PQ 
 1025 
 Q8 
 
 1886 
 
 California 
 
 egional 
 
 icility 
 
 i
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 ENGLISH READING ROOM
 
 uO 
 
 
 </
 
 THE QUEEN OF 
 SHEBA 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' MARJORIE DAW,' ' PRUDENCE PALFREY,' 
 ' THE STILLWATER TRAGEDY,' ETC. 
 
 A id hot's Edition 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 DAVID DOUGLAS, CASTLE STREET 
 
 1885
 
 (Etiinburgfj (Hnifansitu ^Drrss: 
 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE. PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.
 
 m4 
 
 $xt$txit &xm& ^XUmf

 
 NOTE. 
 
 This edition of my prose writings, of 
 which The Queen of Sheba is the initial 
 volume, has been carefully revised, and 
 will include several short stories not 
 contained in the American collection. 
 
 T. B. A. 
 
 Boston, U. S. A. 
 December 1884.
 
 CONTEXTS. 
 
 CHAP, PAGE 
 
 I. MARY, 9 
 
 II. EH WHICH THERE IS A FAMILY JAR. . 23 
 
 III. EN WHICH MARY TAKES A NEW DEPAR- 
 TURE.. 36 
 
 IV. THE ODD ADVENTURE WHICH BEFELL 
 YOUNG LYNDE IN THE HILL COUN- 
 TRY, 43 
 
 v. Cinderella's slipper, ... 80 
 
 VI. BEYOND THE SEA. .... 92 
 
 VII. THE DENHAMS, 110 
 
 VIII. FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. . .132 
 
 IX. MONTANVERT, 163 
 
 X. IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC, . 190 
 
 XI. FROM CHAMOUNI TO GENEVA. . . 229
 
 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 I. -MARY. 
 
 IN" the month of June 1872, Mr. Edward 
 Lynde, the assistant cashier and book- 
 keeper of the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, 
 found himself in a position to execute a plan 
 which he had long meditated in secret. 
 
 A statement like this at the present time, 
 when integrity in a place of trust has be- 
 come almost an anomaly, immediately sug- 
 gests a defalcation ; but Mr. Lynde's plan 
 involved nothing more criminal than a horse- 
 back excursion through the northern part of 
 the State of New Hampshire. A leave of 
 absence of three weeks, which had been 
 accorded him in recognition of several years' 
 conscientious service, offered young Lynde 
 the opportunity he had desired. These three 
 weeks, as already hinted, fell in the month 
 of June, when Nature in New Hampshire is
 
 IO TIIK QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 iii her most ravishing toilet ; she has put 
 away her winter ermine, which sometimes 
 Berves her quite into spring ; she has thrown 
 a green mantle over her brown shoulders, 
 
 and is not above the coqnetry of wearing a 
 great variety of wild-flowers on her bosom. 
 With her sassafras and her sweet-brier she 
 is in her best mood, as a woman in a fresh 
 and becoming costume is apt to be, and 
 almost any one might mistake her laugh for 
 the music of falling water, and the agreeable 
 rustle of her garments for the wind blowing 
 through the pine forests. 
 
 As Edward Lynde rode out of Ri vermouth 
 cne morning, an hour or two before anybody 
 worth mention was moving, he was very 
 well contented with this world, though he 
 had his grievances, too, if he had chosen to 
 think of them. 
 
 Masses of dark cloud still crowded the 
 zenith, but along the eastern horizon, against 
 the increasing blue, lay a city of golden 
 spires and mosques and minarets, — an Ori- 
 ental city, indeed, such as is inhabited by 
 poets and dreamers and other speculative 
 people fond of investing their small capital 
 in such unreal estate. Young Lynde, in 
 spite of his prosaic profession of bookkeeper, 

 
 had an opulent though as yet unworked 
 vein of romance running through his com- 
 position, and he said to himself as he gave a 
 slight twitch to the reins, "I'll put up there 
 to-night at the sign of the Golden Fleece, or 
 may be I '11 quarter myself on one of those 
 rich old merchants who used to do business 
 with the bank in the colonial days." Before 
 he had finished speaking the city was 
 destroyed by a general conflagration ; the 
 round red sun rose slowly above the pearl- 
 grey ruins, and it was morning. 
 
 In his three years' residence at River- 
 mouth, Edward Lynde had never chanced 
 to see the town at so early an hour. The 
 cobble -paved street through which he was 
 riding was a commercial street ; but now 
 the shops had their wooden eyelids shut 
 tight, and were snoozing away as comfort- 
 ably and innocently as if they were not at 
 all alive to a sharp stroke of business in their 
 wakeful hours. There was a charm to 
 Lynde in this novel phase of a thorough- 
 fare so familiar to him, and then the morn- 
 ing was perfect. The street ran parallel 
 with the river, the glittering harebell-blue 
 of which could be seen across a vacant lot 
 here and there, or now and then at the end
 
 12 'nil. ','1 i.i.n OF Mill. \. 
 
 of a narrow lane running up from the 
 wharves. The atmosphere had that in- 
 describable Bparkle and bloom which last 
 only an hour or bo after daybreak, and was 
 charged with line sea-flavours and the deli- 
 cate breath of dewy meadow-land. Every 
 thing appeared to exhale a fragrance ; even 
 the weather-beaten sign of "J. Tibbets & 
 Son, West India Goods & Groceries," it 
 seemed to Lynde, emitted an elusive spicy 
 odour. 
 
 Edward Lynde soon passed beyond the 
 limits of the town, and was ascending a 
 steep hill on the crest of which he proposed 
 to take a farewell survey of the picturesque 
 port throwing off its gauzy counterpane of 
 sea-fog. The wind blew- blithely on this 
 hill-top ; it rilled his lungs and exhilarated 
 him like champagne ; he set spur to the 
 gaunt, bony mare, and, with a nourish of 
 his hand to the peaked roof of the Nautilus 
 Bank, dashed off at a speed of not less than 
 four miles an hour, — for it was anything 
 but an Arabian courser which Lynde had 
 hired of honest Deacon Twombly. She was 
 not a handsome animal either, — yellow in 
 tint and of the texture of an ancestral hair- 
 trunk, with a plebeian head, and mysterious
 
 MARY. 13 
 
 developments of muscle on the hind legs. 
 She was not a horse for fancy riding ; but 
 she had her good points, — she had a great 
 many points of one kind and another, — 
 among which was her perfect adaptability 
 to rough country roads and the sort of work 
 now required of her. 
 
 "Mary ain't what you'd call a racer," 
 Deacon Twombly had remarked while the 
 negotiations were pending ; " I don't say she 
 is, but she's easy on the back." 
 
 This statement was speedily verified. At 
 the end of two miles Mary stopped short 
 and began backing, deliberately and syste- 
 matically, as if to slow music in a circus. 
 Recovering from the surprise of the halt, 
 which had taken him wholly unawares, 
 Lynde gathered the slackened reins firmly 
 in his hand and pressed his spurs to the 
 mare's flanks, with no other effect than 
 slightly to accelerate the backward move- 
 ment. 
 
 Perhaps nothing gives you so acute a 
 sense of helplessness as to have a horse back 
 with you, under the saddle or between 
 shafts. The reins lie limp in your hands, 
 as if detached from the animal ; it is impos- 
 sible to check him or force him forward ; to
 
 14 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 turn him around is to confess yourself con- 
 quered ; to descend and take him by the 
 head is an act of pusillanimity. Of course 
 there is only one thing to be done ; but if 
 you know what that is you possess a sin- 
 gular advantage over your fellow-creatures. 
 
 Finding spur and whip of no avail, Lynde 
 tried the effect of moral suasion : he stroked 
 Mary on the neck, and addressed her in terms 
 that would have melted the heart of almost 
 any other Mary ; but she continued to back, 
 slowly and with a certain grace that could 
 have come only of confirmed habit. Now 
 Lynde had no desire to return to River- 
 mouth, above all to back into it in that 
 mortifying fashion and make himself a spec- 
 tacle for the town-folk-; but if this thing 
 went on forty or fifty minutes longer, that 
 would be the result. 
 
 " If I cannot stop her," he reflected, "I'll 
 desert the brute just before we get to the 
 toll-gate. I can't think what possessed 
 Twombly to let me have such a ridiculous 
 animal ! " 
 
 Mary showed no sign that she was con- 
 scious of anything unconventional or un- 
 looked for in her conduct. 
 
 ' ; Mary, my dear," said Lynde at last,
 
 MARY. 15 
 
 with dangerous calmness, "you would be 
 all right, or at least your proceeding would 
 not be quite as flagrant a breach of promise, 
 if you were only aimed in the opposite 
 direction." 
 
 With this he gave a vigorous jerk at the 
 left- hand rein, which caused the mare to 
 wheel about and face Rivermouth. She 
 hesitated an instant, and then resumed 
 backing. 
 
 "Now, Mary, " said the young man, dryly, 
 " I will let you have your head, so to speak, 
 as long as you go the way I want you to." 
 
 This manoeuvre on the side of Lynde 
 proved that he possessed cpialities which, if 
 skilfully developed, would have assured 
 him success in the higher regions of domes- 
 tic diplomacy. The ability to secure your 
 own way and impress others with the idea 
 that they are having their own way is rare 
 among men ; among women it is as common 
 as eyebrows. 
 
 "I wonder how long she will keep this 
 up," mused Lynde, fixing his eye specula- 
 tively on Mary's pull-back ears. "If it 
 is to be a permanent arrangement I shall 
 have to reverse the saddle. Certainly, the 
 creature is a lusus naturce— her head is on
 
 l6 Tin: QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 the wrong end ! Easy on the back," he 
 added, with a hollow laugh, recalling 
 Deacon Twombly's recommendation. " I 
 should say she was ! I never saw an easier." 
 
 Presently Mary ceased her retrograde 
 movement, righted herself of her own 
 accord, and trotted off with as much sub- 
 missiveness as could be demanded of her. 
 Lynde subsequently learned that this pro- 
 pensity to back was an unaccountable whim 
 which seized Mary at odd intervals and 
 lasted from five to fifteen minutes. The 
 peculiarity once understood not only ceased 
 to be an annoyance to him, but became an 
 agreeable break in the ride. Whenever her 
 mood approached, he turned the mare round 
 and let her back to her soul's content. He 
 also ascertained that the maximum of 
 Mary's speed was five miles an hour. 
 
 " I didn't want a fast horse, anyway," 
 said Lynde philosophically. "As I am not 
 going anywhere in particular, I need be in 
 no hurry to get there." 
 
 The most delightful feature of Lynde's 
 plan was that it was not a plan. He had 
 simply ridden off into the rosy June weather, 
 with no settled destination, no care for to- 
 morrow, and as independent as a bird of
 
 MARY. 1 7 
 
 the tourist's ordinary requirements. At 
 the crap] 8T of his saddle — an old cavalry 
 saddle that had seen service in long-forgotten 
 training-days— was attached a cylindrical 
 valise of cowhide, containing a change of 
 linen, a few toilet articles, a vulcanised 
 cloth cape for rainy days, and the first 
 volume of The Earthly Paradise. The two 
 warlike holsters in front (in which Colonel 
 Eliphalet Bangs used to carry a brace of 
 flintlock pistols now reposing in the Histori- 
 cal Museum at Rivermouth) became the 
 receptacle respectively of a slender flask of 
 brandy and a Bologna sausage ; for young 
 Lynde had determined to sell his life dearly 
 if by any chance of travel he came to close 
 quarters with famine. 
 
 A broad -brimmed Panama hat, a suit of 
 navy-blue flannel, and a pair of riding-boots 
 completed his equipment. A field-glass in 
 a leather case was swung by a strap over 
 his shoulder, and in the breast pocket of 
 his blouse he carried a small compass to 
 guide him on his journey due north. 
 
 The young man's costume went very well 
 with his frank, refined face, and twenty- 
 three years. A dead -gold moustache, 
 pointed at the ends and sweeping at a 
 
 Q.s. B
 
 iS THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 level right and left, like a swallow's wings, 
 gave him something of a military air ; there 
 was a martial directness, too, in the glance 
 of his clear grey eyes, undimmed as yet 
 with looking too long on the world. There 
 could not have been a better figure for the 
 saddle than Lynde's, — slightly above the 
 average height, straight as a poplar, and 
 neither too spare nor too heavy. Now and 
 then, as he passed a farm-house, a young 
 girl hanging out clothes in the front yard — 
 for it was on a Monday — would pause with 
 a shapeless snowdrift in her hand to gaze 
 curiously at the apparition of a gallant 
 young horseman riding by. It often hap- 
 pened that when he had passed, she would 
 slyly steal to the red gate in the lichen- 
 covered stone wall, and follow him with her 
 palm-shaded eyes down the lonely road : 
 and it as frequently happened that he would 
 glance back over his shoulder at the nut- 
 brown maid, whose closely clinging, scant 
 drapery gave her a sculpturesque grace to 
 which her unconsciousness of it was a charm 
 the more. 
 
 These flashes of subtile recognition between 
 youth and youth — these sudden mute greet- 
 ings and farewells — reached almost the
 
 MARY. 19 
 
 dimension of incidents in that first day's 
 eventless ride. Once Lynde halted at the 
 porch of a hip-roofed, unpainted house with 
 green paper shades at the windows, and 
 asked for a cup of milk, which was brought 
 him by the nut-brown maid, who never took 
 her flattering innocent eyes off the young 
 man's face while he drank, — sipping him 
 as he sipped the milk ; and young Lynde 
 rode away feeling as if something had really 
 happened. 
 
 More than once that morning he drew up 
 by the roadside to listen to some lyrical 
 robin on an apple-bough, or to make friends 
 with the black-belted Durham cows and 
 the cream-coloured Alderneys, who came 
 solemnly to the pasture wall and stared at 
 him with big, good-natured faces. A row 
 of them, with their lazy eyes and pink 
 tongues and moist india rubber noses, was 
 as good as a play. 
 
 At noon that day our adventureless ad- 
 venturer had reached Bay ley's Four-Corners, 
 where he found provender for himself and 
 Mary at what had formerly been a tavern, 
 in the naive stage coach epoch. It was the 
 sole house in the neighbourhood, and was 
 occupied by the ex-landlord, one Tobias
 
 20 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 Sewell, who had turned farmer. On finish- 
 ing his cigar after dinner, Lynde put the 
 saddle on Mary, and started forward again. 
 It is hardly correct to say forward, for Mary 
 took it into her head to back out of Bayley's 
 Four-Corners, a feat which she performed to 
 the unspeakable amusement of Mr. Sewell 
 and a quaint old gentleman, named JafFrey, 
 who boarded in the house. 
 
 " I guess that must be a suck-cuss hoss," 
 remarked Mr. Sewell, resting his loosely 
 jointed figure against the rail fence as he 
 watched his departing guest. 
 
 Mary backed to the ridge of the hill up 
 which the turnpike stretched from the 
 ancient tavern, then recovered herself and 
 went on. 
 
 " I never saw such an out-and-out wilful 
 old girl as you are, Mary !" ejaculated 
 Lynde, scarlet with mortification. ' ' I begin 
 to admire you." 
 
 Perhaps the covert reproach touched some 
 finer chord of Mary's nature, or perhaps 
 Mary had done her day's allowance of 
 backing ; whatever the case was, she in- 
 dulged no further caprice that afternoon 
 beyond shying vigorously at a heavily 
 loaded tin-pedler's wagon, a proceeding
 
 MARY. 2 1 
 
 which may be palliated by the statement of 
 the fact that many of Mary's earlier years 
 were passed in connection with a similar 
 establishment. 
 
 The afterglow of sunset had faded out 
 behind the serrated line of hills, and black 
 shadows were assembling like conspirators, 
 in the orchards and under the spreading 
 elms by the roadside, when Edward Lynde 
 came in sight of a large manufacturing town, 
 which presented a sufficiently bizarre ap- 
 pearance at that hour. 
 
 Grouped together in a valley were five 
 or six high, irregular buildings, illuminated 
 from basement to roof, each with a monstrous 
 chimney from which issued a fan of party- 
 coloured flame. On one long low structure, 
 with a double row of windows gleaming 
 like the port-holes of a man-of-war at night, 
 was a squat round tower that now and then 
 threw open a vast valve at the top, and 
 belched forth a volume of amber smoke, 
 which curled upward to a dizzy height and 
 spread itself out against the sky. Lying in 
 the weird light of these chimneys, with here 
 and there a gable or a spire suddenly out- 
 lined in vivid purple, the huddled town 
 beneath seemed like an outpost of the
 
 22 THE QUEEN OP SHEBA. 
 
 infernal regions. Lynde, however, resolved 
 to spend the night there instead of riding on 
 further and trusting for shelter to some farm- 
 house or barn. Ten or twelve hours in the 
 saddle had given him a keen appetite for rest. 
 
 Presently the roar of flues and furnaces, 
 and the resonant din of mighty hammers 
 beating against plates of iron, fell upon his 
 ear ; a few minutes later he rode into the 
 town, not knowing and not caring in the 
 least what town it was. 
 
 All this had quite the flavour of foreign 
 travel to Lynde, who began pondering on 
 which hotel he should bestow his patronage. 
 — a question that sometimes perplexes the 
 tourist on arriving at a strange city. In 
 Lynde r s case the matter was considerably 
 simplified by the circumstance that there 
 was but a single aristocratic hotel in the 
 place. He extracted this information from 
 a small boy, begrimed with iron-dust, and 
 looking as if he had just been cast at a 
 neighbouring foundry, who kindly acted as 
 cicerone, and conducted the tired wayfarer 
 to the door-step of The Spread Eagle, under 
 one of whose wings — to be at once figurative 
 and literal— he was glad to nestle for the 
 night.
 
 A FAMILY JAR. 
 
 II. 
 
 IN WHICH THERE IS A FAMILY JAR. 
 
 WHILE Lynde is enjoying the refreshing 
 sleep that easily overtook him after 
 supper, we will reveal to the reader so much 
 of the young man's private history as may 
 be necessary to the narrative. In order to 
 do this, the author, like Deacon's Twombly*s 
 mare, feels it indispensable to back a little. 
 One morniug, about three years previous 
 to the day when Edward Lynde set forth 
 on his aimless pilgrimage, Mr. Jenness 
 Bowlsby, the president of the Nautilus Bank 
 at Bivermouth, received the following letter 
 from his wife's nephew, Mr. John Flemming. 
 a young merchant in Xew York : — 
 
 New York, May 28, 1869. 
 
 My dear Uncle, — In the course of a few 
 days a friend of mine, Mr. Edward Lynde 
 of this city, will call upon you and hand you 
 a note of introduction from myself. I write 
 this to secure for him in advance the likine:
 
 24 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 and interest which I am persuaded you will 
 not be able to withhold on closer acquaint- 
 ance. I have been intimate with Edward 
 Lynde for twelve years or more, first at the 
 boarding-school at Flatbush, and afterwards 
 at college. Though several years my .junior, 
 he was in the same classes with me, and, if 
 the truth must be told, generally carried off 
 all the honours. He is not only the most 
 accomplished young fellow I know, but a 
 fellow of inexhaustible modesty and amia- 
 bility, and I think it was singularly mali- 
 cious of destiny to pick him out as a victim, 
 when there are so many worthless young 
 men (the name of John 'Flemming will in- 
 stantly occur to you) who deserve nothing 
 better than rough treatment. You see I am 
 taking point-blank aim at your sympathy. 
 
 When Lynde was seven or eight years old 
 he had the misfortune to lose his mother ; 
 his father was already dead. The child's 
 nearest relative was an uncle, David Lynde, 
 a rich merchant of New York, a bachelor, 
 and a character. Old Lynde — I call him
 
 A FAMILY JAR. 25 
 
 old Lynde not out of disrespect, but to dis- 
 tinguish him from young Lynde — was at 
 that period in his fiftieth year, a gentleman 
 of unsullied commercial reputation, and of 
 regular if somewhat peculiar habits. He 
 was at his counting-room precisely at eight 
 in the morning, and was the last to leave in 
 the evening, working as many hours each 
 day as he had done in those first years when 
 he entered as office-boy into the employ- 
 ment of Briggs & Livingstone, — the firm at 
 the time of which I am now writing was 
 Lynde, Livingstone, and Co. Mr. David 
 Lynde lived in a set of chambers up town, 
 and dined at his club, where he usually 
 passed the evenings at chess with some 
 brother antediluvian. A visit to the theatre, 
 when some old English comedy or some 
 new English ballet happened to be on the 
 boards, was the periphery of his dissipation. 
 What is called society saw nothing of him. 
 He was a rough, breezy, thick-set old gentle- 
 man, betrothed from his birth to apoplexy, 
 enjoying life in his own secluded manner,
 
 26 THE QUEEX OF SHEBA. 
 
 and insisting on having everybody about 
 him happy. He would strangle an old 
 friend rather than not have him happy. A 
 characteristic story is told of a quarrel he 
 had with a chum of thirty or forty years' 
 standing, Ripley Sturdevant, Sen. Stur- 
 devant came to grief in the financial panic 
 of 1857. Lynde held a mortgage on Stur- 
 devant's house, and insisted on cancelling 
 it. Sturdevant refused to accept the sacri- 
 fice. They both were fiery old gentlemen. 
 Arcades ambo. High words ensued. What 
 happened never definitely transpired ; but 
 Sturdevant was found lying across the office 
 lounge, with a slight bruise over one eyebrow 
 and the torn mortgage thrust into his shirt- 
 bosom. It was conjectured that Lynde had 
 actually knocked him down and forced the 
 mortgage upon him ! 
 
 In short, David Lynde was warm-hearted 
 and generous to the verge of violence, but a 
 man in every way unfitted by temperament, 
 experience, and mode of life to undertake 
 the guardianship of a child. To have an
 
 A FAMILY JAR. 27 
 
 infant dropped into his arms was as excellent 
 an imitation of a calamity as could well 
 happen to him. I am told that no one could 
 have been more sensible of this than David 
 Lynde himself, and that there was some- 
 thing extremely touching in the alacrity and 
 cheerfulness with which he assumed the 
 novel responsibility. 
 
 Immediately after the funeral — Mrs. 
 Lynde had resided in Philadelphia — the 
 uncle brought the boy to New York. It 
 was impossible to make a permanent home 
 for young Lynde in bachelor chambers, or 
 to dine him at the club. After a week of 
 inconvenience and wretchedness, compli- 
 cated by the sinister suspicions of his land- 
 lady, David Lynde concluded to send the 
 orphan to boarding-school. 
 
 It was at Flatbush, Long Island, that I 
 made the acquaintance of the forlorn little 
 fellow. His cot was next to mine in the 
 dormitory ; we became close friends. We 
 passed our examinations, left Flatbush at 
 the same time, and entered college together.
 
 28 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 In the meanwhile the boy's relations with 
 his guardian were limited to a weekly ex- 
 change of letters, those of the uncle invari- 
 ably beginning with " Yours of Saturday 
 duly at hand," and ending with " Enclosed 
 please find." In respect to pocket-money 
 young Lynde was a prince. My friend 
 spent the long vacations with me at New- 
 burgh, running down to New York occasion- 
 ally to pass a day or so with the uncle. In 
 these visits their intimacy ripened. Old 
 Lynde was now become very proud of his 
 bright young charge, giving him astonishing 
 dinners at Delmonico's, taking him to 
 YVallack's, and introducing him to the old 
 fossils at the club as "my boy Ned." 
 
 It was at the beginning of Lynde's last 
 term at college that his uncle retired from 
 business, bought a house in Madison Avenue, 
 and turned it into a sort of palace with 
 frescoes and upholstery. There was a 
 library for my boy Ned, a smoking-room 
 in cherry-wood, a billiard-room in black 
 walnut, a dining-room in oak and crimson,
 
 A FAMILY JAR. 20. 
 
 — in brief, the beau-ideal of a den for a 
 couple of bachelors. By Jove ! it was like 
 a club-house, — the only model for a home of 
 which poor old Lynde had any conception. 
 Six months before Ned was graduated, the 
 establishment was in systematic running 
 order under the supervision of the pearl of 
 housekeepers. Here David Lynde proposed 
 to spend the rest of his days with his 
 nephew, who might, for form's sake, adopt 
 some genteel profession ; if not, well and 
 good, the boy would have money. 
 
 Now just as Ned was carrying off the first 
 prizes in Greek and mathematics, and dream- 
 ing of the pleasant life he was to lead with 
 his amiable old benefactor, what does that 
 amiable old benefactor go and do but marry 
 the housekeeper ! 
 
 David Lynde knew very little of women : 
 he had not spoken to above a dozen in his 
 whole life ; did not like them, in fact ; had 
 a mild sort of contempt for them, as persons 
 devoid of lusiness ability. It was in the 
 course of nature that the first woman who
 
 30 THE QUEEN OF SIIEBA. 
 
 thought it worth her while should twist him 
 around her ringer like a remnant of ribbon. 
 When Ned came out of college he found 
 himself in the arms of an unlooked-for aunt 
 who naturally hated him at sight. 
 
 I have not the time or space, my dear- 
 uncle, to give you even a catalogue of the 
 miseries that followed on the heels of this 
 deplorable marriage ; besides, you can 
 imagine them. Old Lynde, loving both his 
 wife and his nephew, was by turns violent 
 and feeble ; the wife cool, cunning, and 
 insidious, — a Vivien of forty leading Merlin 
 by the beard. I am not prepared to contend 
 that the nephew was always in the right, 
 but I know he always got the worst of it, 
 which amounts to about the same thing. 
 At the end of eight or ten months he saw 
 that the position was untenable, packed his 
 trunk one night, and quitted the m&iage, — 
 the menagerie, as he calls it. 
 
 This was three weeks ago. Having a 
 small property of his own, some fifteen 
 hundred dollars a year, I believe, Lynde at
 
 A FAMILY JAR. 3 1 
 
 first thought to go abroad. It was always his 
 dream to go abroad. But I persuaded him out 
 of that, seeing how perilous it would be for a 
 young fellow of his inexperience and impres- 
 sible disposition to go rambling alone over 
 the Continent. Paris was his idea. Paris 
 would not make a mouthful of him. I have 
 talked him out of that, I repeat, and have 
 succeeded in convincing him that the wisest 
 course for him to pursue is to go to some 
 pleasant town or village within hailing dis- 
 tance of one of our larger cities, and spend 
 the summer quietly. I even suggested he 
 should make the personal acquaintance of 
 some light employment, to help him forget 
 the gorgeous castle of cards which has just 
 tumbled down about his ears. In six 
 words, I have sent him to Rivermouth. 
 
 Xow, my dear uncle, I have wasted eight 
 pages of paper and probably a hundred 
 dollars' worth of your time, if you do not 
 see that I am begging you to find a position 
 for Lynde in the Nautilus Bank. After a 
 little practice he would make a skilful
 
 32 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 accountant, and the question of salary is, as 
 you see, of secondary importance. Manage 
 to retain him at Rivermouth if you possibly 
 can. David Lynde has the strongest affec- 
 tion for the lad, and if Vivien, -whose name 
 is Elizabeth, is not careful how she drags 
 Merlin around by the beard, he will reassert 
 himself in some unexpected manner. If he 
 were to serve her as he is supposed to have 
 served old Sturdevant, his conduct would 
 be charitably criticised. If he lives a year 
 he will be in a frame of mind to leave the 
 bulk of his fortune to Ned. They have not 
 quarrelled, you understand ; on the con- 
 trary, Mr. Lynde was anxious to settle an 
 allowance of five thousand a year on Ned. 
 but Ned would not accept it. "I want 
 Uncle David's love," says Ned, "and I 
 have it ; the devil take his money/' 
 
 Here you have all the points. I could 
 not state them more succinctly and do 
 justice to each of the parties interested. 
 The most unfortunate party, I take it, is 
 David Lynde. I am not sure, after all, that
 
 A FAMILY JAR. 33 
 
 young Lynde is so much to be pitied. Per- 
 haps that club-house would not have worked 
 well for him if it had worked differently. 
 At any rate he now has his own way to 
 make, and I commend him to your kindness, 
 if I have not exhausted it. 
 
 Your affectionate nephew, 
 
 J. Flemming. 
 
 Five or six days after this letter reached 
 Mr. Bowlsby, Mr. Edward Lynde presented 
 himself in the directors' room of the Nau- 
 tilus Bank. The young man's bearing 
 continued the favourable impression which 
 Mr. Bowlsby had derived from his nephew's 
 letter, and though there was really no 
 vacancy in the bank at the moment, Mr. 
 Bowlsby lent himself to the illusion that he 
 required a private secretary. A few weeks 
 later a vacancy occurred unexpectedly, that 
 of paying-teller, — a position in which Lynde 
 acquitted himself with so much quickness 
 and accuracy, that when Mr. Trefethen, the 
 assistant cashier, died in the December fol- 
 lowing, Lynde was promoted to his desk. 
 
 The unruffled existence into which 
 Edward Lynde had drifted was almost the 
 
 Q-S. c
 
 34 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 reverse of the career he had mapped out for 
 himself, and it was a matter of mild astonish- 
 ment to him at intervals that he was not 
 discontented. He thought Rivermouth one 
 of the most charming old spots he had ever 
 seen or heard of, and the people the most 
 hospitable. The story of his little family 
 jar, taking deeper colours and richer orna- 
 mentation as it passed from hand to hand, 
 made him at once a social success. Mr. 
 Goldstone, one of the leading directors of 
 the bank, invited Lynde to dinner, — few 
 persons were ever overburdened with invita- 
 tions to dine at the Goldstones', — and the 
 door of many a refined home turned will- 
 ingly on its hinges for the young man. At 
 the evening parties, that winter, Edward 
 Lynde was considered almost as good a card 
 as a naval officer. Miss Mildred Bowlsby, 
 then the reigning belle, was ready to flirt 
 with him to the brink of the Episcopal mar- 
 riage service, and beyond ; but the pheno- 
 menal honeymoon which had recently char- 
 tered in Lynde's family left him indisposed 
 to take any lunar observations on his own 
 account. 
 
 With his salary as cashier, Lynde's income 
 was Vanderbiltish for a young man in River-
 
 A FAMILY JAE. 35 
 
 mouth. Unlike his great contemporary, he 
 did not let it accumulate. Once a month 
 he wrote a dutiful letter to his Uncle David, 
 who never failed to answer by telegraph, 
 (i Yours received. God bless you, Edward/' 
 This whimsical fashion of reply puzzled 
 young Lynde quite as much as it diverted 
 him until he learned (through his friend, 
 John Flemming) that his aunt Vivien had 
 extorted from the old gentleman a solemn 
 promise not to write to his nephew. 
 
 Lynde's duties at the bank left him free 
 every afternoon at four o'clock ; his work 
 and his leisure were equally pleasant. In 
 summer he kept a sail-boat on the river, and 
 in winter he had the range of a rich collec- 
 tion of books connected with an antiquated 
 public reading-room. Thus very happily, if 
 very quietly, and almost imperceptibly, the 
 months rolled round to that period when 
 the Nautilus Bank gave Edward Lynde a 
 three weeks' vacation, and he set forth, as 
 we have seen, on Deacon Twombly's mare, 
 in search of the picturesque and the peculiar, 
 if they were to be found in the northern 
 part of New Hampshire.
 
 36 THB QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 III. 
 IN WHICH MARY TAKES A NEW DEPARTURE. 
 
 IT was still dark enough the next morning 
 to allow the great chimneys to show off 
 their coloured fires effectively, when Lynde 
 passed through the clingy main street of 
 
 K and struck into a road which led 
 
 to the hill country. A short distance be- 
 yond the town, while he was turning in the 
 saddle to observe the singular effect of the 
 lurid light upon the landscape, a freight - 
 train shot oblkpiely across the road within 
 five rods of his horse's head, the engine 
 flinging great flakes of fiery spume from 
 its nostrils, and shrieking like a maniac 
 as it plunged into a tunnel through a spur 
 of the hills. Mary went sideways, like 
 a crab, for the next three quarters of a 
 mile. 
 
 To most young men the expedition which 
 Edward Lynde had undertaken would have 
 seemed unattractive and monotonous to the 
 last degree ; but Lynde's somewhat seden- 
 tary habits had made him familiar with his
 
 HAST TAKES A NEW DEPARTURE. 37 
 
 own company. When one is young and well 
 read and amiable, there is really no better 
 company than one's self, — as a steady thing. 
 We are in a desperate strait indeed if we 
 chance at any age to tire of this invisible but 
 ever-present comrade ; for he is not to be 
 thrown over during life. Before now, men 
 have become so weary of him, so bored by 
 him, that they have attempted to escape, by 
 suicide ; but it is a question if death itself 
 altogether rids us of him. 
 
 In no minute of the twenty-four hours 
 since Lynde left Rivermouth had he felt the 
 want of other companionship. Mary, with 
 her peculiarities, the roadside sights and 
 sounds, the chubby children with shining 
 morning face, on the way to school, the 
 woodland solitudes, the farmers at work in 
 the fields, the blue jays and the robins in the 
 orchards, the blond and brown girls at the 
 cottage doors, his own buoyant, unreproach- 
 ful thoughts, — what need had he of com- 
 pany ? If anything could have added to his 
 enjoyment it would have been the possi- 
 bility of being waylaid by bandits, or set 
 upon in some desolate pass by wild animals. 
 But, alas ! the nearest approximation to a 
 bandit that fell in his way was some
 
 38 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 shabby, spiritless tramp who passed by on 
 the further side without lifting an eyelid ; 
 and as for savage animals, he saw nothing 
 more savage than a monkish chipmuck here 
 and there, who disappeared into his stone- 
 wall convent the instant he laid eyes on 
 Lynde. 
 
 Riding along those lonely New England 
 roads, he was more secure than if he had 
 been lounging in the thronged avenues of a 
 great city. Certainly he had dropped on an 
 age and into a region sterile of adventure. 
 He felt this, but not so sensitively as to let 
 it detract from the serene pleasure he found 
 in it all. From the happy glow of his mind 
 every outward object took a rosy light ; 
 even a rustic funeral, which he came upon 
 at a cross-road that forenoon, softened itself 
 into something not unpicturesque. 
 
 For three days after quitting K Lynde 
 
 pushed steadily forward. The first two 
 nights he secured lodgings at a farm-house ; 
 on the third night he was regarded as a sus- 
 picious character, and obtained reluctant 
 permission to stow himself in a hay-loft, 
 where he was so happy at roughing it and 
 being uncomfortable that he could scarcely 
 close an eye. The amateur outcast lay
 
 MARY TAKES A NEW DEPASTURE. 39 
 
 dreamily watching the silver spears of 
 moonlight thrust through the roof of the 
 barn, and extracting such satisfaction from 
 his cheerless surroundings as would have- 
 astonished a professional tramp. " Poverty 
 and hardship are merely ideas after all," 
 said Lynde to himself softly, as he drifted 
 off in a doze. Ah, Master Lynde, playing 
 at poverty and hardship is one thing ; but 
 if the reality is merely an idea, it is one of 
 the very worst ideas in the world. 
 
 The young man awoke before sunrise the 
 next morning, and started onward without 
 attempting to negotiate for breakfast with 
 his surly host. He had faith that some sun- 
 burnt young woman, with bowl of brown 
 bread and milk, would turn up further on ; 
 if she did not, and no tavern presented itself, 
 there were the sausage and the flask of eau- 
 de-vie still untouched in the holsters. 
 
 The mountain air had not wholly agreed 
 with Mary, who at this stage of the journey 
 inaugurated a series of abnormal coughs, each 
 one of which went near to flinging Lynde 
 out of the saddle. 
 
 ' : Mary," he said, after a particularly nar- 
 row escape, "there are few fine accomplish- 
 ment? you haven't got except a spavin.
 
 40 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 Perhaps you 've got that, concealed some- 
 where about your person." 
 
 He said this in a tone of airy badinage 
 which Mary seemed to appreciate ; but he 
 gravely wondered what he could do with 
 her, and how he should replace her if she 
 fell seriously ill. 
 
 For the last two days farm-houses and 
 cultivated fields had been growing rarer and 
 rarer, and the road rougher and wilder. At 
 times it made a sudden detour, to avoid the 
 outcropping of a monster stratum of granite, 
 and in places became so narrow that the rank 
 huckleberry-bushes swept the mare's flanks. 
 Lynde found it advisable on the morning in 
 question to pick his vra.y carefully. A range 
 of arid hills rose darkly before him, stretch- 
 ing east and west further than his eye could 
 follow, — rugged, forlorn hills covered with 
 a thick prickly undergrowth, and sentinelled 
 by phantom-like pines. There were gloomy, 
 rocky gorges on each hand, and high-hang- 
 ing crags, and where the vapour was drawn 
 aside like a veil, in one place, he saw two 
 or three peaks with what appeared to be 
 patches of snow on them. Perhaps they 
 were merely patches of bleached rock. 
 
 Long afterwards, when Edward Lynde
 
 MARY TAKES A NEW DEPARTURE. 41 
 
 was passing through the valley of the Arve, 
 on the way from Geneva to Chamouni, he 
 recollected this bit of Switzerland in 
 America, and it brought an odd, perplexed 
 smile to his lips. 
 
 The thousand ghostly shapes of mist which 
 had thronged the heights, shutting in the 
 prospect on every side, had now vanished, 
 discovering as wild and melancholy a spot 
 as a romantic heart could desire. There 
 was something sinister and ironical even 
 in the sunshine that lighted up these 
 bleak hills. The silver waters of a spring 
 — whose source was hidden somewhere high 
 up among the mossy boulders — dripping 
 silently from ledge to ledge, had the pathos 
 of tears. The deathly stillness was broken 
 only by the dismal caw of a crow taking 
 abrupt flight from a blasted pine. Here and 
 there a birch with its white satin skin glim- 
 mered spectrally among the sombre foliage. 
 
 The inarticulate sadness of the place 
 brought a momentary feeling of depression 
 to Lynde, who was not usually given to 
 moods except of the lighter sort. He 
 touched Mary sharply with the spurs and 
 cantered up the steep. 
 
 He had nearly gained the summit of the
 
 42 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 hill when he felt the saddle slipping ; the 
 girth had unbuckled or broken. As he 
 dismounted, the saddle came off with him, 
 his foot still in the stirrup. The mare 
 shied, and the rein slipped from his fingers ; 
 he clutched at it, but Mary gave a vicious 
 toss of the head, wheeled about, and began 
 trotting down the declivity. Her trot at 
 once broke into a gallop, and the gallop 
 into a full run, — a full run for Mary. At 
 the foot of the hill she stumbled, fell, rolled 
 over, gathered herself up, and started off 
 again at increased speed. The road was 
 perfectly straight for a mile or two. The 
 horse was already a small yellow patch in 
 the distance. She was evidently on her 
 way back to Rivermouth ! Lynde watched 
 her until she was nothing but a speck 
 against the grey road, then he turned and 
 cast a rueful glance on the saddle, which 
 suddenly took to itself a satirical aspect, 
 as it lay sprawling on the ground at his feet. 
 He had been wanting something to 
 happen, and something had happened. He 
 was unhorsed and alone in the heart of the 
 hill country, — alone in a strange and, it 
 seemed to Lynde as he looked about him, 
 uninhabited region.
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 43 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE ODD ADVENTURE WHICH BEFELL YOUNG 
 LYNDE IN THE HILL COUNTRY. 
 
 IT had all happened so suddenly that one 
 or two minutes passed before Edward 
 Lynde took in the full enormity of Mary's 
 desertion. A dim smile was still hovering 
 about his lips when the yellow speck that 
 was Mary faded into the grey distance ; then 
 his countenance fell. There was no sign of 
 mortal habitation visible from the hillside 
 where he stood ; the farm at which he had 
 spent the night was five miles away ; his 
 stiff riding-boots were ill-adapted to pedes - 
 trianism. The idea of lugging that heavy 
 saddle five miles over a mountain road 
 caused him to knit his brows and look very 
 serious indeed. As he gave the saddle an 
 impatient kick, his eyes rested on the 
 Bologna sausage, one end of which protruded 
 from the holster ; then there came over him 
 a poignant recollection of his lenten supper 
 of the night before and his no breakfast at 
 all of that morning. He seated himself on
 
 44 THE QUEEN* OF SHEBA. 
 
 the saddle, unwrapped the sausage, and pro- 
 ceeded to cut from it two or three thin slices. 
 
 "It might have been much worse," he 
 reflected, as he picked off with his penknife 
 the bits of silver foil which adhered to the 
 skin of the sausage ; " if Mary had decamped 
 with the commissary stores, that would have 
 been awkward. " Lynde devoured the small 
 pieces of pressed meat with an appetite born 
 of his long fast and the bracing upland air. 
 
 "Talk about pate* de foie gras !" he ex- 
 claimed, with a sweep of his arm, as if he 
 were disdainfully waving back a menial 
 bearing a tray of Strasbourg pates ; " if I 
 live to return to Rivermouth I will have 
 Bologna sausage three times a day for the 
 rest of my life." 
 
 A cup of the ice-cold water which bubbled 
 up from a boss of cresses by the roadside 
 completed his Spartan breakfast. His next 
 step was to examine his surroundings. 
 " From the top of this hill," said Lynde, " I 
 shall probably be able to see where I am, if 
 that will be any comfort to me. " 
 
 It was only fifty or sixty rods to the crown 
 of the hill, where the road, viewed from 
 below, seemed abruptly to come to an end 
 against the sky. On gaining the summit,
 
 AX ODD ADVENTURE. 45 
 
 Lynde gave an involuntary exclamation of 
 surprise and delight. At his feet in the 
 valley below, in a fertile plain walled in on 
 all sides by the emerald slopes, lay the love- 
 liest village that ever was seen. Though 
 the road by which he had approached the 
 eminence had been narrow and steep, here 
 it widened and descended by gentle grada- 
 tions into the valley, where it became the 
 main street of the village, — a congregation 
 of two or possibly three hundred houses, 
 mostly cottages with gambrel and lean-to 
 roofs. At the left of the village, and about 
 an eighth of a mile distant, was an impos- 
 ing red brick building with wings and a 
 pair of octagon towers. It stood in a forest 
 of pines and maples, and appeared to be 
 enclosed by a high wall of masonry. It 
 was too pretentious for an almshouse, too 
 elegant for a prison ; it was as evidently 
 not a schoolhouse, and it could not be an 
 arsenal. Lynde puzzled over it a moment, 
 and then returned for his saddle, which he 
 slung across his back, holding it by a 
 stirrup-strap brought over either shoulder. 
 
 "If Mary has got a conscience,'' muttered 
 Lynde, ' ' it would prick her if she could see 
 me now. I must be an affecting spectacle.
 
 46 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 In the village they won't know whether I 
 am the upper or the lower half of a centaur. 
 They won't know whether to rub me down 
 and give me a measure of oats, or to ask me 
 in to breakfast.'' 
 
 The saddle with its trappings probably 
 weighed forty pounds, and Lynde was glad 
 before he had accomplished a third of the 
 way to the village to set down his burden 
 and rest a while. On each side of him now 
 were cornfields, and sloping orchards peopled 
 with those grotesque, human-like apple-trees 
 which seem twisted and cramped by a pain 
 possibly caught from their own acidulous 
 fruit. The cultivated land terminated only 
 where the village began. It was not so 
 much a village as a garden, — a garden 
 crowded with flowers of that bright me- 
 tallic tint which distinguishes the flora of 
 northern climes. Through the centre of 
 this Eden ran the wide main street, fringed 
 with poplars and elms and chestnuts. No 
 polluting brewery or smoky factory, with 
 its hideous architecture, marred the idyllic 
 beauty of the miniature town, — for every- 
 thing which is not a city is a town in New 
 England. The population obviously consisted 
 of well-to-do persons, with outlying stock-
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 47 
 
 farms or cranberry meadows, and funds 
 snugly invested in ships and railroads. 
 
 In out-of-the-way places like this is pre- 
 served the greater part of what we have left 
 of the hard shrewd sense and the simpler 
 manner of those homespun old worthies who 
 planted the seed of the Republic. In our 
 great cities we are cosmopolitans ; but here 
 we are Americans of the primitive type, or 
 as nearly as may be. It was unimportant 
 settlements like the one we are describing 
 that sent their quota of stout hearts and 
 flint-lock muskets to the trenches on Bunker 
 Hill. Here, too, the valorous spirit which 
 had been slumbering on its arm for half a 
 century started up at the first shot fired 
 against Fort Sumter. Over the chimney- 
 place of more than one cottage in such se- 
 cluded villages hangs an infantry or a 
 cavalry sword in its dinted sheath, looked 
 at to-day by wife or mother with the ten- 
 derly proud smile that has mercifully taken 
 the place of tears. 
 
 Beyond the town, on the hillside which 
 Edward Lynde had just got within the focus 
 of his field-glass, was the inevitable cemetery. 
 On a grave here and there a tiny flag waved 
 in the indolent June breeze. If Ljmde had
 
 48 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 been standing by the headstones, he could 
 have read among the inscriptions such un- 
 local words as Malvern Hill, Andersonville, 
 Ball's Bluff, and Gettysburg, and might have 
 seen the withered Decoration Day wreaths 
 which had been fresh the month before. 
 
 Lynde brought his glass to bear on the 
 red brick edifice mentioned, and fell to pon- 
 dering it again. 
 
 "I'll be hanged if I don't think it's a 
 nunnery," he said. By and by he let his 
 gaze wander back to the town, in which he 
 detected an appearance of liveliness and 
 bustle not usual in New England villages, 
 large or small. The main street was dotted 
 with groups of men and women ; and isolated 
 figures, to which perhaps the distance lent 
 a kind of uncanny aspect, were to be seen 
 hurrying thither. 
 
 "It must be some local celebration," 
 thought Lynde. "Rural oratory and all 
 that sort of thing. That will be capital ! " 
 
 He had returned the glass to its leather 
 case, and was settling it well on his hip, 
 when he saw a man approaching. It was a 
 heavily built old gentleman in a suit of black 
 alpaca, somewhat frayed and baggy at the 
 knees, but still respectable. He carried his
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 49 
 
 hat in his hand, fanning himself with it from 
 time to time, as if overcome by heat and the 
 fatigue of walking. A profusion of snow- 
 white hair, parted in the middle, swept 
 down on either side of a face remarkable — 
 if it was remarkable for anything — for its 
 benign and simple expression. There was 
 a far-off, indescribable something about this 
 person, as though he had existed long ago 
 and once had a meaning, but was now be 
 come an obsolete word in the human diction- 
 ary. His wide placid brows and the double 
 chin which asserted itself above his high 
 neckcloth gave him a curious resemblance 
 to portraits of Dr. Franklin. 
 
 "The country parson," said Lynde to 
 himself. " Venerable and lovely old char- 
 acter. I '11 speak to him. " 
 
 The old gentleman, with his head slightly 
 thrown back, had his eyes fixed intently on 
 some object in the sky, and was on the point 
 of passing Lynde without observing him, 
 when the young man politely lifted his hat, 
 and said, " I beg your pardon, sir, but will 
 you be kind enough to tell me the name of 
 the town yonder ? " 
 
 The old gentleman slowly brought his eyes 
 down from the sky, fixed them vacantly 
 
 Q 5. D
 
 50 THE QUEEN OF SHED A. 
 
 upon Lynde, and made no response. Pre- 
 suming him to be deaf, Lynde repeated his 
 question in a key adapted to the exigency. 
 Without a change in his mild benevolent 
 expression, and in a voice whose modulations 
 were singularly musical, the old gentleman ex- 
 claimed, " Go to the devil !" and passed on. 
 
 The rejoinder was so unexpected, the 
 words themselves were so brusque, while 
 the utterance was so gentle and melodious, 
 that Lynde refused to credit his ears. Could 
 he have heard aright ? Before he recovered 
 from his surprise the gentleman in black 
 was far up the slope, his gaze again riveted 
 on some remote point in the zenith. 
 
 " It wasn't the country parson after all," 
 said Lynde, with a laugh ; "it was the 
 village toper. He 's an early bird — I '11 say 
 that for him — to have secured his intoxicat- 
 ing worm at this hour of the morning. " 
 
 Lynde picked up the saddle and resumed 
 his march on the town in the happy valley. 
 He had proceeded only a little way when he 
 perceived another figure advancing towards 
 him. — a figure not less striking than that of 
 the archaic gentleman, but quite different. 
 This was a young girl, of perhaps seventeen, 
 in a flowing dress of some soft white stuff,
 
 AN ODD ADVENTUKK. 5 I 
 
 gathered at the waist by a broad red ribbon. 
 She was without hat or shawl, and wore her 
 hair, which was very long and very black, 
 hanging loosely down her shoulders, in 
 exaggeration of a style of coiffure that after- 
 wards came into fashion. She was moving 
 slowly and in the manner of a person not 
 accustomed to walking. She was a lady, — 
 Lynde saw that at a glance, — probably some 
 city-bred bird of passage, resting for the 
 summer in this vale of health. His youthful 
 vanity took alarm as he reflected what a comi- 
 cal picture he must present with that old 
 saddle on his back. He would have tossed 
 it into the berberry-bushes if he could have 
 done so unobserved ; but it was now too late. 
 On perceiving Lynde, the girl arrested 
 her steps a moment irresolutely, and then 
 came directly towards him. As she drew 
 nearer Lynde was conscious of being dazzled 
 by a pair of heavily fringed black eyes, large 
 and lustrous, set in an oval face of exquisite 
 pallor. The girl held a dandelion in one 
 hand, twirling it by the end of its long, 
 snake-like stem as she approached. She 
 was close upon him now ; for an instant he 
 caught the wind of the flower as it swiftly 
 described a circle within an inch of his
 
 52 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 cheek. The girl paused in front of him, 
 and drawing herself up to her full height 
 said haughtily — 
 
 " I am the Queen of Sheba.' 
 
 Then she glided by him with a quickened 
 pace and a suddenly timid air. Lynde was 
 longer recovering himself, this time. He 
 stood rooted to the ground, stupidly watch- 
 ing the retreating gracious form of the girl, 
 who half turned once and looked back at 
 him. Then she vanished over the ridge of 
 the hill, as the old gentleman had done. 
 Was she following him? Was there any 
 connection between those two ? Perhaps he 
 was the village clergyman. Could this be 
 his daughter? What an unconventional 
 costume for a young lady to promenade in, 
 —for she was a lady down to her finger- 
 nails ! And what an odd salutation ! 
 
 "The Queen of Sheba!" he repeated, 
 wonderingly. "What could she mean by 
 that ? She took me for some country bump- 
 kin, with this confounded saddle, and was 
 laughing at me. I never saw a girl at once 
 so — so audacious and modest, or so lovely. 
 1 didn't know there was anything on earth 
 so lovely as that girl." 
 
 He had caught only an instantaneous
 
 AM ODD ADVENTURE. 53 
 
 glimpse of her face, but he had seen it with 
 strange distinctness, as one sees an object 
 by a flash of lightning ; and he still saw it, 
 as one seems still to see the object in the 
 after-darkness. Every line of the features 
 lived in his eyes, even an almost indistin- 
 guishable scar there was on the girl's right 
 cheek near the temple. It was not a flaw, 
 that faint scar ; it seemed somehow to 
 heighten her loveliness, as an accent over a 
 word sometimes gives it one knows not 
 what of piquancy. 
 
 " Evidently she lives in the town or in 
 the neighbourhood. Shall I meet her again, 
 I wonder ? I will stay here a week or a 
 month if — What nonsense ! I must have 
 distinguished myself, staring at her like a 
 gawk. When she said she was the Queen 
 of Sheba, I ought instantly to have replied 
 —what in the deuce is it I ought to have 
 replied ? How can a man be witty with a 
 ton of sole-leather pressing on his spine ! " 
 
 Edward Lynde. with the girl and her 
 mocking words in his mind, and busying 
 himself with all the clever things he might 
 have said and did not say, mechanically tra- 
 versed the remaining distance to the village. 
 
 The street which had seemed thronged
 
 54 THE QUEEN OF SHEEA. 
 
 when he viewed it from the slope of the hill 
 was deserted ; at the farther end he saw two 
 or three persons hurrying along, but there 
 were no indications whatever of the festival 
 he had conjectured. Indeed, the town pre- 
 sented the appearance of a place smitten by 
 a pestilence. The blinds of the lower case- 
 ments of all the houses were closed ; he 
 would have supposed them unoccupied if he 
 had not caught sight of a face pressed against 
 the glass of an upper window here and there. 
 He thought it singular that these faces in- 
 stantly withdrew when he looked up. Once 
 or twice he fancied he heard a distant laugh. 
 and the sound of voices singing drunkenly 
 somewhere in the open air. 
 
 Some distance up the street a tall liberty- 
 pole sustaining a swinging sign announced 
 a tavern. Lynde hastened thither : but 
 the tavern, like the private houses, ap- 
 peared tenantless ; the massive pine window 
 shutters were barred and bolted. Lynde 
 mounted the three or four low steps leading 
 to the piazza, and tried the front door, which 
 was locked. With the saddle still on his 
 shoulders, he stepped into the middle of the 
 street to reconnoitre the premises. A man 
 and two women suddenly showed themselves
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 5^ 
 
 at an open window in the second story. 
 Lynde was about to address them when the 
 man cried out — 
 
 "Oh, you're a horse, I suppose. Well, 
 there isn't any oats for you here. You had 
 better trot on !" 
 
 Lynde did not relish this pleasantry ; it 
 struck him as rather insolent ; but he curbed 
 his irritation, and inquired as politely as he 
 could if a horse or any kind of vehicle could 
 be hired in the village. 
 
 The three persons in the window nodded 
 to each other significantly, and began smiling 
 in a constrained manner, as if there were 
 something quite preposterous in the inquiry. 
 The man, a corpulent, red- faced person, 
 seemed on the point of suffocating with 
 merriment. 
 
 "Is this a public-house?" demanded 
 Lynde, severely. 
 
 "That's as maybe," answered the man. 
 recovering his breath, and becoming grave. 
 
 " Are you the proprietor ? " 
 
 " That 's jest what I am." 
 
 " Then I require of you the accommoda- 
 tion which is the right of every traveller. 
 Your licence does not permit you to turn 
 any respectable stranger from your door."
 
 56 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 "Now, my advice to you," said the man, 
 stepping back from the window, " my ad- 
 vice to you is to trot. You can't get in 
 here. If you try to, I '11 pepper you as sure 
 as you live, though I wouldn't like to do it. 
 So trot right along " 
 
 The man had a gun in his hands ; he 
 clutched it nervously by the stock ; his 
 countenance worked strangely, and his 
 small, greenish eyes had a terrified, defiant 
 expression. Indisputably, the tavern-keeper 
 looked upon Lynde as a dangerous person, 
 and was ready to fire upon him if he per- 
 sisted in his demands. 
 
 " My friend," said Lynde through his set 
 teeth, " if I had you down here, I 'd give 
 you a short lesson in manners." 
 
 "I dare say! I dare say!" cried the 
 man, flourishing the shot-gun excitedly. 
 
 Lynde turned away disgusted and indig- 
 nant ; but his indignation was neutralised 
 by his astonishment at this incomprehensible 
 brutality. He had no resource but to apply 
 to some private house and state his predica- 
 ment. As that luckless saddle had excited 
 the derision of the girl, and drawn down on 
 him the contumely of the tavern-keeper, he 
 looked around for some safe spot in which
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 57 
 
 to deposit it before it brought him into 
 further disgrace. His linen and all his 
 worldly possessions, except his money, 
 which he carried on his person, were in the 
 valise ; he could not afford to lose that. 
 
 The sun was high by this time, and the 
 heat would have been intolerable if it had 
 not been for a merciful breeze which swept 
 down from the cooler atmosphere of the 
 hills. Lynde wasted half an hour or more 
 seeking a hiding-place for the saddle. It 
 had grown a grievous burden to him ; at 
 every step it added a pound to its dead 
 weight. He saw no way of relieving him- 
 self of it. There it was, perched upon his 
 shoulders, like the Old Man of the Sea on 
 the back of Sindbad the Sailor. In sheer 
 despair Lynde flung down his load on the 
 curbstone at a corner formed by a narrow 
 street diagonally crossing the main thorough- 
 fare, which he had not quitted. He drew 
 out his handkerchief and wiped the heavy 
 drops of perspiration from his brows. At 
 that moment he was aware of the presence 
 of a tall, cadaverous man of about forty, 
 who was so painfully pinched and emaci- 
 ated that a sympathetic shiver ran over 
 Lynde as he glanced at him. He was as
 
 58 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 thin as an exclamation point. It seemed 
 to Lynde that the man must be perishing 
 with cold even in that burning June sun- 
 shine. It was not a man but a skeleton. 
 
 "Good heavens, sir!" cried Lynde. 
 "Tell me where I am ! What is the name 
 of this town ? " 
 
 " Constantinople. " 
 
 ' ' Constan — " 
 
 " — tinople," added the man briskly. "A 
 stranger here ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Lynde abstractedly. He 
 was busy running over an imaginary map 
 of the State of New Hampshire in search of 
 Constantinople. 
 
 • "Good!" exclaimed the anatomy, rust- 
 ling his dry palms together, "I'll employ 
 you." 
 
 " You '11 employ me ? I like that ! " 
 
 " Certainly. I 'm a shipbuilder." 
 
 " I didn't know they built vessels a hun- 
 dred miles from the coast," said Lynde. 
 
 "I am building a ship, — don't say I 'm 
 not ! " 
 
 " Of course I know nothing about it." 
 
 " A marble ship." 
 
 "A ship to carry marble ? " 
 
 " No, a ship made of marble ; a passenger
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 59 
 
 ship. We have ships of iron, why not of 
 marble ? " he asked fiercely. 
 
 "Oh, the fellow is mad !" said Lynde to 
 himself, "as mad as a loon ; everybody here 
 is mad, or I Ye lost my senses. So yon are 
 building a marble ship ? " he added aloud, 
 good-naturedly. "When it is finished I 
 trust you will get all the inhabitants of this 
 town into it, and put to sea at once. " 
 
 "Then you'll help me!" cried the man 
 enthusiastically, with his eyes gleaming in 
 their sunken sockets. More than ever he 
 looked like a specimen escaped from some 
 anatomical museum. 
 
 "I do not believe I can be of much assist- 
 ance," answered Lynde, laughing. "I have 
 had so little experience in constructing 
 marble vessels, you see. I fear my early 
 education has been fearfully neglected. B3- 
 the by," continued the young man, who was 
 vaguely diverted by his growing interest in 
 the monomaniac, ' ' how do you propose to 
 move your ship to the sea-board?" 
 
 "In the simplest manner — a double railway 
 track — twenty-four engines — twelve engines 
 on each side to support the hull." 
 
 " That would be a simple way."' 
 
 Edward Lynde laughed again, but not
 
 60 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 heartily. He felt that this marble ship was 
 a conception of high humour and was not 
 without its pathetic element. The whimsi- 
 cality of the idea amused him, but the sad 
 earnestness of the nervous, unstrung vision 
 ary at his side moved his compassion. 
 
 " Dear me," he mused, " may be all of us 
 are more or less engaged in planning a 
 marble ship, and perhaps the happiest are 
 those who, like this poor soul, never awake 
 from their delusion. Matrimony was Uncle 
 David's marble ship, — he launched his ! 
 Have I one on the ways, I wonder ? " 
 
 Lynde broke with a shock from his brief abs- 
 traction. His companion had disappeared, 
 and with him the saddle and valise. Lynde 
 threw a hasty glance up the street, and 
 started in pursuit of the naval architect, who 
 was running with incredible swiftness and 
 bearing the saddle on his head with as much 
 ease as if it had been a feather. 
 
 The distance between the two men, some 
 sixty or seventy yards, was not the dis- 
 advantage that made pursuit seem hopeless. 
 Lynde had eaten almost nothing since the 
 previous noon ; he had been carrying that 
 cumbersome saddle for the last two or three 
 hours ; he was out of breath, and it was
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 6 1 
 
 impossible to do much running in his heavy 
 riding-boots. The other man, on the con- 
 trary, appeared perfectly fresh ; he wore 
 light shoes, and had not a superfluous ounce 
 of flesh to carry. He was all bone and 
 sinew ; the saddle resting upon his head was 
 hardly an impediment to him. Lynde, how- 
 ever, was not going to be vanquished with- 
 out a struggle ; though he recognised the 
 futility of pursuit, he pushed on doggedly. 
 A certain tenacious quality in the young 
 man imperatively demanded this of him. 
 
 " The rascal has made off with my dinner,'' 
 he muttered between his clinched teeth. 
 " That completes the ruin Mary began. If 
 I should happen to catch up with him, I 
 trust I shall have the moral strength not to 
 knock his head off— his skull off ; it isn't a 
 head.'' 
 
 Lynde's sole hope of overtaking him, and 
 it was a very slender hope, was based on the 
 possibility that the man might fall and dis- 
 able himself ; but he seemed to have the 
 sure-footedness as well as the lightness of a 
 deer. When Lynde reached the outskirts 
 of the village, on the road by which he had 
 entered, the agile shipbuilder was more than 
 half-way up the hill. Lynde made a fresh
 
 62 THE QUEEN OB SHEBA. 
 
 spurt here, and lost his hat ; but he had no 
 time to turn back for it. Every instant 
 widened the space between the two runners, 
 as one of them noticed with disgust. At the 
 top of the ascent the man halted a moment 
 to Take breath, and then disappeared behind 
 the ridge. He was on the down grade now, 
 and of course gaining at each stride on his 
 pursuer, who was still toiling upward. 
 Lynde did not slacken his pace, however ; 
 he had got what runners call their second 
 wind. With lips set, elbows pressed against 
 his sides, and head thrown forward, he made 
 excellent time to the brow of the hill, where 
 he suddenly discovered himself in the midst 
 of a crowd of men and horses. 
 
 For several seconds Lynde was so dazed 
 and embarrassed that he saw nothing ; then 
 his eyes fell upon the girl with the long hair 
 and the white gown. She was seated side- 
 wise on a horse without saddle, and the 
 horse was Mary. A strapping fellow was 
 holding the animal by the head-stall. 
 
 " By Jove ! " cried Lynde, springing for- 
 ward joyfully, " that 's my marc ! " 
 
 He was immediately seized by two men 
 who attempted to pass a cord over his wrists. 
 Lynde resisted so desperately that a third
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. t>$ 
 
 man was called into requisition, and the 
 three succeeded in tying his hands and 
 placing him upon a saddle vacated by one 
 of the riders. All this occupied hardly a 
 minute. 
 
 " Will you go along quietly," said one of 
 the men roughly, " or will you be carried ? " 
 
 "What is the meaning of this?" de- 
 manded Lynde, with the veins standing out 
 on his forehead. 
 
 He received no reply from any of the 
 group, which seemed to be composed of 
 farmers and labouring-hands, with two or 
 three persons whose social status did not 
 betray itself. Directly behind the girl, and, 
 like her, mounted on a horse led by a couple 
 of rustics, was the white-haired old gentle- 
 man who had repulsed Lynde so rudely. 
 Lynde noticed that his hands were also 
 secured by cords, an indignity which in no 
 wise altered the benevolent and satisfied 
 expression of his face. Lynde's saddle and 
 valise were attached to the old gentleman's 
 horse. Lynde instinctively looked around 
 for the shipbuilder. There he was, flushed 
 and sullen, sitting on a black nag as bony 
 and woebegone as himself, guarded by two 
 ill-favoured fellows. Xot only were the
 
 64 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 shipbuilder's arms pinioned, but his feet 
 were bound by a rope fastened to each 
 ankle and passed under the nag's belly. It 
 was clear to Lynde that he himself, the old 
 clergyman, and the girl were the victims 
 of some dreadful misconception, possibly 
 brought about by the wretch who had pur- 
 loined the saddle. 
 
 " Gentlemen ! " cried Lynde, as the party 
 began to advance, "I protest against this 
 outrage so far as I am concerned, and I ven- 
 ture to protest on the part of the lady. I 
 am convinced that she is incapable of any 
 act to warrant such treatment. I — I know 
 her slightly," he added, hesitating. 
 
 " yes," said the girl, folding her hands 
 demurely in her lap, " and I know you, too, 
 very well. You are my -husband." 
 
 This announcement struck Lynde speech- 
 less. The rough men exchanged amused 
 glances, and the shipbuilder gave vent to 
 a curious dry laugh. Lynde could have 
 killed him. The party moved on. Up to 
 this moment the young man had been boil- 
 ing with rage ; his rage now yielded place 
 to amazement. What motive had prompted 
 the girl to claim that relationship ? Was it 
 a desperate appeal to him for protection ?
 
 AX ODD ADVENTURE. 63 
 
 But brother, or cousin, or friend would have 
 served as well. Her impulsive declaration, 
 which would be at once disproved, might 
 result in serious complications for him and 
 her. But it had not been an impulsive 
 declaration ; she had said it very calmly, 
 and, he fancied, with just the lightest 
 touch of coquetry, "You are my husband !" 
 For several minutes Lynde did not dare to 
 let his eyes wander in her direction. She 
 was a pace or so in the rear at his right. 
 To see her he would be obliged to turn 
 slightly ; this he presently did, with a 
 movement as if settling himself more easily 
 in the saddle. The girl's loose hair was 
 blown like a black veil over her face, put- 
 ting her into mourning ; she was steadying 
 herself with one hand resting on Mary's 
 mane ; her feet were crossed, and a diminu- 
 tive slipper had fallen from one of them. 
 There was something so helpless and appeal- 
 ing in the girl's attitude that Lynde was 
 touched. 
 
 "May I speak with you, sir?" he said, 
 addressing himself to a man whom somebody 
 had called Morton, and who appeared to 
 issue the orders for the party. The man 
 came to Lynde's side. 
 
 Qs. E
 
 66 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, sir, explain this ! 
 Who is that young woman ? " 
 
 •' You said you knew her," returned the 
 man, not unpleasantly. 
 
 "Indeed I said so," replied Lynde, red- 
 dening. "What has happened? What 
 has she done, what have I done, what has 
 the old clergyman done, that we should be 
 seized like murderers on the public high- 
 way ? " 
 
 " Be quiet now," said the man, laying his 
 hand soothingly on Lynde's arm, and looking 
 at him steadily. " Everything will be satis- 
 factorily explained by and by." 
 
 Lynde's indignation blazed up again. 
 
 •'I can assure you, sir," he cried, as the 
 man returned to his former position, "that 
 the result of the explanation will be far 
 from satisfactory to you. I shall hold to 
 strict account every man who has had a 
 hand in this business. I demand to be 
 brought before a magistrate, or a justice of 
 the peace, if there is one in this God-for- 
 saken country." 
 
 No attention was paid to Lynde's fresh 
 outbreak. Some one picked up his hat and 
 set it on the back of his head, giving him 
 quite a rakish air. His dignity suffered
 
 AX ODD ADVENTUBE. 67 
 
 until the wind took the hat again. The 
 party proceeded in silence, halting once to 
 tighten a girth, and another time to wait 
 for a straggler. If the men spoke to each 
 other it was in subdued tones or whispers. 
 Two of the horsemen trotted on a hundred 
 yards in advance, like skirmishers thrown 
 out in front of an attacking force. There 
 was something in all this mysterious pre- 
 caution and reticence which bewildered and 
 exasperated Lynde, who noted every detail. 
 Mary, in a transient spasm of backing, had 
 fallen to the rear ; the young man could no 
 longer see the girl, but ever before his eyes 
 was the piteous, unslippered little foot with 
 its arched instep. 
 
 The part}' was now at the base of the de- 
 clivity. Instead of following the road to 
 the village, the horses turned abruptly into 
 a bridle-path branching off to the left, 
 and in the course of a few minutes passed 
 through an iron-spiked gateway in a high 
 brick wall surrounding the large red struc- 
 ture which had puzzled Lynde on first dis- 
 covering the town. The double gates stood 
 wide open and were untended : they went 
 to, however, with a clang, and the massive 
 bolts were shot as soon as the party had
 
 68 THE QUEEX OF SHEBA. 
 
 entered. In the courtyard Lynde was 
 hastily assisted from the horse ; he did not 
 have an opportunity to observe what became 
 of the other three prisoners. When his 
 hands were freed he docilely allowed him- 
 self to be conducted up a flight of stone 
 steps and into the vestibule of the building, 
 and thence, through a long corridor, to a 
 small room in which his guard left him. 
 The door closed with a spring not practi- 
 cable from the inside, as Lynde ascertained 
 on inspection. 
 
 The chamber was not exactly a cell ; it 
 resembled rather the waiting-room of a 
 penitentiary. The carpet, of a tasteless, 
 gaudy pattern, was well worn, and the few 
 pieces of hair- cloth furniture, a sofa, a 
 table, and chairs, had a stiff, official air. 
 A strongly barred window gave upon a 
 contracted garden — one of those gardens 
 sometimes attached to prisons, with mathe- 
 matically cut box borders, and squares of 
 unhealthy, party-coloured flowers looking 
 like gangs of convicts going to meals. On 
 his arrival at the place Edward Lynde had 
 offered no resistance, trusting that some 
 sort of judicial examination would promptly 
 set him at liberty. Faint from want of food,
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 69 
 
 jaded by his exertions, and chafing at the 
 delay, he threw himself upon the sofa, and 
 waited. 
 
 There was a great deal of confusion in the 
 building. Hurried footsteps came and went 
 up and down the passages ; now and then ha 
 heard approaching voices, which tantalisingly 
 passed on, or died away before reaching his 
 door. Once a shrill shriek — a woman's shriek 
 — rang through the corridor and caused him 
 to spring to his feet. 
 
 After the lapse of an hour that had given 
 Lynde some general idea of eternity, the 
 door was hastily thrown open, and a small, 
 clderty, blue-eyed gentleman, followed by a 
 man of gigantic stature, entered the chamber. 
 
 " My dear sir," cried the gentleman, 
 making a courteous, deprecatory gesture 
 with his palms spread outward, "we owe 
 you a million apologies. There has been 
 a most lamentable mistake " 
 
 "A mistake!" said Lynde haughtily. 
 " Mistake is a mild term to apply to an out- 
 rage." 
 
 "Your indignation is just ; still it was a 
 mistake, and one I would not have had hap- 
 pen for the world. I am Dr. Pendegrast, 
 the superintendent of this asylum."
 
 70 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 " This is an asylum ! " 
 
 " An asylum for the insane/' returned Dr. 
 Pendegrast. " I do not know how to express 
 my regret at what has occurred. I can only 
 account for the unfortunate affair, and throw 
 myself upon your generosity. Will you allow 
 me to explain " 
 
 Lynde passed his hand over his forehead 
 in a bewildered way. Then he looked at the 
 doctor suspiciously ; Lynde's late experience 
 had shaken his faith in the general sanity of 
 his species. " Certainly," he said, " I would 
 like to have this matter explained to me ; for 
 I '11 be hanged if I understand it. This is 
 an asylum " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " And you are the superintendent '?" 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "Then — naturally — you are not a luna- 
 tic ? " 
 
 " Certainly not ! " said the doctor, starting. 
 
 "Very well; I didn't know. I am 
 listening to you, sir." 
 
 " Early this morning," said Dr. Pende- 
 grast, somewhat embarrassed by Lynde's 
 singular manner, "a number of patients 
 whom we bad always considered tractable 
 seized the attendants one by one at break-
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 7 1 
 
 fast, and, before a general alarm could be 
 given, locked them in the cells. Some of as 
 were still in our bedrooms when the assault 
 began and were there overpowered. We 
 chanced to be short-handed at the time, two 
 of the attendants being ill, and another 
 absent. As I say, we were all seized — the 
 women attendants and nurses as well — and 
 locked up. Higgins here, my head-man, 
 they put into a strait- jacket." 
 
 " Yes, sir," spoke up Higgins for himself, 
 " they did so ! " 
 
 •• Me," continued Dr. Pendegrast, smiling, 
 " they confined in the padded chamber." 
 
 Lynde looked at him blankly. 
 
 " A chamber with walls thickly cushioned, 
 to prevent violent patients from inflicting 
 injury on themselves," explained the doctor. 
 ■'•' /, you see, was considered a very bad case 
 indeed ! Meanwhile, Morton, the under- 
 keeper, was in the garden, and escaped ; 
 but unfortunately, in his excitement, he 
 neglected to lock the main gate after him. 
 Morton gave the alarm to the people in the 
 village, who, I am constrained to say, did not 
 behave handsomely. Instead of coming to 
 our relief and assisting to restore order, which 
 might easily have been done even then,
 
 72 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 they barricaded themselves in their houses, 
 in a panic. Morton managed to get a horse, 
 
 and started for G In the meantime the 
 
 patients who had made the attack liberated 
 the patients still in confinement, and the 
 whole rushed in a body out of the asylum 
 and spread themselves over the village. " 
 
 " That must have been the crowd I saw 
 in the streets when I sighted the town," said 
 Lynde, thinking aloud. 
 
 "If you saw persons in the street," 
 returned the doctor, "they were not the 
 townsfolk. They kept very snug, I assure 
 you. But permit me to finish, Mr. " 
 
 " My name is Lynde." 
 
 "Morton," continued the doctor, bowing, 
 ' ' having secured several volunteers before 
 
 reaching G , decided to return with what 
 
 force he had, knowing that every instant 
 was precious. On his way back he picked 
 up three of the poor wanderers, and, un- 
 luckily, picked up you." 
 
 "He should not have committed such a 
 stupid error," said Lynde, clinging stoutly 
 to his grievance. " He ought to have seen 
 that I was not an inmate of the asylum." 
 
 ' ' An attendant, my dear Mr. Lynde, is 
 not necessarily familiar with all the patients ;
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 73 
 
 he may know only those in his special ward. 
 Besides, yon were bareheaded and running, 
 and seemed in a state of great cerebral 
 excitement." 
 
 " I was chasing a man who had stolen my 
 property." 
 
 " Morton and the others report that you 
 behaved with great violence. " 
 
 " Of course I did. I naturally resented 
 being seized and bound." 
 
 " Your natural violence confirmed them 
 in their natural suspicion, you see. Assur- 
 edly they were to blame ; but the peculiar 
 circumstances must plead for them." 
 
 "But when I spoke to them calmly and 
 rationally — " 
 
 "My good sir," interrupted the doctor, 
 " if sane people always talked as rationally 
 and sensibly as some of the very maddest of 
 my poor friends sometimes do, there would 
 be fewer foolish things said in the world. 
 What remark is that the great poet puts 
 into the mouth of Polonius, speaking of 
 Hamlet ? ' How pregnant sometimes his 
 replies are ! a happiness that often madness 
 hits on, which reason and sanity could not 
 so prosperously be delivered of.' My dear 
 Mr. Lynde, it was your excellent good sense
 
 74 THE QUEEN OF SHEUA. 
 
 that convicted you ! By the way, I believe 
 you claimed the horse which Morton found 
 adrift on the road." 
 
 " Yes, sir, it was mine ; at least I was 
 riding it this morning when the saddle-girth 
 broke, and the mare got away from me." 
 
 " Then of course tbat was your saddle 
 Blaisdell was running off with." 
 
 "Blaisdell?" 
 
 " One of our most dangerous patients, in 
 fact, the only really dangerous patient at 
 present in the establishment. Yet you 
 should hear him talk sometimes ! To-day, 
 thank God, he happened to be in his ship- 
 building mood. Otherwise — I dare not 
 think what he might have done. I should 
 be in despair if he had not been immediately 
 retaken. Oddly enough, all the poor crea- 
 tures, except three, returned to the asylum of 
 their own will, after a brief ramble through 
 the village." 
 
 "And the white-haired old gentleman, 
 who looked like a clergyman, is he mad?" 
 
 "Mackenzie? Merely idiotic," replied 
 the doctor, with the cool professional air. 
 
 ' ' And the young girl, " asked Lynde, 
 hesitatingly, " is she — " 
 
 " A very sad case," interrupted Dr. Pende-
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 75 
 
 grast, with a tenderer expression settling 
 upon his countenance. " The saddest thing 
 in the world. " 
 
 " Insane? " 
 
 " Hopelessly so, I fear." 
 
 A nameless heaviness fell upon Lynde's 
 heart. He longed to ask other questions, 
 but he did not know how to shape them. 
 He regretted that subsequently. 
 
 " And now, Mr. Lynde," said the doctor, 
 "in your general pardon I wish you to in- 
 clude my unavoidable delay in coming or 
 sending to you. "When you were brought 
 here I was still in durance vile, and Higgins 
 was in his strait-jacket. On being released, 
 my hands were full, as you can suppose. 
 Moreover, I did not learn at once of your 
 detention. The saddle and the valise 
 caused me to suspect that a blunder had 
 been committed. I cannot adequately ex- 
 press my regrets. In ten minutes,'' con- 
 tinued Dr. Pendegrast, turning a fat gold 
 watch over on its back in the palm of his 
 hand, where it looked like a little yellow 
 turtle, "in ten minutes dinner will be 
 served. Unless you do me the honour to 
 dine with me, I shall not believe in the 
 sincerity of your forgiveness."
 
 76 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 "Thanks," said Lyucle dejectedly. "I 
 fully appreciate your thoughtfulness ; I am 
 nearly famished, but I do not think I could 
 eat a mouthful here. Excuse me for saying 
 it, but I should have to remain here per- 
 manently if I were to stay another hour. 
 I quite forgive Mr. Morton and the others," 
 Lynde went on, rising and giving the doctor 
 his hand ; ' ' and I forgive you also, since 
 you insist upon being forgiven, though I do 
 not know for what. If my horse, and my 
 traps, and my hat — really, I don't see how 
 they could have helped taking me for a 
 lunatic — can be brought together, I will go 
 and dine at the tavern." 
 
 Half an hour afterward Edward Lynde 
 dismounted at the steps of the rustic hotel. 
 The wooden shutters were down now, and 
 the front door stood hospitably open. A 
 change had come over the entire village. 
 There were knots of people at the street 
 corners and at garden gates, discussing the 
 event of the day. There was also a knot of 
 gossips in the hotel bar-room to whom the 
 landlord, Mr. Zeno Dodge, was giving a 
 thrilling account of an attack made on the 
 tavern by a maniac who had fancied himself 
 a horse !
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 77 
 
 "The critter," cried Mr. Dodge, drama- 
 tically, "was on the p'int of springin' up 
 the piazzy, when Martha handed me the 
 shot-gun." 
 
 Mr. Dodge was still in a heroic attitude, 
 with one arm stretched out to receive the 
 weapon and his eye following every move- 
 ment of a maniac obligingly personated by 
 the spittoon between the windows, when 
 Lynde entered. Mr. Dodge's arm slowly 
 descended to his side, his jaw fell, and the 
 narrative broke off short. 
 
 Lynde requested dinner in a private room, 
 and Mr. Dodge deposed the maid, in order 
 to bring in the dishes himself and scrutinize 
 his enigmatical guest. In serving the meal 
 the landlord invented countless pretexts to 
 remain in the room. After a while Lynde 
 began to feel it uncomfortable to have those 
 sharp green eyes continually boring into the 
 back of his head. 
 
 "Yes," he exclaimed, wearily, "I am 
 the man." 
 
 " I thought you was. Glad to see you, 
 sir." said Mr. Dodge, politely. 
 
 "This morning you took me for an escaped 
 lunatic ?" 
 
 " I did so — fust-off."
 
 78 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 " A madman who imagined himself a 
 horse ? : ' 
 
 "That's what I done," said Mr. Dodge, 
 contritely, "an' no wonder, with that there 
 saddle. They 're a very queer lot, them 
 crazy chaps. There 's one on 'em up there 
 who calls himself Abraham Lincoln, an' 
 then there 's another who thinks he 's a 
 telegraph wire an' lies messages runnin' up 
 an' down him continally. These is new 
 potatoes, sir, — early rosers. There 's no end 
 to their cussed kinks. When I see you 
 prancin' round under the winder with that 
 there saddle, I says at once to Martha, 
 ' Martha, here 's a luny ! ' " 
 
 " A very natural conclusion," said Lynde, 
 meekly. 
 
 " Wasn't it now ? "' 
 
 "And if you had shot me to death," said 
 Lynde, helping himself to another chop, ' ' I 
 should have been very much obliged to 
 you." 
 
 Mr. Dodge eyed the young man dubiously 
 for a dozen seconds or so. 
 
 " Comin' ! comin' !" cried Mr. Dodge, in 
 response to a seemingly vociferous call which 
 had failed to reach Lynde's ear. 
 
 When Edward Lynde had finished dinner,
 
 AN ODD ADVENTURE. 79 
 
 Mary was brought to the door. Under the 
 supervision of a group of spectators as- 
 sembled on the piazza, Lynde mounted, 
 and turned the mare's head directly for 
 Kivermouth. He had no heart to go any 
 farther due north. The joyousness had 
 dropped out of the idle summer journey. 
 He had gone in search of the picturesque 
 and the peculiar ; he had found them — and 
 he wished he had not.
 
 8o THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 CINDERELLA S SLTPPER. 
 
 ON the comb of the hill where his adven- 
 ture had begun and culminated, — it 
 seemed to him now like historic ground, — 
 Edward Lynde reined in Mary, to take a 
 parting look at the village nestled in the 
 plain below. Already the afternoon light 
 was withdrawing from the glossy chestnuts 
 and drooping elms, and the twilight — it 
 crept into the valley earlier than elsewhere 
 — was weaving its half invisible webs under 
 the eaves and about the gables of the houses. 
 But the two red towers of the asylum reached 
 up into the mellow radiance of the waning 
 sun, and stood forth boldly. They were 
 the last objects his gaze rested upon, and 
 to them alone his eyes sent a farewell. 
 
 " Poor little thing ! poor little Queen of 
 Sheba ! " he said softly. Then the ridge 
 rose between him and the village, and shut 
 him out for ever. 
 
 Nearly a mile beyond the spot where Mary 
 had escaped from him that morning, Edward
 
 CINDERELLA S .SLIPPER. 51 
 
 Lynde drew up the mare so sharply that she 
 sunk back on her haunches. He dismounted 
 in haste, and stooping down, with the rein 
 thrown over one arm, picked up an object 
 lying in the middle of the road under the 
 horse's very hoofs. 
 
 It was on a Tuesday morning that Lynde 
 re-entered Rivermouth, after an absence of 
 just eight days. He had started out fresh 
 and crisp as a new bank-note, and came 
 back rumpled and soiled and tattered, like 
 that same note in a state to be withdrawn 
 from circulation. The shutters were up at 
 all the shop-windows in the cobble-paved 
 street, and had the appearance of not having 
 been taken down since he left. Everything 
 was unchanged, yet it seemed to Lynde that 
 he had been gone a year. 
 
 On Wednesday morning when Mr. 
 Bowlsby came down to the bank he was 
 slightly surprised at seeing the young 
 cashier at his accustomed desk. To Mr. 
 Bowlsby's brief interrogations then, and to 
 Miss Mildred Bowlsby's more categorical 
 questions in the evening, Lynde offered no 
 very lucid reason for curtailing his vacation. 
 Travelling alone had not been as pleasant as 
 
 Q.s. F
 
 b2 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 he anticipated ; the horse was a nuisance to 
 look after ; and then the county taverns 
 were snuffy and unendurable. As to where 
 he had been and what he had seen, — he must 
 have seen something and been somewhere in 
 eight days, — his answers were so evasive 
 that Miss Mildred was positive something 
 distractingly romantic had befallen the 
 young man. 
 
 " If you must know," he said, one evening, 
 " I will tell you where I went." 
 
 "Tell me, then !" 
 
 " I went to Constantinople." 
 
 Miss Mildred found that nearly imperti- 
 nent. 
 
 There was, too, an alteration in Lynde's 
 manner which cruelly helped to pique her 
 curiosity. His frank, half satirical, but 
 wholly amiable way,— an armour that had 
 hitherto rendered him invulnerable to Miss 
 Mildred's coquettish shafts, — was wanting ; 
 he was less ready to laugh than formerly, 
 and sometimes in the midst of company he 
 fell into absent-minded moods. Instead of 
 being the instigator and leader of picnics up 
 the river, he frequently pleaded bank duties 
 as an excuse for not joining such parties. 
 " He is not at all as nice as he used to be,"
 
 Cinderella's slipper. 83 
 
 waa Miss Mildred's mental summing up of 
 Lynde a fortnight after his return. 
 
 He was, in fact, unaccountably depressed 
 by his adventure in the hill country ; he 
 could not get it out of his mind. The recol- 
 lection of details which he had not especi- 
 ally remarked at the time came to him in 
 the midst of his work at the bank. Some- 
 times when he turned off the gas at night, 
 or just as he was falling asleep, the sharp, 
 attenuated figure of the shipbuilder limned 
 itself against the blackness of the chamber, 
 or the old gentleman's vacuous countenance 
 in its frame of silver hair peered in through 
 the hangings of the bed. But more fre- 
 quently it was the young girl's face that 
 haunted Lynde. He saw her as she came 
 up the sunny road, swinging the flower 
 in her hand, and looking like one of Fra 
 Angelico's seraphs or some saint out of an 
 illuminated mediaeval missal ; then he saw 
 her seated on the horse, helpless and piteous, 
 with the rude, staring men about her. If 
 he dreamed, it was of her drawing herself 
 up haughtily and saying, " I am the Queen 
 of Sheba. " On two or three nights, when 
 he had not been dreaming, he was startled 
 out of his slumber by a voice whispering
 
 84 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 close to his ear: "I know you, too, very 
 well. You are my husband." 
 
 Mr. Bowlsby and his daughter were the 
 only persons in Rivermouth to whom Lynde 
 could have told the story of his journey. 
 He decided not to confide it to either, since 
 he felt it would be vain to attempt to explain 
 the sombre effect which the whole affair had 
 had on him. 
 
 "I do not understand what makes me 
 think of that poor girl all the time," mused 
 Lynde one day, as he stood by the writing- 
 table in his sitting-room. " It can't be this 
 that keeps her in my mind/' 
 
 He took up a slipper which was lying on 
 the table in the midst of carved pipes and 
 paper-weights and odds and ends. It was 
 a very small slipper, nearly new, with high 
 pointed heel and a square jet buckle at the 
 instep : evidently of foreign make, and cut 
 after the arch pattern of the slippers we see 
 peeping from the flowered brocade skirts of 
 Sir Peter Lely's full-length ladies. It was 
 such an absurd shoe, a toy shoe, a child 
 might have worn it ! 
 
 " It cannot be this," said Lynde. 
 
 And yet it was that, more or less. Lynde 
 had taken the slipper from his valise the
 
 CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER. 85 
 
 evening he got home, and set it on the 
 corner of the desk, where it straightway 
 made itself into a cunning ornament. The 
 next morning he put it into one of the 
 drawers ; but the table looked so barren 
 and commonplace without it that presently 
 the thing was back again. There it had 
 remained ever since. 
 
 It met his eye every morning when he 
 opened the door of his bedroom ; it was 
 there when he came home late at night, 
 and seemed to be sitting up for him, in 
 the reproachful, feminine fashion. "When 
 he was writing his letters, there it was, 
 with a prim, furtive air of looking on. It 
 was not like a mere slipper ; it had traits 
 and an individuality of its own ; there were 
 moments when the jet beads in the buckle 
 sparkled with a sort of intelligence. Sitting 
 at night, reading under the dropdight, Lynde 
 often had an odd sensation as if the little 
 shoe would presently come tripping across 
 the green table-cloth towards him. He had 
 a hundred fanciful humours growing out of 
 that slipper. Sometimes he was tempted 
 to lock it up or throw it away. Sometimes 
 lie would say to himself, half mockingly and 
 half sadly, "That is your wife's slipper ;"
 
 86 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 then lie would turn wholly sad, thinking 
 how tragic that would be if it were really 
 so. 
 
 It was a part of the girl's self ; it had borne 
 her lovely weight ; it still held the impress 
 of her foot ; it would not let Lynde entirely 
 forget her while it was under his eyes. 
 
 The slipper had stood on the writing-table 
 four or five months, — an object of consuming 
 curiosity and speculation to the young woman 
 who dusted Lynde's chambers, — when an 
 incident occurred which finally led to its 
 banishment. 
 
 Lynde never had visitors ; there were few 
 men of his age in the town, and none was 
 sufficiently intimate with him to come to his 
 rooms ; but it chanced one evening that a 
 young man named Preston dropped in to 
 smoke a cigar with Lynde. Preston had 
 recently returned from abroad, where he 
 had been an attache of the American Lega- 
 tion at London, and was now generally re- 
 garded as the prospective proprietor of Miss 
 Mildred. He was an entertaining, mercurial 
 young fellow, into whose acquaintanceship 
 Lynde had fallen at the Bowlsbys'. 
 
 "Ah, you rogue ! " cried Preston gaily, pick- 
 ing up the slipper. " Did she give it you ? "
 
 CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER. 67 
 
 " Who ? " asked Lynde, with a start. 
 
 " Devilish snug little foot ! Was it a 
 danseuse ? " 
 
 " No," returned Lynde, freezingly. 
 
 " An actress ?" 
 
 " No," said Lynde, taking the slipper from 
 Preston's hand and gently setting it back on 
 the writing-table. ' ' It was not an actress ; 
 and yet she played a rule — in a blacker 
 tragedy than any you ever saw on the 
 stage. " 
 
 " Lynde, I beg your pardon. I spoke 
 thoughtlessly, supposing it a light matter, 
 don't you see ? " 
 
 '•There was no offence," said Lynde, 
 hiding his subtile hurt. 
 
 " It was stupid in me," said Preston the 
 next night, relating the incident to Miss 
 Bowlsby. ' : I never once thought it might 
 be a thing connected with the memory of his 
 mother or sister, don't you see ? I took it 
 for a half sentimental souvenir of some 
 flirtation." 
 
 " Mr. Lynde's mother died when he was a 
 child, and he never had a sister," said Miss 
 Bowlsby, thoughtfully. " I shouldn't won- 
 der," she added irrelevantly, after a pause. 
 
 "At what, Miss Mildred ? "
 
 88 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 " At anything ! " 
 
 One of those womanly intuitions which 
 set mere man-logic at defiance was come to 
 whisper in Miss Bowlsby's ear that that 
 slipper had performed some part in Edward 
 Lynde's untold summer experience. 
 
 "He was laughing at you, Mr. Preston ; 
 he was grossly imposing on your unsophisti- 
 cated innocence." 
 
 ' ' Really ? Is he as deep as that ? " 
 
 "He is very deep," said Miss Bowlsby, 
 solemnly. 
 
 On his way home from the bank, one 
 afternoon in that same week, Lynde over- 
 took Miss Mildred walking, and accom- 
 panied her a piece down the street. 
 
 "Mr. Lynde, shall you go on another 
 horseback excursion next summer?" she 
 asked, without prelude. 
 
 " I haven't decided ; but I think not." 
 
 " Of course you ought to go." 
 
 "Why of course, Miss Mildred?" 
 
 " Why ? Because — because — don't ask 
 me ! " ; 
 
 " But I do ask you." 
 
 " You insist ?" 
 
 " Positively." 
 
 ' ' Well then, how will you ever return
 
 Cinderella's slipper. 89 
 
 Cinderella her slipper if you don't go in 
 search of her ! " 
 
 Lynde bit his lip, and felt that the black- 
 est criminals of antiquity were as white as 
 driven snow compared with Preston. 
 
 "The prince in the story, you know.'" 
 continued Miss Bowlshy, with her smile of 
 ingenue, "hunted high and low until he 
 found her again. " 
 
 " That prince was a very energetic fellow," 
 said Lynde, hastily putting on his old light 
 armour. "Possibly I should not have to 
 travel so far from home," he added, with a 
 bow. " I know at least one lady in River- 
 mouth who has a Cinderella foot." 
 
 "She has two of them, Mr. Lynde,'" 
 responded Miss Mildred, dropping him a 
 court' 
 
 The poor little slipper's doom was sealed. 
 The edict for its banishment had gone forth. 
 If it were going to be the town's talk he 
 could not keep it on his writing-desk. As 
 soon as Lynde got back to his chambers, he 
 locked up Cinderella's slipper in an old trunk 
 in a closet seldom or never opened. 
 
 The enchantment, whatever it was, was 
 broken. Although he missed the slipper 
 from anion cr the trifles scattered over his
 
 90 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 table, its absence brought him a kind of 
 relief. He less frequently caught himself 
 falling into brown studies. The details of 
 his adventure daily grew more indistinct ; 
 the picture was becoming a mere outline ; it 
 was fading away. He might have been able 
 in the course of time to set the whole occur- 
 rence down as a grotesque dream, if he had 
 not now and then beheld Deacon Twonibly 
 driving by the bank with Mary attached to 
 the battered family carry-all. Mary was a 
 fact not easily disposed of. 
 
 Insensibly Lynde lapsed into his old 
 habits. The latter part of this winter at 
 Rivermouth was unusually gay ; the series 
 of evening parties and lectures and private 
 theatricals extended into the spring, whose 
 advent was signalised by the marriage 
 of Miss Bowlsby and Preston. In June 
 Lynde ran on to New York for a week, 
 where he had a clandestine dinner with his 
 uncle at Delmonico's, and bade good-bye to 
 Flemming, who was on the eve of starting 
 on a protracted tour through the East. ' ' I 
 shall make it a point to visit the land of the 
 Sabseans," said Flemming, with his great 
 cheery laugh, ' ' and discover, if possible, 
 the unknown site of the ancient capital of
 
 CINDERELLA S SLIPPER. 91 
 
 Sheba." Lynde had confided the story to 
 his friend one night, coming home from the 
 theatre. 
 
 Once more at Rivermouth, Edward Lynde 
 took up the golden threads of his easy exist- 
 ence. But this life of ideal tranquillity and 
 contentment was not to be permitted him. 
 One morning in the latter part of August 
 he received a letter advising him that his 
 uncle had had an alarming stroke of apo- 
 plexy. The letter was followed within the 
 hour by a telegram announcing the death of 
 David Lynde.
 
 92 TEE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 VI. 
 
 BEYOND THE SEA. 
 
 IN the early twilight of a July evening in 
 the year 1875, two young Americans, 
 neither dreaming of the other's presence, 
 came face to face on the steps of a hotel on 
 the Quai du Mont Blanc at Geneva. The 
 two men, one of whom was so bronzed by 
 Eastern suns that his friend looked pallid 
 beside him, exchanged a long, incredulous 
 stare ; then their hands met, and the elder 
 cried out, " Of all men in the world ! " 
 
 " Flemming ! " exclaimed the other 
 eagerly ; " I thought you were in Egypt. " 
 
 " So I was, a month ago. What are you 
 doing over here, Ned ? " 
 
 " I don't know, to tell the truth.' 
 
 " You don't know ! " laughed Flemming. 
 " Enjoying yourself, I suppose." 
 
 "The supposition is a little rash," said 
 Edward Lynde. " I have been over nearly 
 a year, — quite a year, in fact. After Uncle 
 David's death — "
 
 BEYOND THE 93 
 
 " Poor old fellow ! I got the news at 
 Smyrna." 
 
 " After he was gone, and the bush 
 the estate was settled, I turned re&t! 
 Kivermouth. It was cursedly lonesome. I 
 hung on there a while, and then I came 
 abroad." 
 
 • • A rich man — my father wrote me. I 
 have had no letters from you. Your uncle 
 treated you generously, Xed." 
 
 " Did he not always treat me generously ?" 
 said Lynde, with a light coming into his 
 face, and instantly dying out again. " Yes, 
 he left me a pile of money and a heart-ache. 
 I can hardly bear to talk of it even now, 
 and it will be two years this August. But 
 come up to my room. By Jove, I am glad 
 to see you ! How is it you are in Geneva ! 
 I was thinking about you yesterday, and 
 wondering whether you were drifting down 
 the Xile in a dahabeeah. or crossing the desert 
 on a dromedary. Of course you have hunted 
 tigers and elephants : did you kill anything?" 
 
 £i I haven't killed anything but time. I 
 was always a dead shot at that." 
 
 Lynde passed his arm through Flemming's, 
 and the two friends mounted the staircase 
 of the hotel.
 
 94 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 " How is it you are in Geneva ?" repeated 
 Lynde. 
 
 " By luck,"' answered Flemming. " I am 
 going home — in a zigzag way. I 've been 
 obliged to take a reef in my Eastern itiner- 
 ary. The fact is, I have had a letter from 
 the old gentleman rather suggesting it. I 
 believe he has availed himself of my absence 
 to fall into financial difficulties." 
 
 "Why, I thought he was rolling in 
 wealth." 
 
 ' ' No, he is rolling in poverty, as nearly 
 as I can make out. Well, not so bad as 
 that. Nothing is ever as bad as it looks. 
 But he has met with heavy losses. I shall 
 find letters in London and learn all about it. 
 He wrote me not to hurry, that a month or 
 two would make no difference. When I got 
 to Munich, I thought I would take a peep 
 at Switzerland while I had the opportunity. 
 I have done a good piece, — from Lindau 
 to Lucerne, from Lucerne to Martigny by 
 way of the Furca ; through the Tete Noire 
 Pass to Chamouni, and from Chamouni, 
 here. " 
 
 While Flemming was speaking, Lynde un- 
 locked a door at the end of the hall and 
 ushered him into a sitting-room with three
 
 BEYOND THE SKA. 95 
 
 windows, each opening upon a narrow bal- 
 cony of its own. 
 
 "Sit there, old fellow," said Lynde, 
 wheeling an easy-chair to the middle win- 
 dow, "and look through my glass at the 
 view before it takes itself off. It is not 
 often as fine as it is this evening." 
 
 In front of the hotel the blue waters of 
 the Rhone swept under the arches of the Pont 
 des Bergues, to lose themselves in the turbid, 
 glacier-born Arve, a mile below the town. 
 Between the Pont des Bergues and the Pont 
 du Mont Blanc lay the island Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau, linked to the quay by a tiny chain 
 bridge. Opposite, upon the right bank of 
 the Rhone, stretched the handsome facades 
 of tile-roofed buildings, giving one an idea 
 of the ancient quarter which a closer inspec- 
 tion dispels ; for the streets are crooked and 
 steep, and the houses, except those lining 
 the quays, squalid. It was not there, how- 
 ever, that the eye would have lingered. 
 Far away, seen an incredible distance in 
 the transparent evening atmosphere, Mont 
 Blanc and its massed group of snowy satel- 
 lites lifted themselves into the clouds. All 
 those luminous battlements and turrets and 
 pyramids — the Mole, the Grandes Jorasses,
 
 96 THE QUEEX OF SHEBA. 
 
 the Aiguilles du Midi, the Dent du Geant, the 
 Aiguilles d'Argentiere — were now suffused 
 with a glow so magically delicate that the 
 softest tint of the blush rose would have 
 seemed harsh and crude in comparison. 
 
 " You have to come away from Mont 
 Blanc to see it," said Flemming, lowering 
 the glass. " When I had my nose against 
 it at Chamouni I didn't see it at all. It 
 overhung me and smothered me. Old 
 boy," — reaching up his hand to Lynde, 
 who was leaning on the back of the chair, 
 — " who would ever have thought that we 
 two " — Flemming stopped short and looked 
 earnestly into his comrade's face. " Why, 
 Ned, I didn't notice how thin and pale you 
 are. Are you ill ? " 
 
 The colour which had mantled Lynde' s 
 cheeks in the first surprise and pleasure of 
 meeting his friend had passed away, leaving, 
 indeed, a somewhat haggard expression on 
 the young man's countenance. 
 
 "111? Not that I know." 
 
 " Is anything wrong ? " 
 
 ' ; There is nothing wrong," replied Lynde, 
 with some constraint. ' ' That is to say, 
 nothing very wrong. For a month or six 
 weeks I have been occupied with a matter
 
 BEYOND THE SEA. 97 
 
 that has rather unsettled me, — more, per- 
 haps, than I ought to have allowed." 
 
 " What is that?" 
 
 " It doesn't signify. Don't let 'a speak of 
 it." 
 
 "But it does signify. You are keep- 
 ing something serious from me. Out with 
 it!" 
 
 " Well, the truth is," said Lyncle after 
 a moment's hesitation, " it is something 
 serious and nothing very positive : that 's 
 the perplexing part of it.'* 
 
 " You are not making it clear to me." 
 
 " I don't know that I can, Hemming." 
 
 "Try, then." 
 
 Lynde reflected a few seconds, with his 
 eyes fixed on the remote mountain lines 
 imperceptibly melting into the twilight. 
 "Do you remember our walk home from 
 the theatre, one night, two or three days 
 before you sailed from "New York ?*' 
 
 ' ' Perfectly, " replied Hemming. 
 
 " Do you recollect my telling you of a 
 queer thing that happened to me up in the 
 New Hampshire hills ? " 
 
 " Your encounter with the little lunatic? 
 Perfectly. " 
 
 "Don't!" said Lynde, shrinking as if 
 
 Q-s G
 
 98 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 some sharp instrument had pierced him. 
 " She is here ! : ' 
 
 " Here ! " exclaimed Flemming, half rising 
 from the chair, and glancing towards a 
 draped door which connected the suit of 
 apartments. 
 
 "Not in these rooms/' said Lynde, with 
 a short laugh, "but in Geneva, — in this 
 hotel." 
 
 " You do not mean it." 
 
 "When I say it is she, I'm not sure of 
 it." 
 
 " Of course it isn't." 
 
 ' ' That 's what I saj 7 , and the next moment 
 I know it is." 
 
 " And is this your trouble ? " 
 
 "Yes," answered Lynde, knitting his 
 brows. "I felt that I shouldn't make it 
 clear to you." 
 
 "I am afraid you haven't, Ned. What 
 earthly difference does it make to you 
 whether or not it 's the same girl ? " 
 
 "What difference!" cried Lynde, im- 
 petuously; " what difference, — when I love 
 the very ground she walks on ! " 
 
 " Oh, you love her ! Which one ? " 
 
 " Don't laugh at me, Flemming." 
 
 "I am not laughing," said Flemming,
 
 BEYOND THE SEA. 99 
 
 looking puzzled and anxious. " It is not 
 possible, Xed, you have allowed yourself to 
 go and get interested in a — a person not 
 right in her mind ! " 
 
 " Miss Denham is as sane as you are." 
 
 "Then Miss — Denham, is it? — cannot be 
 the girl you told me about." 
 
 " That 's the point." 
 
 " I don't see why there should he any 
 confusion on that point." 
 
 "Don't you?" 
 
 " Come, let us go to the bottom of this. 
 You have fallen in with a woman in Swit- 
 zerland, and you suspect her of being a girl 
 you met years ago in New Hampshire under 
 circumstances which render her appearance 
 here nearly an impossibility. As I am not 
 a man of vivid imagination, that floors me. 
 What makes you think them identical ? " 
 
 "A startling personal resemblance, age, 
 inflection of voice, manner, even a certain 
 physical peculiarity, — a scar." 
 
 " Then what makes you doubt?" 
 
 ' • Everything. " 
 
 "Well, .that's comprehensive, at all 
 events." 
 
 "The very fact of her being here. The 
 physician at the asylum said that that girl's
 
 IOO THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 malady was hopeless. Miss Denham has one 
 of the clearest intellects I ever knew ; she 
 is a linguist, an accomplished musician, and, 
 what is more rare, a girl who has moved a 
 great deal in society, or, at least, has tra- 
 velled a great deal, and has not ceased to 
 be an unaffected, fresh, candid girl." 
 
 " An American ? " 
 
 " Of course ; didn't I say so ? " 
 
 " The other may have been a sister, then, 
 or a cousin," suggested Flemming. "That 
 would account for the likeness, which pos- 
 sibly you exaggerate. It was in 1872, wasn't 
 it?" 
 
 " I have been all over that. Miss Denham 
 is an only child ; she never had a cousin. 
 To-day she is precisely what the other 
 would have been, with restored health 
 and three years added to her seventeen or 
 eighteen." 
 
 ' ' Upon my word, Ned, this is one of the 
 oddest things I ever heard. I feel, though, 
 that you have got yourself into an unneces- 
 sary snarl. Where does Miss Denham come 
 from ? She is not travelling alone ? How 
 did you meet her ? Tell me the entire 
 story." 
 
 " There is nothing to tell, or next to
 
 BEYOND THE SEA. IOI 
 
 nothing. I met the Denhams here, six 
 weeks ago. It was at the tabU-cFhdU . 
 Two ladies came in and took places oppo- 
 site me, — a middle-aged lady and a young 
 one. I did not notice them until they were 
 seated ; it was the voice of the younger 
 lady that attracted me ; I looked up, — and 
 there was the Queen of Sheba. The same 
 eyes, the same hair, the same face, though 
 not so pale, and fuller ; the same form, only 
 the contours filled out. I put down my 
 knife and fork and stared at her. She 
 flushed, for I fancy I stared at her rather 
 rudely, and a faint mark, like a star, came 
 into her cheek and faded. I saw it as dis- 
 tinctly as I saw it the day she passed me on 
 the country road, swinging the flower in her 
 hand." 
 
 " By Jove ! it's a regular romance, — straw- 
 berry mark and all." 
 
 " If you don't take this seriously," said 
 Lynde, frowning, ' ; I am done." 
 
 "Goon." 
 
 "I shall never know howl got through 
 the endless courses of that dinner ; it was an 
 empty pantomime on my part. As soon as 
 it was over I rushed to the hotel register. 
 The only entry among the new arrivals which
 
 102 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 pointed to the two ladies was that of Mrs. 
 William Denham aud Niece, United States. 
 You can understand, Flemming, how I was 
 seized with a desire to know those two 
 women. I had come to Geneva for a day or 
 so ; but I resolved to stay here a month 
 if they stayed, or to leave the next hour 
 if they left. In short, I meant to follow 
 them discreetly ; it was an occupation for 
 me. They remained. In the course of a 
 week I knew the Denhams to speak to them 
 when we met of a morning in the English 
 Garden. A fortnight later it seemed to me 
 that I had known them half my life. They 
 had come across the previous November, 
 they had wintered in Italy, and were going 
 to Chamouni some time in July, where Mr. 
 Denham was to join them ; then they were 
 to make an extended tour of Switzerland, 
 accompanied by an old friend of the family, a 
 professor, or a doctor, or something, who was 
 in the south of France for his health. Miss 
 Denham — her name is Ruth — is an orphan, 
 and was educated mostly over here. When 
 the Denhams are at home they live some- 
 where in the neighbourhood of Orange, Xew 
 Jersey. There are all the simple, exasper- 
 ating; facts. I can add nothing to them.
 
 BEYOND THE SEA. 103 
 
 If I were to tell you how this girl has per- 
 plexed and distressed me, by seeming to be 
 and seeming not to be that other person,— 
 how my doubts and hopes have risen and 
 fallen from day to day, even from hour to 
 hour, — it Mould be as uninteresting to you 
 a> a barometrical record. But this is certain : 
 when Miss Denham and I part at Chamouni, 
 as I suppose we shall, this world will have 
 come to an end so far as I am concerned.*' 
 
 " The world doesn't come to an end that 
 way, — when one is twenty-six. Does she 
 like you, Xed ? " 
 
 ' ' How can I say ? She does not dislike 
 me. We have seen very much of each other. 
 We have been together some portion of each 
 day for more than a month. But I 've never 
 had her a moment alone ; the aunt is always 
 present. We are like old friends,— with a 
 difference. " 
 
 " I see ; the aunt makes the difference! 
 No flirting allowed on the premises." 
 
 ' ' Miss Denham is not a girl to flirt with : 
 she is very self-possessed, with just a sus- 
 picion of haughtiness; personally, tall, slight, 
 a sort of dusky Eastern beauty, with the 
 clear warm colours of a Xew England Sep- 
 tember twilight. — not like the brunettes on
 
 104 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 this side, who are apt to have thick com- 
 plexions, saving their presence. I say she 
 is not a girl to flirt with, and yet, with that 
 sensitive-cut mouth and those deep eyes, she 
 could do awful things in the way of tender- 
 ness if she had a mind to. She 's a puzzle 
 with her dove's innocence and her serpent's 
 wisdom. All women are problems. I sup- 
 pose every married man of us goes down to 
 his grave with his particular problem not 
 quite solved." 
 
 Flemming gave aloud laugh. The " every 
 married man of us" tickled him. "Yes," 
 said he ; " they are all daughters of the 
 Sphinx, and past finding out. Is Miss 
 Denham an invalid ? " he asked, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " No ; she is not strong, — delicate, rather ; 
 of the pure type of American young-woman- 
 hood, — more spirit than physique ; but not 
 an invalid, — unless " — 
 
 " You have let a morbid fancy run away 
 with you, Ned. This lady and the other 
 one are two different persons. ' 
 
 " If I could only believe it !" said Lynde. 
 "I do believe it at times ; then some ges- 
 ture, some fleeting expression, a turn of the 
 head, the timbre of her voice. — and there she
 
 BEYOND THE SEA. IO5 
 
 is again ! The next moment I am ready to 
 laugh at myself." 
 
 " Couldn't you question the aunt ? " 
 
 "How could I?" 
 
 " You couldn't !'* 
 
 "I have thought of that doctor at the 
 asylum, — what in the devil was his name ? 
 I might write to him ; but I shrink from 
 doing it. I have been brutal enough in 
 other ways. I am ashamed to confess to 
 what unforgivable expedients I have resorted 
 to solve my uncertainty. Once we were 
 speaking of Genoa, where the Denhams had 
 spent a week ; I turned the conversation on 
 the Church of St. Lorenzo and the relic in 
 the treasury there, — the Sacro Catlno, a 
 supposed gift to Solomon from the Queen of 
 Sheba. Miss Denham listened with the 
 calmest interest ; she had not seen it the 
 day she visited the church ; she was sorry 
 to have missed that. Then the aunt changed 
 the subject, but whether by accident or 
 design I was unable for the soul of me to 
 conjecture. Good God, Flemming ! could 
 this girl have had some terrible, swift 
 malady which touched her and passed, and 
 still hangs over her, — an hereditary doom ? " 
 
 " Then she 's the most artful actress that
 
 106 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 ever lived, I should say. The leading lady 
 of the Theatre Francais might go and take 
 lessons of her. But if that were so, Ned ? " 
 
 "If that were so," said Lynde, slowly, 
 " a great pity would be added to my love." 
 
 " You would not marry her ! " 
 
 Lynde made no reply. 
 
 The night had settled down upon Geneva 
 while the friends were talking. The room 
 was so dark they could not distinguish each 
 other; but Flemming was conscious of a pale, 
 set face turned towards him in the obscurity, 
 in the same way that he was conscious of 
 the forlorn whiteness of Mont Blanc looming 
 up out yonder, unseen. It was dark in the 
 chamber, but the streets were gay now with 
 the life of a midsummer night. Intermin- 
 able lines of lamps twinkled on the bridges 
 and along the quays ; * the windows of the 
 cafes on the opposite bank of the Rhone 
 were brilliant with gas jets ; boats bearing 
 merry cargoes to and from the lake, passed 
 up and down the river ; the street running 
 under the hotel balcony was crowded with 
 loungers, and a band was playing in the 
 English Garden. From time to time a strain 
 of music floated up to the window where 
 the two men were sitting. Neither had
 
 IJEYOXD THE SEA. 107 
 
 spoken for some minutes, when Lyntle asked 
 his friend where he was staying. 
 
 "At the Schweizerhof," replied Flemming. 
 " I always take the hotel nearest the station. 
 Few Americans go there, I fancy. It is 
 wonderfully and fearfully Swiss. I was 
 strolling in here to look through the register 
 for some American autographs when I ran 
 against you." 
 
 ' ' You had better bring your traps over 
 here." 
 
 " It would not be worth while. I am 
 booked for Paris to-morrow night. Ned, — 
 come with me ! " 
 
 "I can't, Flemming ; I have agreed to go 
 to Chamouni with the Denhams." 
 
 "Don't !" 
 
 ' ' That is like advising a famishing man 
 not to eat his last morsel of food. I have a 
 presentiment it will all end there. I never 
 had a presentiment before." 
 
 " I had a presentiment once," said Flem- 
 ming, impressively. " I had a presentiment 
 that a certain number — it was number 
 twenty-seven — would draw the prize in a 
 certain lottery. I went to the office, and 
 number twenty-seven was one of the two 
 numbers unsold ! I bought it as quick as
 
 I08 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 lightning, I dreamed of number twenty- 
 seven three successive nights, and the next 
 day it drew a blank." 
 
 " That has the ring of the old Flemming !" 
 cried Lynde, with an unforced laugh. "I 
 am glad that I have not succeeded in turn- 
 ing all your joyous gold into lead. I 'm 
 not always such dull company as I have 
 been to-night, with my moods and my pre- 
 sentiments. I owe them partly, perhaps, 
 to not seeing Miss Denham to-day, the aunt 
 having a headache." 
 
 "You were not in a rollicking humour 
 when I picked you up." 
 
 "I had been cruising about town all 
 the morning alone, making assaults on the 
 Musee Fol, the Botanic Garden, and the 
 Jewish Synagogue. In the afternoon I had 
 wrecked myself on Rousseau's Island, where 
 I sat on a bench staring at Pradier's poor 
 statue of Jean Jacques until I fancied that 
 the ugly bronze cannibal was making mouths 
 at me. When the aunt has a headache, / 
 suffer. Flemming, you must see Miss Den- 
 ham, if only for a moment." 
 
 " Of course I should like to see her, 
 Ned." 
 
 " You do not leave until evening," Lynde
 
 BEYOND THE SKA. 109 
 
 sai'l, reflecting. "I think I can manage a 
 little dinner for to-morrow. Now let us 
 take a breath of fresh air. I know the 
 queerest old nook, in the Rue de Chant- 
 poulet, where the Bavarian beer is excellent 
 and all the company smoke the most enor- 
 mous porcelain pipes. Haven't I hit one of 
 your weaknesses ? " 
 
 " You have hit a brace ! "'
 
 110 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE DENHAMS. 
 
 WHEX Edward Lynde returned to the 
 hotel that night, after parting with 
 Flemming at the head of a crooked, gable- 
 hung street leading to the Sehweizerhof, the 
 young man regretted that he had said any- 
 thing on the subject of the Denhams, or, 
 rather, that he had spoken of the painful 
 likeness which had haunted him so persist- 
 ently. The friends had spent the gayest of 
 evenings together at a small green-topped 
 table in one corner of the smoky cafe. Over 
 their beer and cheese they had chatted of old 
 days at boarding-school and college, and 
 this contact with the large, healthy nature 
 of Flemming, which threw off depression as 
 sunshine dissipates mist, had sent Lynde's 
 vapours flying. Nothing was changed in 
 the circumstances that had distressed him, 
 yet some way a load had removed itself 
 from his bosom. He was sorry he had 
 mentioned that dark business at all. As he 
 threaded the deserted streets, — it was long
 
 THE DENHAMS. 1 1 1 
 
 after midnight, — he planned a dinner to be 
 given in his rooms the next day, and formu- 
 lated a note of invitation to the ladies, 
 which he would write when he got back to 
 the hotel, and have in readiness for early 
 delivery in the morning. 
 
 Lynde was in one of those lightsome 
 moods which, in that varying month, had 
 not unfrecjuently followed a day of doubt 
 and restless despondency. As he turned 
 into the Quai des Bergues he actually 
 hummed a bar or two of opera. He had not 
 done that before in six weeks. They had 
 been weeks of inconceivable torment and 
 pleasure to Lynde. 
 
 He had left home while still afflicted by 
 David Lynde's death. Since the uncle's ill- 
 advised marriage the intercourse between 
 them, as the reader knows, had all but 
 ceased ; they had met only once, and then 
 as if to bid each other farewell ; but the 
 ties had been very close, after all. In the 
 weeks immediately following his guardian's 
 death, the young man, occupied with set- 
 tling the estate, of which he was one of the 
 executors, scarcely realised his loss ; but 
 when he returned to Pa vermouth a heavy 
 sense of loneliness came over him. The
 
 112 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 crowded, happy firesides to which he was 
 free seemed to reproach him for his lack of 
 kinship ; he stood alone in the world ; there 
 was no more reason why he should stay in 
 one place than in another. His connection 
 with the bank, unnecessary now in a money 
 point of view, grew irksome ; the quietude 
 of the town oppressed him ; he determined 
 to cut adrift from all and go abroad. An 
 educated American with no deeper sorrow 
 than Lynde's cannot travel through Europe, 
 for the first time at least, with indifference. 
 Three months in Germany and France began 
 in Lynde a cure which was completed by a 
 winter in Southern Italy. He had regained 
 his former elasticity of spirits and was 
 taking life with a relish, when he went to 
 Geneva ; there he fell in with the Denhams 
 in the manner he described to Flemming. 
 An habitual shyness, and perhaps a doubt 
 of Flemming's sympathetic capacity, had 
 prevented Lynde from giving his friend 
 more than an outline of the situation. In 
 his statement Lynde had omitted several 
 matters which may properly be set down 
 here. 
 
 That first day at the table-cVJtote and the 
 next day, when he was able more deliber-
 
 THE DENHAMS. I 1 3 
 
 ately to study the young woman, Edward 
 Lynde had made no question to himself as 
 to her being the same person he had stun in 
 so different and so pathetic surroundings. 
 It was unmistakeably the same. He had 
 even had a vague apprehension she might 
 recognise him, and had been greatly re- 
 lieved to observe that there was no glimmer 
 of recognition in the well-bred, careless 
 glance which swept him once or twice. No, 
 he had passed out of her memory, — with 
 the other shapes and shadows ! How- 
 strange they should meet again, thousands 
 of miles from Xew England ! how strange 
 that he alone, of all the crowded city, 
 should know there had been a dark episode 
 in this girl's history ! What words she had 
 spoken to him and forgotten, she who now 
 sat there robed in the beauty of her reason ! 
 
 It was a natural interest, and a deep 
 interest, certainly, that impelled Lynde to 
 seek the acquaintance of the two ladies. 
 On the third day a chance service rendered 
 the elder — she had left a glove or a hand- 
 kerchief beside her plate at table, and 
 Lynde had followed her with it from the 
 dining-room — placed him upon speaking 
 terms. They were his countrywomen, he 
 
 Q-s H
 
 1 14 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 was a gentleman, and the surface ice was 
 easily broken. Three days afterwards 
 Lynde found himself oddly doubting his 
 first conviction. This was not that girl ! 
 The likeness was undeniable : the same 
 pnrple-black hair, the same long eyelashes, 
 a very distinctive feature. In voice and 
 carriage, too, Miss Denham curiously re- 
 called the other ; and that mark on Miss 
 Denham's cheek — a birth-mark — was sin- 
 gular enough. But there the analogies 
 ended. Miss Denham was a young woman 
 who obviously had seen much of the world ; 
 she possessed accomplishments which could 
 have been acquired only by uninterrupted 
 application ; she spoke French, German, 
 and Italian with unusual purity. That 
 intellect, as strong and clear as crystal, 
 could never have suffered even a temporary 
 blur. He was beginning to be amazed at 
 the blunder he had committed, when sud- 
 denly, one evening, a peculiar note in her 
 voice, accompanied by a certain lifting of 
 the eyelashes, — a movement he had noticed 
 for the first time, but which was familiar to 
 him, — threw Lynde into great perplexity. 
 It was that other girl ! How useless for 
 him to try to blind himself to the truth !
 
 THE DENHAMS. 1 15 
 
 Besides, why should he wish to, and why 
 should the fact of the identity trouble him 
 to such a degree ? The next day he was 
 staggered by Miss Denham alluding inci- 
 dentally to the circumstance that she and her 
 aunt had passed a pai't of the spring of 1S72 
 in Florida. That was the date of Lynde's 
 adventure, the spring of 1872. Here was 
 almost positive proof that Miss Denham 
 could not have been in Xew England at the 
 time. Lynde did not know what to think. 
 Of course he was mistaken ; he must be 
 mistaken, — and yet ! There were moments 
 when he could not look at Miss Denham 
 without half expecting to see the man 
 Blaisdell flitting somewhere in the back- 
 ground. Then there were days when it was 
 impossible for Lynde to picture her as any- 
 thing different from what she now was. 
 But whatever conclusion he came to, a 
 doubt directly insinuated itself. 
 
 While he was drifting from one uncer- 
 tainty to another, a fortnight elapsed in 
 which his intimacy with the Denhams had 
 daily increased. They were in Geneva for 
 an indefinite time, awaiting directions from 
 Mr. Denham. The few sights in the city 
 had been exhausted ; the places of interest
 
 Il6 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 in the environs could not be visited by ladies 
 without escort ; so it fell out that Lynde 
 accompanied the Denhams on several short 
 excursions, — to Petit and Grand Sacconnex, 
 to the Villa Tronchin, to Pregny and Mornex. 
 These were days which Lynde marked with 
 a red letter. At the end of the month, 
 however, he was in the same state of dis- 
 tressing indecision relative to Miss Denham. 
 On one point he required no light, — he was 
 deeply interested in her, so deeply, indeed, 
 that it had become a question affecting all 
 his future, whether or not she was the per- 
 son he had encountered on his horseback 
 journey three years before. If she was — 
 
 But Edward Lynde had put the question 
 out of his thought that night as he walked 
 home from the cafe. His two bars of opera 
 music lasted him to the hotel steps. Though 
 it was late, — a great bell somewhere, striking 
 two, sent its rich reverberation across the 
 lake while he was unlocking his chamber 
 door, — Lynde seated himself at a table and 
 wrote his note to the Denhams. 
 
 Flemming had promised to come and take 
 coffee with him early the next morning, that 
 is to say at nine o'clock. Before Flemming 
 arrived, Lynde's invitation had been des-
 
 THE DENHAMS. 1 1 7 
 
 patched and accepted. He was re-reading 
 Miss Denham's few lines of acceptance when 
 lie heard his friend, at the other end of the 
 hall, approaching with great strides. 
 
 "The thousandth part of a minute late !" 
 cried Flemming, throwing open the door. 
 ' ' There 's no excuse for me. When a man 
 lives in a city where they manufacture a 
 hundred thousand watches a year, — that 's 
 one watch and a quarter every five minutes 
 day and night, — it 's a moral duty to be 
 punctual. Ned, you look like a prize pink 
 this morning." 
 
 "I have had such a sleep ! Besides, I Ve 
 just gone through the excitement of laying 
 out the menu for our dinner. Good heavens, 
 I forgot the flowers ! We '11 go and get 
 them after breakfast. There 's your coffee. 
 Cream, old man ? I am in a tremor over 
 this dinner, you know. It is a maiden 
 effort. By the way, Flemming, I wish you'd 
 forget what I said about Miss Denham, last 
 evening. I was all wrong." 
 
 " I told you so ; what has happened ? " 
 
 ' ' Nothing. Only I have reconsidered 
 the matter, and I see I was wrong to let 
 it upset me." 
 
 " 1 saw that from the first."
 
 I iS THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 "Some people," said Lynde, gaily, "al- 
 ways see everything from the first. You 
 belong to the I-told-you-so family, only you 
 belong to the cheerful branch." 
 
 "Thank the Lord for that! A wide- 
 spreading, hopeful disposition is your only 
 true umbrella in this vale of tears." 
 
 " I shall have to borrow yours, then, if 
 it rains heavily, for I 've none of my own." 
 
 ' ' Take it, my boy ; my name 's on the 
 handle!" 
 
 On finishing their coffee the young men 
 lighted cigars and sallied forth for a stroll 
 along the bank of the river, which they 
 followed to the confluence of the Rhone with 
 the Arve, stopping on the way to leave 
 an order at a florist's. Returning to the 
 hotel some time after mid-day, they found 
 the flowers awaiting them in Lynde's par- 
 lour, where a servant was already laying the 
 cloth. There were bouquets for the ladies' 
 plates, an imposing centre-piece in the shape 
 of a pyramid, and a profusion of loose 
 flowers. 
 
 "What shall we do with these?" asked 
 Lynde, pointing to the latter. 
 
 " Set 'em around somewhere," said Flem- 
 ming, with cheerful vagueness.
 
 THE DENHAMS. II9 
 
 Lynde disposed the flowers around the 
 room to the best of his judgment ; he hung 
 some among the glass pendants of the chande- 
 lier, gave a nosegay to each of the two gilt 
 statuettes in the corners, and piled the re- 
 mainder about the base of a monumental 
 clock on the mantel-piece. 
 
 "That's rather a pretty idea, isn't it? — 
 wreathing Time in flowers," remarked Flem- 
 ming, with honest envy of his friend's pro- 
 founder depth of poetic sentiment. 
 
 "I thought it rather neat,"' said Lynde, 
 who had not thought of it at all. 
 
 In the course of that dinner if two or three 
 unexplained demure smiles flitted over Miss 
 Denham's face, they might, perhaps, have 
 been indirectly traced to these floral decora- 
 tions, though they pleased her more than if 
 a woman's hand had been visible in them. 
 
 "Flemming,'' said Lynde, with a severe 
 aesthetic air, "I don't think that arrange- 
 ment in the fireplace is quite up to the rest 
 of the room. " 
 
 " Xor I either," said Flemming, who had 
 been silently admiring it for the last ten 
 minutes. 
 
 The fireplace in question was stuffed with 
 a quantity of long, delicately spiral shavings,
 
 120 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 sprinkled with silver spangles or flakes of 
 isinglass, and covered by a piece of pale blue 
 illusion. This device — peculiarly Genevese 
 — was supposed to represent a waterfall. 
 
 "Take a match and touch it off,'' sug- 
 gested Flemming. 
 
 " If we had some more flowers, now "— 
 
 " Exactly. I am going to the hotel to get 
 myself up like a head -waiter, and I '11 bring 
 some when I come back. " 
 
 In an hour afterwards Flemming reap- 
 peared, followed by a youth bearing an im- 
 mense basket. Lynde removed the Alpine 
 waterfall to an adjoining chamber, and built 
 up a huge fire of flame-coloured flowers in 
 the grate. The two friends were standing 
 in the middle of the room, gravely contem 
 plating the effect, when a servant opened 
 the door and announced Mrs. and Miss 
 Denham. A rustle of drapery at the 
 threshold was followed by the entrance of 
 the two ladies in ceremonious dinner toilets. 
 
 Lynde had never seen Miss Denham in 
 any but a dark travelling-dress, or in such 
 unobtrusive costume as a modest girl may 
 wear at a hotel table. He stood motionless 
 an instant, seeing her in a trailing robe of 
 some fleecy, maize-coloured material, with a
 
 THE DENHAMS. 121 
 
 cluster of moss-roses at her corsage and a 
 cross of diamonds at her throat. She was 
 without other ornament. The shade of her 
 dress made her hair and eyes and complexion 
 wonderful. Lynde was proud to have her 
 look like that for Flemming, though he Mas 
 himself affected by a queer impression that 
 this cmeenly young person was not the 
 simple, lovely girl he had known all along. 
 He was embarrassed by her unexpected 
 elegance, but he covered his embarrassment 
 and his pleasure by presenting his friend to 
 the ladies, and ordering the servant to serve 
 the dinner immediately. 
 
 Lynde's constraint was only momentary. 
 and the others had experienced none. Flem- 
 ming, indeed, had a fleeting surprise at 
 finding in the aunt a woman of thirty-live 
 or thirty- eight, in the Indian summer of her 
 beauty. Lynde had given him the idea of 
 an elderly person with spectacles. As to 
 Miss Denham, she had not fallen short of 
 the mental picture Flemming had drawn of 
 her, — which ought to have surprised him. 
 No charms or graces in a woman, however, 
 could much surprise Flemming ; he accepted 
 them as matters of course ; to him all 
 women were charming in various degrees.
 
 122 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 He had that general susceptibility which 
 preserves us the breed of bachelors. The 
 constant victim of a series of minor emotions, 
 he was safe from any major passion. There 
 was a certain chivalrous air of camaraderie 
 in his manner to women which made them 
 like him sooner or later ; the Denhams liked 
 him instantly. Even before the 'potage was 
 removed, Lynde saw that his dinner was a 
 success. "The cook may drop dead now, 
 if he wants to," said Lynde to himself ; "he 
 can't spoil anything. " 
 
 "You are not entirely a stranger to us, Mr. 
 Flemming, "said Mrs. Denham, lookingat him 
 from behind the floral pyramid, which had 
 the happy effect of isolating the parties who 
 sat opposite each other. " There is a person 
 who goes about foreign lands with no other 
 ostensible mission than to sound 3'our praise." 
 
 " You must set down a great deal to filial 
 gratitude," returned Flemming. "I have 
 been almost a father to our young friend." 
 
 " He tells me that your being here is 
 quite accidental." 
 
 " It was one of those fortunate things, 
 madam, which sometimes befall undeserv- 
 ing persons, as if to refute the theory of a 
 special providence.
 
 THE DENHAMS. 123 
 
 " On the contrary, Mr. Flemming,"— it 
 was Miss Ruth who spoke, — "it was evi- 
 dently arranged with the clearest foresight ; 
 for if you had been a day later, perhaps you 
 would not have found your friend in Geneva 
 — that is, if Mr. Lynde goes with us to 
 Chamouni." 
 
 " You have heard from Mr. Denham, 
 then ? " said Lynde, turning to the aunt. 
 
 ' ' We had letters this morning. Mr. Den- 
 ham is in Paris, where he will remain a week 
 or ten days, to show the sights to an old 
 American friend of ours who is to join our 
 party. I think I told you, Mr. Lynde? 
 Supposing us to be weary of Geneva by 
 this time, Mr. Denham suggests that we 
 go on to Chamouni and wait there. I have 
 left the matter to Ruth, and she decides in 
 favour of leaving to-morrow, if the weather 
 is fine." 
 
 " We are not tired of Geneva," said Miss 
 Denham ; " it would be ingratitude to Mr. 
 Lynde to admit that ; but we are longing for 
 a nearer view of the Mont Blanc groups. 
 One ought to know them pretty well after 
 six weeks' constant looking at them ; but 
 the changes in the atmosphere make any 
 certain intimacy impossible at this distance.
 
 124 THE Q^EEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 New ranges loom up and disappear, the lines 
 alter almost every hour. Were you ever at 
 the Isles of Shoals, Mr. Flemming ?" 
 
 Flemming started slightly. Since Miss 
 Denham entered the room he had given 
 scarcely a thought to Lynde's dismal sus- 
 picions. Once or twice they had come into 
 Flemming 's mind, but he had promptly 
 dismissed them. The girl's inquiry con- 
 cerning a locality in New Hampshire sud- 
 denly recalled them, and recalled the 
 motive with which Lynde had planned 
 the dinner. Flemming flushed with vexa- 
 tion to think he had lent himself to the 
 arrangement. 
 
 " I have spent parts of two summers at 
 the Isles of Shoals," he said. 
 
 " Then you must have observed the 
 singular changes that seem to take place on 
 the mainland, seen from Appledore. The 
 mirage on the Rye and Newcastle coasts — is 
 it Newcastle ? — sometimes does wonderful 
 things. Frequently you see great cities 
 stretching along the beach, some of the 
 houses rising out of the water, as in Venice, 
 only they are gloomy, foggy cities, like 
 London, and not like Venice. Another time 
 you see ships sailing by upside down ; then
 
 THE DENHAHS. 12$ 
 
 it is a chain of hills, with peaks and projec- 
 tions that melt away under your eyes, leav- 
 ing only the flat coast-line." 
 
 Flemming had seen all this, and seemed 
 again to see it through the clear medium of 
 the young ghFs "words. He had witnessed 
 similar optical illusions in the deserts, also, 
 which he described to her. Then Flemming 
 remembered a curious trick of refracted light 
 he had once seen in the sunrise on Mount 
 Washington, and suddenly he found himself 
 asking Miss Denham if she were acquainted 
 with the interior of New Hampshire. He 
 had put the interrogation without a shadow 
 of design ; he could have bitten his tongue 
 off an instant after. 
 
 Lynde, who had been discussing with 
 Mrs. Denham the details of the next day's 
 journey, looked up quickly and sent Flem- 
 ming a rapid scowl. 
 
 "I have never been inland,'' was Miss 
 Denhanrs answer. " My acquaintance with 
 New Hampshire is limited to the Shoals and 
 the beaches at Piye and Hampton. In visit- 
 ing the Alps first I have, I know, been very 
 impolite to the mountains and hills of my 
 own land." 
 
 " Faith, dear, Mr. Lynde and I have been
 
 126 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 speaking of the conveyance for to-morrow ; 
 shall it be an open or a close carriage ? " 
 
 " An open carriage, by all means, aunt." 
 
 "That would have its inconvenience in 
 case of showers, " said Lynde ; ' ' when April 
 takes her departure from the Alps, she is 
 said to leave all her capriciousness behind 
 her. I suggest a partially closed vehicle ; 
 you will find a covering comfortable in either 
 rain or shine." 
 
 " Mr. Lynde thinks of everything," re- 
 marked Mrs. Denham. "He should not 
 allow himself to be dictated to by unforesee- 
 ing woman." 
 
 ' ' In strict confidence, Mrs. Denham, I 
 will confess that I have arbitrarily taken 
 this business in hand. For nearly a week, 
 now, I have had my eye on a vehicle that 
 must have been built e-xpressly for us ; it is 
 driven by a tall, distinguished person, frosty 
 of mustache and affable of manner, — evi- 
 dently a French marquis in disguise." 
 
 " "What an adroit fellow Ned is ! " Flem- 
 ming said to himself. "I wonder that with 
 all his cleverness he could have got such a 
 foolish notion into his head about this girl." 
 
 ' ' AVe must have the French marquis at 
 any cost," said Miss Denham.
 
 THE DENHAMS. \2J 
 
 11 The truth is," remarked Lynch ! 
 
 have secured him." 
 
 ' ' We are to start at eight, Ruth. " 
 
 " Which means breakfast at seven. Is 
 Mr. Lynde equal to a feat like that, aunt ': " 
 
 "As I intend to have watchers and sit 
 up all night," said Lynde, "I think I can 
 promise to be on hand." 
 
 This matter decided, the conversation, 
 which had been carried on mostly in duets, 
 became general. Flemming soon recovered 
 from the remorse of his inadvertent question, 
 or rather from his annoyance at the thought 
 that possibly it had struck Lynde as having 
 an ulterior motive. 
 
 As to Lynde, he was in the highest 
 humour. Miss Denham had been thor- 
 oughly charming to his friend, with her 
 serious and candid manner, — a manner as 
 far removed from reserve as from the thin 
 vivacity of the average young woman of 
 the period. Her rare smile had been finer 
 than another's laugh. Flemming himself 
 went as near to falling in love with her 
 and the aunt as his loyalty to Lynde and 
 the supposed existence of a Mr. Denham 
 permitted. 
 
 After a while the window curtains were
 
 128 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 drawn, though it was scarcely dusk without, 
 and candles brought ; then the ices were 
 served, and then the coffee ; and then the 
 clock on the mantel -piece, as if it took 
 malicious satisfaction in the fleetness with 
 which Time (wreathed in flowers) slips away 
 from mortals, set up a silvery chime — it 
 sounded like the angelus rung from some 
 cathedral in the distance — to tell Flemming 
 that his hour was come. He had still to 
 return to the hotel to change his dress-suit 
 before taking the train. Mrs. Denham in- 
 sisted on Lynde accompanying his friend to 
 the station, though Flemming had begged 
 that he might be allowed to withdraw with- 
 out disturbing the party, and even without 
 saying farewell. "I don't recognise good- 
 byes," said he ; " there are too many sorrow- 
 ful partings in the world already. I never 
 give them the slightest encouragement.'' 
 But the ladies persisted in considering the 
 dinner at an end ; then the two friends con- 
 ducted the Denhams to the door of their own 
 parlour and there took leave of them. 
 
 " Well ?" said Lynde as he seated himself 
 beside Flemming in the carriage. " What 
 do you think of her ?" 
 
 "An unusually agreeable woman," re-
 
 THE DEXHAMS. 120, 
 
 turned Flemming, carelessly. " She is 
 thirty-eight, she looks twenty-six, and is 
 as pleasant as nineteen." 
 
 " I mean Miss Denham !" 
 
 " Xed, I don't care to discuss Miss Denham. 
 "When I think of your connecting that lovely 
 lady with a crazy creature you met some- 
 where or other, I am troubled touching your 
 intellect." 
 
 " But I do not any longer connect her 
 with that unfortunate girl. I told you to 
 put all that out of your mind. " 
 
 " I don't find it easy to do, Xed ; it is so 
 monstrous. Was not this dinner an arrange- 
 ment for me to see Miss Denham and in 
 some way judge her ?" 
 
 " Xo, Flemming ; there was a moment 
 yesterday evening when I had some such 
 wild idea, I had grown morbid by being 
 alone all day and brooding over a resem- 
 blance which I have not been able to pre- 
 vent affecting me disagreeably at intervals. 
 This resemblance does not exist for you, 
 and you have not been subtile enough 
 to put yourself in my place. However, all 
 that is past ; it shall not disturb me in 
 future. When I invited the Denhams to 
 this dinner, it was solely that I might pre- 
 
 Q.S. t
 
 I30 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 sent you to the woman I shall marry if she 
 will have me." 
 
 " She is too good for yon, Ned." 
 
 " I know it. That 's one thing makes me 
 love her. I admire superior people ; it is 
 my single merit. I wouldn't stoop to marry 
 my equal. Flemming, what possessed you 
 to question her about New Hampshire ?" 
 
 " We were speaking of the White Hills, 
 and the question asked itself. I wasn't 
 thinking of your puerilities ; don't imagine 
 it. I hope her reply settled you. What 
 are you going to do now ? " 
 
 " I shall go with them to Chamouni." 
 
 ' ' And afterwards ? " 
 
 ' My plan is to wait there until the uncle 
 comes." 
 
 " That would be an excellent plan if you 
 wanted to marry the- uncle. If I were you, 
 Ned, I would go and speak with Miss Den- 
 ham, and then with the aunt, who will be 
 worth a dozen uncles if you enlist her on 
 your side. She doesn't seem unfriendly to 
 you." 
 
 " I will do that, Flemming," returned 
 Lynde, thoughtfully. "I am not sure that 
 Miss Denham would marry me. We are 
 disposing of her as if she could be had for
 
 THE DENHAMS. 131 
 
 the asking. I might lose everything by 
 being premature." 
 
 ' ' Premature ! I Ve a mind to stay over 
 and fall in love with her myself. I could 
 do it in a day and a half, and you have been 
 six weeks about it." 
 
 " Six weeks ! I sometimes think I have 
 loved her all my life," said Lynde. 
 
 From the Schweizerhof the young men 
 drove without speaking to the railway 
 station, which they reached just in time 
 for Flemming to catch his train. With 
 hurriedly exchanged promises to write each 
 other, the two parted on the platform. 
 Then Lynde in a serenely happy frame of 
 mind caused himself to be driven to the Rue 
 des Paquis, where he stopped at the chateau 
 of the French marquis, which looked re- 
 markably like a livery-stable, and arranged 
 for a certain travelling-carriage to be at the 
 door of the hotel the next morning at eight.
 
 132 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOCTXI. 
 
 IF there is in all the world as lovely a 
 day's ride as that from Geneva to 
 Chamouni, it must be the ride from Cha- 
 mouni to Geneva. Lynde would not have 
 made even this concession the next morning, 
 as a heavy-wheeled carriage, containing 
 three travellers and drawn by four stout 
 Savoy horses, rolled through the Grande 
 Place, and, amid a salvo of whip-lash and a 
 cloud of dust, took the road to Bonneville. 
 
 ' ' I did not think I cared very much for 
 Geneva," said Miss Denham, leaning from 
 the carriage side to look back at the little 
 Swiss capital set so prettily on the blue 
 edge of Lake Leman ; "I did not think I 
 cared for it at all ; yet I leave it with a 
 kind of home-leaving regret. 
 
 " That is because you found complete 
 repose there, I imagine," said Lynde. 
 " Geneva is blessed among foreign cities in 
 having no rich picture-galleries, or famous 
 cathedrals, or mouldy ruins covered all over
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. 1 33 
 
 with moss and history. In other places, 
 you know, one is distracted by the things 
 which it is one's imperative duty to see, 
 and by the feeling that a lifetime is too 
 short properly to see them. Coming from 
 the great Italian cities to Geneva is like 
 falling asleep after some prolonged mental 
 strain. I do not object to waking up and 
 leaving it, however. I should not mind 
 leaving Eden, in pleasant company, on such 
 a morning as this." 
 
 " The company, and I dare say the morn- 
 ing, are not insensible to your handsome 
 compliment, Mr. Lynde." 
 
 The morning was without flaw, and the 
 company, or at least that part of it repre- 
 sented by Miss Ruth Denham, had more 
 colour in its cheeks than usual, and its dark 
 eyes looked very dark and melting under 
 their long fringes. Mrs. Denham was also 
 of a high complexion, but, having a practical 
 turn of mind, she was wondering whether 
 the trunks, which rose like a monument 
 from the footboard of the vehicle, were 
 quite secure. It was a lumbering, comfort 
 able concern, with red and black wheels, 
 and a maroon body set upon complicated 
 springs. The back seat, occupied by the
 
 134 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 Denhams, was protected by a leather hood, 
 leaving the forward portion of the carriage 
 open. The other seat was amicably shared 
 between Lynde and a pile of waterproofs 
 and woollen wraps, essentials in Switzer- 
 land, but which the ladies doubtless would 
 have provided themselves if they had been 
 in the tropics. On the high box in front 
 sat the driver, speaking from time to time 
 in low, confidential tones to the four power- 
 ful black horses, whose harnesses were 
 lavishly hung with flaunting chamois -tails 
 and made merry with innumerable silver 
 bells. 
 
 For the last two weeks Lynde had been 
 impatiently looking forward to this journey. 
 The thought of having an entire day with 
 Miss Denham, on such terms of intimacy as 
 tacitly establish themselves between per- 
 sons travelling together in the same car- 
 riage, had softened the prospect of the final 
 parting at Chamouni ; though now he did 
 not intend they should separate there, un- 
 less she cruelly willed it. The nature of 
 Miss Denham's regard for him Lynde had 
 not fathomed. She had been frank and 
 friendly with him, as she might have been 
 with a cousin or a person much older than
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CH AMOUNT. 1 35 
 
 herself. As he told Flemming, he had 
 never had her a minute alone. The aunt 
 had always accompanied them on their brief 
 walks and excursions about Geneva ; when- 
 ever she had been unable to do so, the 
 excursion or the walk had been abandoned. 
 Lynde saw, among other gracious things in 
 this day's ride, a promising opportunity for 
 a tete-a-tete with Miss Denham. Here and 
 there, along the winding ascents, would be 
 tempting footpaths, short pine-shaded cuts 
 across the rocks, by which the carriage 
 could be intercepted further on. These five 
 or ten minutes' walks, always made en- 
 chanting by some unlooked-for grove, or 
 grotto, or cascade, were nearly certain to 
 lure Miss Ruth to her feet. Then he would 
 have her to himself, for Mrs. Denham seldom 
 walked when she could avoid it. To make 
 assurance doubly sure Lynde could almost 
 have wished her one of those distracting 
 headaches from which hitherto he had suf- 
 fered so keenly. 
 
 For the first few miles the road lay through 
 a succession of villas and cultivated gardens ; 
 indeed, these gardens and villas extend all 
 the way to Chime, where a thin ribbon of a 
 stream, the Foron, draws the boundary line
 
 I36 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 between the canton of Geneva and Savoy. 
 At this point the scenery begins, not too 
 aggressively, to be picturesque ; you catch 
 some neat views of the Voirons, and of the 
 range of the Jura lying on your right. Be- 
 yond is the village of Annemasse, and the 
 Chateau of Etrambiere, with its quartet of 
 towers, rises from the foot of the Petit- 
 Saleve in the bluish-grey distance. You no 
 longer see Mont Blanc, except at intervals. 
 Here and there a knot of hamlets clings to 
 some fir-dotted slope, or tries to hide itself 
 away in the bosom of a ravine. All these 
 Alpine villages bear the same resemblance 
 to each other as so many button-moulds of 
 different sizes. Each has its quaint little 
 church of stucco, surrounded by clusters of 
 grey and dingy-white headstones and crosses, 
 — like a shepherd standing in the midst of 
 his flock ; each has its bedrabbled main 
 street, with a great stone trough into which 
 a stream of ice-cold water is for ever flowing, 
 and where comely young women of sub- 
 stantial ankles, with their flaxen hair 
 braided down their backs, are for ever 
 washing linen ; each has its beggar, with 
 a goitre or a wooden leg, lying in wait for 
 you ; and each, in turn, with its purple and
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CH AMOUNT. 1 37 
 
 green and red tiled roofs, is charming to 
 approach and delightful to get away from. 
 
 After leaving Annemasse, the road runs 
 up the valley of the Arve and crosses a bridge 
 over the Menoge. Then comes the village 
 of Nangy, and then Contamines, beyond 
 which, on a bold height, stand the two 
 wrinkled, crumbling towers of the ancient 
 castle of Faucigny, whence the province 
 takes its name. It was at Nangy that a 
 pretty incident befell our travellers. On 
 the outskirts of the village they met fifty or 
 sixty school children marching three abreast, 
 the girls on one side of the road and the boys 
 on the other. The girls — each in a coarse 
 blue or yellow frock, with a snowy necker- 
 chief pinned over her bosom and a pig-tail 
 of hair hanging down her shoulders — seemed 
 for all the world like little old women ; and 
 not one of the little men appeared to be less 
 than a hundred and five years old. They 
 suggested a collection of Shems and Japhets, 
 with their wives, taken from a lot of toy 
 Xoah's arks. As the carriage rolled between 
 the two files, all the funny little women 
 bobbed a simultaneous courtesy, and all the 
 little old-fashioned men lifted their hats with 
 the most irresistible gravity conceivable.
 
 I38 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 " Fancy such a thing happening in the 
 United States ! " said Lynde. ' ' If we were 
 to meet such a crowd at home, half a dozen 
 urchins would immediately fasten themselves 
 to the hind axle, and some of the more play- 
 ful spirits would probably favour us with a 
 stone or two, or a snowball, according to the 
 season." 
 
 " There comes the cure, now," said Miss 
 Denham. " It is some Sunday-school fete. " 
 
 As the cur£, a florid, stout person, made 
 an obeisance and passed on, fanning him- 
 self leisurely with his shovel-hat, his simple 
 round face and white feathery hair put 
 Lynde in mind of the hapless old gentleman 
 whom he mistook for the country parson 
 that morning so long ago. Instantly the 
 whole scene rose before Lynde's vision. Per- 
 haps the character of the landscape through 
 which they were passing helped to make the 
 recollection very vivid. There was not a 
 cloud in the pale arch ; yonder were the far- 
 reaching peaks with patches of snow on 
 them, and there stretched the same rugged 
 forlorn hills, covered with dwarf bushes and 
 sentinelled with phantom-like pines. An 
 odd expression drifted across Lynde's coun- 
 tenance.
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. I39 
 
 " What are you smiling at, Mr. Lynde, 
 in that supremely selfish manner ? " inquired 
 Mrs. Denham, looking at him from under 
 her tilted sun-umbrella. 
 
 "Was I smiling? It was at those droll 
 little beggars. They bowed and courtesied 
 in an unconcerned, wooden way, as if they 
 were moved by some ingenious piece of 
 Swiss clock-work. The stiff old cure, 
 too, had an air of having been wound up 
 and set a-going. I could almost hear the 
 creak of bis mainspring. I Mas smiling at 
 that, perhaps, and thinking how strongly 
 the scenery of some portions of our own- 
 country resembles this part of Switzer- 
 land." 
 
 "Do you think so? I had not remarked 
 it." 
 
 ' ' This is not the least like anything in 
 the Adirondack region, for example,*' ob- 
 served Miss Ruth. 
 
 "It may be a mere fancy of mine," re- 
 turned Lynde. "However, we have simi- 
 lar geological formations in the mountainous 
 sections of Xew England ; the same uncom- 
 promising Gothic sort of pines ; the same 
 wintry bleakness that leaves its impress 
 even on the midsummer. A body of water
 
 140 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 tumbling through a gorge in New Hamp- 
 shire must be much like a body of water 
 tumbling through a gorge anywhere else." 
 
 " Undoubtedly all mountain scenery has 
 many features in common," Mrs. Denham 
 said ; ' ' but if I were dropped down on the 
 White Hills, softly from a balloon, let us 
 say, I should know in a second I was not 
 in Switzerland. " 
 
 "I should like to put you to the test in 
 one spot I am familiar with," said Lynde. 
 
 ' ' I should not like to be put to the test 
 just at present," rejoined Mrs. Denham. 
 "I am very simple in my tastes, and I 
 prefer the Alps." 
 
 "Where in New England will you see 
 such a picture as that?" asked Miss Ruth, 
 pointing to a village which lay in the heart 
 of the valley, shut in on the right by the 
 jagged limestone rocks of the Brezon and 
 on the left by the grassy slopes of the Mole. 
 
 ' ' Our rural towns lack colour and archi- 
 tecture," said Lynde. "They are mostly 
 collections of square or oblong boxes, painted 
 white. I wish we had just one village com- 
 posed exclusively of rosy-tiled houses, with 
 staircases wantonly running up on the out- 
 side, and hooded windows, and airy bal-
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. 1 41 
 
 conies hanging out here and there where you 
 don't expect them. I would almost over- 
 look the total lack of drainage which seems 
 to go along with these carved eaves ami 
 gables, touched in with their blues and 
 browns and yellows. This must be Bonne- 
 ville we are coming to. We change horses 
 here. " 
 
 In a few minutes they swept through an 
 avenue of noble trees, and stopped at the 
 door-step of an inn alive with passengers by 
 the diligence just arrived from Sallanches, 
 on its way to Geneva 
 
 Lynde was beginning to feel a trine out of 
 spirits. The journey thus far had been very 
 pleasant, but it had not wholly fulfilled his 
 expectations. The Denhams had occupied 
 themselves with the scenery ; they had not 
 been much inclined to talk ; and Lynde had 
 found no opportunity to make himself especi- 
 ally agreeable. They had spoken several 
 times of Flemming, in a vein of eulogy. 
 Lynde loved Flemming ; but Flemming as a 
 topic of conversation possessed no particular 
 advantage over landscape. Miss Denham 
 had never looked so lovely to Lynde as she 
 did this day ; he was glad to get her again 
 in that closely-fitting drab travelling-dress,
 
 142 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 laced up to the shapely white throat. A 
 sense of great comfort had stolen over him 
 the two or three times when she had sunk 
 back in the carriage cushions and let her 
 eyes dwell upon him contemplatively for a 
 moment. He was beginning to hate Mrs. 
 Denham, and he thoroughly loathed Bonne- 
 ville, where a polyglot crowd of tourists 
 came flocking into the small waiting-room 
 just as Miss Ruth was putting up her hair 
 and unconsciously framing for Lynde a 
 never-to-be-forgotten picture in the little 
 cracked inn-mirror. 
 
 Passengers by diligence usually dine at 
 Bonneville, a fact which Lynde had ascer- 
 tained when he selected Cluses, nine miles 
 beyond, as the resting-place for his own 
 party. They were soon on the road again, 
 with the black horses turned into roan, 
 traversing the level meadow lands between 
 the Brezon and the Mole. With each mile, 
 now, the landscape took on new beauty and 
 wildness. The superb mountains — some 
 with cloudy white turrets, some thrusting 
 out huge snow-powdered prongs, and others 
 tapering to steely dagger -points — hemmed 
 them in on every side. 
 
 Here they came more frequently on those
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. 1 43 
 
 sorrowful roadside cairns, surmounted by a 
 wooden cross with an obliterated inscription 
 and a shrivelled wreath, marking the spot 
 where some peasant or mountaineer had 
 been crushed by a land-slide or smothered 
 in the merciless winter drift. As the car- 
 riage approached Cluses, the road crept along 
 the lips of precipices and was literally over- 
 hung by the dizzy walls of the Brezon. 
 Crossing the Arve, — you are always crossing 
 the Arve or some mad torrent on your way 
 from Geneva to Chamouni, — the travellers 
 entered the town of Cluses and alighted at 
 one of those small Swiss hotels which con- 
 tinually astonish by their tidiness and excel- 
 lence. 
 
 In spite of the intermittent breeze wander- 
 ing down from the regions above the snow- 
 line, the latter part of the ride had been 
 intensely hot. The cool, shadowy room, 
 with its table ready laid for dinner near the 
 latticed window, was a welcome change to 
 the three dusty voyagers as they were 
 ushered into it by the German landlord, 
 whose round head thinly thatched with 
 whitey-brown hair gave him the appearance 
 of having been left out over night in a 
 hoar frost. It was a refreshment in itself
 
 144 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 to look at him, so crisp and cool, with that 
 blinding afternoon glare lying on the heated 
 mountain-slopes. 
 
 ' ' I could be contented here a month, " said 
 Mrs. Denham, throwing off her bonnet, and 
 seating herself in the embrasure of the 
 window. 
 
 ' ' The marquis allows us only three 
 quarters of an hour, " Lynde observed. ' ' He 
 says we cannot afford to lose much time if we 
 want to reach Chamouni before sundown." 
 
 " Chamouni will wait for us." 
 
 " But the sunset won't." 
 
 Lynde had a better reason than that for 
 wishing to press on. It was between there 
 and Magland, or, rather, just beyond Mag- 
 land, that he proposed to invite Miss 
 Denham to walk. The wonderful cascade 
 of Arpenaz, though it could be seen as well 
 from the carriage, was to serve as pretext. 
 Of course he would be obliged to include 
 Mrs. Denham in his invitation, and he had 
 sufficient faith in the inconsistency of woman 
 not to rely too confidently on her declining. 
 " As she never walks, she '11 come along 
 fast enough," was Lynde's grim reflection. 
 
 He had by no means resolved on what he 
 should say to Miss Ruth, if he got her alone.
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. 1 45 
 
 In the ten minutes' walk, which would he 
 almost equivalent to a first interview, he 
 could not say much. He could tell her 
 how grieved he was at the thought of the 
 approaching separation, and tell her in such 
 a manner as would leave her in no great 
 doubt as to the state of his feelings. But 
 whether he went so far as that was a pro- 
 blem which he intended to let chance solve 
 for him. 
 
 Lynde was standing on the inn steps with 
 his after-dinner cheroot, meditatively blow- 
 ing circles of smoke into the air, when the 
 carriage drove round from the stable and 
 the Denhams appeared in the door- way. 
 The young woman gave Lynde an ungloved 
 hand as he assisted her to the seat. The 
 slight pressure of her fingers and the touch 
 of her rings were possessions which he re- 
 tained until long after the carriage had 
 passed that narrow defile near the stalactite 
 cavern in the Balme, where a couple of 
 tiresome fellows insist on letting oft' a small 
 cannon for you, to awaken a very disoblig- 
 ing old Echo who refuses to repeat anything 
 more than twice. What a magic there is in 
 hands, — in some hands ! Lynde could have 
 held Mrs. Denham's hand a fortnight with-
 
 146 THE QUEEN OF SHEEA. 
 
 out getting anything so tangible as that 
 fleeting touch of Miss Ruth's. 
 
 "Is the grotto worth seeing?" Mrs. 
 Denhani asked, with a speculative glance 
 up the mountain side. 
 
 "It is an hour's hard climb, and scarcely 
 pays," replied Lynde, appalled by this 
 indication of Alpine enterprise. " I visited 
 it the first time I came over the road. You 
 get a good look at the peaks of Mont Douron 
 on the other side of the valley, and that 's 
 all : the grotto itself is not remarkable. 
 But I think it will be worth while to halt a 
 moment when we come to the fall of Nant 
 d"Arpenaz. That is really marvellous. It 
 is said to be nearly as fine as the Staub- 
 bach. " 
 
 As Miss Ruth leaned back in the cushions, 
 lazily fastening the third button of her glove 
 with a hair-pin, there was just the faintest 
 glimmer of humour in the eyes that looked 
 up into the young man's face. He was 
 being read, and he knew it ; his dark inten- 
 tions in regard to that waterfall were pro- 
 bably as legible to her as if they had been 
 printed in great-primer type on his forehead. 
 On two or three occasions at Geneva she 
 had wrested his unworded thought from him
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. 1 47 
 
 with the same effortless sorcery. Lyncle 
 evaded her look, and studied a spire-like 
 peak on his left. "I shall have an air of 
 detected villany now, when I ask her,"' 
 he mused. "That's the first shade of 
 coquetry I ever saw in her. If she accepts 
 my invitation without the aunt, she means 
 either to flirt with me or give me the 
 chance to speak to her seriously. Which is 
 it to be, Miss Ruth ? I wonder if she is 
 afraid of Mrs. Denham. Sometimes it seems 
 to me she would be a different girl if it were 
 not for the presence of the aunt." 
 
 By and by, at a bend of the road after 
 passing Magland, the waterfall became visi- 
 ble in the distance. The cascade of Xant 
 d'Arpenaz is one of the highest falls in 
 Savoy, and if it is not the most beautiful, 
 one can still well afford, having seen that, 
 not to see the others. It is not a large 
 volume of water, except when swollen by 
 rains, as it happened to be this day, but 
 its plunge from the dizzy brown cliff is the 
 gracefullest thing in the world. The curi- 
 ously stratified face of the precipice is con- 
 cave, and the water has a fall of several 
 hundred feet to reach the slope, which, 
 indeed, it seems never to reach ; for be-
 
 I48 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 fore the stream has accomplished half the 
 descent it is broken into fine spray, and 
 flaunts loosely in the wind .like a veil 
 of the most delicate lace, or, when the 
 sun-light drifts through it, a wondrously 
 wrought Persian scarf. There it appears 
 to hang, miraculously suspended in mid- 
 air, while in fact it descends in impercep- 
 tible vapours to the slope, where it re-forms 
 and becomes a furious little torrent that 
 dashes across the road under a bridge and 
 empties itself into the Arve. 
 
 The carriage-road skirts the base of the 
 mountain and offers numberless fine views 
 of the cascade as you approach or leave it. 
 It was directly in front of the fall, half a 
 mile distant, though it did not look so far, 
 that the driver, in obedience to previous 
 instruction from Lynde, drew up the horses 
 and halted. At that instant the sunshine 
 slanted across the fall and dashed it with 
 prismatic colours. 
 
 "It is almost too excpiisite to look at," 
 said Mrs. Denham. " It makes one doubt 
 one's own eyes." 
 
 "I saw it once," Lynde said, "when I 
 thought the effect even finer. I was in- 
 duced by some pleasant English people to
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOCXI. I49 
 
 Btop over night at Magland, and we walked 
 up here in the moon-rise. You can't imagine 
 anything so lovely as that long strip of gossa- 
 mer unfolding itself to the moonlight. There 
 was an English artist with us, who made a 
 sketch of the fall ; but he said a prettier 
 thing about it than his picture. " 
 
 " What was that ?" inquired Miss Ruth. 
 
 " He called it Penelope's web, because it 
 is always being unravelled and reknitted. " 
 
 " That artist mistook his profession.*' 
 
 " Folks often do," said Lynde. " I know 
 painters who ought to be poets, and poets 
 who ought to be bricklayers." 
 
 ' ' Why bricklayers ? " 
 
 " Because I fancy that bricklaying makes 
 as slight drain on the imagination as almost 
 any pursuit in life. Speaking of poets and 
 waterfalls, do you remember Byron's daring 
 simile in Manfred ? He compares a certain 
 waterfall at the foot of the Jungfrau to the 
 tail of the pale horse ridden by Death in the 
 Apocalypse. Mrs. Denham," said Lynde 
 abruptly, "the marquis tells me there's a 
 delightful short cut through the rocks here, 
 which strikes into the road a mile farther 
 on." 
 
 " Let us take it then," answered Mrs.
 
 150 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 Denham, settling herself comfortably in the 
 cushions. 
 
 " It is a footpath," explained Lynde. 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Our reputation as great American 
 travellers will suffer, Mrs,. Denham, if 
 we fail to do a bit of Switzerland on foot. 
 Rather than have that happen I would 
 undertake the expedition alone. It would 
 be mere martyrdom, though, without com- 
 pany." As Lynde turned the handle of the 
 carriage door and planted his foot on the 
 first step, he ventured a glance at Miss Ruth, 
 who was sitting there with a face as impene- 
 trable as that of the Memphian Sphinx. 
 
 " Certainly, if our reputation is at stake," 
 exclaimed Mrs. Denham, rising with alacrity. 
 Lynde could not help his clouded counte- 
 nance. "No," she added, slowly sinking 
 back into the seat, " I 've no ambition as an 
 explorer. I really have not. " 
 
 " And Miss Denham ?" said Lynde, draw- 
 ing a scarcely repressed breath of relief. 
 
 "Oh, Ruth can go if she likes," re- 
 plied Mrs. Denham, "provided it is not 
 too far. " 
 
 "It is hardly an eighth of a mile across," 
 said Lynde. "You will find us waiting for
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. 151 
 
 you at the opposite end of the cut, unless 
 you drive rapidly. It is more than a mile 
 by the road." 
 
 " Do you wish to go, Ruth ? " 
 
 Miss Denham hesitated an instant, and 
 then answered by rising impulsively and 
 giving her hand to Lynde. Evidently, her 
 first intention had been to refuse. In a 
 moment more she was standing beside him. 
 and the carriage was lazily crawling up the 
 hill with Mrs. Denham looking back through 
 her glass at the cascade. 
 
 A dozen rude steps, partly artificial and 
 partly formed by the strata of the limestone 
 bank, led from the roadside up to the open- 
 ing of the footway. For thirty or forty 
 yards the fern-fringed path was too narrow 
 to admit of two persons walking abreast. 
 Miss Denham, with her skirts gathered in 
 one hand, went first, picking her way over 
 the small loose stones rendered slippery by 
 the moss, and Lynde followed on in silence, 
 hardly able to realise the success of the ruse 
 which had come so near being a failure. 
 His companion was equally preoccupied. 
 Once she stopped for Lynde to detach her 
 dress from a grasping twig, and once to 
 pluck one of those pallid waxen flowers
 
 152 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 which sometimes dauntlessly find a footing 
 even among the snow-drifts of the higher 
 Alps. The air was full of the resinous 
 breath of the pines, whose boughs, meeting 
 and interlacing overhead, formed an ara- 
 besqued roof, through the openings of which 
 the afternoon sunshine sifted, as if through 
 stained glass. With the slender stems of 
 the trees rising on each side in the semi-twi- 
 light, the grove was like the transept of a 
 cathedral. It seemed a profanation to speak 
 in such a place. Lynde could have wan- 
 dered on for ever in contented silence, with 
 that tall, pliant figure in its severely-cut 
 drapery moving before him. As he watched 
 the pure outline defining itself against the 
 subdued light, he was reminded of a coloured 
 bas-relief he had seen on a certain Egyptian 
 vase in the Museum at Naples. Presently 
 the path widened, a brook babbled some- 
 where ahead among the rocks, and the 
 grove abruptly ended. As Lynde stepped 
 to Miss Denham's side he heaved a deep, 
 involuntary sigh. 
 
 "What a sigh, Mr. Lynde!" she cried, 
 swiftly turning upon him with a surprised 
 smile. ' ' It was scarcely complimentary. " 
 
 ' ' It was not exactly a compliment ; it was
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. 1 53 
 
 an unpremeditated monody on the death of 
 this day, which has flown too soon. ; ' 
 
 ' ' You are very ready with your monody ; 
 it yet lacks three or four hours of sunset, 
 when one might probably begin to lament. 
 I am enjoying it all too much to have a 
 regret." 
 
 "Do you know, I thought you were not 
 enjoying it — the journey, I mean ? You 
 have not spoken a hundred words since we 
 left Geneva."' 
 
 " That was a proof of my perfect enjoy- 
 ment, as you would know if you knew me 
 better. Fine scenery always affects me like 
 music, and, with Jessica, ' I am never merry 
 when I hear sweet music' Besides, Mr. 
 Lynde, I was forming a plan." 
 
 A pi 
 
 a ; I 
 
 " A dark conspiracy" — 
 
 " Is the spirit of Lucretia Borgia present ':" 
 
 — "in which you are to be chief con- 
 spirator, Mr. Lynde." 
 
 " Miss Denham, the person is dead, either 
 by steel or poison ; it is all one to me, — I 
 am equally familiar with both methods." 
 
 As the girl lifted up her eyes in a half- 
 serious, half-amused way, and gave him a 
 look in which gentleness and a certain
 
 154 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 shadow of hauteur were oddly blended, 
 Lynde started in spite of himself. It was the 
 very look of the poor little Queen of Sheba. 
 
 " With your bowl and dagger and 
 monody," said Miss Denham, breaking into 
 one of her rare laughs, " you are in full 
 tragedy this afternoon. I am afraid my 
 innocent plot will seem very tame to you in 
 the face of such dreadful things. " 
 
 " I promise beforehand to regard it as the 
 one important matter in the world. What 
 is it?" 
 
 "Nothing more than this : I want you to 
 insist that Aunt Gertrude and I ought to 
 make the ascent of Montanvert and visit 
 the Mer de Glace, — before Uncle Denham 
 arrives." 
 
 " Why, would he object ? " 
 
 " I do not think anything would induce 
 him to trust either of us on one of those 
 narrow mule-paths. " 
 
 " But everybody goes up Montanvert as 
 a matter of course. The bridle -way is 
 perfectly safe. " 
 
 ' ' Uncle Denham once witnessed a painful 
 accident on the Wetterhorn,— indeed, he 
 himself barely escaped death ; and any sug- 
 gestion of mountain climbing that cannot
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNL I 55 
 
 be done on wheels always meets a negative 
 from him. I suspect my aunt will not 
 strongly favour the proposal, but when 1 
 make it I shall depend on you to sustain 
 me." 
 
 " I shall surely do so, Miss Denham. 1 
 have had this same excursion in my mind 
 all along." 
 
 "I was wondering how I should get the 
 chance to ask the favour of you, when that 
 special Providence, which your friend Mr. 
 Flemming pretends not to believe in, man- 
 aged it for me." 
 
 "It wasn't I, then, but Providence, that 
 invited you to walk ? " 
 
 " It looks like it. Mr. Lynde." 
 
 " But at first you were disposed to reject 
 the providential aid." 
 
 " I hesitated about leaving Aunt Gertrude 
 alone." 
 
 "If you had refused me, there would have 
 been no end to my disappointment. This 
 walk, though it is sixty or seventy miles too 
 short, is the choicest thing in the whole 
 journey. " 
 
 "Come, Mr. Lynde, that is an improve- 
 ment on your sigh." 
 
 "Does it occur to you that this is the first
 
 150 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 time we have chanced to be alone together, 
 in all these weeks ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Ruth, simply, " it is the 
 first time." 
 
 " I am a great admirer of Mrs. Denhain — " 
 
 " I do not see how you can help being ; 
 she is charming, and she likes you." 
 
 " But sometimes I have wished that — that 
 Mr. Denham was here." 
 
 "Why?" asked Miss Ruth, regarding 
 him full in the face. 
 
 "Because then, may be, she would have 
 been less devoted to you." 
 
 Miss Denham did not reply for a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 " My aunt is very fond of me," she said, 
 gravely. "She never likes to have me 
 absent one hour from her side." 
 
 " I can understand that," said Lynde with 
 an innocent air. 
 
 The girl glanced at him quickly and went 
 on : " She adopted me when I was only 
 three years old ; we have never been separ- 
 ated since. She lived in Paris all the time 
 I was at school there, though she did not 
 like Paris as a residence. She would make 
 any sacrifice for me that a mother would 
 make for a daughter. She has been mother
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI. I 57 
 
 and sister to me. I cannot overpay her 
 devotion by any unselfishness of mine. " 
 
 As she spoke, Lynde caught a hateful 
 glimpse of the road through the stubby pine- 
 trees beyond. It appeared to him only two 
 minutes ago that he was assisting Miss 
 Denham to mount the stone steps at the other 
 extremity of the footpath ; and now he was 
 to lose her again. She was w r ith him alone 
 for perhaps the last time. 
 
 '• Miss Ruth !" said Lynde, with sudden 
 earnestness in his voice. He had never 
 before addressed her as Miss Ruth. She 
 raised her eyes furtively to his face. "Miss 
 Ruth—" 
 
 " Oh, there 's the carriage, Mr. Lynde !" 
 exclaimed Miss Denham, releasing the 
 arm she had accepted a few paces back, 
 and hurrying down the path, which here 
 narrowed again as at the entrance to the 
 grove. "And there is Aunt Gertrude," 
 she added, half-turning to Lynde, with a 
 rich bloom on her cheeks, " looking as dis- 
 tressed as if we had slipped over some 
 precipice. But we have not, have we, 
 Mr. Lynde ?" 
 
 "No, we haven't slipped over any preci- 
 jrices," answered Lynde, with a curt laugh.
 
 15b THE QUEEX OF SHEEA. 
 
 " I wish we had, he muttered to himself. 
 " She has dragged me through that grove 
 and over those stones, and, without prevent- 
 ing me, has not permitted me to breathe the 
 least word of love to her. I don't know how 
 she did it. That girl 's the most consummate 
 coquette I ever saw. I am a child in her 
 hands. I believe I 'm beginning to be afraid 
 of her." 
 
 Miss Ruth was already in the carriage, 
 pinning the Alpine flower to the corsage of 
 her aunt's dress, when Lynde reached the 
 steps. Mrs. Denham's features expressed 
 no very deep anxiety that he could discover. 
 That was clearly a fiction of Miss Ruth's. 
 Lynde resumed his place on the front seat, 
 and the horses started forward. He was 
 amused and vexed at the inconsequence of 
 his interview with Miss Denham, and did 
 not know whether to be wholly vexed or 
 wholly amused. He had, at least, broken 
 the ice, and it would be easier for him to 
 speak when another opportunity offered. 
 She had understood, and had not repulsed 
 him ; she had merely evaded him. Perhaps 
 he had been guilty of a mismove in attempt- 
 ing to take her at a disadvantage. He was 
 too discreet to dream of proposing any more
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOTJNI. 259 
 
 walks. A short cut was plainly not the most 
 direct way to reach Miss Denham. 
 
 She was in livelier spirits now than she had 
 been in at any time during the day. " The 
 exercise has done you good, Ruth," re- 
 marked Mrs. Denham ; "I am sorry I did 
 not accept Mr. Lynde's invitation myself." 
 Mr. Lynde was also politely sorry, and Miss 
 Ruth contributed her regrets with an em- 
 phasis that struck Lynde as malicious and 
 overdone. 
 
 Shortly before arriving at St. Martin, 
 Miss Ruth broached her Montanvert pro- 
 ject, which, as she had prophesied, was 
 coldly received by the aunt. Lynde hast- 
 ened to assure Mrs. Denham that the ascent 
 was neither dangerous nor difficult. Even 
 guides were not necessary, though it was 
 convenient to have them to lead the animals. 
 On the way up there were excellent views 
 of the Fk'gere and the Brevent. There was 
 a capital inn at the summit, where they 
 could lunch, and from the cliff behind the 
 inn one could look directly down on the 
 Mer de Glace. Then Lynde fell back upon 
 his Murray and Baedeker. It was here that 
 Professor Tyndall spent many weeks, at 
 different times, investigating the theory of
 
 l60 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 glacier motion ; and the Englishman's hut, 
 which Goethe mentions in his visit to the 
 scene in 1779, was still standing. Miss 
 Ruth begged with both eyes' ; the aunt 
 wavered, and finally yielded. As a con- 
 tinuance of fine weather could not be de- 
 pended on, it was agreed that they should 
 undertake the ascent the following morning 
 immediately after daybreak. Then the con- 
 versation dropped. 
 
 The magnificent scenery through which 
 their route now wound began to absorb 
 them. Here they crossed a bridge, span- 
 ning a purple chasm whose snake-like thread 
 of water could be heard hissing among the 
 sharp flints a hundred feet below ; now 
 they rattled through the street of a sleepy 
 village that seemed to have no reason for 
 being except its picturesqueness ; now they 
 were creeping up a tortuous steep gloomed 
 by menacing crags ; and now their way lin- 
 gered for miles along a precipice, over the 
 edge of which they could see the spear-like 
 tips of the tall pines reaching up from the 
 valley. 
 
 At the bridge between St. Martin and 
 Sallanches the dazzling silver peaks of Mont 
 Blanc, rising above the green pasturage of
 
 FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUXI. l6l 
 
 the Forclaz, abruptly revealed themselves 
 to the travellers, who fancied for the 
 moment that they were close upon the 
 mountain. It was twelve miles away in a 
 bee-line. From this point one never loses 
 sight of those vast cones and tapering 
 aiguille*. A bloom as delicate as that of the 
 ungathered peach was gradually settling on 
 all the fairy heights. 
 
 As the travellers drew nearer to the ter- 
 mination of their journey, they were less 
 and less inclined to converse. At every 
 turn of the sinuous road fresh splendours 
 broke upon them. By slow degrees the 
 glaciers became visible : first those of Gria 
 and Taconay ; then the Glacier des Bossons, 
 thrusting a crook of steel-blue ice far into 
 the valley ; and then — faintly discernible 
 in the distance, and seemingly a hand's 
 breadth of snow framed by the sombre 
 gorge — the Glacier des Bois, a frozen estu- 
 ary of the Mer de Glace. 
 
 The twilight was now falling. For the 
 last hour or more the three inmates of the 
 carriage had scarcely spoken. They had 
 unresistingly given themselves over to the 
 glamour of the time and place. Along the 
 ravines and in the lower gorges and chasms 
 
 QS- L
 
 162 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 the grey dusk was gathering ; high over- 
 head the domes and pinnacles were each 
 instant taking deeper tinges of rose and 
 violet. It seemed as if a wOrd loudly or 
 carelessly uttered would break the spell of 
 the alpyliihen. It was all like a dream, and 
 it was in his quality of spectral figure in a 
 dream that the driver suddenly turned on 
 the box, and, pointing over his shoulder 
 with the handle of his whip said, — 
 " Chamouni ! "
 
 HONTANVEST. 1 63 
 
 IX. 
 
 MONTAXVERT. 
 
 THE mist was still lingering in the valleys, 
 though the remote peaks had been 
 kindled more than an hour by the touch of 
 sunrise. As Lynde paced up and down the 
 trottoir in front of the Couronne hotel, he 
 drew out his watch from time to time and 
 glanced expectantly towards the hotel 
 entrance. In the middle of the street stood 
 a couple of guides, idly holding the bridles 
 of three mules, two of which were furnished 
 with side-saddles. It was nearly half an 
 hour past the appointment, and the Denhams, 
 who had retired at eight o'clock the night 
 before in order to be fresh for an early start 
 up the mountain, had made no sign. Lynde 
 himself had set the lark an example that 
 morning by breakfasting by candle-light. 
 Here were thirty minutes lost. He quick- 
 ened his pace up and down in front of the 
 hotel, as if his own rapidity of movement 
 would possibly exert some occult influence in 
 hastening the loiterers ; but another quarter
 
 I64 THE QUEEN' OF SHEBA. 
 
 of an hour dragged on without bringing 
 them. 
 
 Lynde was impatiently consulting his 
 watch for the twentieth tinie when Miss 
 Denham's troubled face showed itself in the 
 door-way. 
 
 "Isn't it too bad, Mr. Lynde? Aunt 
 Gertrude can't go ! " 
 
 " Can't go ! " faltered Lynde. 
 
 ' ' She has a headache from yesterday's 
 ride. (She got up, and dressed, but was 
 obliged to lie down again." 
 
 "Then that's the end of it, I suppose," 
 said Lynde, despondently. He beckoned to 
 one of the guides. 
 
 "I don't know," said Miss Denham, 
 standing in an attitude of irresolution on the 
 upper step, with her curved eyebrows drawn 
 together like a couple of blackbirds touching 
 bills. " I don't know what to do . . . she 
 insists on our going. I shall never forgive 
 myself for letting her see that I was disap- 
 pointed. She added my concern for her 
 illness to my regret about the excursion, 
 and thought me more disappointed than I 
 really was. Then she declared she would go 
 in spite of her headache . . . unless I 
 went. "
 
 MONTANVERT. 1 65 
 
 The gloom which had overspread Lynde's 
 countenance vanished. 
 
 " It is not one of her severest turns," con- 
 tinued Miss Ruth, ceasing to be a statue on 
 a pedestal and slowly descending the hotel 
 steps with her waterproof trailing from her 
 left arm, "and she is quite capable of exe- 
 cuting her threat. What shall we do, Mr. 
 Lynde ? " 
 
 " I think we had better try the mountain, 
 — for her sake, : ' answered Lynde. " We 
 need not attempt the Mer de Glace, you 
 know ; that can be left for another day. 
 The ascent takes only two hours, the descent 
 half an hour less ; we can easily be back in 
 time for lunch. " 
 
 ; ' Then let us do that." 
 
 Lynde selected the more amiable-looking 
 of the two mules with side-saddles, dismissed 
 one of the guides after a brief consultation, 
 and helped Miss Denham to mount. In at- 
 tending to these preliminaries Lynde had suf- 
 ficient mastery over himself not to make any 
 indecorous betrayal of his intense satisfaction 
 at the turn affairs had taken. Fortune had 
 given her into his hands for five hours ! She 
 should listen this time to what he had to say 
 though the mountain should fall.
 
 1 66 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 At a signal from Lynde the remaining 
 guide led the way at a brisk pace through 
 the bustling town. In front of the various 
 hotels were noisy groups of tourists about to 
 set forth on pilgrimages, some bound for the 
 neighbouring glaciers and cascades, and 
 others preparing for more distant and more 
 hardy enterprises. It was a perfect Babel 
 of voices, — French, Scotch, German, Italian, 
 and English ; with notes of every sort of 
 patois, — above which the strident bass of 
 the mules soared triumphantly at intervals. 
 There are not many busier spots than 
 Chamouni at early morning in the height 
 of the season. 
 
 Our friends soon left the tumult and con- 
 fusion behind them, and were skirting the 
 pleasant meadows outside of the town. 
 Passing by the way of the English church, 
 they crossed to the opposite bank of the 
 Arve, and in a few minutes gained the 
 hamlet lying at the foot of Montanvert. 
 Then the guide took the bridle of Miss 
 Ruth's mule and the ascent began. The 
 road stretches up the mountain in a suc- 
 cession of zigzags with sharp turns. Here 
 and there the path is quarried out of the 
 begrudging solid rock ; in places the terrace
 
 MONTANVKRT. 167 
 
 is several yards wide and well wooded, but 
 for the most part it is a barren shelf with a 
 shaggy wall rising abruptly on one hand 
 and a steep slope descending on the other. 
 Higher up, these slopes become quite re- 
 spectable precipices. A dozen turns, which 
 were accomplished in unbroken silence, 
 brought the party to an altitude of several 
 hundred feet above the level. 
 
 " I — I don't know that I wholly like it," 
 Bald Miss Ruth, holding on to the pommel 
 of her saddle and looking down into the 
 valley, checkered with fields and criss- 
 crossed with shining rivulets. "Why do 
 the nmles persist in walking on the very 
 edge?*' 
 
 "That is a trick they get from carrying 
 panniers. You are supposed to be a pan- 
 nier, and the careful animal doesn't want 
 to brush you off against the rocks. See 
 this creature of mine ; he has that hind 
 hoof slipping over the precipice all the 
 while. But lie '11 not slip ; he 's as sure- 
 footed as a chamois, and has no more taste 
 for tumbling off the cliff than you have. 
 These mules are wonderfully intelligent. 
 Observe how cautiously they will put foot 
 on a loose stone, feeling all around it. "
 
 I 68 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 "I wish they were intelligent enough to 
 be led in the middle of the path," said Miss 
 Ruth, " but I suppose the guide knows." 
 
 " You may trust to him ; he is a person 
 of varied accomplishments, the chief of 
 which is he doesn't understand a word of 
 English. So you can scold, or say any- 
 thing you like, without the least reserve. 
 I picked him out for that," added Lynde 
 with a bland smile. " His comrade was a 
 linguist." 
 
 " If I have anything disagreeable to say," 
 replied Miss Ruth, with another bland smile, 
 " I shall say it in French." 
 
 The guide, who spoke four languages, in- 
 cluding English, never changed a muscle. 
 Lynde, just before starting, had closely 
 examined the two guides on their lingual 
 acquirements — and retained the wrong man. 
 
 "I trust you will have no occasion, Miss 
 Denham, to be anything but amiable, and 
 that you will begin by granting me a favour. 
 Will you ? " 
 
 "Cela depend." 
 
 "There you go into French! I haven't 
 offended you ? " 
 
 "0 no. What is the favour? — in Eng- 
 lish.'
 
 MONTANVERT. 1 69 
 
 "That you will let me call you Miss 
 Bath, instead of Miss Denham. - ' 
 
 "I haven't the slightest objection, Mr. 
 Lynde." 
 
 " Thanks. And now I want you — " 
 
 " What, another favour ? " 
 
 " Of course. Who ever heard of one 
 favour? " 
 
 " To be sure ! What is the second ? " 
 
 " I want you should be a little sorry 
 when all this comes to an end." 
 
 "You mean when we leave Chamouni ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I shall be sorry then," said Miss Bath, 
 frankly ; "but I am not going to be sorry 
 beforehand." 
 
 There was something very sweet to Lynde 
 in her candour, but there was also something 
 that restrained him for the moment from 
 being as explicit as he had intended. He 
 rode on a while without speaking, watching 
 the girl as the mule now and then turned 
 the sharp angle of the path and began a new- 
 ascent. This movement always brought her 
 face to face with him a moment. — she on the 
 grade above, and he below. Miss Ruth had 
 grown accustomed to the novel situation, 
 and no longer held on by the pommel of
 
 I70 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 the saddle. She sat with her hands folded 
 in her lap, pliantly lending herself to the 
 awkward motion of the animal. Over her 
 usual travelling-habit she had thrown the 
 long waterproof, which reached to her feet. 
 As she sat there in a half-listless attitude 
 she was the very picture of the Queen of 
 Sheba seated upon Deacon Twombly's mare. 
 Lyncle could not help seeing it ; but he was 
 schooling himself by degrees to this fortui- 
 tous resemblance. It was painful, but it 
 was inevitable, and he would get used to it 
 in time. "Perhaps," he mused, "if Iliad 
 never had that adventure with the poor in- 
 sane girl, I might not have looked twice at 
 Miss Denham when we met — and loved her. 
 It was the poor little queen who shaped my 
 destiny, and I oughtn't to be ungrateful." 
 He determined to tell the story to Miss Ruth 
 some time when a fitting occasion offered. 
 
 It was only when the likeness flashed upon 
 Lynde suddenly, as it had done in the grove 
 the previous day, that it now had the power 
 to startle him. At the present moment it 
 did not even seriously annoy him. In an 
 idle, pensive way he noted the coincidence 
 of the man leading the mule. The man was 
 Morton and the mule was Mary ! Lynde
 
 MOXTANVERT. I 7 I 
 
 smiled to himself at the reflection that Mary 
 would probably not accept the analogy with 
 very good grace if she knew about it. This 
 carried him to Ri vermouth ; then he thought 
 of Cinderella's slipper, packed away in the 
 old hair-trunk in the closet, and how per- 
 fectly the slipper would fit one of those feet 
 which a floating fold of the waterproof that 
 instant revealed to him — and he was in 
 Switzerland again. 
 
 "Miss Ruth," he said, looking up quickly 
 and urging his mule as closely behind hers 
 as was practicable, "what are your plans to 
 be when your uncle comes ? " 
 
 "When my uncle comes we shall have 
 no plans, — Aunt Gertrude and I. Uncle 
 Denham always plans for everybody." 
 
 " I don't imagine he will plan for me," said 
 Lynde. gloomily. "I wish he would, for I 
 shall not know what to do with myself . " 
 
 " I thought you were going to St. Peters- 
 burg." 
 
 " I have given that up." 
 
 "It's to be Northern Germany, then ? " 
 
 ' ' No, I have dropped that idea, too. 
 Will Mr. Denham remain here any time ? " 
 
 " Probably not long." 
 
 " What is to become of me after you are
 
 172 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 gone ! " exclaimed Lynde. " When I think 
 of Mr. Denham sweeping down on Chamouni 
 to carry you off, I am tempted to drive this 
 mule straight over the brink of one of these 
 precipices ! " 
 
 The girl leaned forward, looking at the 
 rocky wall of the Flegere through an open- 
 ing in the pines, and made no reply. 
 
 "Miss Ruth," said Lynde, "I must 
 speak ! " 
 
 "Do not speak," she said, turning upon 
 him with a half-imperious, half-appealing 
 gesture, "I forbid you;" and then, more 
 gently, ' ' We have four or five days, perhaps 
 a week, to be together ; we are true, frank 
 friends. Let us be just that to the end." 
 
 "Those are mercifully cruel words," 
 returned the young man, with a dull pain 
 at his heart. " It is a sweet way of saying 
 a bitter thing." 
 
 "It is a way of saying that your friend- 
 ship is very dear to me, Mr. Lynde," she 
 replied, sitting erect in the saddle, w T ith the 
 brightness and the blackness deepening in 
 her eyes. "I wonder if I can make you 
 understand how I prize it. My life has not 
 been quite like that of other girls, partly 
 because I have lived much abroad, and partly
 
 MONTANVERT. 1 73 
 
 because I have Leen very delicate ever since 
 my childhood ; I had a serious lung-trouble 
 then, which has never left me. You would 
 not think it, to look at me. Perhaps it is 
 the anxiety I have given Aunt Gertrude 
 which has made her so tenacious of my affec- 
 tion that I have scarcely been permitted to 
 form even those intimacies which girls form 
 among themselves. I have never known 
 any one — any gentleman — as intimately as 
 I have known you. She has let me have 
 you for my friend." 
 
 "But, Miss Ruth— " 
 
 " Mr. Lynde," she said, interrupting him, 
 ' ' it was solely to your friendship that my 
 aunt confided me to-day. I should be de- 
 ceiving her if I allowed 3-011 to speak as — as 
 you were speaking." 
 
 Lynde saw his mistake. He should have 
 addressed himself in the first instance to 
 the aunt. He had been lacking in proper 
 regard for the convenances, forgetting that 
 Ruth's education had been different from 
 that of American girls. At home, if you 
 love a girl you tell her so ; over here, you 
 go and tell her grandmother. Lynde 
 dropped his head and remained silent, re- 
 solving to secure an interview with Mrs.
 
 174 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 Denham that night if possible. After a 
 moment or two he raised his face. "Miss 
 Ruth," said he, " if I had to choose, I would 
 rather be your friend than any other 
 woman's lover." 
 
 " That is settled, then," she returned, 
 with heightened colour. ' ' We will not 
 refer to this again ! " and she brushed away 
 a butterfly that was fluttering about her 
 conceitedly in its new golden corselet. 
 
 Meanwhile the guide marched on stolidly 
 with Ruth's reins thrown loosely over the 
 crook of his elbow. In his summer courses 
 up and down the mountain, the man, with 
 his four languages, had probably assisted 
 dumbly at much fugitive love-making and 
 many a conjugal passage- at-arms. He took 
 slight note of the conversation between the 
 two young folks ; he was clearly more inter- 
 ested in a strip of black cloud that had 
 come within the half hour and hung itself 
 over the Aiguille du Dru. 
 
 The footpath and the bridle-road from 
 Chamouni unite at the Caillet, a spring of 
 fresh water half-way up the mountain. 
 There the riders dismounted and rested five 
 or six minutes at a rude hut perched like a 
 brown bird under the cliff.
 
 MONTANVERT. 1 75 
 
 "I've the fancy to go on foot the rest 
 of the distance," Lynde remarked, as he 
 assisted Ruth into the saddle again. 
 
 " Then I '11 let you lead the mule, if you 
 will," said Ruth. "I am not the least 
 afraid." 
 
 " That is an excellent idea ! Why did 
 you not think of it sooner ? I shall expect 
 a buonamano, like a real guide, you know." 
 
 " I will give it you in advance," she said 
 gaily, reaching forward and pretending to 
 hold a coin between her thumb and finger. 
 
 Lynde caught her hand and retained it an 
 instant, but did not dare to press it. He 
 was in mortal fear of a thing which he could 
 have crushed like a flower in his palm. 
 
 The young man drew the reins over his 
 arm and moved forward, glancing behind 
 him at intervals to assure himself that his 
 charge was all right. As they approached 
 the summit of the mountain the path took 
 abrupter turns, and was crossed in number- 
 less places by the channels of winter ava- 
 lanches, which had mown down great pines 
 as if they had been blades of grass. Here 
 and there a dry water-course stretched 
 like a wrinkle along the scarred face of 
 the hill.
 
 176 THE QUEEX OF SHEBA. 
 
 " Look at that, Miss Ruth !" cried Lynde, 
 cliecking the mule and pointing to a slope 
 far below them. 
 
 Natiire, who loves to do a gentle thing 
 even in her most savage moods, had taken 
 one of those empty water-courses and filled 
 it from end to end with forget-me-nots. As 
 the wind ruffled the millions of petals, this 
 bed of flowers, only a few inches wide but 
 nearly a quarter of a mile in length, looked 
 like a flashing stream of heavenly blue 
 water rushing down the mountain-side. 
 
 By and by the faint kling-kling of a cow- 
 bell sounding far up the height told the 
 travellers that they were nearing the 
 plateau. Occasionally they descried a 
 herdsman's chalet, pitched at an angle 
 against the wind on the edge of an arete, or 
 clinging like a wasp's-nest to some jutting 
 cornice of rock. After making four or five 
 short turns, the party passed through a 
 clump of scraggy, wind-swept pines, and 
 suddenly found themselves at the top of 
 Montanvert. 
 
 A few paces brought them to the Pavil- 
 ion, a small inn kept by the guide Couttet. 
 Here the mules were turned over to the 
 hostler, and Miss Ruth and Lynde took a
 
 MOXTAXVERT. 1 77 
 
 quarter of an hour's rest, examining the 
 collection of crystals and moss-agates and 
 horn-carvings which M. Couttet has for 
 show in the apartment that serves him as 
 salon, cafe, and museum. Then the two 
 set out for the rocks overlooking the glacier. 
 
 The cliff rises precipitously two hundred 
 and fifty feet above the frozen sea, whose 
 windings can be followed, for a distance of 
 five miles, to the walls of the Grandes and 
 Petites Jorasses. Surveyed from this height, 
 the Mer de Glace presents the appearance 
 of an immense ploughed field covered by a 
 fall of snow that has become dingy. The 
 peculiar corrugation of the surface is scarcely 
 discernible, and one sees nothing of the 
 wonderful crevasses, those narrow and often 
 fathomless partings of the ice, to look into 
 which is like looking into a split sapphire. 
 The first view from the cliff is disappointing, 
 but presently the marvei of it all assails and 
 possesses one. 
 
 " I should like to go down on the ice," said 
 Ruth, after regarding the scene for several 
 minutes in silence. 
 
 "We must defer that to another day." 
 said Lynde. " The descent of the moraine 
 from this point is verv arduous, and is seldom 
 
 Q. s. M
 
 178 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 attempted by ladies. Besides, if we do any- 
 thing, we ought to cross the glacier and go 
 home by the way of the Mauvais Pas. We 
 will do that yet. Let us sit upon this 
 boulder and talk. " 
 
 ' ' What shall we talk about ? I don't 
 feel like talking." 
 
 " I '11 talk to you. I don't know of what. 
 . . . I will tell you a story." 
 
 ' ' A story, Mr. Lynde ? I like stories as 
 if I were only six years old. But I don't 
 like those stories which begin with ' Once 
 there was a little girl, ' who alwaj- s turns out 
 to be the little girl that is listening." 
 
 " Mine is not of that kind," replied Lynde, 
 with a smile, steadying Miss Ruth by the 
 hand as she seated herself on the boulder ; 
 "and yet it touches on you indirectly. It 
 all happened long ago." 
 
 ' ' It concerns me, and happened long ago ? 
 I am interested already. Begin ! " 
 
 " It was in the summer of 1872. I was a 
 clerk in a bank then, at Bi vermouth, and 
 the directors had given me a vacation. I 
 hired a crazy old horse and started on a 
 journey through New Hampshire. I didn't 
 have any destination ; I merely purposed to 
 ride on and on until I got tired, and then
 
 MONTAN VERT. J 79 
 
 ride home again. The weather was beauti- 
 ful, and for the first three or four days I 
 never enjoyed myself better in my life. The 
 flowers were growing, the birds were singing, 
 — the robins in the sunshine and the whip- 
 poor-wills at dusk, — and the hours were not 
 long enough for me. At night I slept in a 
 tumble-down barn, or anywhere, like a born 
 tramp. I had a mountain brook for a wash- 
 basin and the west wind for a towel. Some- 
 times I invited myself to a meal at a farm- 
 house when there wasn't a tavern handy ; 
 and when there wasn't any farm-house, and 
 I was very hungry, I lay down under a tree 
 and read in a book of poems. " 
 
 " Oh, that was just delightful !" said Ruth, 
 knitting the fingers of both hands over one 
 knee and listening to him with a child-like 
 abandon which Lynde found bewitching. 
 
 " On the fourth day — there are some 
 people crossing on the ice," said Lynde, in- 
 terrupting himself. 
 
 " Never mind the people on the ice !" 
 
 "On the fourth day I came to a wild lo- 
 cality among the Ragged Mountains, where 
 there was not a human being nor a house to 
 be seen. I had got up before breakfast was 
 ready that morning, and I was quite anxious
 
 I SO THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 to see the smoke curling up from some 
 kitchen chimney. Here, as I mounted a hill- 
 side, the saddle-girth broke and I jumped 
 off to fix it. Somehow, I don't know pre- 
 cisely how, the horse gave a plunge, jerked 
 the reins out of my hands, and started on a 
 dead run for Rivermouth." 
 
 "That wasn't very pleasant," suggested 
 Ruth. 
 
 " Not a bit. I couldn't catch the animal, 
 and I had the sense not to try. I climbed 
 to the brow of the hill and was not sorry to 
 see a snug village lying in the valley." 
 
 ' ' What village was that ? " 
 
 ' ' I don't know to this day — with any 
 certainty. I didn't find out then, and 
 afterwards I didn't care to learn. Well, 
 I shouldered my traps and started for the 
 place to procure another horse, not being 
 used to going under the saddle myself. I 
 had a hard time before I got through ; but 
 that I shall not tell you about. On my way 
 to the village I met a young girl. This young 
 girl is the interesting part of the business. " 
 
 " She always is, you know." 
 
 "She was the most beautiful creature I 
 had ever seen — up to that time. She was 
 dressed all in white, and looked like an
 
 M0XT.4NVERT. l8l 
 
 angel. I expected she would spread wing 
 and vanish before I could admire her half 
 enough ; but she did not. The moment she 
 saw me she walked straight to the spot 
 where I stood, and looked me squarely in 
 the face." 
 
 " Wasn't that rather rude — for an angel ? " 
 
 ' ' You wouldn't have thought so. She 
 did it like a young goddess with the su- 
 preme prerogative to flash herself that way 
 on mortals by the roadside." 
 
 " Oh, she was a young goddess as well as 
 an angel." 
 
 ' ' After she had looked me in the eye a 
 second," continued Lynde, not heeding the 
 criticism, " she said — what do you suppose 
 she said ? " 
 
 ' ' How can I imagine ? " 
 
 "You could not, in a thousand years. 
 Instead of saying, ' Good-morning, sir,' and 
 dropping me a courtesy, she made herself 
 very tall and said, with quite a grand air, 
 ' I am the Queen of Sheba ! ' Just fancy it. 
 Then she turned on her heel and ran up the 
 road." 
 
 "Oh, that was very rude. Is this a true 
 story, Mr. Lynde ? " 
 
 " That is the sad part of it, Miss Ruth.
 
 1 82 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 This poor child had lost her reason, as I 
 learned subsequently. She had wandered 
 out of an asylum in the neighbourhood. 
 After a while some men came and took her 
 back again, — on my horse, which they had 
 captured in the road. " 
 
 ' ' The poor, poor girl ! I am sorry for 
 her to the heart. Your story began like a 
 real romance ; is that all of it ! It is sad 
 enough." 
 
 " That is all. Of course I never saw her 
 afterwards." 
 
 "But you remembered her, and pitied 
 her?" 
 
 " For a long time, Miss Ruth." 
 
 " I like you for that. But what has this 
 to do with me ? You said — " 
 
 " The story touched on you indirectly ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, so it does; I will tell you how. 
 This poor girl was beautiful enough in your 
 own fashion to be your sister, and when I 
 first saw you — " 
 
 " Monsieur," said the guide, respectfully 
 lifting a forefinger to his hat as he ap- 
 proached, " I think it looks like rain." 
 
 The man had spoken in English. Ruth 
 went crimson to the temples, and Lynde's
 
 MONTAXVERT. I S3 
 
 face assumed a comical expression of dis- 
 may. 
 
 "Looks like rain," he repeated mechani- 
 cally. "I thought you told me you did 
 not understand English ? " 
 
 "Monsieur is mistaken. It is Jean Mac- 
 quart that does not spik English." 
 
 " Very well," said Lynde ; " if it is going 
 to rain we had better be moving. It would 
 not be pleasant to get blockaded up here by 
 a storm — or rather it would ! Are the 
 animals ready ? " 
 
 " They are waiting at the foot of the path, 
 monsieur." 
 
 Lynde lost no time getting Ruth into the 
 saddle, and the party began their descent, 
 the guide again in charge of the girl's mule. 
 On the downward journey they unavoidably 
 faced the precipices, and the road appeared to 
 them much steeper than when they ascended. 
 
 "Is it wind or rain, do you think?' 
 asked Lynde, looking at a wicked black 
 cloud that with angrily-curled white edges 
 was lowering itself over the valley. 
 
 " I think it is both, monsieur." 
 
 "How soon?" 
 
 " I cannot know. Within an hour, 
 surely."
 
 184 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 ' ' Perhaps we were wrong to attempt 
 going down," said Lynde. 
 
 " Monsieur might be kept at Couttet's 
 one, two — three days. But, if monsieur 
 wishes, I will go on and tell the friends of 
 mademoiselle that you are detained." 
 
 "0 no ! " cried Ruth, filled with horror 
 at the suggestion. ' ' We must return. I 
 shall not mind the rain, if it comes. " 
 
 As she spoke, a loose handful of large 
 drops rustled through the pine boughs over- 
 head, and softly dashed themselves against 
 the rocks. 
 
 " It has come," said Lynde. 
 
 "I have my waterproof," returned the 
 girl. " I shall do very well. But you — " 
 
 The sentence was cut short by a flash of 
 lightning, followed by a heavy peal of 
 thunder that rolled through the valley and 
 reverberated for one or two minutes among 
 the hills. The guide grasped the reins close 
 iip to the bits, and urged the mule forward 
 at a brisk trot. The sky cleared, and for a 
 moment it looked as if the storm had drifted 
 elsewhere ; but the party had not advanced 
 twenty paces before there was a strange 
 rustling sound in the air, and the rain came 
 down. The guide whipped off a coarse
 
 MOXTANVERT. I&5 
 
 woollen coat he wore, and threw it over the 
 girl's shoulders, tying it by the sleeves 
 under her chin. 
 
 " Oh, you must not do that !'' she cried, 
 "you will catch your death !" 
 
 " Mademoiselle," he replied, laughing as 
 he gave another knot to the sleeves, "for 
 thirty-eight years, man and boy, I have been 
 rained upon and snowed upon — and voila !" 
 
 ' ; You 're a fine fellow, my friend, if you do 
 speak English," cried Lynde, "and I hope 
 some honest girl has found it out before 
 now. " 
 
 "Monsieur," returned the man, signing 
 himself with the cross, ' ' she and the little 
 one are in heaven. " 
 
 The rain came down in torrents ; it pat- 
 tered like shot against the rocks ; it beat the 
 air of the valley into mist. Except the path 
 immediately before them, and the rocky per- 
 pendicular wall now on their right and now 
 on their left, the travellers could distinguish 
 nothing through the blinding rain. Shortly 
 the wind began to blow, whistling in the stiff 
 pines as it whistles among the taut cordage of 
 a ship in a gale. At intervals it tore along the 
 salient zigzags and threatened to sweep the 
 mules off their legs. The flashes of lightning
 
 1 86 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 now followed each other in rapid succession, 
 and the thunder crashed incessantly through 
 the gorges. It appeared as if the great cones 
 and cromlechs were tumbling pell-mell from 
 every direction into the valley. 
 
 Though the situation of the three persons 
 on the mountain-side was disagreeable to 
 the last extent, they were exposed to only 
 one especial danger, — that from a land-slide 
 or a detached boulder. At every ten steps 
 the guide glanced up the dripping steep, and 
 listened. Even the mules were not without 
 a prescience of this peril. The sharpest 
 lightning did not make them wince, but at 
 the faintest sound of a splinter of rock or a 
 pebble rustling down the slope, their ears 
 instantly went forward at an acute angle. 
 The footing soon became difficult on account 
 of the gullies formed by the rain. In spite 
 of his anxiety concerning Ruth, Lynde could 
 not help admiring the skill with which the 
 sagacious animals felt their way. Each fore 
 hoof as it touched the earth seemed endowed 
 with the sense of fingers. 
 
 Lynde had dismounted after the rain set 
 in and was walking beside the girl's mule. 
 Once, as an unusually heavy clap of thunder 
 burst over their heads, she had impulsively
 
 MONTANVERT. 1S7 
 
 stretched out her hand to him ; he had 
 taken it, and still held it, covered by a fold 
 of the waterproof, steadying her so. He 
 was wet to the skin, but Ruth's double 
 wraps had preserved her thus far from any- 
 thing beyond the dampness. 
 
 "Are you cold?" he asked. Her hand 
 was like ice. 
 
 " Not very," she replied, in a voice ren- 
 dered nearly inaudible by a peal of thunder 
 that shook the mountain. A ball of crimson 
 fire hung for a second in the murky sky and 
 then shot into the valley. The guide 
 glanced at Lynde, as much as to say, " That 
 struck. " 
 
 They were rapidly leaving the wind above 
 them ; its decrease was noticeable as they 
 neared the Caillet. The rain also had lost 
 its first fury, and was falling steadily. 
 Here and there bright green patches of the 
 level plain showed themselves through the 
 broken vapours. Ruth declined to halt at 
 the Caillet ; her aunt would be distracted 
 about her, and it was better to take advan- 
 tage of the slight lull in the storm, and push 
 on. So they stopped at the hut only long 
 enough for Lynde to procure a glass of 
 cognac, a part of which he induced the girl
 
 1 88 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 to drink. Then they resumed their un- 
 comfortable march. 
 
 When Lynde again looked at his com- 
 panion he saw that her lips were purple, 
 and her teeth set. She confessed this time 
 to being very cold. The rain had at length 
 penetrated the thick wrappings and tho- 
 roughly chilled her. Lynde was in despair, 
 and began bitterly to reproach himself for 
 having undertaken the excursion without 
 Mrs. Denham. Her presence could not have 
 warded off the storm, but it would have 
 rendered it possible for the party to post- 
 pone their descent until pleasant weather. 
 Undoubtedly it had been his duty to leave 
 Miss Ruth at the inn and return alone to 
 Chamouni. He had not thought of that 
 when the guide made his suggestion. There 
 was now nothing to do but to hurry. 
 
 The last part of the descent was accom- 
 plished at a gait which offered the cautious 
 mules no chance to pick their steps. Lynde's 
 animal, left to its own devices, was following 
 on behind, nibbling the freshened grass. 
 But the road was not so rough, and the 
 stretches protected by the trees were in 
 good condition. In less than three quarters 
 of an hour from the half-way hut, the party
 
 MONTAXVERT. 1 89 
 
 were at the foot of the mountain, where 
 they found a close carriage which Mrs. Den- 
 ham had thoughtfully sent to meet them. 
 Benumbed with the cold and cramped bi- 
 nding so long in one position, the girl was 
 unable to stand when she was lifted from 
 the saddle. Lynde carried her to the car- 
 riage and wrapped her in a heavy afghan 
 that lay on the seat. They rode to the 
 hotel without exchanging a word. Lynde 
 was in too great trouble, and Ruth was too 
 exhausted to speak. She leaned back with 
 her eyes partially closed, and did not open 
 them until the carriage stopped. Mrs. Den- 
 ham stood at the hall door. 
 
 "Mr. Lynde! Mr. Lynde!" she said, 
 taking the girl in her arms. 
 
 The tone of reproach in her voice cut him 
 to the quick. 
 
 "He was in no way to blame, aunt," 
 said Ruth, trying to bring a smile to her 
 blanched face; "it was I who ivoirfd go." 
 She reached back her hand unperceived by 
 Mrs. Denham and gave it to Lynde. He 
 raised it gratefully to his lips, but as he 
 relinquished it and turned away he experi- 
 enced a sudden, inexplicable pang, — as if 
 he had said farewell to her.
 
 190 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 X. 
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 
 
 BY the time Lynde had changed his wet 
 clothing, the rain had turned into a 
 dull drizzle which folded itself like a curtain 
 about the valley. Mont Blanc, with its 
 piled-up acres of desolation, loomed through 
 the mist, a shapeless, immeasurable cloud, 
 within whose shadow the little town was to 
 live darkly, half blotted out, for the next 
 four days. 
 
 Lynde spent the afternoon between his 
 own chamber and the reading-room of the 
 hotel, wandering restlessly from one to the 
 other, and not venturing to halt at Mrs. 
 Denham's door to inquire after Ruth. 
 Though he held himself nearly guiltless in 
 what had occurred, Mrs. Denham's rebuking 
 tone and gesture had been none the less 
 intolerable. He was impatient to learn 
 Euth's condition, and was growing every 
 moment more anxious as he reflected on her 
 extreme delicacy and the severe exposure 
 she had undergone ; but he could not bring
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 191 
 
 himself just then to go to Mrs. Denham for 
 information. He concluded to wait until 
 he met her at dinner ; but Mrs. Denham did 
 not come down to the tabh-dliote. 
 
 The twilight fell earlier than usual, and 
 the long evening set in. Lynde smoked his 
 cigar gloomily at an open window looking 
 upon the street. It was deserted and dis- 
 mal. Even the shop across the way, where 
 they sold alpenstocks and wood-carvings 
 and knick-knacks in polished lapis, was 
 empty ; in pleasant weather the shop was 
 always crowded with curiosity-mongers. 
 
 The raw wind spitefully blew the rain into 
 Lynde's face as he looked out. "Quel 
 temps de loup !" sighed a polite little French 
 gentleman, making his unlighted cigarette 
 an excuse for addressing Lynde. The 
 wretched little French gentleman was perish- 
 ing with a desire to say a thousand graceful 
 things to somebody, but Lynde was in no 
 mood for epigrams. He gave his inter- 
 locutor a light, and sheered off. In a 
 corner of the reading-room was a tattered 
 collection of Tauchnitz novels ; Lynde 
 picked up one and tried to read, but the 
 slim types ran together and conveyed no 
 meaning to him. It was becoming plain
 
 192 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 that he was to have no communication with 
 the Denhams that night unless he assumed 
 the initiative. He pencilled a line on the 
 reverse of a visiting card and sent it up to 
 Mrs. Denham's parlour. The servant re- 
 turned with the card on his waiter. The 
 ladies had retired. Then Lynde took him- 
 self off to bed disconsolately. 
 
 It was nearly nine o'clock when he awoke 
 the following morning. The storm had not 
 lifted ; the colourless clouds were still let- 
 ting down a fine, vapoury rain that blurred 
 everything. As soon as he had break- 
 fasted, Lynde went to Mrs. Denham's 
 rooms. She answered his knock in per- 
 son and invited him by a silent gesture to 
 enter the parlour. He saw by the drawn 
 expression of her countenance that she had 
 not slept. 
 
 "Ruth is ill," she said in a low voice, 
 replying to Lynde's inquiry. 
 
 iC You do not mean very ill ?" 
 
 ' ' I fear so. She has passed a dreadful 
 night. I have had a doctor." 
 
 " Is it as serious as that ? What does he 
 say?" 
 
 " He says it is a severe cold, with symp- 
 toms of pneumonia ; but I do not think he
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 193 
 
 knows," returned Mrs. Denham, despair- 
 ingly. " I must despatch a courier to 1113- 
 husband ; our old family physician is now 
 with him at Paris. I have just received a 
 letter, and they are not coming this week ! 
 They must come at once. I do not know 
 how to telegraph them, as they are about 
 to change their hotel. Besides, I believe a 
 telegram cannot be sent from here ; the 
 nearest office is at Geneva. I must send 
 some messenger who will have intelligence 
 enough to find Mr. Denham wherever he 
 is." 
 
 "I will go." 
 
 "You?" 
 
 " Why not ? I shall waste less time than 
 another. There should be no mistake in 
 the delivery of this message. A courier 
 might get drunk, or be stupid. I can do 
 nothing here. If it had not been for me, 
 possibly this unfortunate thing would not 
 have happened. I am determined to go, 
 whether you consent or not." 
 
 "I shall be grateful to you all my life, 
 Mr. Lynde. I should not have thought of 
 asking such a favour. Euth says I was 
 rude to you yesterday. I did not mean to 
 be. I was distracted with anxiety at having 
 
 Q. s. N
 
 194 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 her out in such a storm. If there is any 
 blame in the matter it is entirely mine. 
 You forgive me ? " 
 
 " There is nothing to forgive, Mrs. Den- 
 ham ; blame rests on no one ; neither you 
 nor I could foresee the rain. Write a line 
 to Mr. Denham while I pack my valise ; I 
 shall be ready in ten minutes. Who is his 
 banker at Paris ? " 
 
 "I think he has none. " 
 
 " How do you address your letters ? " 
 
 "I have written but once since Mr. Den- 
 ham's arrival, and then I directed the letter 
 to the Hotel Walther. * 
 
 "He has probably left his new address 
 there. However, I shall have no difficulty 
 in finding him. Mrs. Denham " — Lynde 
 hesitated. 
 
 "Mr. Lynde?" 
 
 ' ' Can I not see her a moment ? " 
 
 "See Ruth?" 
 
 ' ' My request appears strange to you, 
 does it not? It would not appear strange 
 if you knew all." 
 
 ' ' All ? I don't understand you, " replied 
 Mrs. Denham, resting her hand on the back 
 of a chair and regarding him with slowly 
 dilating pupils.
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF .MONT BLANC. 195 
 
 '"If you knew how troubled I am — and 
 how deeply I love her." 
 
 " You love Ruth ! " 
 
 " More than I can tell you."' 
 
 "Have you told her?" Mrs. Denham 
 demanded. 
 
 "Not in so many words. " 
 
 Mrs. Denham slowly sank into the chair, 
 and for several seconds appeared completely 
 oblivious of the young man's presence ; then, 
 turning sharply on Lynde, and half rising, 
 she asked with a kind of fierceness, "Does 
 Ruth know it ? : ' 
 
 ' ' A woman always knows when she is 
 loved, I fancy. Miss Denham probably 
 knew it before I did." 
 
 Mrs. Denham made an impatient gesture 
 and subsided into the chair again. She re- 
 mained silent a while, staring at the pattern 
 of the carpet at her feet. 
 
 " Mr. Lynde," she said at length, " I was 
 not prepared for this. The possibility that 
 you might grow interested in my niece 
 naturally occurred to me at first. I was 
 pleased when I became convinced that the 
 acquaintance between you had resolved itself 
 into merely a friendly liking. I was thrown 
 off my guard by your seemingly frank man-
 
 I96 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 ner. I trusted you. You have been alone 
 with my niece but twice, — once for only ten 
 minutes. I will do you the justice to say 
 that you have made the most of those two 
 occasions." 
 
 " I made very little of those two occa- 
 sions," said Lynde, reflectively. 
 
 " I think you have been — treacherous ! " 
 
 ' ' I do not see what there can be of 
 treachery in my admiring Miss Denham," 
 he replied, with a flush. "I entered into 
 no compact not to admire her." 
 
 "Mr. Lynde, Mr. Denham will not ap- 
 prove of this. " 
 
 "Not at first, perhaps . . . but after- 
 wards ? " 
 
 "Neither now nor afterwards, Mr. Lynde." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " He has other views for Ruth," said Mrs. 
 Denham, coldly. 
 
 " Other views ! " repeated Lynde, paling. 
 " I thought her free." 
 
 " She is not free in that sense." 
 
 The assertion Ruth had made to him the 
 previous day on the mountain side, to the 
 effect that she had never known any gentle- 
 man as intimately as she had known him, 
 flashed across Lynde's memory. If Mr,
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 197 
 
 Denham had views for her, certainly Ruth 
 was either ignorant of them or opposed to 
 them. 
 
 " Is Miss Ruth aware of Mr. Denham'a 
 intentions regarding her?" 
 
 " I must decline to answer you, Mr. 
 Lynde," said Mrs. Denham, rising with 
 something like haughtiness in her manner. 
 
 " You are right. I was wrong to speak 
 at present. I cannot conceive what im- 
 pelled me ; it was neither the time nor the 
 place. I beg you to consider everything 
 unsaid, if you can, and I especially beg you 
 not to allude to this conversation in your 
 note to Mr. Denham. The one important 
 thing now is to have proper medical attend- 
 ance for your niece. The rest will take 
 care of itself." 
 
 Lynde bowed somewhat formally and was 
 turning away, when Mrs. Denham laid her 
 fingers lightly on the sleeve of his coat. 
 " I am sorry I have pained you," she said, 
 as if with a touch of remorse. 
 
 " I confess I am pained," he replied, with 
 the faintest smile, "but I am not discour- 
 aged, Mrs. Denham." 
 
 A quarter of an hour later Lynde was on 
 the way to Geneva. Life and the world
 
 I98 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 had somehow darkened for him within the 
 hour. It seemed to him incredible that 
 that was the same road over which he had 
 passed so joyously two days before. The 
 swollen torrents now rushed vengefully 
 through the arches of the stone bridges ; 
 the low-hanging opaque clouds pressed the 
 vitality out of the atmosphere ; in the 
 melancholy grey light the rain-soaked 
 mountains wore a human aspect of dolour. 
 He was not sorry when the mist gathered 
 like frost on the carriage windows, and shut 
 the landscape from his sight. 
 
 The storm had been terrible in Geneva 
 and in the neighbourhood. It was a scene 
 of devastation all along the road approaching 
 the town. Most of the trees in the suburbs 
 had been completely stripped of foliage by 
 the hailstones ; the leaves which still clung 
 to the bent twigs were slit as if volleys of 
 buckshot had been fired into them. But the 
 saddest thing to see was field after field of 
 rich grain mown within a few inches of the 
 ground by those swift icy sickles which no 
 man's hand had held. In the section of the 
 city through which Lynde passed to the 
 railway the streets were literally strewn with 
 broken tiles and chimney-pots. In some
 
 IN TIIK SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 199 
 
 places the brown and purple fragments 
 lay ankle-deep, like leaves in autumn. 
 Hundreds of houses had been unroofed and 
 thousands of acres laid waste in a single 
 night. It will take the poor of the canton 
 fifty years to forget the summer storm of 
 1875. 
 
 By noon the next day Lynde Mas in Paris. 
 As he stepped from the station and stood 
 under the blue sky in the sparkling Parisian 
 atmosphere, the gloom and desolation he 
 had left behind at Geneva and Chamouni 
 affected him like the remembrance of a night- 
 mare. For a brief space he forgot his sorrow- 
 ful errand ; then it came back to him with 
 its heaviness redoubled by the contrast. He 
 threw his valise on the seat of & fiacre stand- 
 ing near the cross-way, and drove to the 
 office of C4alignani in the Rue de Tiivoli, — 
 the morgue in which the names of all foreign 
 travellers are daily laid out for recognition. 
 The third name Lynde fell upon was that of 
 William Denham, Hotel Meurice. The 
 young man motioned to the driver to follow 
 him and halt at the hotel entrance, which 
 was only a few steps further in the arcade 
 facing the gardens of the Tuileries. 
 
 Mr. Denham was at breakfast in the small
 
 200 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 salon opening on the paved square formed 
 by the four interior walls of the building ; 
 he had just seated himself at the table, 
 which was laid for two persons, when the 
 waiter brought him Mrs. Denham's note and 
 Lynde's card. Mr. Denham glanced from 
 one to the other, and then broke the seal 
 of the envelope with a puzzled air which 
 directly changed into a perturbed expres- 
 sion. 
 
 "Show the gentleman in here," he said, 
 speaking over the top of the note-sheet to 
 the servant, " and set another cover." 
 
 It was a strongly -featured person of fifty 
 or fifty-five, slightly bald, and closely shaven 
 with the exception of a heavy iron-grey 
 moustache, who rose from the chair and 
 stepped forward to meet Lynde as he en- 
 tered. Lynde's name was familiar to Mr. 
 Denham, it having figured rather promi- 
 nently in his wife's correspondence during 
 the latter part of the sojourn at Geneva. 
 
 "You have placed us all under deep obli- 
 gations to you, sir," said Mr. Denham, with 
 a smile in which the severity of his features 
 melted. 
 
 "The obligations are on my side, sir," 
 replied Lynde. "I owe Mrs. Denham a
 
 IX THE SHADOW OF MONT BLAXC. 201 
 
 great many kindnesses. I wish I could 
 have found some happier way than the 
 present to express my sense of them." 
 
 " I sincerely hope she was not justified 
 in allowing you to take this long journey. 
 I beg of you to tell me what has happened. 
 Mrs. Denham has been anything but ex- 
 plicit. " 
 
 She had merely announced Ruth's illness, 
 leaving it to Lynde to inform Mr. Denham 
 of the particulars. That gentleman wrinkled 
 his brows involuntarily as he listened to 
 Lynde's account of his mountain excursion 
 alone with Ruth, and the result. " I have 
 not seen Miss Denham since," said Lynde, 
 concluding his statement, in which he had 
 tripped and stumbled wofully. "I trust 
 that Mrs. Denham's anxiety has exagger- 
 ated her niece's condition. " 
 
 "Ruth is far from strong," replied Mr. 
 Denham, " and my wife is almost morbidly 
 quick to take alarm about her. In fact we 
 both are. Do you know how the trains run 
 to Geneva ? Is there anything earlier than 
 the evening express ? " 
 
 Lynde did not know. 
 
 " We will ascertain after breakfast," con- 
 tinued Mr. Denham. " Of course you have
 
 202 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 not breakfasted yet. You ought to be in 
 appetite by this time. I am unusually late 
 myself, this morning, and my friend, the 
 doctor, is still later. We tired ourselves 
 out yesterday in a jaunt to Fontainebleau. 
 The doctor 's an incorrigible sight-seer. Ah, 
 there he is ! Mr. Lynde, my friend Dr. 
 Pendegrast. " 
 
 Lynde did not start at hearing this unex- 
 pected name, though it pierced his ear like 
 a sharp -pointed arrow. He was paralysed 
 for an instant ; a blur came over his eyes, 
 and he felt that his hands and feet were 
 turning into ice. However, he made an 
 eiTort to rise and salute the elderly gentle- 
 man who stood at his side with a hand 
 stretched out in the cordial American 
 fashion. 
 
 Evidently Dr. Pendegrast did not recog- 
 nise Lynde, in whose personal appearance 
 three years had wrought many changes. 
 The doctor himself had altered in no essen- 
 tial ; he was at that period of man's life — 
 between fifty and sixty — when ravaging 
 time seems to give him a respite for a 
 couple of lustrums. As soon as Lynde 
 could regain his self-possession he examined 
 Dr. Pendegrast with the forlorn hope that
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 203 
 
 this was not Ms Dr. Pendegrast ; but it was 
 
 he, with those round eyes like small blue- 
 faience saucers, and that slight, wiry figure. 
 If any doubt had lingered in the young 
 man's mind, it would have vanished as the 
 doctor drew forth from his fob that same fat 
 little gold watch, and turned it over on its 
 back in the palm of his hand, just as he had 
 done the day he invited Lynde to remain 
 and dine with him at the asylum. 
 
 "Why, bless me, Denham ! ; ' he ex- 
 claimed, laying his ear to the crystal of the 
 timepiece as if he were sounding a doubt- 
 ful lung, "my watch has run down, — a 
 thing that hasn't happened these twenty 
 years." As he stood with his head inclined 
 on one side, the doctor's cheery eyes inad- 
 vertently rested upon Mr. Denham's face 
 and detected its unwonted disturbance. 
 
 "Mr. Lynde has just come from Cha- 
 mouni," said Mr. Denham, answering the 
 doctor's mute interrogation. "It seems 
 that P.uth is ill. " 
 
 Dr. Pendegrast glanced at Lynde and 
 turned to Mr. Denham again. 
 
 " I imagine it is only a cold," Mr. Denham 
 continued. " She was caught in a rain-storm 
 on the mountain and got very wet. Mrs.
 
 204 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 Denham is of course worried about her, and 
 Mr. Lynde has been kind enough to come all 
 the way to Paris for us." 
 
 " That was very kind in him." 
 
 Dr. Pendegrast drew a chair up to the 
 table and began questioning Lynde. Beyond 
 satisfying such of the doctor's inquiries as 
 he could, Lynde did not speak dining the 
 meal. He managed to swallow a cup of 
 black coffee, which revived him ; but he 
 was unable to eat a mouthful. The intelli- 
 gence he had brought so occupied his com- 
 panions that the young man's very noticeable 
 agitation and constraint escaped them. In 
 a few minutes Mr. Denham rose from his 
 seat and begged the two gentlemen to finish 
 their breakfast at leisure, while he went to 
 consult the time-table at the bureau of the 
 hotel. 
 
 " The doctor can give you a genuine Ha- 
 vana," he remarked to Lynde. " I will join 
 you shortly in the smoking-room." 
 
 While Dr. Pendegrast silently drank his 
 coffee, Lynde pieced his scattered thoughts 
 together. What course should he pursue ? 
 Should he take the doctor into his confi- 
 dence, or should he let himself drift ? How 
 could the doctor help him in the circum-
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF 3IOXT BLANC. 205 
 
 stances ? Ruth had been insane. What 
 could do away with that dreadful fact, the 
 revelation of which now appalled him as if 
 he had never suspected it. Paith, Ruth, — 
 the very name was significant of calamity ! 
 Flemming's words rang in his ears : "Yon 
 would not marry her ! " He had not replied 
 to Flemming that night when the case was 
 merely supposititious. But now — it seemed 
 to Lynde that he had never loved Ruth un- 
 til this moment. The knowledge of her 
 misfortune had added to his love that great 
 pity of which he had spoken to his friend. 
 But could he many her ? He did not dare 
 put the cpiiestion squarely, for he dared not 
 confess to himself that he could not give her 
 up. This, then, was the key to Mrs. Den- 
 ham's cold rejection of his suit ; it explained, 
 also, Ruth's unwillingness to have him speak 
 to her of his love. How poignant must have 
 been her anguish that day on Montanvert if 
 she cared for him ! .She loved him, — how 
 could he doubt it ? — but she had accepted 
 the hopelessness of the position. In his own 
 mind he had accused her of cocpietry in their 
 walk at the cascade of Nant d'Arpenaz. 
 He saw through it all now ; the scales had 
 fallen from his eyes. She was hiding her
 
 206 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 misery under a smooth face, as women will. 
 A sudden reflection sent a chill over Lynde : 
 what if she had recognised him that first day 
 at dinner in Geneva and had been playing a 
 part all the while ! Then she was the most 
 subtile actress that ever lived, and the lead- 
 ing lady of the Theatre Francais might 
 indeed go and take lessons of her, as Flem- 
 ming had said. The thought gave Lynde a 
 shock. He would not like to have the 
 woman he loved such an actress as that. 
 Had Ruth revealed everything to the aunt, 
 and was she too playing a part ? In her 
 several allusions to Dr. Pendegrast Mrs. 
 Denham had called him "the doctor" 
 simply, or "an old friend of our family," 
 and never once pronounced his name. 
 ' ' Was that accidental or intentional ? " 
 Lynde wondered. " It was inevitable that 
 he and I should meet sooner or later. Was 
 she endeavouring to keep the knowledge of 
 Dr. Pendegrast from me as long as possible ? 
 The exigency has unmasked her ! " 
 
 " Now, Mr. Lynde, I am at your service." 
 Lynde gave a start, as if the doctor had 
 suddenly dropped down at his side from out 
 of the sky. 
 
 Dr. Pendegrast pushed back his chair
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 207 
 
 and led the way across the quadrangle, in 
 which a number of persons were taking 
 coffee at small tables set here and there 
 under oleander-trees in green-painted tubs. 
 The smoking-room was unoccupied. Lynde 
 stood a moment undetermined in the centre 
 of the apartment, and then he laid his hand 
 on the doctor's shoulder. 
 
 " You don't remember me ? " 
 
 " Ah, then I have seen you before ! " ex- 
 claimed Dr. Pendegrast, transfixed in the 
 act of drawing a cigar from his case. 
 ' ' Your name and your face puzzled me, but 
 I could not place you, so I didn't mention 
 it. You must pardon an old man's bad 
 memory. I am confused. When and 
 where have I had the pleasure of seeing 
 you?" 
 
 " It was scarcely a pleasure," said Lynde 
 with bitterness. 
 
 ' ' Indeed ! I cannot imagine that ; it is 
 a pleasure now," returned the doctor cour- 
 teously. 
 
 " It was three years ago, at your asylum. 
 As you will recollect, I was brought there 
 by mistake the day the patients — " 
 
 " Bless me ! " exclaimed the doctor, drop- 
 ping the ignited match. ei How could I for-
 
 208 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 get you ! I took such a great liking to you, 
 too. I have thought of that awkward affair 
 a thousand times. But, really, coming 
 across you in this unexpected manner — " 
 
 " I suppose I have changed somewhat," 
 Lynde broke in. " Dr. Pendegrast, I am 
 in a very strange position here. It is im- 
 perative you should be perfectly frank with 
 me. You will have to overlook my abrupt- 
 ness. Mr. Denham may return any instant, 
 and what I have to say cannot be said in his 
 presence. I know that Miss Denham has 
 been under your charge as a patient. I 
 want to know more than that bare circum- 
 stance. " 
 
 The doctor recoiled a step. " Of course/' 
 he said, recovering himself, ' ' you must 
 have recognised her." 
 
 ' ' I met your friends six or seven weeks 
 ago at Geneva," continued Lynde. " I re- 
 cognised Miss Denham .at once ; but later 
 I came to doubt and finally to disbelieve 
 that I had ever seen her elsewhere. I 
 refused to accept the testimony of my 
 eyes and ears because — because so much 
 of my happiness depended on my rejecting 
 it." 
 
 " Does Mrs. Denham know that you are in
 
 IN THE SHADOW 0* MONT BLANC. 209 
 
 possession of the fact yon mention ? Denham 
 of course doesn't/' 
 
 " No ; it is my meeting with you that has 
 turned my discarded doubt into a certainty. " 
 
 " Then I beg of you," said Dr. Pendegrast, 
 throwing a glance across the quadrangle, 
 " not to breathe a syllable of this ; do not 
 even think of it. It has been kept from 
 every one, — from even the most intimate 
 friends of the family : Ruth herself is not 
 aware of her temporary derangement." 
 
 " Miss Denham does not know it ?" 
 
 " She has not the remotest suspicion of 
 the misfortune which befell her three years 
 ago." 
 
 "Miss Denham does not know it?" re- 
 peated Lynde, in a dazed way. "That — 
 that seems impossible ! Pardon me. How 
 did it happen, Dr. Pendegrast ? " 
 
 ' ' I assume that you are not asking me 
 through idle curiosity," said the doctor, 
 looking at him attentively. 
 
 " I have vital reasons for my question, 
 doctor." 
 
 " I do not see why I should not tell you, 
 since you know so much. The family were 
 in Florida that spring. Ruth had not been 
 well for several months ; they had gone 
 
 6-s. o
 
 210 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 South on her account. Jt was partly a pul- 
 monary difficulty. On their return North, 
 Ruth was prostrated by a typhoid fever. 
 She recovered from that, but with her mind 
 strangely disordered. The mental malady 
 increased with her convalescence. Denham 
 and I were old friends ; he had faith in my 
 skill, and she was placed in my care. She 
 was brought to the asylum because I could 
 not attend to her anywhere else. I con- 
 sidered her case serious at first, even hope- 
 less. The human body is still a mystery, 
 after science has said its last word. The 
 human mind is a deeper mystery. While I 
 doubted of her recovery, she recovered. At 
 the first intimation of returning health, 
 she was taken home ; when her wandering 
 thought came back to her she was in her 
 own room. She remembered that she had 
 been very ill, a long time ill ; she had a 
 faint impression that I had attended her 
 meanwhile ; but she remembered nothing 
 more. The knowledge of her affliction was 
 kept a secret from her, — unwisely, I think. 
 They put it off and put it off, until it 
 became very awkward to tell her." 
 
 Lynde started as he recalled his conversa- 
 tion with Miss Denham on the rocks over-
 
 IX THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 211 
 
 hanging the Mcr tie Glace. With unwitting 
 cruelty he had told Ruth her own pathetic- 
 story, and she had unconsciously pitied her- 
 self ! A lump came into his throat as he 
 remembered it. 
 
 " That was a mistake," said Lynde, with 
 an effort, " not to tell her/' 
 
 "An absurd mistake. It has given my 
 friends no end of trouble and embarrass- 
 ment." 
 
 " How long was she afflicted this way ? " 
 
 " Something less than two months." 
 
 " It was the result of the fever ?" 
 
 "That chiefly." 
 
 "It was not — hereditary?" Lynde lin- 
 gered on the word. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then it is not likely to occur again ? " 
 
 " I cannot think of anything more un- 
 likely," returned the doctor, " unless the 
 same conditions conspire, which is scarcely 
 supposable, as I could easily prove to you. 
 You can understand, Mr. Lynde, that this 
 has been a sore trial to Dcnham and his 
 wife ; they have had no children, and their 
 hearts are bound up in Ruth. The dread 
 of a recurrence of the trouble has haunted 
 them night and day in spite of all the argu-
 
 212 THE QUEEX OF SHEBA. 
 
 merits I could advance to reassure them. 
 They have got what our French friends 
 call a fixed idea, which is generally an idea 
 that requires a great deal of fixing. The 
 girl ought to marry, — every woman ought 
 to marry, it is her one mission ; but between 
 their affections and their apprehensions, my 
 friends have allowed Ruth no opportunity 
 to form attachments. " 
 
 " I 'm glad of that," said Lynde quietly. 
 
 "Are you?" snapped the doctor. "I 
 am not. I would like to see her married 
 some day. Meanwhile I would like to see 
 a dozen lovers about her. It is as natural 
 for a young girl to coquet as it is for a 
 canary to peck at its seed or trim its bill 
 on a bit of fishbone. It is bad for the girl 
 and the canary when they are prevented." 
 
 ' ' There is something human in this crisp 
 old doctor," said Lynde to himself, and then 
 aloud : "So Mr. Denham has no matrimo- 
 nial plans for her ? " 
 
 " None whatever. Since Ruth's recovery 
 the family have been constantly on the wing 
 either at home or abroad. Most of Ruth's 
 life has been passed over here. I trust to 
 your discretion. You will perceive the 
 necessity of keeping all this to yourself."
 
 IX THE SHADOW OP MoNT BLANC. 213 
 
 " I do, and I now see that your travelling 
 with the Denhams is a circumstance in no 
 
 way connected with the state of Miss Den- 
 ham's health." 
 
 "Not in the most distant manner, Mr. 
 Lynde. I am with them because they are 
 my old friends. I was worn out with pro- 
 fessional work, and I ran across the sea to 
 recuperate. It is fortunate I did, since 
 Ruth chances to need me. r ' 
 
 Lynde pondered a moment, and then, 
 abruptly : ' ' Does Mrs. Denham know of 
 my former meeting with her niece ? " 
 
 "I never breathed a word to Mrs. Den- 
 ham on the subject of Ruth's escapade," 
 replied the doctor. " It would have pained 
 her without mending matters. Besides, I 
 was not proud of that transaction." 
 
 Mrs. Denham's suppression of the doctor's 
 name, then, in speaking of him to Lynde, 
 had been purely accidental. 
 
 " Miss Ruth's strange hallucination, in 
 her illness, as to personality, her fancy 
 about the Queen of Sheba, — what was that 
 traceable to?" asked Lynde, after a pau^e. 
 
 " Heaven only knows. She was reading 
 the Old Testament very much in those days. 
 I have sometimes accepted that as an ex-
 
 214 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 planation. It often happens that a delu- 
 sion takes its cue from something read, or 
 thought, or experienced in a rational state. 
 In the case of the man Blaisdell, for ex- 
 ample, — you remember him, with his marble 
 ship? He was formerly an enterprising 
 shipbuilder; during the Southern war he 
 filled a contract with Government for a 
 couple of ironclads, and made his fortune. 
 The depression in shipping afterwards 
 ruined him — and he fell to constructing 
 marble vessels ! He is dead, by the way. 
 I wonder if his reason has been given back 
 to him — in that other world." 
 
 Lynde did not speak immediately, and 
 the doctor relighted his cigar, which had 
 gone out. 
 
 "Dr. Pendegrast, you have lifted a crush- 
 ing weight from me. I cannot explain it to 
 you now and here ; but you shall know some 
 day." 
 
 Dr. Pendegrast smiled. " I didn't re- 
 collect you at first, Mr. Lynde ; my memory 
 for names and faces is shockingly derelict, 
 but I have retained most of my other facul- 
 ties in tolerably good order. I have been 
 unreserved with you because I more than 
 suspect — :>
 
 IN THE SHADOW of MONT BLANC. 21 5 
 
 The doctor's sentence was cut short by 
 Mr. Denham, who entered at the instant. 
 He had learned that there was no train for 
 Geneva before the night-express. Lynde 
 lighted the cigar which he had been uncon- 
 sciously holding between his fingers all this 
 while, and on the plea of cashing a draft at 
 a banker's left the two gentlemen together. 
 He wandered absently into the Place de la 
 Concorde, crossed the crowded bridge there, 
 and plunged into the narrow streets of the 
 Latin Quarter. Finding his way back after 
 an hour or so to the other bank of the Seine, 
 he seated himself on one of those little black 
 iron chairs which seem to have let them- 
 selves down like spiders from the lime-trees 
 in the Champs Elysees, and remained for a 
 long time in a deep study. 
 
 The meeting with Dr. Pendegrast had 
 been so severe a shock to Lynde that he 
 could not straightway recover his mental 
 balance. The appalling shadow which the 
 doctor's presence had for the moment 
 thmwn across him had left Lynde be- 
 numbed and chilled despite the reassuring 
 sunshine of the doctor's words. By degrees, 
 however, Lynde warmed to life again ; his 
 gloom slipped off and was lost in the restless
 
 2l6 THE QUEEN OF SIIEBA. 
 
 tides of life which surged about him. It 
 was the hour when Paris sits at small green 
 tables in front of the cafes and sips its ab- 
 sinthe or cassia ; when the boulevards are 
 thronged, and the rich equipages come and 
 go. There was not a cloud in the tender 
 blue sky against which the reddish obelisk 
 of Luxor looked like a column of jet ; the 
 fountains were playing in the Place de la 
 Concorde, and in the Tuileries gardens be- 
 yond, the breeze dreamily stirred the foliage 
 which hid from Lynde's view the grey 
 facade of the gutted palace, still standing 
 there, calcined and cracked by the fires of 
 the Commune. Presently all this began to 
 distract him, and when he returned to the 
 hotel he was in a humour that would have 
 been comparatively tranquil if so many 
 tedious miles had not stretched between 
 Paris and Chamouni. 
 
 He found Mr. Denham and Dr. Pendegrast 
 delaying dinner for him. After dinner, see- 
 ing no prospect of renewing conversation in 
 private with the doctor, Lynde killed the 
 time by writing a voluminous letter to Flem- 
 ming, whose name he had stumbled on in 
 the passenger-list of a steamer advertised to 
 sail two days later from Liverpool.
 
 IX THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 21 7 
 
 As Lynde took his seat in the railway 
 
 carriage that night he had a feeling that 
 several centuries had elapsed since daybreak. 
 Every moment was a month to him until he 
 could get back to Chamouni. The thought 
 that Ruth might be dangerously ill scarcely 
 presented itself among his reflections. She 
 was free, he loved her, and there was no 
 reason why he should not try to win her, 
 however strongly the Denhams might be 
 opposed to him. His mind was perfectly 
 easy on that score ; they had no right to 
 wreck the girl's future in their shallow 
 fear. His two travelling companions shortly 
 dropped asleep, but Lynde did not close his 
 eyes during those ten weary hours to Macon. 
 Thence to Geneva was rive hours more of 
 impatience. At Geneva the party halted no 
 longer than was necessary to refresh them- 
 selves at a buffet near the station and hire 
 a conveyance to Chamouni, which they 
 reached two or three hours after sunset. 
 The town still lay, as Lynde had left it, 
 in the portentous shadow of the mountain, 
 with the sullen rain dropping from the black 
 sky. 
 
 Lynde drew an alarming angary from the 
 circumstance that Mrs. Denham did not
 
 2l8 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 come down to greet them. It dawned upon 
 him then for the first time with any dis- 
 tinctness that Ruth might be fatally ill. 
 Mr. Denham, accompanied by Dr. Pende- 
 grast, hastened to his wife's apartments, 
 and Lynde stationed himself at the head 
 of a staircase in the hall, where he waited 
 nearly an hour in intolerable suspense before 
 the doctor reappeared. 
 
 " What is it, doctor ? " 
 
 "Pneumonia. No," he added, divining 
 Lynde's unspoken thought even before it 
 had fairly shaped itself in his brain, " it is 
 not the other business." 
 
 " You are hiding the truth from me," said 
 Lynde, with a pang. " She is dead ! " 
 
 "No, but she is very low. The disease 
 is approaching a crisis ; a change must take 
 place by to-morrow. Frankly, I dread that 
 change. I am hiding nothing from you." 
 
 " Is there no hope ? . You do not mean 
 that!" 
 
 "I am afraid I do. Perhaps it is because 
 she is so dear to me that I always anticipate 
 the worst when she is concerned. The 
 other physician is more sanguine ; but then 
 he does not love Ruth as I do." 
 
 " You might have saved her ! "
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 2IQ 
 
 " Everything has been done that could 
 be done. He is a person of remarkable 
 skill, this Paris physician. I could have 
 advised no change in his treatment of the 
 case if I had been on the spot at first. 
 That is a great deal for one physician to 
 say of another. You had better go and get 
 some rest," added Dr. Pendegrast, in a 
 changed voice, struck by the young man's 
 ghastly look. " Your two night- journeys 
 have used you up." 
 
 Lynde went mechanically to his room and 
 threw himself upon the bed without un- 
 dressing. He had no inclination to sleep, 
 but his fatigue, bodily and mental, over- 
 came him unawares as he lay listening to 
 the wind which swept through the moun- 
 tain-gorges, and rose and fell monotonously 
 with a sound like the rote of the sea. It 
 was a vision of the sea that rilled his 
 unrestful slumber : Ruth was dead, she had 
 died in his arms, and he was standing woe- 
 begone, like a ghost, on the deck of a home- 
 ward bound ship, with the grey, illimitable 
 waste of waters stretching around him. 
 
 It appeared to Lynde to be in the middle 
 of the night, though it was in fact on the 
 edge of daybreak, that he was awakened
 
 220 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 by some one knocking softly at his door. 
 He lighted a match, and by its momentary 
 flicker saw Mr. Denham standing on the 
 threshold. 
 
 " Ruth wishes to see you," he said, indis- 
 tinctly and with an indecisive air. ' ' As 
 nearly as we can gather, that is what she 
 wants. Come quickly ! " 
 
 Without waiting for a reply Mr. Denham 
 turned and passed through the hall. Lynde 
 followed in silence. He was less surprised 
 than agitated by the summons ; it was of a 
 piece with the dream from which he had 
 been roused. 
 
 There were candles burning on the mantel- 
 piece of the chamber, and the dawn was 
 whitening the window-panes. In that weird, 
 blended light the face of the sick girl shone 
 like a fading star. Lynde was conscious of 
 no other presence, though Mrs. Denham and 
 Dr. Pendegrast with a . third person were 
 standing near the chimney-place. Ruth 
 raised her eyes and smiled upon Lynde as he 
 came in ; then her lids closed and did not 
 open again, but the smile stayed in a dim 
 way on her features, and a flush almost too 
 faint to be perceived crept into her cheeks. 
 Lynde stooped by the bed and took one of
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 221 
 
 Ruth's hands. She turned her head slightly 
 on the pillow, and after a moment her lips 
 moved as if she were making an effort to 
 speak. Lynde remained immobile, fearing 
 to draw breath lest a word should escape his 
 ear. But she did not speak. As he stood 
 there listening in the breathless stillness the 
 flame of the candles burned fainter and 
 fainter in the increasing daylight ; a bird 
 twittered somewhere aloft ; then the sun- 
 shine streamed through the windows, and 
 outside all the heights were touched with 
 sudden gold. 
 
 Dr. Pendegrast approached Lynde and 
 rested one finger on his arm. " You had 
 better go now," the doctor whispered hastily. 
 " I will come to you by and by." 
 
 Lynde was sitting on the side of the bed 
 in his own room in the broad daylight. He 
 had been sitting motionless in one posture 
 for an hour, — perhaps two hours, he could 
 not tell how long, — when Dr. Pendegrast 
 opened the door without pausing to knock. 
 Lynde felt the cold creeping about his 
 heart. 
 
 "Doctor," he said desperately, "don't 
 tell me ! "
 
 222 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 " Mr. Lynde," said Dr. Pendegrast, walk- 
 ing up to the bedside and speaking very 
 slowly, as if he were doubtful of his own 
 words and found it difficult to articulate 
 them, " a change has taken place, but it is a 
 change for the better. I believe that Ruth 
 will live." 
 
 " She will live ! " 
 
 ' ' We thought she was sinking ; she 
 thought so herself, the poor child. You 
 were worth a thousand doctors to her, 
 that 's my belief. Mrs. Denham was afraid 
 to tell her you had gone to Paris to fetch 
 us, thinking it would excite her. Ruth 
 imagined that her aunt had offended you, 
 and thought you had gone not to return." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " That troubled her, in the state she was 
 in, — troubled her mightily. She has been 
 able to take a few spoonfuls of broth," the 
 doctor went on, irrelevantly; "her pulse is 
 improved ; if she has no drawback she will 
 get well." 
 
 Lynde looked around him bewilderedly 
 for a moment ; then he covered his face 
 with his hands. "I thought she was 
 dying ! " he said under his breath. 
 
 That day and the next the girl's life hung
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 223 
 
 by a thread ; then the peril passed, and her 
 recovery became merely a question of care- 
 ful nursing. The days which immediately 
 followed this certainty were the happiest 
 Lynde had ever experienced. Perhaps it 
 was because his chamber was directly over 
 Faith's that he sat there in the window-seat, 
 reading from morning until night. It was 
 as near to her as he was permitted to 
 approach. He saw little of Mr. Denham 
 and still less of Mrs. Denham during that 
 week ; but the doctor spent an hour or two 
 every evening with Lynde, and did not find 
 it tiresome to talk of nothing but his 
 patient. The details of her convalescence 
 were listened to with an interest that would 
 have won Dr. Pendegrast if he had not 
 already been very well disposed towards 
 the young fellow, several of whose New 
 York friends, as it transpired, were old 
 acquaintances of the doctor's, — Dr. Dillon 
 and his family, and the Delaneys. The 
 conversation between Lynde and Dr. Pen- 
 degrast at the Hotel Meurice had been 
 hurried and disjointed, and in that respect 
 unsatisfactory ; but the minute history of 
 Ruth's previous case, which the doctor 
 related to Lynde in the course of those long
 
 224 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 summer nights, set his mind completely at 
 rest. 
 
 ' ' I could never have given her up, any 
 way," said Lynde to himself. "I have 
 loved her for three years, though I didn't 
 know it. That was my wife's slipper after 
 all, " he added, thinking of the time when it 
 used to seem to be sitting up for him at 
 night, on his writing-table at Ri vermouth, 
 and how often it threw a gloom over him 
 with its tragic suggestion. "My wife's 
 slipper ! " He repeated the phrase softly to 
 himself. There was nothing tragic in it 
 now. 
 
 By and by the hours began to drag with 
 him. The invalid could not get well fast 
 enough to keep pace with his impatience. 
 The day she was able for the first time to 
 sit up a while, in an arm-chair wheeled by 
 the bedside, was a /ete-day to the four 
 Americans in the Couronne hotel. If Lynde 
 did not exhaust his entire inheritance in cut 
 flowers on this occasion, it was because Dr. 
 Pendegrast objected to them in any pro- 
 fusion in a sick-chamber. 
 
 " When am I to see her?" asked Lynde 
 that evening, as the doctor dropped into the 
 room to make his usual report. ' ' Let me
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 225 
 
 think. To-day is Tuesday, — perhaps we 
 shall let you see her by Friday or .Saturday." 
 
 " Good heavens ! why don't you put it off 
 thirty or forty years ? " 
 
 "I haven't the time," returned Dr. Pende- 
 grast, laughing. " Seriously, she will not 
 be strong enough until then to bear the least 
 excitement. I am not going to run any 
 risks with Ruth, I can tell you. You are 
 very impatient, of .course. I will give you a 
 soothing draught." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "A piece of information." 
 
 "1 11 take it !" 
 
 " And a piece of advice." 
 
 "I'll take that, too; you can't frighten 
 me." 
 
 "It is a betrayal of confidence on my 
 part," said the doctor slowly, and with an 
 air of reconsidering his offer. 
 
 "Xo matter." 
 
 " Well then, Ruth's asking for you the 
 other night rather amazed Denham when 
 he came to think it over quietly, and Mrs. 
 Denham judged it best to inform him of the 
 conversation which took place between you 
 and her the morning you set out for Paris. 
 Denham was still more amazed. She had 
 
 Q. S. p
 
 226 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 attempted to cure him of one astonishment 
 by giving him another. Similia similibus 
 curantur did not work that time. Then 
 the two came to me for consultation, and 
 I told them I thought Ruth's case required 
 a doctor of divinity rather than a doctor of 
 medicine. " 
 
 " Did you say that ?" 
 
 " Certainly I did. I strongly advised an 
 operation, and designated the English Church 
 here as a proper place in which to have it 
 performed. Moreover, as a change of air 
 would be beneficial as soon as might be after- 
 wards, I suggested for the invalid a short 
 trip to Geneva — with not too much company. 
 My dear fellow, you need not thank me ; 
 I am looking exclusively to Ruth's happi- 
 ness, — yours can come in incidentally, if it 
 wants to. Mrs. Denham is your ally." 
 
 " Is she, indeed ? I thought differently. 
 And Ruth — " 
 
 "Ruth," interposed the doctor, with a 
 twinkle in his eyes, " Ruth is the good little 
 girl in the primer who doesn't speak until 
 she 's spoken to. " 
 
 "By Jove, she doesn't speak even then ! 
 I have tried her twice : once she evaded me, 
 and once she refused to listen."
 
 IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC. 227 
 
 " The results of her false education," said 
 the doctor, sententiously. 
 
 Lynde laughed. 
 
 " To -what view of the question does Mr. 
 Denham incline ?" he asked. 
 
 " Denham is not as unreasonable as he 
 used to be ; but he is somewhat stunned by 
 the unexpectedness of the thing." 
 
 " That 's the information ; and now for 
 the advice, doctor." 
 
 " I advise you to speak with Denham the 
 first chance you get. You will have an 
 opportunity this evening. I took the 
 liberty of asking him to come up here and 
 smoke a cigar with us as soon as he finishes 
 his coffee." 
 
 Lynde nodded his head approvingly, and 
 the doctor went on : — 
 
 " I shall leave you together after a while, 
 and then you must manage it. At present 
 he is in no state to deny Ruth anything ; he 
 would give her a lover just as he would buy 
 her a pair of ear-rings. His joy over her 
 escape from death — it was a fearfully 
 narrow escape, let me tell you — has left him 
 powerless. Moreover, her illness, in which 
 there has not been a symptom of the old 
 trouble, has reassured him on a most painful
 
 228 THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 poiut. In short, everything is remarkably 
 smooth for you. I think that's Denham's 
 step now in the hall," added Dr. Pende- 
 grast, hurriedly. " You can say what you 
 please to him of Ruth ; but mind you, my 
 dear boy, not a word at this juncture about 
 the Queen of Sheba — she 's dethroned, you 
 know ! "
 
 FROM CHAMOUNI TO GENEVA. 229 
 
 XL 
 FROM CHAMOUNI TO GENEVA. 
 
 OXE morning in September, a month 
 after all this, three persons, a lady 
 and two gentlemen, stood on the upper step 
 of the Couronne hotel, waving farewell with 
 their handkerchiefs to a carriage which had 
 just started from the door and was gaily 
 taking the road to St. Gervais-les-Bains, on 
 the way to Geneva. 
 
 A cool purple light stretched along the 
 valley and reached up the mountain-side to 
 where the eternal snows begin. The crown 
 of Mont Blanc, muffled in its scarf of cloud, 
 was invisible. The old monarch was in that 
 disdainful mood which sometimes lasts him 
 for months together. From those perilous 
 heights came down a breath that chilled the 
 air and tempered the sunshine falling upon 
 Chamouni, now silent and deserted, for the 
 season was wellnigh over. With the birds, 
 their brothers, the summer tourists had 
 flown southward at the rustling of the first 
 autumnal leaf. Here and there a guide
 
 23O THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 
 
 leaned idly against a post in front of one of 
 the empty hotels. There was no other indi- 
 cation of life in the main street save the 
 little group we have mentioned watching 
 the departing carriage. 
 
 This carriage, a maroon body set upon 
 red and black wheels, was drawn by four 
 white horses and driven by the marquis. 
 The doctor had prescribed white horses, 
 and he took great credit to himself that 
 morning as he stood on the hotel steps 
 beside Mr. and Mrs. Denham, who followed 
 the retreating vehicle rather thoughtfully 
 with their eyes until it turned a corner of 
 the narrow street and was lost to them. 
 
 As the horses slackened their speed at an 
 ascending piece of ground outside the town, 
 Lynde took Ruth's hand. The colour of 
 health had reasserted itself in her cheeks, 
 but her eyes had not lost a certain depth of 
 lustre which they had learned during her 
 illness. The happy light in them illumined 
 her face as she turned towards him. 
 
 "I don't believe a word of it!" cried 
 Lynde. "It is just a dream, a cheating 
 page out of a fairy-book. These horses are 
 simply four white mice transformed. An 
 hour ago, perhaps, this carriage was a
 
 FROM CHAMOUNI TO GENEVA. 23 1 
 
 pumpkin lying on the hearth of the hotel 
 kitchen. The coachman is a good fairy 
 in a thin disguise of overcoat and false 
 moustache. lam doubtful of even you. The 
 whole thing is a delusion. It won't last, it 
 can't last ! Presently the wicked gnome 
 that must needs dwell in a stalactite cavern 
 somewhere hereabouts will start up and 
 break the enchantment. " 
 
 ' ' It will never be broken so long as you 
 love me," said Ruth, softly. She smiled at 
 Lynde's fancy, though his words had by no 
 means badly expressed her own sense of 
 doubt in respect to the reality of it all. 
 
 Here the driver leaned forward, skilfully 
 touching the ear of the off-leader with the 
 tip of his lash, and the carriage rolled away 
 in the blue September weather. And here 
 our story ends — at the very point, if we 
 understand it, where life began for those 
 two.
 
 T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.
 
 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 
 
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