in a 
 frolic ! Did he have Agrippina, his vile mother, 
 killed ? And none too soon, if he did. But Brutus 
 had his two sons killed, and you make a demigod 
 of Brutus. Yet, when Nero s little daughter was 
 born, his happiness was beyond all mortal joy ; his 
 sorrow was as great when she died. It was a ser 
 vile senate, not he, that translated her to the stars. 
 He persecuted the Christians, as Paul did when 
 he was Saul, because he thought it right to perse 
 cute Christians. The Christians have persecuted 
 him ever since. And who tells all these iniqui 
 ties of him ? A hard old Eoman called Tacitus, 
 who says of these same Christians, that they were 
 a band of men detested for their evil practices; 
 and one story may be as true as the other. My 
 friends desert me/ he cried when he came to die, 
 and I cannot find an enemy ! And he was nothing 
 but a boy, when all is said. Gossip and slander 
 have ruled the world from of old. Fame, you 
 fickle jade ! History, you lying tongue ! You 
 
110 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 never did fouler wrong than when you painted 
 Nero, the child of art and song and splendor, as a 
 monster ! " And all at once Dominique rose to 
 his feet and rushed from the room. 
 
 " What an excitable boy ! " said Mrs. Stuart. 
 " He is always so full of his fancies." 
 
 "But he builds on such reprehensible premises," 
 said Miss Grey. " It is surely the result of no 
 teaching of mine." 
 
 Neither Miss Grey nor Mrs. Stuart saw that, 
 although with no unsteadiness of gait, yet he 
 walked on tiptoe. But Adelaide saw it, as she 
 sat with her head downcast and her heart flut 
 tering like a leaf in her stone-cold breast. And 
 Captain Dacre rose with some hurry in his old- 
 fashioned and rather stately adieux, and hastened 
 after his son. 
 
 " I am na fou,. I m na that fou, 
 But just a wee drap in my ee, " 
 
 sang Allia. "Very well," she said in an undertone. 
 " If it was the Lieutenant, just a little exalted, 
 behaving in that style and talking in that style, I 
 never should hear the last of it. There would n t 
 be enough to say about it." 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. Ill 
 
 " Are n t you fond of Dominique, Allia ? " asked 
 Adelaide. 
 
 " Of course I am. But " 
 
 " Those that we are fond of we must take as they 
 are, and make the most of them. The leopard 
 cannot change his spots. At any rate, we cannot 
 say that Dominique has practised a deceit upon 
 us. We accept him with our eyes open oh, we 
 have no choice about it, he is a part of our lives ! 
 And, Allia, you see he needs us all the more." 
 
 It was one fresh spring morning, when all the 
 air was sweet with growing grass, with budding 
 branches, and with the clean and wholesome scent 
 of upturned furrows, when bees were humming 
 and birds were twittering, and the world seemed 
 as if it might be such a pleasant world, other 
 things agreeing, that Adelaide saw Dominique s 
 boat flying over the water on its sail. She had 
 not known he was at home again, and she caught 
 up her hat and shawl and ran down through the 
 terraces of the garden to meet him on the shore. 
 
 He leaped out, as the prow ran up the pebbles, 
 only to take her hand and half draw, half lift her 
 into the boat. Then he sprang in again, pushed 
 
112 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 off with an oar and trimmed his sail, and they 
 were sweeping away before the gentle land-breeze, 
 bowing and clipping from one soft long swell to 
 the next, till only the salt breath of the outer sea 
 blew about them, and the land was far behind, 
 before he spoke again after his first glad cry of 
 "Adelaide!" 
 
 "Well, Dominique," she said at last, tired of 
 waiting, " is it some trouble ? Am I to help you ? 
 Can I ? Have you come to tell me ? " 
 
 "Wait! wait!" he cried. "You will hear it 
 soon enough soon enough ! " And on they 
 sailed. 
 
 "It pains you so, let me have my half of it," 
 she urged again with the smile which was only 
 like pale sunshine over rain. 
 
 " O my God ! " he answered her then. " You 
 shall have it. I will not spare you pain. I am 
 disgraced ! I am expelled from my class in dis 
 honor ! I have my choice to leave, or to be thrust 
 out and the tale of my misdeeds laid before my 
 father ! And I cannot bear it. I cannot face him. 
 I cannot see him take his death- wound. I am 
 going away. That will give him another thought. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 113 
 
 I am going away ; none will ever see me again till 
 I can look them in the face ! " 
 
 " You are going away ! " 
 
 " Out into the outer world ; to retrieve myself, 
 Adelaide, or to die. When I come back it will 
 be because I am sure of myself." 
 
 "0 Dominique, that is noway! Stay here 
 stay with us ! " 
 
 " Impossible. It is a terrible nightmare ! I 
 must wake from it ; I must get so far away that 
 I cannot dream the evil thing again. I must go. 
 But, Adelaide, I must have one hope in the world, 
 one anchor ! " He looked at her with wild, eager, 
 questioning eyes. Was he absolutely sure of this 
 love that had never been spoken plainly between 
 them, that had perhaps seemed to them too sacred 
 to trifle with, too natural to doubt ? Would she 
 save him? Would she destroy him utterly? "Oh, 
 how can I look in your dear sweet eyes," he cried, 
 " when I cannot look in his ? Adelaide, I must 
 leave my wife behind me." 
 
 There was a moment s pause. " You will," said 
 Adelaide then simply. " I am your wife for ever 
 and ever." 
 
 8 
 
114 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 "Ah, I know," he said impatiently. "But I am 
 so vile myself I distrust everybody. I distrust 
 you. I cannot tell what may happen. It must 
 be my wife by law that I leave." 
 
 " Dominique ! " 
 
 " Yes, Adelaide. And it is easy enough. The 
 Cape is just under our lee. We will shape our 
 course for that. We will find our license and a 
 minister, and no one shall be the wiser till I come 
 back to claim you." 
 
 " Dominique ! It is not to be thought of ! " 
 
 " It is to be done ! " he cried. 
 
 " Dominique, you would not care to come back 
 to the woman who could marry you in secrecy and 
 shadow." 
 
 "Care!" 
 
 "It is not right. I should be living a falsehood. 
 I should be deceiving my mother and your father." 
 
 She was so heavenly in her grave and stately 
 innocence, surveying him with the level gaze of 
 her shining eye, the white sail behind her, the 
 blue sky above her, ringed by the purple sea, so 
 sweet, so pure, so lofty, his heart stood still to 
 think he might possibly have lost this too. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 115 
 
 
 
 " And if you do not," he avowed, " I shall not 
 be living at all. Look how black the depths 
 below us are ! You will give me your promise 
 here and now, or I will slip over the boat side and 
 down into the deepest and blackest of them, and 
 so nd the whole matter. Quite likely the best 
 ending it could have for you." 
 
 " Dominique I " she cried, the tears starting ; 
 " I love you. I want you to be happy. But this 
 will make me miserable." 
 
 " It is my province to make people miserable. 
 You will be more so, perhaps, when the water rolls 
 over me till the sea gives up its dead. And that ? 
 by Heaven, it shall do, unless I have your word ! " 
 And he waited, leaning forward, all determination, 
 all tenderness, naming from his dark eyes and pale 
 face, the impersonation of impassioned splendor. 
 "You have yielded," he said presently. "I see 
 you have. Adelaide, my darling, my darling, 
 if there is any strength in me you shall be glad of 
 it. And if there is none, why then you and I 
 were one when first we saw each other our fates 
 were cast together. It is not that I ask so much 
 of you we cannot help ourselves. And you 
 
116 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 shall not be what I am, but I will mount to 
 
 you." 
 
 An hour s swift, silent sailing, before they 
 threaded the fleet of anchored fishing boats and 
 touched the Cape. A hurried walk to the town 
 hall for the license, Adelaide hesitating, tearful, 
 voiceless. A search for the clergyman, that 
 scorched her with a sort of shame. Then the 
 brief service, as hurried a return to the boat, and 
 the sail set for Coastcliff again. 
 
 " You are my wife/ said Dominique, with some 
 thing of the old spirit flashing up ; " and them 
 that God hath joined together let no man put 
 asunder, nor no woman either. Don t think that 
 I shall not come back to you. that you shall not 
 be proud of me yet! When I am master of a 
 Cuuarder " 
 
 " Are you going to sea, Dominique ? " 
 
 " No matter where I am going." 
 
 " But I have a right to know, have I not ? " she 
 urged, the smile glancing on the tears. 
 
 "Well; the sea is a great country, and no 
 man has a fee in it. There are things to 
 do upon the sea just as much as on the land. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 117 
 
 There are fame and fortune and service there, 
 too. 
 
 It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 
 And see the great Achilles whom we knew, 
 It may be that the gulfs will wash us down. 
 
 You shall hear from me in ways that you will 
 understand. As for you, I must take you on trust. 
 I was wrong I do believe in one thing yet. I 
 believe in you, Adelaide." 
 
 The wind had changed and was coming briskly, 
 as May winds will, a baffling wind that seemed to 
 blow from all quarters before it blew out of the 
 thunder-cloud; the sea was rising. Dominique 
 had all he could do to manage the cockle-shell of 
 a boat in the cross-seas ; sunset heaped the thun 
 der-clouds with flames before them and faded to a 
 glow through which the stars were gleaming, ere 
 they touched the place whence they had started. 
 Tired and wet and hungry, but ignorant of any of 
 it, they went up from the shore; and as they 
 parted in the dark and dew, for one moment Domi 
 nique s arms were about his wife, and the first kiss 
 of her lover s was her husband s. 
 
118 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 XII. 
 
 GASCOYGNE drove Adelaide over to the Lonely 
 Beach. 
 
 " Take a furred wrap, Adelaide/ said Mrs. Stuart. 
 " This spring wind is too fresh." 
 
 " I will not let the wind visit her too roughly," 
 said Gascoygne. 
 
 It looked lonelier than ever there as they drove 
 up, with nothing but the snow bloom of the old 
 plum orchard behind the house, like a flight of 
 the breaker s foam, with the sunlight gilding the 
 purple sweep of the farther sea, the beach grass 
 just springing, and not a soul and not a sail in 
 sight. 
 
 His man had brought the morning paper, and 
 the Captain sat with it by the fire that seldom 
 went out at the Lonely Beach, but he was not read 
 ing it. He roused himself at the sound of their 
 footsteps and voices. An open letter had fallen 
 beside him. "From Dominique," he said. "He 
 
THE MAHQUIS OF CAKABAS. 119 
 
 has told me of his failure. Ah, my God ! I have 
 nothing left to live for ! And he has gone ! " 
 
 " He will come back," said Adelaide. 
 
 "I don t know," said the Captain. "If he 
 could go away. Why should he ? What have I 
 done to him that he should desert me ? What is 
 there for him to come back to ? " 
 
 " His father," said Adelaide, kneeling beside his 
 chair and putting her arms round the old man s 
 neck, while Gascoygne picked up the paper and 
 walked to the window. " And his wife." 
 
 " Adelaide ! " springing up. " Has he added 
 that to the rest?" 
 
 " Is it such an enormity ? " she asked, forcing a 
 smile for his sake. 
 
 " And when ? " he gasped. 
 
 " We were married yesterday," she said. " No 
 one is to know it but Gascoygne and yourself. 
 Heaven overlook the hiding it from my good 
 mother ! " she exclaimed, turning impetuously to 
 Gascoygne. 
 
 " But you know very well," answered Gas 
 coygne, who always brought the comfort of an 
 every-day view of things, " that my cousin could 
 
120 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 never keep the secret alone. She would have to 
 let all the ladies of the Confederated Charities 
 help her." And then he left them together. 
 
 "That it should come in this way," cried the 
 Captain, " the desire of my heart ! I had no right 
 to, but I dreamed it, I hoped for it. But not 
 this way, not in the dark," he said, " not with my 
 boy ruined, not wishing that I might have died 
 before the day ! " 
 
 " My father," said Adelaide then, " you have 
 something more to live for now than you had be 
 fore. You have your daughter." 
 
 "I don t deserve her oh, I don t deserve her!" 
 sobbed Captain Dacre, sinking into his chair again. 
 "I have only brought the sweet thing trouble. 
 Adelaide, my child, you must forgive me for the 
 wrong I have done you " 
 
 " Forgive you for giving me my husband ! " she 
 cried, standing before him in all the stature of a 
 woman. " Don t think I value him less because 
 he is not as strong as an archangel. If he were 
 different he would not be Dominique. And it is 
 Dominique that I love," she said, the blush kind 
 ling all her beauty freshly. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 121 
 
 " My dear girl ! " 
 
 " And as for you, you must come away from 
 here. This loneliness is killing you. Gascoygne 
 says there is nothing worse for the nerves. You 
 must come over to the cottage and help us make 
 cheer. He will come back. I have faith, I have 
 perfect faith in Dominique." 
 
 " No," said Captain Dacre. " If he comes back, 
 he will come back here. I will keep his home 
 open and ready for him. You will be on the hill, 
 I will be here. Only remember, Adelaide, it is 
 your home here too, whenever you will." And 
 then they went out to Gascoygne in the plum 
 orchard, where the bluebirds were busy, and 
 looked at the springing green things, whose seeds 
 had come from the gardens of the Coastcliff cot 
 tage, and that by and by would be massed in 
 splendid colors, walked down the turfy slope that 
 it cost the Captain such pains to keep green and 
 glear of the blowing sand, and paced to and fro by 
 the margin, hiding their forebodings in happy 
 plans for the future, till the horse came round. 
 " Now, remember," said Adelaide, " I come over 
 one day, and you return my visit the next of every 
 day we live ! " 
 
122 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 " You have given him something else to think 
 of," said Gascoygne, as they crossed the causeway. 
 And now, with his plants to watch between 
 whiles, he will live on his hopes. Too stimulating 
 diet, however, like too much ammonia for his 
 flowers." 
 
 "I wonder why his flowers are of so much 
 deeper color than ours," s"aid Adelaide. " I sup 
 pose it is the salter air ; although the Lieutenant 
 said they drew their richness from the grave of 
 some old buccaneer buried there at the foot of the 
 orchard, he doubted. Do you recollect Allia s 
 dancing there in the flowers and the sun last sum 
 mer, as he was saying it ? He shivered, and .when 
 you asked him why, gave a shrug and said it was 
 only the old woman s tale some one was dan 
 cing on his grave. I would n t have thought it of 
 the Lieutenant, would you ?" said Adelaide, looking 
 at Gascoygne. And the light in her glance and 
 the laugh in her voice told how sure she was her 
 self of Dominique s escape from the man s grasp. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 123 
 
 XIII. 
 
 IT was a long month in that slow spring, a 
 long month without a word from Dominique. Ade 
 laide, standing where the blush roses were now in 
 bloom, had, on many an evening of it, looked out 
 across the sea beneath, and wondered if she were 
 the same girl who stood there once and said she 
 hated death and would like this life to last for 
 ever. Now, opening her eyes on the morning 
 light, that heavy load upon her heart, she had 
 thought that an unending sleep would be better 
 than her waking. And then one day had come a 
 dateless telegram, without signature, from she 
 knew not where : " The Poet s Book. Marked 
 passage. Page three hundred and twenty-five." 
 And she had hastened to take from the shelf 
 the book they knew by that name, the old " Thou 
 sand Nights and One Night," that had once 
 belonged to a poet, had been marked and re-marked 
 by his hand, and had been sold with his library, 
 
124 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 a book over which they two had often lingered, for 
 its flavor, fuller than any other of oriental life, for 
 the palms and pomegranates and jasmines and 
 quinces, among which, as they read, they could 
 hear "the stream in murmuring ripple, and the 
 birds confusedly warbling, and the wind with rust 
 ling gush tempering the world to quiet," for the 
 music of its songs and the poetry of its pages. 
 "What memories the yellow-leaved book recalled ; 
 and Dominique must have known it would. This 
 was the leaf they turned together as the book lay 
 on the old blossoming stone-wall in the sun, and a 
 bee walked across the page as if looking for its 
 honey. On this was pictured the bride of flexile 
 grace, in her gown of green, with whom Domi 
 nique had compared her as he read here and there 
 skippingly, who " showed in her straightness the 
 blade of standing wheat." Her hand trembled so 
 that the book all but fell as she fluttered the pages 
 for that passage which Dominique, in a fashion that 
 he had, had from time to time taken down with 
 others in his pocket note-book. " Five things," she 
 read, " were at once heaped on him : love and beg 
 gary and hunger and nakedness and toil ; and nev- 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 125 
 
 ertheless he straightened his soul to endure." And 
 if the page was blistered with her uncontrollable 
 tears, she also, because Dominique had done so, 
 straightened her soul to endure. And then again 
 there were months of silence, in which it seemed to 
 her as if her heart and her hair should grow gray 
 together, till, with the snow, came another mes 
 sage : " The same. Page two hundred and two." 
 And when she had found this and read : 
 
 " Oh, thou art one whose pleasure, when t is spoken, 
 Makes the world dance and Fortune clap her hands," 
 
 she understood, with but little thinking, that Dom 
 inique had fallen in with some portion of the good 
 luck it would be her " pleasure " he should have, 
 and a weight of anxious sorrow and yearning pity 
 fell away from her sensations. She trusted Domi 
 nique s own nature for the rest, and waited. 
 
 She waited a long while. It was on the return 
 of her wedding-day that a third message came, 
 this time by cable : " Second Chronicles, ninth, 
 twenty-first." Which, being interpreted, she found 
 to read : " For the king s ships went to Tarshish 
 with the servants of Huram: every three years 
 came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold and 
 
126 THE MAKQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 silver, ivory and apes and peacocks." This, then, 
 told her all she ought to hope to know, perhaps. 
 That he was enduring, that he had found good 
 fortune, that he was following the sea on long 
 voyages, that he was in port somewhere on the 
 other hemisphere. Doubtless she could have 
 traced his whereabouts ; but what he did not 
 choose to say she would not guess. The message 
 meant a great deal more to her than many a 
 longer one might. She knew that Dominique had 
 called back, in indicating it, and wished her also 
 to recall it, the. happy autumn day when they 
 read ancient history and puzzled over Tarshish, 
 and he had drawn a long tress of her fallen 
 fragrant hair across his lips, with a glance half 
 timid, half defiant, and then a laugh that hid the 
 passion of the kiss he gave it, while he held it up 
 and apostrophized it : 
 
 " And I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, 
 "Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. 
 
 Adelaide, how black your hair is ! It is like the 
 hair of those Arabian girls in our poet s book, 
 that was so dark it made a glory of their brows. 
 And then your eyes are so blue ! To think this 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 127 
 
 hair is nothing but a thread of silk ; but if I were 
 as far away as a fixed star, it would have power to 
 draw me back ! " There had often been an echo of 
 raillery in such by-play ; now she might know 
 how real it had been to him all the time. 
 
 She would have liked to keep this last message 
 to herself awhile, if it had not been her wedding- 
 day. As it was, she went over to find the Cap 
 tain and a Bible and read it to him. 
 
 " Great heavens ! " said the Captain. " Gold 
 and ivory and apes ! Is there a fate in it ? Can t 
 he escape it ? Does he mean that he has gone 
 into the slave trade ? " 
 
 "I think you are possessed," said Adelaide. 
 " Why must you needs imagine evil when he has 
 told us that he straightened his soul to endure ? 
 He is on an Indiaman. When he commands her 
 he will come to us. Then by his own efforts he 
 will have retrieved himself. He is alive ; he is 
 doing well ; I feel as if he were almost here. 
 And I have brought this to show you, too. Gas- 
 coygne did it for me. Does it not startle you and 
 fill your soul with joy ? " 
 
 It was a likeness of Dominique, that she had 
 
123 THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 
 
 asked Gascoygne to make his gift of portraiture 
 answering for the first sketch, if no more. She 
 had not known what it was she asked of him, nor 
 what sacrificial fervor Gascoygne had struck into 
 those lines that gave back the white light of the 
 brow, the glow of the dark eyes, now so tender in 
 their downcast gleam beneath long lashes like a 
 girl s, now so ardent, the high beauty of the smile, 
 the whole starry strength of the face. Perhaps 
 Gascoygne gave to the thing some of the nobility 
 of his own abnegation ; there was no abnegation 
 about Dominique, for had he known of Gas- 
 coygne s mind he would only have said, " I can 
 not give her up. You can. I love her best ! " 
 
 But the Captain turned the picture on its face. 
 " I must not let him beguile the good faith out of 
 me with his eyes," he said. " You feel as though 
 he were almost here ? I don t know I don t 
 know," he said gloomily. " I only know this, 
 Adelaide, that before he wins you he must de 
 serve you, or I will break the bonds, as I can. I 
 will not be a party to the crime." 
 
 "What crime is that? "said a smooth voice in 
 the doorway. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 129 
 
 "One, Mr. Ladeuce," said Adelaide, as slie 
 turned and perceived him, " with whose commis 
 sion, singular as that may seeni to you, you have 
 no concern." 
 
130 "THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 LADEUCE had returned some time since, but had 
 kept rather quiet. As he had once before told the 
 Captain that he came to help him bring up Domi 
 nique, now he said he had come to help him find 
 him. 
 
 " I am not looking for him," said the Captain. 
 
 Nevertheless, he stayed. Here he might find 
 some clue to Dominique ; elsewhere it would be 
 difficult, if not impossible. "To tell you the 
 truth," he said, " it is as much your Gascoygne, 
 yonder, as Dominique that I want. That little 
 irregularity of the heart has become troublesome 
 again." 
 
 " A heart," said Captain Dacre, " as hard as the 
 nether millstone must be out of order, indeed, to 
 make you aware of its existence." 
 
 Bitter as the loneliness was, the Captain saw 
 but little of the Lieutenant, busy, much of his 
 time in the laboratory, trying to penetrate the 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 131 
 
 fertilizing secret of certain phosphates and nitrates 
 that should have a fortune in it, and so let the 
 fortune in possession go whence it came. It 
 would have gone, if he had had to become a coal- 
 heaver, the day that Dominique went, had not his 
 yearning for his son made it imperative to keep 
 house and home and all as before, that he might 
 some day revisit it. 
 
 Ladeuce may have found the life a trifle solitary, 
 too ; but he occupied himself as formerly, with the 
 fishermen over in Coastcliff town, with more than 
 one run out to sea in his own boat, with frequent 
 visits to Allia, who welcomed him again as sun 
 shine from the outside world of which she saw 
 so little, save for some seldom flight to the city to 
 make demands upon her other trustees, or to take 
 an afternoon at the theatre. " You are as fresh as 
 a flower," said Ladeuce, who had that voluptuous 
 enjoyment of voluptuous things which made little 
 Allia s brown and scarlet skin give him a portion 
 of the same pleasure that his somewhat cultivated 
 senses would have found in a painting by Greuze. 
 " It would be rare to take you out and show you 
 the things you imagine. And I might, perhaps, if 
 I were not old enough to be your father." 
 
132 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 " I don t know what difference that need make," 
 pouted Allia. 
 
 When, later, the Captain muttered to Ladeuce 
 something about his waste of time in these re 
 gions, " Is that so ? " said Ladeuce with his sweet 
 low laugh. " Could I spend it any better ? When 
 does that moon-eyed heiress on the hill, the little 
 Allia, come to her majority ? I may double my 
 fortune with hers and let the Nighthird go." 
 
 But Captain Dacre was of a desperate cast in 
 these days. He thought of the silly little beauty 
 on the hill, the charge of that woman who had 
 been his best friend on earth, who had brought 
 Adelaide into life for Dominique, and he looked 
 at the presentable person of the man who, to a 
 natural external polish, had added some of the 
 grace that comes by contact with people of grace, 
 and by more or less reading of books off watch 
 and on shore. " Hark ye, Ladeuce," said he, in 
 his old commanding tones, "not another word of 
 that, or we turn the tables and it is I that will de 
 nounce you ! " And Ladeuce sauntered from the 
 room, humming the refrain of a tune the Captain 
 had heard many a boatload of men sing in the 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 133 
 
 surf of Southern shores. "It is idle, idle, idle," 
 groaned the Captain. " The man is returning me 
 to what I was ! " 
 
 But Ladeuce was not concerning himself about 
 his influence upon the Captain ; nor did he intend 
 his stay to he a long one, when he should have 
 accomplished his purpose. He was playing for a 
 large stake, and could well afford to let the Niglit- 
 bird make her voyages without him, or even take 
 a pleasure trip about the world, if in the mean 
 time he might win, and so become the benefactor 
 and treasurer of the man whom he should lead 
 into fabulous riches. He had some little property 
 
 of his own not much he had been a free 
 
 
 
 spender ; but these riches were hardly less than the 
 mines of Potosi, and they meant all that was fair 
 and festive in his fancy ; they meant escape from 
 danger and work and care, as from the dark spec 
 tres of forgotten storms, life imder southern suns 
 in splendor of courts and palaces, under southern 
 stars in myrtle shadows. Did he not know the 
 joys possible to these young European nobles of 
 unbounded wealth ? Had he not heard the inex 
 tinguishable laughter of the gods ? Had he not seen 
 
134 THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 
 
 from afar their villas in the laurels and roses of 
 the Mediterranean shores, music and flowers and 
 beauty and pleasure from morning till night, from 
 night till morning? Did it not mean rank and 
 power, unlimited luxury and the pride of the flesh ? 
 " I shall not be the Marquis myself," laughed 
 Ladeuce softly in his thoughts, " but I shall be 
 next to the Marquis." Yet, on the heels of the 
 thought, he could not help a start when he heard 
 Gascoygne, as he held one of a remnant of draw 
 ings that Adelaide and Dominique had done under 
 his supervision, long ago, for her class of bad boys 
 in the town, saying, " Yes, indeed, Miss Grey, you 
 are right ; that fairy story is a political treatise in 
 disguise, and, in a humbler way, it ought to be the 
 vade mecum of all adventurers, too. The cunning 
 friend of the Marquis of Carabas tells all their 
 tales in one." And glancing at the drawing, he saw 
 that Adelaide s pencil had sketched a curious like 
 ness to himself in the countenance of the spurred 
 and booted cat. Both likeness and speech might 
 be accidental, probably were ; but the revelation 
 that they made was accusation and judgment and 
 sentence, too. It only decided him to quicken his 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 135 
 
 movements. He went out with Allia she very 
 happy with the black pearl he had given her, which 
 looked like a clot of poison but which eclipsed in 
 her eyes every pearl the Winged Victory brought 
 Adelaide into the garden where old John, busy 
 with some bulbs, not far away, presented his broad 
 back to the contemplation of the universe. " These 
 are the days," she said, " when we miss Dominique ; 
 we used to be out with him so much in boats." 
 
 "Your cousin Adelaide does not seem to miss 
 him badly." 
 
 " I should n t wonder," said Allia, " if she heard 
 from him. Indeed but you must never know 
 it I am almost sure she does." 
 
 " She is very peculiar, then, to keep her knowl 
 edge of him to herself, and let my old friend lan 
 guish in his sorrow. One would do a good work," 
 said Ladeuce reflectively, " who restored that son 
 to the father. I would go for him to-morrow if 
 I knew his whereabouts. What makes you sure 
 that she knows more than another ? " 
 
 Allia glanced at him cautiously. "Oh, will 
 you promise me," she said, " that you will never 
 breathe it ? " 
 
136 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 " Is it not enough for you to make me the re 
 quest ? I would promise you anything ! " 
 
 " A telegram came to her. I saw it.. I ought 
 not, you know. But I wanted to. And it was 
 only a Bible text. I could n t make anything of 
 it, but of course she could. And it had no 
 date. And it came by cable. And that is all/ 
 said Allia breathlessly, frightened at herself from 
 every point of view. 
 
 " By cable ! Do you get me a sight of that bit 
 of paper!" 
 
 Why ? What good will that do ? " 
 
 " I can trace its starting-point at the office, and 
 we will have Dominique back in the time it takes 
 me to fetch him/ he said with a glowing face and 
 a joyous laugh. " You are a faithful child to wish 
 to do your friends this service." 
 
 " Do you want to know the rest ? " she said then, 
 after a moment, winding and unwinding her scarf 
 of red Madeira lace. "This morning there came 
 to her a box; and it was full of fresh orange- 
 blossoms ! Not a blemish on them ! Oh, it was 
 so sweet ! I am not betraying anything there, for 
 you must have noticed how the whole house smells 
 like an altar." 
 
THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 137 
 
 " Fresh orange-blossoms ? They could not have 
 come from far, then. That tells the story. The 
 cable gives the port, the port gives the ship. Do 
 you want a whole string of black pearls ? I will 
 bring them when I bring Dominique." 
 
 Ladeuce had seen the bit of paper before another 
 day was over, and had gone about his business. 
 If the orange-blossoms did not indeed tell the 
 story, yet, in conjunction with the message by 
 cable, they told enough to the Lieutenant s mind 
 for him to conjecture that Dominique had to do 
 with foreign shipping, and was just now in an 
 American port. 
 
 He would not tell him how resplendently Ade 
 laide looked that morning as he passed her in the 
 doorway, with the bunch of orange-blossoms at her 
 throat, with the bloom, the blush, the brightness 
 on her face, as if she were herself the spirit of all 
 the sumptuous beauty of sea and sky and air upon 
 that summer s day. Between that and little Allia s 
 beauty, of the earth earthy, there was the differ 
 ence that there is between a poppy and a star. 
 
138 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE Lieutenant had given the patient work of 
 years to the development of his discoveries con 
 cerning Dominique, and he had the patience and 
 the cunning of a cat to give. This part was but 
 play. If he was not in one near port, he would 
 be in another. 
 
 To find him, to approach him in his own solici 
 tous fashion, to represent himself as injured by 
 Dominique s course, to beguile him, hungry for 
 news from home, for an hour to his own yacht in 
 the stream, all that was no long operation. 
 
 The Nigfitbird, that had discharged her contra 
 band cargo and had been awaiting his directions, 
 was in the port where he ordered her, taut and 
 trim, and so well disguised that not even Domi 
 nique would have thought her anything but a 
 craft built for fast sailing, according to some pecu 
 liar fancy of her owner, the night that he sat on 
 her deck as the moon went down, and the soft 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 139 
 
 wind swelled all the white sails up all their lofty 
 height, and the water hissed away in foam beneath 
 the sharp keel that cleft it. 
 
 There was too much self-contempt and too much 
 wisdom in Dominique to let him accuse Ladeuce 
 of his ruin. Nobody but himself, he knew, could 
 ruin a man. But the tempter had no longer any 
 attraction for him, and he was on his deck only 
 through a disinclination to refuse, through a cer 
 tain residue of his old kindliness, because the man 
 was just from Coastcliff and the Lonely Beach, and 
 because, finally, he had assured him that he had 
 important business which could be best transacted 
 with him there. His own ship, the one of which 
 he went first mate, was to sail upon the morning 
 tide. Ladeuce had caught him on the wing. 
 
 Dominique had but an hour or two to spend 
 here, and they had been below when the Nightbird 
 silently shook out a sail and stole away so gently 
 that one hardly observed she was moving. 
 
 " I will give you a touch of my speed," said 
 Ladeuce, as they came on deck. And as they took 
 their seats, he added, " You will not be on hand 
 to sail with your ship." 
 
140 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 Dominique sprang to his feet. "Not ? " he cried 
 like a trumpet. " Not ? What do you mean ? " 
 And then, as he looked about him, "Are you 
 going to complete my ruin ? " 
 
 "Softly, softly," said the Lieutenant. "We have 
 no loud voices on the Nighfbird. Before you grow 
 violent you will hear reason, and see that there 
 is reason in it. Ce ! You have been upon this 
 deck before." 
 
 " I ? Never ! " cried Dominique. 
 
 "Pray be seated," said the Lieutenant blandly 
 as ever. " I have much to say to you of infinitely 
 more moment than the recovery of your position 
 as mate of any ship that ever sailed. You have 
 been, I say, on the Nigliibird before. She was a 
 slaver then." 
 
 "A slaver!" 
 
 "A slaver. How many years ago is it, that 
 the stanch little devil whipped the hurricane, 
 one midnight, down in the black waters off the 
 Caymans, and Dacre and I " 
 
 "Dacre! Dacre!" 
 
 "No excitement. It is twenty years ago and 
 more. My friend, Captain Dacre of the Lonely 
 
THE MAEQUIS OF CAKABAS. 141 
 
 Beach, was master of the NigJifbird, and brought 
 her safely away from many a stern chase, loaded 
 to the water s edge with negroes " 
 
 " You lie ! " cried Dominique. And with the 
 word Ladeuce had measured his length upon the 
 deck, while the other stood over him blazing in 
 white wrath. 
 
 "I do not lie," said Ladeuce calmly, rising on 
 one elbow a moment and waving back those who 
 would have sprung to his aid, "except upon the 
 deck. And you will hear me out if I have to 
 order you put in irons to do it. It is for your 
 own interest." 
 
 " For my own interest ! " exclaimed Dominique 
 drawing back. "For my own interest that you 
 tell me my father was " 
 
 "He is not your father," said Ladeuce, pick 
 ing himself up. And he rubbed his bruises 
 contentedly. 
 
 Dominique staggered into his seat. 
 
 " For God s sake ! " he cried, " is the whole 
 world a lie ? Ladeuce, will you torture me so 
 I cannot no, no, it is false ! " 
 
 "It is true," said Ladeuce. "I shall call Cap- 
 
142 THE MAEQUIS OF CAEABAS. 
 
 tain Dacre to witness, if you force me. He will 
 tell you, as I do, that you, a child upon your 
 drowning mother s breast, lashed to a spar, were 
 drawn from the wreckage of the barque El 
 Rey, tumbling by us that black midnight; that 
 the woman went back to her grave a half-hour 
 later, and that you were taken by him for his son. 
 I shall run the Niglitbird to the bay, before his 
 door, and if you have a doubt he shall set it quite 
 at rest." 
 
 As the smooth voice slipped on, there flashed 
 on Dominique s memory, through all his bewil 
 derment and doubt and pain, the stormy night 
 at the Lonely Beach when they had talked of 
 slavers till the Captain turned faint and sick. 
 "My father! oh, my father!" cried Dominique. 
 His arms fell listlessly and he shook with great 
 sobs. 
 
 " Desde cuando?" said Ladeuce. "As I said 
 before, he is nothing of the kmd. And I see no 
 need of trouble at that ! He is a man living under 
 menace of the penalty of piracy, the sword of the 
 law liable to fall no, it is a rope, though * 
 
 " Silence I " thundered Dominique, the flash of 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 143 
 
 his eyes making his tears like sparks of fire. " I 
 will not hear another word." 
 
 " You cannot help yourself," with a wave of the 
 arm indicating his authority there. "Dacre will 
 tell you all this is true. That, moreover, he owns 
 the Niglitbird at this moment " 
 
 It was Dominique s oath at his impotence, 
 for whose utterance, although under his breath, 
 Ladeuce politely paused. 
 
 "At this moment. So much for that business. 
 But he will not tell you," continued Ladeuce, " for 
 he does not know, that your mother had just life 
 enough to whisper to me your name and race; 
 that I have her wedding ring, a part of her linen 
 with its name and coronet, and the chain and locket 
 from your own throat. Does that interest you ? 
 If you are not the son of the slaver, Dacre, do you 
 not want to know who you are ? " 
 
 "No, no, no," sobbed Dominique again. "I care 
 for nothing. I want nothing. If this is true I 
 want nothing but death. If I am not his son 
 I am nobody s. But it cannot be true ! I swear, I 
 swear it cannot ! " 
 
 Ladeuce rose and walked forward. His fall had 
 
144 THE MAKQUIS OF CAKABAS. 
 
 stiffened him a trifle. He was not altogether in 
 condition for this excitement. Still it was but 
 pleasurable excitement. When he came back, 
 Dominique was quiet again, staring out over the 
 shining wake they cut in the red glow of the 
 sinking moon, his face as white and set as a death 
 mask. 
 
 " You must have known these things sooner or 
 later, and you should hold me not as your enemy 
 in the telling, but your benefactor," said the mas 
 ter of the Niglitbird. " I have taken this ring, 
 this locket, this marked linen, those whispered 
 words ; I have left my business and gone to 
 the centre of authority; I have unravelled all 
 mystery, I have traced every thread, I have 
 not left one stitch dropped ; I have entered your 
 claim, I have won your cause; you await only 
 your investiture. For I have proved that the 
 Marquis del Kiviero was killed in an insur 
 rection on one of his West Indian estates, to 
 correct abuses on which he had left Spain ; that 
 his wife and child and their servants escaped on 
 the barque M Rey ; that you are that child ; and 
 that all the estates and their accumulated, their 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 145 
 
 unspeakable wealth, and all their titles, a dozen in 
 number, belong to you, Don Angel the Marquis 
 del Eiviero y Zumalaxericas. To the proof, I have 
 every document^ and affidavit needed, and at your 
 service. You do not realize, it may be," he went 
 on, at Dominique s impatient gesture, " what this 
 wealth means. That you are a grandee of Spain, 
 that you are one who may wear your hat before 
 the king, that signifies little to you, que lastima ! 
 Yet to walk your people s halls while their eyes 
 follow you from the painted walls, heroes all, that 
 should make their blood sweep superbly in your 
 veins, even yours, Dominique ! And then you for 
 get that life where breath is luxury, under the great 
 sweet orange boughs, under the stars that hang out of 
 heaven like lamps, troops of girls at the fountains, 
 guitars, heaps of fruit, eyes flashing from mantillas 
 at the church-door Ay de mi I Of what am I 
 talking? That is not the life of princes, of the 
 owners of millions, of the dwellers in castles and 
 towers, unless they choose to doff their splendor. 
 What delight in spending, in giving, in doing! 
 You are glad to toss a girl a bunch of roses to 
 day; y u m &y empty a garden of roses into her 
 10 
 
146 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 room to-morrow ! Now, perhaps, you will see the 
 necessity I have been under to compel you to lis 
 ten for your own advantage." 
 
 " And what do you expect for all this ? " said 
 Dominique hoarsely. 
 
 " Gratitude." 
 
 "And that is " 
 
 " Your friendship and your purse to speak 
 openly," with the low rippling laugh. 
 
 " You will have neither." 
 
 " Seiior Don Angel ! " 
 
 " None of your ribaldry with me ! " cried Domi 
 nique, " or I will throw you into the sea ! It was 
 for this that you took my ruin and disgrace in 
 hand ! To teach me to loathe a simple life, pure 
 love, healthy aspirations ! It was for this that you 
 led me through riotous nights and disgusting days, 
 that I might learn to prize the luxury awaiting 
 me and find myself unable to do without it. I 
 believe that you lie in your throat. And let who 
 will enjoy your castle in Spain, it will not be I. 
 I will not add one hair to the burden my father 
 has borne for me " 
 
 " I shall have to show you the papers, I see." 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 147 
 
 " I refuse to look at them." 
 
 Ladeuce, his eyes upon the deck, lifted his cap 
 from his forehead. "The papers are below," he 
 said. "You will go down with me." When he 
 looked up again there were men at either side of 
 Dominique. " You will forgive me this," he said, 
 " when the king calls you cousin. Now, quietly, 
 or by force." 
 
 "Let them lay a finger on me!" cried Domi 
 nique. 
 
 " Quietly, or by force." 
 
 And Dominique went below ; and he saw the 
 proof. There was no possibility of disbelief. 
 
 " For what remains," said Ladeuce, " that is, in 
 relation to the matter of the slaver, when we an 
 chor to-morrow, if the sea is quiet I will be set 
 ashore and bring Captain Dacre off. You will 
 not doubt his word. He will but reinforce mine." 
 Arid then Dominique went on deck again. 
 
 In what a wild whirl were his emotions, his 
 thoughts, if he could call them thoughts, where 
 everything came as it were by the flashes of light 
 ning that reveal outlines on the darkness of 
 night. His father, whom he had adored, whom he 
 
148 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 had idolized, who idolized him ! That he should 
 have been connected with this, capable of this, 
 guilty of this I A thousand points started up 
 bristling in the light now, and his doubts were 
 torn to shreds of vapor upon them. But he could 
 not connect them, he could not reason about them ; 
 he felt as if all things were annihilated, and he 
 alone left above the empty hollow, as he walked 
 the deck for hours. 
 
 The vast shell of the sky wheeled slowly over 
 hirn and the sea, the great sails soared dimly 
 into the darkness ; the night wore gray with its 
 dust of stars, and saffron hints began to gleam 
 along the eastern water, while a great morning 
 star came out with steady glow ; but he saw none 
 of it. Then the topmast tipped itself with a 
 point of flame, the topsail glowed like some hover 
 ing thing of life far up aloft, a rosy gush of light 
 welled up and filled the immense spaces, and day 
 broke over the wide, solemn hush of the high 
 seas. Still Dominique walked the deck, unheed 
 ing the change of watch or the change of time. 
 
 Ladeuce slept on below ; he had felt but poorly 
 after the stormy night-scene ended ; a thought 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 149 
 
 struck him like a chill, that, after all, he might 
 never come into the fruit of his labors. 
 
 The sun, who, if not our creator, preserver, and 
 benefactor, is at any rate the viceroy of that power, 
 brought some slight help. With the withdrawal 
 of darkness, a shade of confusion and hopelessness 
 withdrew also. Dominique remembered that La- 
 deuce . had said this was all twenty years ago and 
 more. It was twenty years ago that his father 
 forsook this black business, saw its horror, suffered 
 with its shame. Twenty years is a good part of 
 a lifetime. The Captain Dacre of that day was 
 not the Captain Dacre of this. Some accident 
 threw him into that current, rudely born and bred, 
 the drift of the sea. When he realized the thing, 
 he labored to leave it. Was Dominique going to 
 
 
 
 believe there was one bad seed left in the lovely 
 soul of the old man ? Not if a voice from heaven 
 proclaimed it. His religion was real, his self- 
 sacrifice was utter, his love was perfect. If he had 
 ever done wrong, it had been unwittingly; con 
 victed of the wrong, he had cast himself free. 
 Should Ladeuce bring him off to face his son and 
 confess the sin that in all these silent years had 
 
150 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 been branding him to the bone ? Never ! His 
 father should never drearn. Dominique knew the 
 past. His soul should not be seared with that. 
 His son would take him, and they would go away 
 together where no one should find them. They 
 could have peace yet, if not joy. 
 
 And Adelaide. There came a fresh pang, rend 
 ing his soul asunder. Whatever he knew, what 
 ever he felt, he could not expect the same of her, 
 nor could he connect her with this disgrace. Never 
 could he take her in ignorance of this stain upon 
 him; never could he betray the facts about his 
 father for the sake of regaining her. It did not 
 occur to him that if it were not his father, then 
 the stain had nothing to do with himself. He was 
 part and parcel with the man whom he called 
 father ; he was his son in spirit, if not in flesh. 
 He did not reason out so much as that. Adelaide 
 must not know; that was all. If his wife, she would 
 have a right to know. She must not be his wife 
 then. He would never go back to her. She was 
 young; she would forget him. Another man must 
 hear that tender voice, must meet the heavenly 
 sweetness of her smiles, feel the soft touches of 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 151 
 
 those arms, rest in the daily loveliness of face and 
 thought and ways. Their marriage was but a 
 fiction, after all, as one might say. She should 
 be freed. One day it would be a faint memory. 
 And, one day, perhaps Gascoygne His hands 
 clasped behind his head as he walked, his up 
 turned face confronting the dawn, the groan that 
 passed his lips seemed to tear its way from his 
 soul. 
 
 And now Dominique set himself to some serious 
 thinking. 
 
 On the Spanish business and his heritage he did 
 not pause. For the other, there was but one de 
 cision to make, and its consequences to meet. If 
 his father s heart had not already been broken by 
 his boy s heart-breaking conduct, it should never 
 be broken by the knowledge that Dominique was 
 acquainted with his early life. Since he could 
 remember him, his life had been a perfect one. 
 The perfect man was the man he knew, not the 
 tempted, the sinning, the brutal. This man had 
 no more in common with that than the white- 
 winged moth has with the loathsome worm before 
 the chrysalis. His memory overswept countless 
 
152 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 scenes of the old Captain s gentleness and pa 
 tience, his simplicity and sweetness. Was the 
 man who sat by the winter s fire, imagining God s 
 scheme of making the dust of the earth heroic, a 
 bad man ? Was it he that turned faint and sick 
 when his enemy dragged the past before him, 
 and Adelaide and Dominique had said they would 
 as soon touch the hand of a leper as the hand 
 smirched with such a record ? No matter what 
 the record had been, he loved him just the same. 
 Never should harm come to him ! Had he drawn 
 the shipwrecked out of sea and storm ? Neither 
 sea nor storm should prevail against him, much 
 less this reptile ! Dominique s brain burned with 
 a white heat as he remembered the wretch ; burned 
 with great throbs pulsating through all his body ; 
 his heart seemed to pause and snatch his breath 
 at every beat. "0 my father, my sweet old 
 father ! " he cried. " Never fear ! Your son stands 
 between you and wrong ! Were his facts a thou 
 sand times true, his story is yet a lie ! And I love 
 you so I will die before he touches you ! " 
 
 None of all this had been thinking, after all, so 
 much as swift perception. Yet now it narrowed 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 153 
 
 down to two points of question and answer. Who 
 was there, Dominique asked himself, that knew of 
 this old slaver sufficiently to bring the matter 
 home personally? Who knew of it, in fact, at 
 all? 
 
 No soul but Ladeuce no one being alive upon 
 the earth. The knowledge was locked in the 
 Lieutenant s breast, would be silent there forever 
 were his tongue stilled, were his hand nerveless. 
 And where was every document relating to it ? 
 
 On this vessel. 
 
 There was but one course. Was treading on a 
 snake s head murder ? If it were ten thousand 
 murders, it was all the same. 
 
 Then Dominique threw himself on the deck and 
 slept without a dream far into the day. 
 
 Ladeuce was just going over the side as he 
 awoke. " Good-by," he said. " Perhaps my work 
 is all in vain. But you will await me and the 
 guest I bring to you. When you see s me 
 again we will have changed the complexion of 
 things ! " 
 
 Two men went with him. They ran up a sail 
 and soon were a speck on the horizon. 
 
154 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 The Nightbird had reduced her sail, and was 
 slowly edging her way into Coastcliff Bay. Domi 
 nique went below and occupied himself there 
 with some charts, thought the officer who went to 
 see, since everything else was under lock ; with 
 pacing up and down like a wild creature in a cage, 
 another one reported. He was below a long time. 
 The men came back before he went on deck, and 
 the vessel had anchored. 
 
 With a glass, as they rolled on the slight swell, 
 he could see the long low town, the outer hill 
 with the cottage gleaming among its gardens, the 
 white curve of the Lonely Beach and the knot of 
 gnarled oaks beyond it. The late afternoon sun 
 was just reddening hill and town and spire, and 
 Ladeuce was not returning. Dominique laughed, 
 as he saw it, while his glass swept the expanse. 
 It was Wednesday ; and Wednesday was the day 
 on which Captain Dacre and Dominique had 
 always dined at the cottage, and passed the night. 
 It was unlikely that his father had broken through 
 the habit of years, or that the cottage people 
 should allow it, now that he was all alone. La- 
 deuce was waiting at the Lonely Beach ; he would 
 
THE MAKQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 155 
 
 wait all night. His father was sitting now on one 
 of the flowering terraces, with Adelaide going and 
 coming about him, the flower herself, the sun 
 beam ! Little did he think it was in this way he 
 should return to her, unseen himself, although so 
 near, unseen and impalpable as the dead ! Ah, if 
 the glass would but give her to him now, now 
 when it was the last time he should ever try to 
 look upon her. God bless the dear girl, God help 
 her ! If shesuffered, she but shared his pain. All 
 things that had to do with him must suffer. 
 
 It was some time afterward that Dominique 
 approached the officer of the deck. " I should 
 like for myself," he said, one hand on his pistol 
 pocket, "the yawl with which your commander 
 went ashore. I go the same way. For you and 
 the rest there is the Cape, as you know, not quite 
 a dozen miles to the eastward. If you have any 
 thing of value here you had best get it out ; and 
 you cannot be too quick about it. I see that you 
 have boats enough." 
 
 The men surveyed curiously the dark young 
 stranger, whose conduct had been so peculiar, 
 whose face was so white, and whose voice seemed 
 
156 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 now to come from so far away. " Are you beside 
 yourself, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 "You will be, if another hour finds you on 
 the NigMbird" said Dominique. " Do you recog 
 nize this signature ? " It was the draft with 
 which Ladeuce had once paid to him some heavy 
 gaming debts and that, through all his woe and 
 want, he had scorned to use. " It will make good 
 any loss you meet," he said. And then the quick 
 sharp dialogue that followed, the purse that 
 changed hands with the draft, although it left 
 him penniless, and the intrepid spirit in the heat 
 of whose flame these men were but the sparks 
 flying upward, completed the work he wished. 
 
 An hour later the NigMbird, with all sail set 
 and not a soul aboard, was drifting into Coastcliff 
 Bay in the rosy twilight. Two boats had left her, 
 making for the Cape, and another, with its head 
 pointed in the opposite direction, was stealing 
 over the purpling water like a ghost. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 157 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE old Captain sat in the garden chair of 
 the terrace under Mrs. Stuart s window. He had 
 abated something of his unrest, and something of 
 his condemnation, too, since Adelaide had told 
 him of the orange-flowers. 
 
 " It means marriage bells and wreaths," said he. 
 "It means that he sees his way clear and will soon 
 be here; that he feels sure of himself; that he 
 has withstood his temptations. "We shall see him 
 presently, my Adelaide." The Captain had no 
 idea of breaking any bonds now. In the dulling 
 of his own hurt and the unconscious action of his 
 affections through all this time, he had come to 
 believe in the working of new miracles, and that 
 Dominique was about to deserve Adelaide. Just 
 now he was sound asleep, with his newspaper over 
 his head, and Gascoygne, returned from his after 
 noon visits, was walking down one of the garden 
 aisles to Adelaide, who stood knee-deep among the 
 white and gold lilies. 
 
158 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 Old John lifted his broad back as he went by. 
 " Do you see anything out in the bay, sir ? " said 
 he. " I was looking through my glass a while ago, 
 and I think his friend is after the old Captain 
 again. Might have given him more breathing- 
 space than a week. His room s better than his 
 company. His company s worse for the Captain 
 than Dominique s room," with a chuckle in his fat 
 throat. 
 
 He went for the glass and adjusted it to Gas- 
 coy gne s eye. "You see her, sir ? " he said. " She 
 was close hauled when I happened to spy her out, 
 an hour gone. But since then she s hoisted 
 anchor and crowded on sail, and that I don t 
 make out, for she s always kept her distance in 
 these waters before." 
 
 "She is certainly bearing down on the Black 
 Buoy. I wonder how well she knows the coast ? " 
 
 " You had better believe, Doctor, she s sounded 
 every fathom more than once." 
 
 " She 11 be grounded on the reef " 
 
 " If she stands to her course. But she 11 go about. 
 I don t quite see through that rig, though." 
 
 "I don t see anybody aboard of her," said 
 Gascoygne. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 159 
 
 "It mightn t have been two boats left her on 
 the Cape side ; but I 11 swear I saw another, with 
 a peaked sail and gaff, running for the straight 
 line between the breakers of the Lonely Beach." 
 
 " Then Ladeuce will be there when the Captain 
 returns to-morrow. It s a thousand pities. He s 
 wearing the old man s nerves to tatters. John, I 
 think it s time we " 
 
 " Did a little something, sir. Yes, sir. I wish 
 to God, sir, my beard was black again. But a 
 man s like the new red roses, after they get 
 purple the second day, there s no watering will 
 turn them red again." 
 
 " Well, well. I rather think you 11 do. Just 
 shave a half-inch down your cheek, enough to 
 show the sabre-cut, while Thomas puts in the 
 horse, and I should n t wonder if we put the foe to 
 flight. Another siege of him, and the old Captain 
 would go to the wall." 
 
 In a half-hour they were trundling along the 
 causeway at the head of the meadows, through 
 the wood where the shadows and the wild fra 
 grances were already heavy, and out upon the 
 open. It was a clear twilight glorified by a moon. 
 
160 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 But a spark in the window was the only light in 
 the old house as they drew near ; it was the tip 
 of the cigar the Lieutenant smoked at the open 
 window. Gascoygne went on ahead, passed round 
 the corner, and entered the house. 
 
 " Good evening, Lieutenant," he said. " You 
 have come back, I see." 
 
 " "Why, my young Doctor, is it you ? " cried the 
 Lieutenant. " By all that s good, that is fortunate. 
 Be seated, pray. Will you smoke ? "No ? I can 
 recommend these Habanas. No small vices ? Yes, 
 I have come back, you see, and partly to continue 
 your treatment." 
 
 "You make a mistake, Lieutenant," said Gas 
 coygne, still standing. "I told you long ago I 
 could do nothing for you. You came back, 
 I think, to see an old acquaintance. John, 
 here!" 
 
 " Lieutenant," said a voice out of the shadow, 
 " I have grown gray since we served together." And 
 the stooping shape of the gardener came into the 
 moonlight that fell through another window like a 
 pale halo on the gathering gloom, straightened 
 itself, and confronted the Lieutenant. " I have 
 
T-HE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 161 
 
 grown gray since we served together. But you 
 remember the night I got this stroke with a 
 cutlass ? " 
 
 Ladeuce did not move, but one could see a slight 
 tremor shivering through him. His lips parted, 
 but the whispered, " Jasper ! " seemed to stay be 
 tween them. 
 
 " Jasper. That is what they called me on the 
 middle passage. John Jasper is my name up 
 here, the name my father, and my grandfather, in 
 the fishing-town, bore before me here." 
 
 " Well, John," said Ladeuce then lightly, " I 
 sometimes thought there was a familiar bend in 
 your back I don t know that I ever saw your 
 face over your work in the gardens. I don t 
 know that I ever heard your voice. Dashed if I 
 could place you. Stupid of me. I suppose you 
 followed Dacre." 
 
 " Perhaps the Captain followed me," said the 
 gardener, leaning on the back of a chair. "I 
 always had a fancy for turning over the earth. I 
 had come here, and was the gardener on the hill, 
 before the Captain and his boy were wrecked out 
 there on the reef." 
 
 11 
 
162 THE MARQUIS OF*CARABAS. 
 
 " Sly old fox, to keep it to himself I " 
 
 "He had n t it to keep," said John. "White 
 head and beard and eyebrows, stooping back, 
 another hundredweight, and a silent tongue have 
 been as good as rolling seas between us. The Cap 
 tain has never guessed my riddle, Lieutenant." 
 
 " He has n t ? May I ask why you have never 
 read it to him ? " 
 
 " I don t know as that s your affair. But I d 
 just as soon tell you. I lay low at first, to see 
 how. the land lay, and when I found out the life 
 he wanted to live for the sake of the boy, I d no 
 mind to hinder. I d no quarrel with him when 
 we sailed together." 
 
 " And when did you place your confidence in 
 our friend here, the Doctor ? " 
 
 " When I guessed you were leading Dominique 
 to the dogs, and worrying the old Captain into 
 the grave. We d grown pretty fond of Dominique 
 up here, you see." 
 
 " And what have you come to me for ? Hush- 
 money ? But you could have had that of him. 
 To ship on board the Nightbird again ? These old 
 sea-dogs will return to their " 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 163 
 
 " Nothing of the sort, Lieutenant. To ship with 
 you ? It was a dark night, Lieutenant, but do 
 you suppose I don t know where I got this cutlass- 
 wound and who threw up your arm ? You had 
 a good grudge against me then ; you Ve a better 
 now. Not to ship with you ! " And the gar 
 dener laughed grimly. "To tell you to quit, 
 Lieutenant." 
 
 " To tell you," said Gascoygne, " that your power 
 over Captain Dacre is gone, and you must be back 
 on your ship before morning." 
 
 " It seems to me you are imperative." 
 
 " Perhaps so. The case is urgent. And you do 
 not care to be denounced ? " 
 
 " Denounced ? Do you expect," he exclaimed 
 to the gardener, with that ripple of a laugh like 
 the bubbling of a flute under water, " do you 
 expect to betray me arid go scot-free yourself? 
 Come to denouncing, and I have a word to say." 
 
 " It would n t do any good, Lieutenant. I was 
 tried for piracy on the high seas long ago, and 
 served out a part of my sentence, and got my 
 pardon, and my mistress knew it when she took 
 me." The gardener chuckled again at the thought. 
 
164 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 " She believes she s been the saving of me," he 
 said. " But Lord ! I would n t run my neck into 
 that noose again not for love of money. All of us 
 Coastcliff fellows have got to have a turn on a 
 man-of-war, or be cast away in the South Seas, or 
 take a hand at smuggling or the African trade or 
 whaling. "We shouldn t think we were able- 
 bodied seamen if we didn t. But I had all I 
 wanted. I like pottering about my flowers all day 
 and going home to my old woman and the children 
 of nights a sight the best." 
 
 " Well, Lieutenant, that is all to-night," said 
 Gascoygne. " I am sorry to have to tell you that 
 if you are here to-morrow, or ever again, there will 
 be more. We fail to understand your motives, 
 but we have too much interest in an old man who 
 has blotted out wrong with right, in the lad who 
 has grown into our hearts, in his wife, to 
 have them injured or annoyed further. And so 
 good-night." 
 
 As they left the room the gardener came back 
 and looked in the door again. " Do you mind," 
 said he, "the little chap that slapped your face 
 for you when you were saucy to his sister over 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 165 
 
 there by the rope-walk one day ? That s my 
 boy." 
 
 " Damn your boy ! " said the Lieutenant. 
 
 When he heard the sound of their wheels on 
 the causeway coming through the quiet air he 
 relighted his cigar and laughed a little. What 
 odds would all this rodomontade make ? He 
 should have Dacre and be off with him in the 
 skiff by sunrise, and good-by to Coastcliff and the 
 whole kit of them here. One would smile at it 
 all when secure in the castle in Spain. A castle 
 in Spain the old phrase struck him. Ah, ah ! 
 but he had taken pains enough with the founda 
 tion ! And what was this about a wife ? The 
 more to cut loose from, that was all, and serve my 
 lady right. But he would n t have supposed a 
 little thing could have excited him so. He would 
 have liked to wring that young cockerel s neck. 
 However, let those laugh that win. By sunrise 
 To-night, he was fairly tired out and should drop 
 asleep in his chair. 
 
 How still it was ! A moment ago he heard 
 the thin fine strain of a bugle blowing sweetly 
 from the boat of some pleasure party up the little 
 
166 THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 
 
 Coastcliff River ; now nothing but the ripple of a 
 spent wave. Through all the damp coolness and 
 salt breath of the wide air, over meadow and 
 under the low wood, only the rustle of a leaf, the 
 fanning of a moth s wing, the floating of a falling 
 flower. One could hear silence itself. Silence 
 broken only by the seldom plash of the breaker, 
 by the faint beating of oars in the rowlocks, far 
 out upon the sea, in the moon or was it the 
 beating of one s heart, regular, repeating, grow 
 ing louder, growing louder, turning to thunder 
 on one s ear ! Infernally close these rooms when 
 one had had a whole sky to breathe in By the 
 Lord! 
 
 What was it that made him bound from his 
 seat and fall back again ? A white vision in the 
 moonshine ? A cold hand laid upon his heart ? 
 The first dream of the night ? The Lieutenant 
 had dropped asleep in his chair. 
 
 But the beating of the oars in the rowlocks was 
 more and more distinct and real. It was from 
 the oars of a boatman making shore between the 
 breakers that barely showed a white lip at him. 
 Since he had left the Nightbird the wind had 
 
THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 167 
 
 fallen and his sail had flapped loose and idle, and 
 he had taken no heed of the tide that was against 
 him in rowing. It made small difference ; he bent 
 over his oars and with straining muscles sent the 
 boat along by great lengths, all alone on the wide 
 weird water in the moon, pushing forward to his 
 fell purpose. Now he was in the still stretch be 
 tween the two horns of the breaker ; now the boat 
 slid slowly up the sand, and he clambered out and 
 stretched his cramped limbs a moment before he 
 put on his jacket, looked to his priming, and 
 passed up the long slope, up the wet reach of the 
 margin bared by the tide, up the loose bluff of 
 sand, up the soft stretch of turf to the house. 
 
 No light in the house; that was well. The 
 master was on the hill, the man and maid were at 
 their jollity in the town. There was a window, 
 and some one sitting at it. A thin cloud gathered 
 and blew across the moon as Dominique crept up 
 farther. A man, he thought, a man asleep. A 
 dozen steps nearer. He would not shoot a man 
 asleep. The fellow should know what struck him. 
 And then the cloud blew off and blew away to 
 threads in the violet vaults of the midnight sky. 
 
168 THE MAKQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 The moon, that had come round, shone full on the 
 sleeper s face with cold, clear lustre. Ah, let your 
 hand fall, Dominique, and the weapon roll away 
 from it untouched, for fate has been before you 
 here ! No sleeper s face is this, but the face of 
 a dead man. Ladeuce had been gathered to his 
 fathers if he had any. 
 
THE MAKQUIS OF CARABAS. 169 
 
 XVII. 
 
 WHEN Dominique reeled away from the house, 
 staggering as if struck with the rebound of the 
 blow that had slain his foe, he was aware of but 
 one sensation, that he must put miles and miles 
 between himself and the crime he had committed. 
 Beads stood on his forehead, but he was cold 
 as clay, cold as that thing in the window be 
 hind him there, that icy thing staring at the 
 moon. He would have been glad to be as dead 
 as that. To be like that ? Oh, never like that, 
 nothing in common with that ! Let him make 
 haste away till distance should swallow it ! He 
 pushed off his boat mechanically, and began to 
 row heavily. "Whither ? To the Cape ? To the 
 Nightbird ? His keel was grazing on the pebbles 
 across the bay, before he realized that he was on 
 his way to Adelaide. Not to speak with her, to 
 hold her, to caress her, but just once more to see 
 her sweet, pure face, and then to put the side of 
 
170 THE MARQUIS OF CAIIABAS. 
 
 the earth between them. Then all the veils of all 
 horizons should cover it from him forever ! 
 
 He climbed the steep path, going round by the 
 back of the hill, that he might avoid everybody, 
 and paused at the gate in the wall on the side of 
 the town, where the little wicket creaked on its 
 hinges. He would go out that way again, and 
 follow the high road. One minute he waited to 
 listen. Not a sound betrayed that any one had 
 heard him. A branch, rising on the faintly rising- 
 breeze, shook down a mist of fragrant dew, and a 
 thrush somewhere in its recesses seemed to dream a 
 song. Over his head an althea, with its clusters of 
 pale bloom, towered white in the moonlight that 
 overlay it, and fell on the hedge of white hydran 
 geas ; just at hand the great cedars dropped their 
 silvered boughs ; faint wafts of bergamot and balm, 
 and mint and lemon leaf, came blended in cool, 
 delicious breaths ; and as he stepped cautiously 
 down the walk, he could see the lilies trembling in 
 all their gold and snow, and feel the stifling sweet 
 ness that drifted from their cups along the slow 
 night air. But he noted nothing of it all ; if he 
 was ever so dimly aware of it, it was but as the 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 171 
 
 atmosphere of peace and innocence putting a 
 sharp edge to his sense of guilt, his sense of guilt 
 that had fallen on him suddenly as a thunderbolt 
 falls. Now, as he turned the screen of the purple 
 clematis and honeysuckle, came the glow from the 
 open doors and casements of the house. And now, 
 stealing nearer, he could see their shapes within, 
 could see Adelaide walking up and down the hall on 
 his father s arm, could even hear their voices. They 
 talked lightly of their unrest, their expectations ; 
 he heard his own name ; they were saying he 
 could not be far away, and any day or night might 
 bring him ; and, if not that, then the next voyage 
 at all events. They were saying how chivalric 
 was the nature that felt so deeply its forfeit that 
 it would not accept the happiness waiting for him, 
 till it should be earned, that had given years of 
 his life for his sin-offering, that had sent him out 
 alone in the world to expiate the faults of the hot 
 and heedless hours of youth, to seek deliverance 
 from temptations that might haunt him, and 
 cure for his past ail. " It is his search for the 
 Holy Grail," said Adelaide. " We must not think 
 how we long for him. We must only think how 
 
172 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 strong and noble he will be when he comes back." 
 What a chill was this that swept over him like a 
 wind from the tomb, and curdled his blood, and 
 stiffened the plunging of his heart ! Ah, what an 
 outcast was he from- that paradise ! Nor was it to 
 be helped. Were it undone, he would do it all 
 again. Were the crime to commit, his hand would 
 be as red. 
 
 From where he stood he looked directly through 
 the hall. Now they were under the hall-lamp, 
 against which a moth was beating. Adelaide had 
 on a thin gown, the color of her eyes, and she 
 wore her mother s yellow pearls. How sorry was 
 this look that had grown in his father s eyes ! 
 They went forward to the door, where Allia sat 
 on the step, fingering a broken string of beads. 
 One had just rolled away from her ; she went to 
 get a lamp to carry out and look for it. Was it 
 the little Voodoo god ? Was it on that that Cap 
 tain Dacre quietly set his foot, crushing it to pow 
 der ? Who knows ? For at the instant of her 
 return, shading the lamp with a calla-leaf, a sud 
 den cry from her lips startled one and all to look 
 her way. And there against the sky-line of the 
 
THE MARQlfts OF CARABAS. 173 
 
 bay, almost as if grounded on the outer reef, rose 
 the likeness of a burning ship at sea, sail^ and 
 shrouds and spars, cordage and pennon and long 
 low hull, outlined in fire, a towering flame, a thou 
 sand towering flames, with just the film of dis 
 tance and of moonshine making reality a phantom. 
 For a time, every one was stone-still in the splen 
 dor and awfulness of the apparition. Not even 
 Dominique, not even Adelaide, heard the Captain 
 murmur to himself : " By Heaven ! If I did not 
 know it was mirage, if I did not know she was 
 down under the equator, I could think it was the 
 craft herself, and that it was all up with Ladeuce ! " 
 But something straightened him as he gazed, 
 something lifted a load from him, as if he saw his 
 sins and all their evil train consuming, and the 
 smoke of them ascending a burnt sacrifice to 
 heaven. After all, a better knowledge told him 
 that that cloud of fair flame, that whirling, wrap 
 ping sheet of fire, that core of red heat, that pall 
 of pitchy smoke sweeping away on the land-breeze 
 and floating farther and farther out to sea, blacker 
 than blackness in the moonbeam, was no mirage, 
 and he could not be mistaken in the Nighfbird. 
 
174 THE MARQUIS CJF CARABAS. 
 
 Dominique saw the whole thing through the 
 vista of the hall. A fierce joy fluttered over him 
 in the midst of his misery. For an instant out of 
 the intense shadow he had started into the full 
 moonlight ; then, as the flame of smoke and cin 
 ders fell away upon the wind, came over all his 
 aching consciousness some grewsome fantasy of 
 the- ashes of a castle in Spain, and he shrank back 
 into hiding. 
 
 A half-hour s waiting. But he had no idea of 
 the passage of time. Captain Dacre went back 
 into the house, and sat down with Mrs. Stuart 
 and Miss Grey, for a good-night game of casino ; 
 Adelaide strolled down the hall again and out the 
 garden door. She stood there so near him that he 
 could touch her, that he could perceive the scent 
 of roses always hovering about her. Good God ! 
 could he endure it ? Then she had gone on and 
 up the garden walk, and was standing where the 
 open light fell on a staff twisted and re-twisted 
 with the trumpet-flower vine like wreaths of flame 
 behind her. It was not her mere loveliness that 
 moved him so, although to his excited senses that 
 exceeded all women s loveliness before her. It 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 175 
 
 was herself, the personality that, if fire had scarred 
 and marred her, would have been the same, her 
 single-hearted earnestness, her sanguine belief in 
 prevailing goodness, the fine texture of her nature, 
 and that sweet innocence which knowledge of evil 
 could not soil, all mingled in one temper, as all 
 the colors of heaven go to the making of clear 
 white light, and all a part of the life that had 
 grown up between them almost from childhood, 
 common to both of them. Nor was it that these 
 things in the detail occurred to Dominique ; it was 
 the impression of the whole that his heart felt 
 like the stamp of the seal upon hot wax. She was 
 lovely, she was herself, she was his ! If for one 
 moment he could clasp her ! And the gulfs of the 
 eternities gaped between them, the gates of hell 
 prevailed against them! 
 
 As she stood there, she was singing. How 
 peaceful, how perfect, how heavenly it was, with 
 the flowers and fragrances, the silence that fol 
 lowed on the song, the moonlight sleeping far and 
 wide, oh ! the accursed moonlight that rested, 
 too, upon that stiffening mask, that upturned face 
 in the window at the Lonely Beach ! Presently 
 
176 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 she went on and up through the lilies ; she would 
 soon be out of sight. Gascoygne s voice was 
 heard calling her; the silver tones replied. He 
 was conscious that all things were taking on 
 an exaggerated strain, as if he were in a rarer 
 atmosphere. "It will not do, it will not do," 
 he said to himself. " I must get out of this, or 
 my brain will burst." And he crept to the next 
 shadow, and stopped to hear whether crackling 
 gravel or twig told of him or not, ere he gained the 
 shelter of the old lilac walk, when all at once Gas 
 coygne s voice rang out again. " Adelaide ! Domi 
 nique is in the garden. Dominique ! I saw you." 
 A wild fright seized him at the words. He cow 
 ered in the gloom a minute, and then there was a 
 flutter and a flight and a quick glad cry coming, 
 and, with a leap like that of some desperate thing 
 of the woods, he started to flee he knew not 
 whither, and ran into Adelaide s arms. 
 
 " Unhand me ! " he cried savagely, in a hard, 
 hoarse voice. " Unhand me, I tell you ! Will 
 you let me go, or not ? " The piercing sorrow 
 and surprise and hesitation as she called his name 
 again cut him to the heart. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 177 
 
 But he must not stay for that. " Hands off ! " 
 he cried again. " Don t touch me ! Don t touch 
 me ! There is blood upon me ! Now will you let 
 me go ? " 
 
 But it was Gascoygne s large, firm grasp upon 
 his shoulder now. Adelaide was standing just be 
 fore him, motionless, with her clasped and fallen 
 hands, as if she had been struck by lightning. 
 " All the less for that, Dominique," said he. " Now 
 tell us what you mean." 
 
 " I mean," said Dominique then slowly, lifting 
 his wretched face to the light, " that I am a mur 
 derer." 
 
 " And of whom, Dominique ? " said Gascoygne 
 gravely, his grasp still upon his shoulder. 
 
 "Of my enemy. And I do not regret it. I 
 would do it again, if need were. There is nothing 
 more to say about it." 
 
 " You mean the Lieutenant, then ? " 
 
 " I mean the Lieutenant." 
 
 " What nonsense is this, Dominique ? It is not 
 three hours since I left him sitting in the window- 
 place at the Lonely Beach " 
 
 " It is not two hours since / left him there, but 
 12 
 
178 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 stone dead," said Dominique, as if obliged 
 to recall all the ghastly scene, " and staring at the 
 moon." 
 
 " You are mad, lad." 
 
 " Go and see if I am mad ! Oh, you will find 
 him there. He will be waiting for you, with the 
 leer fixed on his damnable face, and the pistol 
 what have I done with that revolver? Yes, yes, I 
 remember. It fell. It is in the grass. Do you 
 think you had better keep me now ? To be taken 
 and tried for my crime ? Do you hold me still ? " 
 he cried vehemently. "Do you not recoil from 
 me ? Do you not shudder at my touch ? Oh, it 
 is he that has forced me to this ; it is he through 
 whom I have become this execrable thing ; it is he 
 that has made my hands drip with murder ! If he 
 has a soul, may Heaven visit the penalty upon it ! " 
 And then he fell upon the grass before Adelaide, 
 grovelling there. " No, no," he cried, " I am not 
 fit to touch the hem of her garment. I may not 
 kiss her feet." 
 
 But Adelaide was kneeling as instantly beside 
 him, and was lifting his head in her arms. " I do 
 not believe what you say," she sobbed. " And if I 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 179 
 
 did, oh, my poor Dominique, what difference would 
 it make with your wife ? " 
 
 " Dominique," said Gascoygne sternly, " I do 
 not know what these heroics mean. I am going 
 to take John, and go over to the Lonely Beach and 
 discover. But you must promise me you will not 
 leave this place." 
 
 " I cannot/ 
 
 " That you will not leave this place. Now, lis 
 ten. I cannot let Adelaide stay out of doors so 
 long, but you will go into the grapery, the glass 
 is open, and wait for me with her, or I will call 
 your father " 
 
 " My God, Gascoygne, don t do that ! " 
 
 " What else can I do ? I must call your father, 
 or you must promise me to stay." 
 
 " I thought you used to be my friend, Gas 
 coygne," implored Dominique. "Don t you see 
 that I must go ? Don t you see I can t drag Ade 
 laide down with me, that I set her free, that 
 she shall not be the wife of a felon, that every 
 moment I stay adds to my agonies, that I am 
 only a tramp on that highway to the nearest port ? 
 No, no, my father must not hear. Is there no 
 
180 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 faith in man ? " And he was on his feet again, 
 eager and white in his passion of despair. 
 
 " I don t want to call him/ said Gascoygne. 
 " Give me your word to await me here, and I will 
 not." 
 
 " I promise you anything," he said, " anything, 
 if in return you promise that he shall not know I 
 have been here." 
 
 " Unless you wish it. This way. Here ; there 
 are two rustic chairs. Be quiet, Dominique, till I 
 return, I may be gone two hours, or I shall 
 give you a composing-powder now." 
 
 " You can give me no composing-powder, Gas 
 coygne. There is nothing to medicine my hurt. 
 A thousand years from now, in this world or 
 another, the wound will be just as raw and 
 bleeding." 
 
 When Gascoygne had drawn the seats side by 
 side, he left them, and it was but a few minutes 
 before the cautious feet of the horse he bestrode 
 might be heard going down the hill, followed by 
 those of the one he led for John. And if any 
 on the hill s brow had looked, they might presently 
 have seen the two galloping over the bridge and 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 181 
 
 along the causeway, as if a host of goblins fol 
 lowed after. 
 
 Dominique sat with his elbows on the arms of 
 his chair, his head resting in his hands, and his 
 feet thrust out before him, saying nothing. Ade 
 laide left his side, and went gently wandering 
 up and down the walk. Over them streamed the 
 westering moon tempered by the trailing shadows 
 of the thick vine-leaves and the translucent grape 
 bunches, where the light almost seemed to have 
 gathered into shining drops and clusters. After 
 a while she paused hesitatingly before him, and 
 then, kneeling at his side, put her arms along his 
 shoulders, and laid her head upon his breast. He 
 sat still, neither stirring nor returning her embrace. 
 She could feel the shiver thrilling through him. 
 At length, as if he could bear it no longer, he 
 rose, and, doing so, lifted her to her feet. 
 
 " Adelaide, I must not touch you, I must not 
 speak to you," he said. " Oh, my God ! It seems 
 as if once I might take my own wife into my 
 arms ! " 
 
 And suddenly he had snatched her and folded 
 her to his heaving breast, raining passionate kisses 
 
182 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 down upon her face, kisses followed by a storm of 
 tears, before he opened his arms and released her. 
 She gathered up her fallen hair, blushing even in 
 the moonlight filtering through the vines. 
 
 " Dominique," she said presently, going and put 
 ting both hands on his arm where he leaned against 
 an arch, " am I not really your wife ? " 
 
 (( God knows you are," he said chokingly. " But 
 you will not be long. You shall not be tied to 
 anything so wretched as I. I came into your 
 sweet, still life out of storm. I go back to my 
 element. You will be sad, you will be sorry ; you. 
 will grow careless, you will forget. Oh, I see it 
 all ! " he exclaimed. " Some night, when I shall 
 be tossing on the storms of the south seas without 
 a star, you will be happy and smiling, and going 
 to and fro with the calm and stainless man who 
 gives your home peace." 
 
 " Oh, what do you take me for, Dominique ? " 
 she said piercingly. " Can you think this of one 
 who, you know, believes marriage to be a sacra 
 ment, and denies the possibility of divorce, even 
 by death ? I am your wife, you just said. Not 
 even God can make it otherwise. And what are 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 183 
 
 wives for ? " she cried. " To enjoy all the pleasures 
 of life and to have none of its troubles ? Would 
 you be so cruel as to let me share your joy and 
 not try to help you bear your sorrow " 
 
 "Adelaide, it is no use. Though you speak 
 with the tongues of angels, you cannot make 
 black white. Husband and wife are one you 
 cannot be one with me. I told you I would 
 mount to you. Oh, to what depth have I fallen 
 instead ! I will riot let you hurt yourself so far as 
 to become one flesh with the man " 
 
 " Who committed a sin in an outburst of pas 
 sion " 
 
 " It was no outburst of passion. I rowed twelve 
 miles, against wind and tide, to kill Ladeuce, 
 meaning, every time I lifted the oar, to kill him. 
 And he is dead. I see you shudder now as you 
 think of it." 
 
 "Yes. I shudder. It is dreadful. I cannot 
 make it out. It seems as if it never could have 
 been my Dominique." 
 
 "It never was. It was quite another person 
 from the Dominique you knew. That Dominique 
 was an innocent lad, Christ ! in his worst ex- 
 
184 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 cess ! This Dominique s hands are as red as his 
 heart is black ! You see there is nothing between 
 you, your spotlessness retreats from him." 
 
 "I see nothing of the kind," said Adelaide, 
 calmed by his turbulence. " I see that, if he were 
 all you say, he would need me so much the more. 
 Not only his help, his comforter, but, if we are 
 husband and wife, if we are one, if he is the 
 sin, as he says, and I am the innocence, then he 
 cannot dispense with me, my innocence shall 
 bring him back his own. But, oh, Dominique, 
 you make a mistake in thinking so well of me. I 
 am I am capable I too, Dominique, could 
 tread on the snake 
 
 " Adelaide, you drive me wild ! You do a 
 wrong ! You, with your white soul ! You " 
 
 " Yes, if he were stinging to death one I loved. 
 Oh ! " she cried, as Dominique started at her 
 words, " I felt it in my heart when I thought he 
 was leading you astray." 
 
 " Yes, perhaps he led me astray. But a man 
 has the choice of going or not. It was not for 
 that Adelaide ! My darling ! Say no more, 
 say no more ! " he cried, flinging himself aside. 
 
* 
 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 185 
 
 "You will force me to betray myself. I would 
 not have you, when I am gone, think I am all, all, 
 all black, for I had reasons, terrible reasons " 
 
 " I know them, Dominique." 
 
 "You know them!" 
 
 "I heard the old gardener, John, telling Gas- 
 coygne that he served with the Lieutenant and 
 Captain Dacre. You know the rest, Dominique." 
 
 "But you must tell me !" he insisted, while the 
 furious current of his veins sung and resounded 
 in his ears. 
 
 " On the Nightlird" she whispered tremblingly. 
 "The the slaver." 
 
 As she spoke, all Dominique s strength forsook 
 him. His knees gave way ; his face was ashen ; he 
 sank into the seat at hand. " And I have soiled 
 my soul with murder to keep a secret that all the 
 world knew ! " he murmured. 
 
 " Nobody knew it but Gascoygne and I. No 
 body does now." 
 
 How much more did she know, he questioned 
 of himself, his heart fluttering like a leaf in a 
 storm. That he was not Captain Dacre s son ? 
 That she was the wife of what is this Ladeuce 
 
* 
 
 186 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 called it a grandee of Spain? He could not 
 ask. A wild hope shook him, for half the mo 
 ment, that she knew everything. But, like the 
 black shadow of a sunbeam, came as swiftly the 
 conviction again of his father s shame and misery 
 if aware that the child of his love knew of his 
 dishonor. 
 
 " No, no," he cried aloud ; " it was not for that 
 I made away with a life. Not that the creature 
 alone knew the secret, but that he was about 
 to make my father learn I knew it also ! I 
 never meant I never meant, Adelaide, that you 
 should have the cruel knowledge, either, that I 
 had done this deed. I came but for just one last 
 look at you, a look that should be an embrace, 
 and you forced me to disclose myself. I meant 
 then to disappear out of your life. But now you 
 know it. It cannot be helped. Only if you ever 
 loved me, do not let my father know it. That can 
 be helped." 
 
 And then he suddenly became silent. Another 
 word might be too much. She might learn that 
 there was reason for Ladeuce to acquaint his father 
 with his knowledge, might learn of that Spanish 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 187 
 
 secret and, with her high cast of thought, see 
 ing the work in the world to be done with such 
 rank and wealth, such place and power, she 
 might feel that his first duty of all was to take 
 up his burdens there, render allegiance to his old 
 race, and refuse to abandon his post. Execrable 
 secret, in which if he ever stirred finger, his father 
 must suffer all he should be screened from, must 
 suffer all the agony of looking in his son s eyes, 
 conscious that Dominique knew of the deception, 
 knew that he was not his son, knew of the black 
 business in which the man was engaged when he 
 became his son, an agony worse to both than 
 death ! Dominique could bear to wear in the view 
 of the woman he loved the stain of such base 
 birth ; he could not bear to break the old heart 
 that loved him. He could give up Adelaide, happi 
 ness, hope. "Only death," he groaned, "would 
 have been so much the easier." 
 
 "You must not think, Dominique," Adelaide 
 said, after the long silence, with a timidity as if 
 she felt herself recreant in hinting such a pos 
 sibility, " that this has made my love for your 
 for our father the less. I knew it before I married 
 
188 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 you. I pitied him so much, to think how he 
 regretted, that I only loved him more and more. 
 Perhaps I honored him the more. You remember, 
 Dominique, we used to think those natures nobler 
 that knew sin, and left it, than those with only 
 idle and untempted guilelessness." 
 
 " We did n t know what we were talking about. * 
 He could not endure, in the tension of his nerves, 
 to hear the one who loved his father almost as he 
 did himself, speak of him as ever having sinned. 
 And then there was another silence. 
 
 A bell from the chapel-spire below struck mid 
 night. A little impatient bird outside stirred in 
 his nest, and, dreaming it was morning, began to 
 sing, and hushed himself again. 
 
 " I am as impatient as that bird," said Adelaide. 
 " Now, Dominique, that I have told you we know 
 the whole business, you will not think of going 
 away ? " 
 
 "It makes no difference," he answered her. 
 " You cannot be the wife of a man who is not only 
 a criminal, but who lives with a death sentence 
 hanging over him. I should be away from this at 
 once. It is hard in Gascoygne to keep me. If I 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 189 
 
 repented I should want to pay the penalty of my 
 crime, you see. I do not want to. I do not 
 repent. I am hardened and blood-stained I 
 have only a horror of myself that may lead to 
 madness." 
 
 Adelaide had no answer to make him, but sat 
 on the bench where she had sunk, softly weeping. 
 He went over and sat beside her. 
 
 -" At least once," he said, " lie in my arms and 
 weep on my breast. Hush now, my darling, hush. 
 Do not let me think I have broken your heart. I 
 should break it indeed if I stayed." 
 
 And so the speechless hour passed, till there 
 came a sound of horses hoofs upon the bridge 
 below ; every stroke to Adelaide seemed to strike 
 upon uncovered nerves, and to Dominique was like 
 the swinging of a pendulum that measured off the 
 moments of his respite. Then they thought they 
 heard Gascoygne at the stables ; a quiet step on 
 the gravel and he had rejoined them. 
 
 " It is just as I thought," he said. "The purest 
 nonsense. You are either suffering from illusion, 
 Dominique, or you are a fool. Ladeuce is dead 
 indeed " 
 
190 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 " I told you he was," said Dominique sullenly. 
 
 " But you did not kill him. He had been dead 
 some time before you landed on the beach. He 
 died of a disease of the heart, which I long ago 
 told him might put an end to him any day. There 
 was neither wound nor bruise nor bullet-mark 
 upon him. John and I exnmined him thoroughly. 
 Nor have I been content with that. Before we 
 buried him at the foot of the old plum orchard 
 near the meadow, and effaced all appearance of 
 our work, I had a brief autopsy, to be assured for 
 your sake, as I am assured, that I was certainly 
 right. Are you satisfied now ? " 
 
 "Why should I be?" 
 
 " Why should you be ? Dominique, you put 
 me out of all patience ! What do you make of 
 this, then ? Here is your pistol. I found it in 
 the grass. It is one of the old ivory -mounted pair 
 with which we used to shoot at the buoy. Every 
 ball is in it ; every chamber is loaded. There has 
 not been one discharged. You have fired no shot 
 with that weapon." 
 
 " Do you really mean to say, Gascoygne " 
 
 " I mean to say that you no more killed La- 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 191 
 
 deuce than I did. But he is dead and buried ; his 
 ship is burned ; and that is the end of him. He 
 will never be inquired for. And as for old John, 
 his fealty to Captain Dacre is as great as when he 
 sailed with him. He tells nothing of his service 
 with your father but the bare fact of the ser 
 vice ; and his gratitude to Mrs. Stuart and to Ade 
 laide is so sincere that he may be trusted to keep 
 our confidence. ]STow you will come in and go to 
 bed like a rational man. It has been a ghastly 
 affair, but we are well out of it. Come." 
 
 "And do you think, Gascoygne," cried Domi 
 nique, suddenly facing him, white and blazing 
 as the star that was rising out of the sea behind 
 them, " do you think that my hand was so much 
 more worth than my soul ? " What a laugh was 
 that which burst through his lips I " Do you 
 think," he cried again, " that because Fate and I 
 had the same intention at the same moment, my 
 intention was any the less because Fate struck first ? 
 Do you think that any two minutes or two hours 
 of time could annihilate the fact of my fixed pur 
 pose ? Was n t the murder done in my soul ? 
 You thirst for blood, and the blood is spilled by 
 
192 THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 
 
 another, were you any the less blood-thirsty ? 
 Do you know what murder means ? If you stop 
 a planet in its course, there is heat enough set 
 free to destroy it ; if you stop a life in its course, 
 the flames of hell shoot forth. No, no ! oh no ! I 
 am as much the murderer as I was before. It is 
 just as necessary that I should go. I am as much 
 at variance with all that is peaceful and spotless 
 and " 
 
 " Why, what is this ? " said another voice, and 
 they saw Captain Dacre coming up the long walk 
 from the door, with the last ray of the moon 
 glancing redly through the crystal panes upon his 
 face. 
 
 " Adelaide, dear, are you here ? I told your 
 mother you had gone to bed, and I locked the 
 doors for her. But voices and sounds have waked 
 me, and kept me awake, till at last Dominique ! 
 Dominique ! " And then with a swift step, with 
 an utterance half joy and half despair, Dominique 
 fell insensible at his father s feet. 
 
 " That ends the business," said Gascoygne, And 
 with the Captain s aid they lifted the unconscious 
 form and carried it up to the Captain s bed. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 193 
 
 When Gascoygne came down to breakfast in the 
 morning, he said he had been up all night, for 
 Dominique had come home, and lay at the point 
 of death with congestion of the brain. 
 
194 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 "I THOUGHT," said Allia, looking up at Gas- 
 coygne s intelligence, with the sunshine making a 
 dazzle across her topaz-colored eyes, "that some 
 thing very queer must have happened. There 
 seemed to be sounds in the air everywhere about 
 the house last night. I heard horses hoofs, and a 
 voice crying, and then I remembered that burning 
 ship, and thought of the stories of the Wild Ladies, 
 and I did n t know but my Voodoo bead was at 
 work. I was really a little frightened. I knocked 
 at Adelaide s door, but she would n t answer ; and I 
 wrapped up my head in the coverlet before I could 
 get to sleep." 
 
 "You grow wiser every day you live, Allia/ 
 said Gascoygne." 
 
 " I wonder," said Mrs. Stuart, when Allia, who 
 had quite breakfasted before Gascoygne s arrival, 
 had half danced, half flung herself out of the 
 room at his remark, " where Adelaide is. She is 
 always so early." 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 195 
 
 " Adelaide," said Gascoygne, balancing his coffee- 
 cup a lingering moment, "is sitting with her 
 husband." 
 
 "Is what?" 
 
 " Is with Dominique, cousin." 
 
 " Dominique ? Her husband ? Have you left 
 your senses ? Gascoygne ! Will you tell me what 
 you mean ? " said Mrs. Stuart, her hand suddenly 
 trembling so that the ruby flickered like a flame. 
 
 " Why, nothing very bad," with his pleasant, 
 reassuring smile, " only that Adelaide has been 
 the wife of Dominique since 
 
 " Adelaide ! My daughter ! Gascoygne, you are 
 dreaming ! " 
 
 "On the contrary, I am painfully aware of being 
 wide awake." 
 
 " But my child deceiving me ! " 
 
 " Well," said Gascoygne, " there are some cir 
 cumstances where we do wrong to do right. And 
 when Adelaide married, she thought " 
 
 " I cannot believe it. I must go to her." 
 
 " You had better be seated again. There must 
 not be a syllable whispered in Dominique s pres 
 ence ; and Adelaide is in too exalted a condition 
 
196 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 to know if she is on this earth or another. It is 
 perfectly true." He paused a moment and re 
 garded her. " While you were attending to your 
 Confederated Charities she was arranging a little 
 charity of her own. You are surprised ? I have 
 presumed you had no other intention." 
 
 " No other intention ! " sobbed Mrs. Stuart. 
 " Gascoygne, how very unkind of you ! I always 
 meant, I always meant, Gascoygne, that she should 
 marry you." 
 
 "The stars meant differently. The stars," said 
 Gascoygne gently, "that let you take an utter 
 stranger unquestioned into your family and edu 
 cate his child with your own. But the thing is 
 done, my dear cousin. I don t know that you 
 need to shed tears over it. I think I should make 
 the best of it. As for me, I am still here, and 
 always shall be. The poor you have always with 
 you, you know " 
 
 " Why, Gascoygne, you have a fortune ! Are 
 you beginning to fear coming to want ? " 
 
 " I came to want long ago. It takes more than 
 money, cousin, to make good fortune. And, mean 
 while, you have a son-in-law who will love you 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAEABAS. 197 
 
 very truly, that is if he lives to love any 
 one " 
 
 "The poor boy! The poor child!" said Mrs. 
 Stuart, looking up with the sudden tears wetting 
 her face. " There is a great deal that is delightful 
 about him, Gascoygne. And he never had any 
 mother. I have always felt like a mother to him, 
 though. And if if he is really my own son 
 now " 
 
 " There is no doubt about it," said Gascoygne, 
 laughing in the midst of his apprehensions. 
 
 " Then I must go to him at once. He must 
 have nurses, and Miss Grey and I will oversee 
 them. How fortunate I am in having Miss Grey 
 for a fixture in the family ! But that makes no 
 difference about Miss Adelaide," she said, rising. 
 " I am just as indignant with her. To think that 
 a child of mine 
 
 " Is it all her fault ? Where have your eyes 
 been ? I think I would smother my wrath, 
 cousin. Adelaide must have gone through with 
 a great deal. And now with Dominique s life 
 hanging in the scale " 
 
 " That is true, Gascoygne. I remember how I 
 
198 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 felt when my poor husband Adelaide with a 
 husband ! The baby ! Gascoygne, is n t it like 
 a romance ? " And Mrs. Stuart came round and 
 kissed Gascoygne, who had finished his coffee, and 
 then bustled out of the room, the pleasure of a 
 child with a new play, of a philanthropist with a 
 new pauper, perhaps rather of a mother with 
 a new son, beginning to blossom in her bosom. 
 
 Gascoygne rose and walked about the room, and 
 paused at last at the teak-wood desk where Mrs. 
 Stuart kept her correspondence. Over it, wreathed 
 with a long branch of the white rose vine that had 
 been indulged in its determination of thrusting 
 itself into the room, hung the portrait he had made 
 of Adelaide long ago, with the life and lustre of 
 her young beauty in the flower-like face and starry 
 eyes. " That, at least," he murmured, " nothing 
 can take from me." Then he went to his own 
 retreat. When Captain Dacre came down he saw 
 another picture hanging beside Adelaide s, the 
 pastel Gascoygne had given her, and on which he 
 had imprinted all he could of the fire and radiance 
 of the Southern countenance she loved ; round 
 about it were flung sprays of the brier roses torn 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAKABAS. 199 
 
 from the garden wall where the two children had 
 been wont to read their books together. 
 
 Perhaps that sacrificial garland of roses indi 
 cated the state of feeling of the whole household 
 towards Dominique, the delighted acceptance of 
 him as one of themselves now in fact, the de 
 lighted acceptance of the romantic circumstance 
 coming into their still lives that he had been Ade 
 laide s husband all this time, authorized as that 
 was by Captain Dacre s knowledge of it. If it 
 was a delightedness kept in abeyance during the 
 days and nights when Gascoygne went without 
 sleep by the sick-bed, it was allowed full play 
 when Dominique rose, if not refreshed and strong 
 from his fever as Achilles from the river Styx, yet 
 clothed and in his right mind, and glancing, every 
 time the door opened, for Adelaide, whom her 
 mother had rigorously excluded from his room. 
 
 It had become evident to Gascoygne during 
 both Dominique s delirium and calm, that there 
 was no change in his feelings or intentions. He 
 was floating alone on clear far-off night seas under 
 the equator, all through the first ; to the second he 
 came with that weary sense of taking up a burden 
 
200 THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 
 
 that every one feels on waking after disaster. He 
 did not ask for Adelaide ; it was plain he did not 
 mean to do so, at least as yet ; he had no right 
 he meant to claim no right. The first time that 
 he awoke from sleep, opening his eyes on other 
 than the phantasmagoria of the heated brain, it 
 was to see his father at the foot of the bed, and 
 the same smile kindled and grew and overspread 
 his eyes that the Captain remembered in the 
 child he had rescued from the sea. For long after 
 that he was content to sleep, with the weariness 
 following his fever, and wake to meet that glance 
 again, or else to lie with his hand grasped in his 
 father s, saying nothing, almost thinking nothing. 
 When he did speak, it was only to signify that 
 this was too pleasant to be anything but brief, 
 and he must be off when he should find a ship 
 again. 
 
 " I came very near crossing the dark river this 
 time, did n t I ?" he said. " Well, I must soon be 
 sailing a different sort of sea. I shall not get my 
 strength again till I am out on blue water." 
 
 When, however, his strength began to return, it 
 came swiftly, helped by the coming coolness of 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CABABAS. 201 
 
 those days when the year seems to pause at its 
 full ripeness. He said nothing to Captain Dacre 
 of his life since they had seen him before, or of 
 what had brought him back. 
 
 " 1 may, perhaps, have some difficulty in getting 
 a ship again," was all he said to Gascoygne. 
 
 " Not any," said Gascoygne. " Have you for 
 gotten the Winged Victory ? She is nearly ready 
 to take in cargo now ; and it will only be like all 
 the rest of my cousin s behavior if she sends her to 
 Australia under your command. I presume you 
 consider yourself competent." 
 
 " To handle a fleet of her." 
 
 " Well, perhaps we can give you a clean bill of 
 health by the time the agent says the word." 
 
 "I don t know," said Dominique, " that I can 
 accept the command. I must be out of this alto 
 gether ; and that is no way." 
 
 " You may have to accept it. Captain Durringe 
 has lately died, and it will be a serious loss if the 
 ship is laid up. It is Adelaide s property, you 
 know, and so your own." 
 
 " Then, by heaven, I never will set foot on her 
 deck!" --,,:,: 
 
202 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 " We won t argue the matter, Dominique ; you 
 are not yet strong enough. I had hoped the fever 
 had burned all that nonsense out of you. If your 
 wife chooses to take you with all the stains that you 
 harangued of to her, I cannot think that you are 
 the scamp to desert her. She, at any rate, does 
 not think you are, and has been in person to her 
 agent with her orders. I believe the ship can 
 clear within the month ; there is a state-room en 
 gaged for a single passenger, which may be pleas 
 ant for you, and if not, it can t be helped now. 
 By the time you have sailed to the antipodes 
 in her, have got on the other side of the earth 
 and under a different co-ordination of stars, you 
 will have seen in another light the circumstances 
 that have been troubling you, and will have re 
 turned to your senses. Come, come, Dominique, 
 you force me to a dilemma. Shall I commit you 
 to the Winged Victory t or to a mad- house ? " 
 
 Dominique still shook his head. 
 
 " Perhaps," said Gascoygne, " I ought to bring 
 up my allies. Your father, who became persuaded 
 from your wanderings that you would go away, is 
 happy now in the thought of keeping just the 
 
THE MARQUIS OF GARABAS. 203 
 
 tether of the Winged Victory ownership about 
 you." 
 
 " My wanderings, Gascoygne ! " 
 
 " Oh, you need have no anxiety," said Gascoygne 
 with a laugh. " Your wanderings were only out 
 at sea out of this, out of this/ " 
 
 " Out of this," said Dominique. " Yes, out of 
 this. Why do you urge me to darken other lives 
 with my trouble ? If I did not virtually with my 
 right hand do all that in my madness I tKbught I 
 did, I am as much the culprit it was no fault of 
 mine that I did not. Listen, Gascoygne. Here is 
 where it is with me. I did an evil deed. I do 
 not regret it. I am under conviction of sin. But 
 I do not repent, and I never shall, and there is no 
 forgiveness without repentance. Don t you see, 
 then, that I am already in hell ? " 
 
 " Child s talk, Dominique ! It is enough that 
 you didn t do the deed. The rest is moon 
 shine. You are still under an illusion and need 
 to continue my treatment and follow my advice. 
 Do you remember, my lad, when you used to say 
 that it seemed to you, the night I helped you off 
 the wreck, that I made you ? " Perhaps Gascoygne 
 
204 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 forgot with a purpose that it was he and not 
 Dominique who had cherished that fancy. " If I 
 did/ he continued, "it seems to me I have a right to 
 do as I please with you ; and I am pleased to send 
 you out of this by means of the Winged Victory. 
 Moreover, Dominique, and this is all I shall 
 say about it, the captain of such a vessel has a 
 chance at fortune that does not come to the second 
 or third officer of any other. You have a chance, 
 in accepting this opportunity, to make it possible for 
 your father to throw away the money gained in 
 the way that grieves him, and, with your purse at 
 his hand, never to feel his loss. Look, now," said 
 Gascoygne, ceasing his customary pacing of the 
 floor and coming to sit down opposite Dominique s 
 chair, " suppose all Captain Dacre s wealth went 
 to found an asylum for certain of his African 
 people, either the orphans or the sick and old 
 what happy years will he spend in seeing it all 
 done, in superintending it after it is done, in feel 
 ing that every day he wipes out the black work 
 of some other day " 
 
 " Gascoygne, do you think you need to urge that 
 upon me ? Have I dreamed of anything else ? 
 
THE MARQUIS OF C ARAB AS. 205 
 
 Has he ? Has n t he been seeking, this dozen 
 years, for the means to let him do it and not 
 defraud me or render me suspicious ? Has n t he 
 tried to make jewels in his laboratory, to make 
 phosphates, to find out the secrets of the earth s 
 wealth " 
 
 " Well, in this way you find them for him. And 
 can you see any fairer prospect of happiness than 
 in closing or tearing down the Lonely Beach house, 
 and yourself coming home from your voyages to 
 this house on the hill a better gift to Adelaide 
 each voyage than all the pearls the Winged Victory 
 ever brought to your friends here, to your father, 
 to your wife, to your children ? " 
 
 " Gascoygne," groaned Dominique, " why will 
 you tempt me so ? " 
 
 Was it a dream that Dominique dreamed in the 
 morning twilight, between sleeping and waking, 
 or was it some forefeeling of the future that 
 surely one day was to be his own ? In it he had 
 corne off the sea one sunny morning, all bronzed 
 and bearded, had come up the gardens, terrace 
 over terrace, brimmed with birds and bees and 
 blossoms, and into the hall where, as he had seen 
 
206 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 it once before, the sunlight streamed again through 
 the jewelled glass of the skylight over a woman 
 with just that aura of added beauty that belongs 
 to the women of dreams, or to the dreams of 
 women the dreamer loves, a woman gracious 
 and beautiful as only Adelaide could be, with 
 every year an added grace, and streamed, too, 
 over the group of babies round her there, ideal 
 babies, this with the father s eyes, that with the 
 mother s mouth. The air is full of the sweet, 
 sweet music of their cries and laughter ; they 
 have been telling fairy stories, and frolic now in 
 some sportive game, puss in the corner or blind- 
 man s-buff, he thinks, and one with blindfolded 
 eyes lays hold of those that come across her way. 
 " And who is this ? " the little creature cries, as 
 with uplifted finger to the rest he has stooped 
 till her tender hands outspread have found his 
 bearded face. He thrills and trembles, even in his 
 dream, as the timid touches go wandering over it 
 " And who is this ? " cry all the rest. And the 
 little creature shrinks away. " I don t know who 
 you are," she says, in a voice that half declares her 
 doubt, " unless," with a memory of her fairy story, 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 207 
 
 " you are the the Marquis of Carabas." And 
 before the chorus of warbling voices can shout, 
 " It is papa ! It is papa ! " before he takes her in 
 his arms, with all the others clinging about, and 
 the gracious, tearful mother smiling down upon 
 them, the glad old man hurrying forward, " I am 
 the Marquis of Carabas," he answers her. And, 
 dream or not, it is all he ever tells wife or child or 
 friend of the old castle in Spain. 
 
208 THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 PERHAPS Mrs. Stuart builded better than she 
 knew in keeping Adelaide away in those long 
 days. As Dominique sat in his room, or went out 
 upon tne upper gallery, he could hear her voice 
 about the house ; this step seemed to be hers just 
 approaching, but it went by ; the nutter of that 
 curtain was her garment ; the cup of life was just 
 about to touch his lips, and all the pleasant 
 waters spilled. He walked in the garden some 
 paces daily, but there was neither bloom nor 
 perfume there without Adelaide. He sat at the 
 table a few times, but he fasted for more than 
 food, in Adelaide s absence, although good reason 
 was given. When he came down at length to 
 leave for the Winged Victory, he had seen 
 Adelaide only once in all the time of convales 
 cence, once as he opened his door and looked 
 down the stairway and she was standing in the 
 hall, with the colored lights falling about her, and 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 209 
 
 a glad answer in the eyes that were looking up at 
 him. To-day she was gone again. There were 
 others there to bid him farewell. Mrs. Stuart was 
 whispering, " This is your home, my son ; " Miss 
 Grey was saying, " It will not be long ; " his father 
 was clasping him, and he his father as if he were a 
 boy again. But Adelaide was not there. She 
 could not trust herself to say good-by ? Maybe it 
 was as well. Not yet in his full strength, had he 
 felt those arms about his neck, that flower-sweet 
 breath upon his face, it might not have been 
 possible for him to cling to that still unsurren- 
 dered determination of coming back no more. 
 His father was so happy here he hardly needed 
 him, and, if he did, he could come to him when he 
 had sent the Winged Victory home with another 
 master, and himself trod the deck of some ship 
 that never ran by the north star. After all, the 
 fire of the fever had burned out none of his in 
 delible sense of wrong-doing ; only the sweetness 
 of that possible home and heaven had tempted 
 him. 
 
 But alone on the quarter-deck in blue water, 
 with the fresh west wind swelling the vast sails 
 
210 THE MARQUIS OF CAR ABAS. 
 
 and blowing far away up the dark depths to shake 
 a keener sparkle from the stars, it was only with 
 a dreary soul and heavy heart that Dominique 
 looked out that night over the shadowy seas. 
 Courage enough, but to what purpose ? Youth, 
 but with what hope ? Life, but with how much 
 strength ? The great black night, horizon behind 
 horizon, was no blacker than this phantom of 
 despair that loomed above the edge of his inner 
 horizon, no blacker than the conviction of guilt 
 that never once had left him, that never could 
 leave one who knew not how to fight it, who had 
 no help to fight it, who was alone ! And he leaned 
 over the rail as if the deeps might give him the 
 help he needed, or the grave he craved. " Alone, 
 alone," he said. 
 
 But as he spoke, a voice replied, " Alone ? " 
 He had turned at the sound of the first syllable, 
 feeling a swift and indignant impatience with the 
 presumption of the passenger whom he had not 
 yet seen. " Alone ? " said the voice again, like a 
 chord of music. " Not alone, Dominique, with 
 your wife and God." And it was Adelaide who 
 threw back her hood and looked him in the face. 
 
THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. 211 
 
 " You could not leave me, you see," she said with 
 her sweet smile. " I could not let you go. 
 Dominique ! You will not think ill of me ? But 
 if you have a fight to fight, your wife must fight 
 it with you. If you have a stain to cleanse, your 
 wife must seek the cleansing waters with you ! 
 We will ask for help together, Dominique." 
 
 Already so much help perhaps the rest 
 would follow. Something like the echo of for 
 gotten joy swept through him. And, as the ship 
 rose on the swelling billow, no longer with the 
 unconcern of unanswering, unfathomable immen 
 sity did skies and waters gleam, while Domi 
 nique s gaze returned to them with Adelaide in 
 his arms. 
 
 University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 
 
ROBERTS BROTHERS PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. 
 
 By HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, 
 
 Author of "The Amber Gods," "New England Legends," &c. 1 vd, 
 16mo. Price $1.25. 
 
 From the Literary World. 
 
 It tea long time since Mrs. Spofford has let loose a novel upon the world, 
 bat it is plain that her right hand has not lost its cunning. She manipulates 
 (he thunderbolts of rhetoric with the same easy vehemence that amazed 
 the readers of " The Amber Gods" a dozen years ago. Yet there is more 
 method in her thought, and in her style. The former is deeper and more 
 intense, and the latter shows the chastening influence of time. ... In 
 reading her writings one s intellect and sensibilities are at variance ; the 
 former protesting and resisting, and the latter helpless, but happy under 
 the fascinations of her marvellous words. Blest is he who can give himself 
 up to the delights of her entertainment, and feast on its dainties without a 
 doubt of their wholesomeness, and without fear of possible mental bewil 
 derment or moral headache. 
 
 " The Thief in the Night " is a very peculiar story, not less in its con 
 ception than in the manner of its execution. It opens with a murder, a 
 mysterious tragedy, the victim of which lies pale on his bloody bed, with 
 weeping friends about him. His widow, and the man who loves her, and 
 whom she has loved, stand together looking at the dead man ; and then the 
 author drops the curtain, to be raised again in due season. The conviction 
 of every reader at the end of this scene is that the husband has been slain 
 by the wife, for love of him who was dearer to her. . . . This book will 
 have many readers; its fascinations are undeniable; the author has no 
 superior in our literature in the deft manipulation of words, and this 
 felicity is attended, somewhat incongruously, it seems, by a power of intense 
 dramatic expression that gives substantial strength to her stories. 
 
 From a Regular Correspondent of the New York Tribune. 
 BOSTON, Feb. 29. The variety of thieves is infinite. Some plundei 
 custom-houses, and some steal hearts, and between these offences are 
 various gradations. The arch thief of souls is not the only one who cornea 
 to us in the guise of an angel of light. A very captivating thief, indeed, was 
 the one who last night robbed me alike of sleep and ennui, "A Thief in 
 the Night; " for that is the quaint title of a book by Mrs. Harriet Prescott 
 Spofford, a new and really wonderful romance, which Roberts Brothers 
 are about to publish. The reader does not willingly lay it down between 
 commencement and finis. . . . There is no break in the breathless interest ; 
 no trace of weariness or flagging anywhere; no place where it seems to 
 you that the wonderful story which L)lds you like the eye of the Ancient 
 Mariner could have known a pause. . . . The whole interest is concentrated 
 In three strong human souls, brought out with lights and shades as vivid 
 as Rembrandt used in his pictures, souls which terribly suffered and 
 sinned, but with the likeness of the Divine in them still. It is not un 
 common, in books at least, to marry the wrong man, thinking him to be 
 the right one. Catherine made the less common mistake of marrying the 
 right man, believing him to be the wrong one; and out of this miscon 
 ception grows the tragedy of the tale. 
 
 StM everywhere. Mailed postpaid by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. 
 
Miss Alcotfs First Novel. 
 
 MOODS: A NOVEL. 
 
 BY LOUISA M. ALCOTT, 
 
 Author of "Little Women," "Little Men," "An Old-Fashioned Girl," 
 "Work," " Hospital Sketches," &c. 
 
 " Moods, the earliest, least successful, but really best of Louisa M. Alcott s 
 novels, has been republished by Roberts Brothers. . . . It is pleasant to see Miss 
 Alcott recur in her preface with loyal devotion to this first of her literary children. 
 I wish, she says, *to give my first novel, with all its imperfections on its head, a 
 place among its more successful sisters, for into it went the life, liberty, and en 
 thusiasm that no later book can possess. " Our Continent. 
 
 " Miss Alcott s books are remarkable, among other things, for their brilliant 
 characterizations. Her creations are far enough from being airy nothings; they 
 have flesh and blood. She ranks, justly, with the best writers of American fic 
 tion ; her stories have achieved a place of their own in American letters, and one 
 which they are likely to hold permanently." Chicag-o Standard. 
 
 " It will be new to many of the present generation, and those to whom it is not 
 new will read it with interest and curiosity, to mark the changes that have been 
 made by its author. These are not so many or radical as might have been ex 
 pected. The chief alteration is in the ending of the story, which strikes us as an 
 improvement. The work is, except in occasional episodes and a few bits of de 
 scription, unlike the manner with which the public are familiar in Miss Alcott s 
 writings It is a psychological study, made with extraordinary power when it is 
 remembered that it was originally, and still is in its essential features, the work of 
 a young girl of eighteen." Saturday Evening Gazette. 
 
 " Moods, which is a republication of her first novel in an improved form, 
 teaches the same high moral lesson as her numerous other works. . . . Healthier 
 reading than Miss Alcott s it is impossible to find ; and the high literary character 
 of her work, its freedom from all cant and mere preachiness, recommend it to a 
 class of readers whose discrimination and cultivated taste are nauseated by the so- 
 called goody-good of the period." Si. Louis Spectator. 
 
 One volume. 16mo. Cloth, Black and Gold. Price, $1.50. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. 
 
Publishers ^ Advertisement. 
 
 With the issue of " Aschenbroedel " the Second Series 
 of "No Name " novels is completed, in twelve volumes, 
 viz. : 
 
 Signer Monaldini s Niece ; The Colonel s Opera Cloak ; 
 His Majesty, Myself : Mrs. Beauchamp Brown; Sal 
 vage ; Don John ; The Tsar s Window ; Manuela 
 Paredes ; Baby Rue ; My Wife and My Wife s Sister ; 
 Her Picture ; Aschenbroedel. 
 
 The First Series comprises twelve novels, viz. : 
 
 Mercy Philbrick s Choice ; Afterglow ; Hetty s Strange 
 History; Is That All? Will Denbigh, Nobleman; 
 Kismet ; The Wolf at the Door ; The Great Match ; 
 Marmorne ; Mirage ; A Modern Mephistopheles ; 
 Gemini. And two poetical volumes : Deirdre, a 
 novel in verse ; a Masque of Poets, Original Poems 
 by Fifty Poets, written specially for this book, in 
 cluding "Guy Vernon," an entire novelette inverse. 
 
 The publishers are glad to think that this enterprise, 
 conceived and planned by them, has met with success. 
 Says that excellent authority, " Scribner s Monthly : " 
 " No one of the numerous series of novels with which 
 the country has been deluged of late contains as many 
 good volumes of fiction as the No Name. " They 
 point with pride to the large number of novels in both 
 series which are permanent favorites with the reading 
 public. 
 
 NO NAME [THIRD] SERIES. 
 
 The Third Series of " No Name " Novels will be com 
 menced immediately, in volumes of uniform size with the 
 First and Second Series, but with a designating style of 
 binding. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 BOSTON, Midsummer, 1882. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 NO NAME [SECOND] SERIES. 
 
 HER PICTURE. 
 
 " One of the brightest and freshest bits of fiction we have read this season is 
 1 Her Picture, the last issue in the No Name Series. The book is crammed 
 full of bright things, and the reader will find it a delightful contrast to most of the 
 so-called society novels of the day." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " The latest volume of the second series of No Name novels surpasses, in 
 many respects, any of its twenty-three predecessors, in what has proved to be one 
 of the most popular and successful series of novels ever issued from the American 
 press. Like most works of a similar character, love forms the principal factor in 
 both its warp and woof, but it is a love story told with such piquancy and pathos 
 that it charms and delights the reader without creating an inordinate desire to un 
 ravel the plot at the expense of more lasting pleasure. The author, whoever he 
 or she may be, writes with a degree of power and brilliancy that alone pertain to 
 true genius and extended experience. The conversational parts, which, in many 
 books, one is often tempted to skip, are bright and witty. Rue, the heroine, is an 
 original, lovely creation. . . . We recommend Her Picture. " Courier. 
 
 " Her Picture, the most recent of the No Name novels, is a graceful love 
 story, pleasantly told. The hero and heroine are an artist and a pretty orphan 
 girl respectively. He meets her while on a sketching tramp, paints her picture, 
 and falls in love with her. Sha returns his passion. Presently he grows jealous 
 of a rival and quits the object of his affection. He sends the picture, however, 
 to the exhibition, where it makes a hit and gives him fame. The girl falls into a 
 fortune, and eventually brings up before her portrait. She encounters her lover 
 there, all is explained, and everything ends happily. This is narrated spiritedly, 
 and the whole is characterized by good literary taste, excellent judgment, and 
 brightness of style. " Saturday Gazette. 
 
 " A few years since, Roberts Brothers, of Boston, commenced the publication 
 of a series of novels called the No Name Series. From the very first the pub 
 lic has been greatly impressed with the character of the novels issued by this 
 house. There was an originality, a clearness and purity of style that unfortunately 
 has not been remarked in works of fiction of these later days. The No Name 
 Series give no very startling scenes or strained love passages, but abound in quiet 
 bits of humor, interesting information, and natural displays of affection. The 
 last of the No Name* Series published is called Her Picture. It is a tale 
 most charmingly told. The interest of the reader never flags, and regret is only 
 felt when the book is finished. The character of Rue is quaint and altogether 
 well depicted. One learns to love her, and thoroughly sympathize with all her 
 troubles, and rejoices with her when at last she is left happy and prosperous." 
 Denver Republican. 
 
 One volume. 16mo. Green Cloth. Price, $1.00. 
 
 Our publications are to be had of all booksellers. When not to be 
 found, send directly to the publisher s, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.