THE VEILED DOCTOR 
 
 B 
 
 BY 
 
 VARINA ANNE JEFFERSON DAVIS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 1895
 
 l 
 
 Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights rtstrved.
 
 THE VEILED DOCTOR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WELL out of the course of the present 
 lines of travel there stands a sleepy old town, 
 where the brooding quiet muffles every pulse 
 of modern life. No latter-day institutions 
 profane the antiquity of its streets ; no steam- 
 whistles disturb its dreams of former gran- 
 deur. Years ago, when this had been a centre 
 of the trade which found transportation in 
 the heavy-bodied, ungraceful schooners and 
 barks that lie rotting now in the grass-grown 
 docks, there had been some talk of bringing 
 the railroad this way. But the city fathers, 
 in blue coats and brass buttons, took snuff 
 together as they discussed the many disad- 
 vantages consequent upon such innovation.
 
 They had refused right of way, refused to 
 contribute to the stock of the baby enter- 
 prise, refused everything, in short, and so 
 successfully blocked its progress that a dif- 
 ferent route was decided upon, and the old 
 town, under its canopy of trees, fell forever 
 out of step with the vanguard of commerce. 
 But the retired sea captains who formed its 
 population congratulated each other upon 
 the wisdom of their choice as they smoked 
 in the tiny amphibious parlors among the 
 rare shells and curios gathered in a life's 
 cruising. So, bustling prosperity ebbed 
 away, and, like the tide in the sluggish har- 
 bor, nobody noticed its going until it was 
 beyond recall. 
 
 In the centre of the old town, a jewel in a 
 fit setting, there stands the largest and qui- 
 etest house of all. The fan-light above the 
 colonial doorway has looked down upon the 
 same ruts in the streets for over a century, 
 its brass floriated hinges have reflected gen- 
 eration after generation of the same families 
 as they passed to and fro on their business 
 in life. Here the wedding processions must
 
 all turn the corner to reach the old church 
 on which the house's garden abutted. Here, 
 too, the funerals wound their way, and Sun- 
 day after Sunday the tiny panes of the win- 
 dows blinked at the people going to meet- 
 ing from the time when balloon-skirts and 
 periwigs were "macaroni" through all the 
 changes of fashion, until now, if they think 
 at all, they must wonder if powdered hair 
 be in favor again, for all the heads that 
 cross the road are either white or grizzled ; 
 young blood does not take over-kindly to 
 the stagnant town, and soon drifts into more 
 untrammelled channels. In the gambrel roof 
 of the old house a window blinks from under 
 its projecting shingles like the single eye of 
 some sleepy Polyphemus, and behind it 
 stretches a long and pleasant garden, where 
 pear and apple trees peep over the high box 
 hedge at the graveyard beyond. 
 
 There was a day when the house was re- 
 plete with young life ; when the high, nar- 
 row hall was decorated with flowers, and the 
 great rooms that opened out on either hand 
 smelled sweet with the wealth of many gar-
 
 dens robbed to make her new home beauti- 
 ful in the eyes of Gordon Wickford's wife. 
 There had always been a Wickford in the 
 old house. Since colonial times, when the 
 first of them built its solid walls, the family 
 dominated the place socially, just as the win- 
 dows in their roof looked down on the hum- 
 bler homes around it. To be Madame Wick- 
 ford was, as the quaint title implied, to be at 
 the head of such society as the town afford- 
 ed ; it was the apex of every well-bred girl's 
 hopes, and the end of every mother's schem- 
 ing. Consequently, when the last man of the 
 great family returned from college beauti- 
 ful, rich, and fired with real enthusiasm for 
 his profession there was no little cap-set- 
 ting among his feminine neighbors. 
 
 People said he had not been quite as con- 
 siderate of others' feelings as might be ex- 
 pected in so high-principled a young gentle- 
 man, but the reputation of a mild village 
 " Juan " did not harm him in the eyes of 
 the pretty, foolish maidens. There, for in- 
 stance, was little Alice Marlow, next door, 
 with whom he used to sing so sweetly that
 
 the news of his approaching marriage had 
 obscured all the light in her narrow, quiet 
 existence. She would probably have gone 
 the way of her weak-chested tribe anyhow ; 
 but people were more romantic in those 
 days, and blamed him severely when she 
 died, or rather, to be more accurate, they 
 blamed his new wife, who, not being one of 
 themselves an interloper, as it were was 
 fair game for gossip. 
 
 The woman he brought home from the 
 city was certainly not of a consumptive 
 type, and although there might be a ques- 
 tion about her fascination, no one could 
 deny her claim to such perfect beauty that 
 it almost antagonized the beholder. It cer- 
 tainly went far towards her undoing with 
 the good folk among whom she was to live. 
 Her figure was lithe and round, with long 
 limbs that ended in slender feet and hands. 
 There were red flashes in the depths of her 
 brown eyes, that looked out from under 
 straight black brows. Her nose was deli- 
 cately formed, with just the slightest incli- 
 nation to aquilinity ; her lips were thin and
 
 red indeed, at times their color seemed 
 almost unnatural against the rosy tint of the 
 skin. It was the scarlet mouth of a sensu- 
 ous, beauty -loving woman set in a child's 
 face. But her glory lay in her hair; each 
 thread of it, replete with its own glad, golden 
 life, rippled from the very roots in luxuri- 
 ous undulations, and broke at last into a 
 foam of little curls wherever it escaped con- 
 finement. How she and her black maid 
 brushed it ! How they washed it and rubbed 
 in the pomatums before they built up the 
 towering bows of the fashionable coiffure of 
 that day ! It was the pride of her life, and 
 took precedence of the superb young hus- 
 band she had achieved for herself in her 
 second season. She refused to cut a lock of 
 it for him, but laughingly bade him wait. 
 " You will soon own hair and head too, Gor- 
 don," she said, "and I would not injure 
 your future property, not even for your ask- 
 ing." The yellow coils had an odd, incon- 
 gruous effect above the dark eyebrows; they 
 gave her an unfamiliar, exotic air, which she 
 fully appreciated and made the most of.
 
 Wickford's courtship had been short and 
 fervent. The man prostrated himself spirit- 
 ually before her beauty, and demanded noth- 
 ing but the acceptance of his adulation. 
 However, she possessed the grace of re- 
 ceiving it prettily, and it was enough for 
 him. She was well-born, but an orphan, 
 and a poor one ; yet, in the humility of his 
 great love, it seemed a little thing to lay 
 his fortune and his honest young heart at 
 her feet. As to her character, his sublime 
 faith in his ideal was pathetically earnest ; 
 he believed in her as a savage might in his 
 fetich, and would have bitterly resented the 
 suggestion of any imperfection in his idol. 
 So they were married, and arrived in a pri- 
 vate travelling-carriage amid dust, sunshine, 
 and the curious observation of the towns- 
 people. 
 
 As yet the trees in the street had not 
 completely hidden their graceful branch- 
 line-s in new spring greenery ; there were 
 still light young shoots in the box hedges, 
 and the air was full of the breath of the 
 spring. In the old garden long lines of
 
 crocus, yellow jonquils, and single blue hya- 
 cinths hedged the grass-plots. The snow- 
 balls were covered with great foamy white 
 balls, periwinkles looked up clear-eyed from 
 under the parlor windows, and everywhere 
 the single blue violets were making the air 
 sweet with their spring thanksgiving. The 
 tall standard roses had thrown out pale-green 
 racemes, and the " bridal-wreath " bushes were 
 just commencing to powder their branches 
 with miniature blossoms. A young moon 
 hung like a reap-hook in the evening sky ; 
 the bride and groom could see it between a 
 fretwork of flowery apple and pear branches 
 as they paced backward and forward in the 
 soft air. 
 
 The woman beside him seemed to Wick- 
 ford the heart and essence of the spring, 
 and his pride and happiness swelled in him 
 until the burden of his joy grew almost 
 painful. There was only one regret which 
 troubled him never any more could he 
 enrich his good-fortune tenfold by pouring 
 it into his mother's sympathetic ear. A 
 kind of loyalty to her, a tender desire to
 
 ingraft her memory even upon this mo- 
 ment of supreme bliss, unlocked the door 
 of his reserve, and he began to talk to his 
 young wife of old Madame Wickford. It 
 was she who had planted this very garden 
 with loving hands. He spoke of the gentle 
 influence that diffused itself around her like 
 the perfume of her beloved flowers, which he 
 had piously preserved, every plant and shrub 
 just as she had left them. He told how 
 the garden was to him a stage, over which 
 flitted the figures of his parents, his old aunt, 
 his nurse, and his playmates. All the recol- 
 lections of his childhood were played out 
 amid its scenery. It was, indeed, a place 
 where memory made sweet music for him 
 among the trees. Here he had dreamed of 
 his future wife in his short bachelor days, 
 " but never, love, could I imagine anything 
 half so beautiful as you," he told her. Here 
 he had mapped out a career for her to the 
 minutest detail, for, as he said, Isabel was 
 now to take up old Madame Wickford's 
 charities where his mother's dying hands 
 dropped them ; his profession and ample
 
 10 
 
 means had enabled him to keep track of 
 her former pensioners. " Though what was," 
 he exclaimed, " the little money he could 
 give to the elevating influence his wife would 
 inspire !" Her beauty he intended should 
 carry comfort to the sick and suffering , her 
 knowledge of a larger world help her to 
 grasp and hold the reins of social dominion. 
 She must take the lead in church matters 
 must be Lady Bountiful. In a word, he con- 
 cluded, " I look forward to seeing you de- 
 velop into just such a patient, helpful, saint- 
 ly creature as my dear mother was. I hope 
 to find you thinking her thoughts, doing her 
 deeds of mercy, and going down to the 
 grave at last blessed as she was by the whole 
 community." 
 
 A sense of mutinous impatience began to 
 burn in Isabel's hot young heart ; it was cer- 
 tainly not of charities and churches she had 
 been dreaming when she had married the 
 catch of the season. Nor had he a right, 
 she thought, to arrange her existence for 
 her without so much as consulting her per- 
 sonal taste ; it was treating her altogether
 
 II 
 
 too much as one of his goods and chattels, 
 and she determined to make an obstinate re- 
 sistance before she sank into the colorless, 
 goody-goody life her mother-in-law must 
 have led. Besides, this eternal harping on 
 the perfections of another woman was dis- 
 tasteful. It carried a concealed sting of 
 comparison, which was not blunted by her 
 inner assurance that she was of a vitally dif- 
 ferent clay from the angelic character her 
 husband described. Privately, Madame Isa- 
 bel vastly preferred being, as she called it, " a 
 woman of spirit " than assuming this role of 
 special town Providence, which did not fit 
 her in the least. 
 
 Gordon talked on and on, garrulous in his 
 overflowing happiness, while the girl beside 
 him listened sullenly. Never a woman 
 breathed who enjoyed having another wom- 
 an's perfections thrust under her eyes for 
 contemplation, and the vain, petted beauty 
 formed no exception to the rule. She was 
 physically tired, too, and not a little dis- 
 appointed by her surroundings ; the town 
 seemed so small, the people so out of style ;
 
 12 
 
 everything jarred on her nerves, and she un- 
 justly, but not unnaturally, included her hus- 
 band in the list of trials. Even Wickford's 
 love-making had taken on a didactic, superior 
 tone that she flinched under like a restive 
 horse. She knew he was still lauding that 
 inexhaustible mother of his, although she 
 did not listen closely, wrapping herself in a 
 cloud of disagreeable* thoughts. However, 
 her attention waked suddenly as he opened 
 the wicket in the hedge. She looked up in- 
 quiringly. 
 
 " Come, dear," he said, " I want you to 
 know where she lies, the sweetest, tenderest, 
 best woman that ever made a man happy. 
 I wish to point out her grave to you myself, 
 for, as I said, I wish you to strive to emulate 
 her virtues in all things. Oh, if she had only 
 lived to lead you up to her own high stand- 
 ard with those loving, tender hands skilled 
 in all womanly arts !" 
 
 She stopped short, and her strained cour- 
 tesy snapped. 
 
 " Does it not strike you, Gordon," she 
 asked, in a sarcastic tone, " that I have been
 
 13 
 
 phenomenally patient under your sermon- 
 izing? You could hardly imagine that you 
 have made yourself particularly gay and 
 amusing on my first evening at home, which 
 you have spent lauding another woman's 
 perfections to my disadvantage." 
 
 " Why, Isabel !" he exclaimed, bewildered. 
 " I don't understand. I was talking of my 
 dear mother." 
 
 " Oh, la, of course you were !" she inter- 
 rupted, hastily. " I have had your mother 
 for three solid hours by the clock, and though 
 I haven't a doubt she was a most excellent 
 old body, enough is as good as a feast. As 
 for expecting me to live the life of an almo- 
 ner of your bounty, you might as well give 
 it up, for I am what I am, and it is as use- 
 less to make me over as a last year's bonnet." 
 
 Gordon stared in shocked astonishment. 
 " You can't mean," he said at last, incredu- 
 lously, " that you will not " 
 
 " But I most assuredly do mean it," she 
 broke in. " I am not going to spend my 
 time among ill -smelling poor people and 
 quarrelsome old maids, if that's what you
 
 14 
 
 want of me. It's disagreeable to be cross, 
 Gordon, but you have bored me beyond en- 
 durance with your retrospects. The dew is 
 falling; I am going in." So saying, she 
 turned on her heel and soon disappeared in 
 the house beyond. 
 
 Her contemptuous withdrawal from his 
 confidences stung him deeply. He had been 
 showing her his Holy of Holies, and she 
 found him " boring." There is always some- 
 thing absurd about rejected tenderness, too, 
 and his exaggerated idea of his own im- 
 portance, fed on the universal adulation of 
 his fellow -townsmen, made him peculiarly 
 sensitive to ridicule. He was a good man, 
 but by no means devoid of a provincial's 
 touchy vanity. It also greatly aggravated 
 the situation that his mother's memory was 
 mixed up with their first misunderstanding. 
 He felt very bitter at the moment, but wisely 
 determined to go out alone, and reconquer 
 some measure of mental quiet before he saw 
 Isabel again. Seated in the rank grass by 
 the side of old Madame Wickford's monu- 
 ment, he slowly reasoned himself back into
 
 15 
 
 good temper, although the jar of his fall 
 from Paradise had set all his nerves jangling. 
 Doctor-like, he made allowance for Isabel's 
 fatigue and the thousand physical trials that 
 the old stage-coach travel necessarily in- 
 volved. Her lonely position called out all 
 his manliness, and as the stars came out 
 one by one, and the spring night distilled a 
 stronger essence from the flowers in the gar- 
 den, peace returned to him, but the untrou- 
 bled glory of his young love's morning was 
 gone forever.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE wedding of the town's greatest catch 
 was, of course, the event of the year, and no 
 little interest centred around this new mem- 
 ber of society, who had become by matri- 
 monial right the leading lady of the neigh- 
 borhood. Visitors poured in upon her, 
 women arrayed in the past fashion, who 
 were too much taken up with her city 
 finery and too completely awed by her ur- 
 bane manners to show themselves at their 
 simple best. She drank tea with them out of 
 handleless blue-and-white teacups true tea 
 dishes, whose size is a constant astonishment 
 to modern ideas. She honestly tried to be 
 civil, but hers was an observation without 
 sympathy, and it froze any expansiveness 
 in her visitors at its very source. The men 
 were in worse case than their sisters ; she 
 set cake and wine before them with perfect
 
 17 
 
 if somewhat supercilious politeness. But 
 these unpolished specimens, whose finger- 
 nails even were not always irreproachable, 
 became suddenly conscious as she scrutinized 
 them of an unnatural length of limb and 
 the appalling impossibility of tucking their 
 large hands and feet out of her sight. She 
 watched them all coldly, recording their pe- 
 culiarities with photographic exactitude, to 
 be repeated with such exaggeration of word 
 and gesture as served these good bovine peo- 
 ple up so seasoned by her humor that they 
 were endowed with a new spice of comedy, 
 which could have surprised nobody more 
 than themselves. Her husband, naturally, 
 was treated to many such a dish of gossip. 
 
 Although he tried to remember that his 
 own point of view was too nearly theirs to 
 enable him to judge his old friends and 
 neighbors, he could not help a dawning 
 astonishment at Isabel's singular blindness 
 to their higher moral traits. She could and 
 did make him laugh with her at times, but 
 he felt an ever-present and growing uneasi- 
 ness at the strange unlikeness he discovered
 
 i8 
 
 between his dream-wife and his real house 
 mistress. 
 
 There, for instance, was Aunt Hannah, 
 whose high genealogical pretension she had 
 piously refrained from scrutinizing. Ma- 
 dame once repeated a long dissertation on 
 his pedigree, of which she had been the bored 
 auditor, and ended it with the peroration : 
 
 " Why, now, I never suspected I was 
 marrying into such aristocracy. Your aunt 
 told me your family was the oldest in 
 America, for they came over with William 
 the Conqueror, and you know that is, indeed, 
 a unique pretension. Yes, I've made a great 
 match and no mistake." And she courte- 
 sied to her image in the convex mirror over 
 the fireplace with a ludicrous imitation of 
 the old lady's stiff-jointed movements. 
 
 He loved his aunt, but he laughed all the 
 same, and caught and kissed Isabel before 
 she ran away on one of her many errands 
 that accomplished nothing. 
 
 There was bitterness in it all though, for, 
 like most denizens of small towns, he had 
 a proprietary feeling towards his surround-
 
 19 
 
 ings, and suffered under a morbid aversion 
 to ridicule ; even a harmless joke rankled, 
 and real lese majestt affecting his dignity 
 was more just cause for quarrel in his 
 mind than a serious injury. Had she not 
 been part of his very self, her ridicule of 
 his family and friends would have irritated 
 him sooner; but, with a fatuous forbear- 
 ance, he let her skewer individual after 
 individual with her sarcasm until she 
 marched upon him in open order. She 
 derided his dress, saying it lacked a certain 
 smartness she was accustomed to in her 
 city beaux, and called his rather pompous 
 if sincere love-making, " born, sir, in a land 
 of liberty," speeches, and begged him to 
 save his polysyllables for his patients, as 
 they might pay him and she could not. 
 
 She grew impatient, too, as the novelty of 
 her new situation wore off, and seemed to hold 
 him personally responsible for the ennui of 
 her life. Nothing ever happened in the old 
 town ; although people married and died 
 even in such back-waters of existence, they 
 took such a long time about it here that
 
 20 
 
 the neighbors were denied the sensation of an 
 unexpected event of even this mild character. 
 
 As Wickford became more and more ab- 
 sorbed in his profession she naturally saw 
 less of him, and, failing diversions to her 
 taste, she joined the local sewing societies, 
 went to tea-parties, the respectable dulness 
 of which was proverbial even in that day, 
 and generally took her place in the society 
 it was her lot to fill. However, it was a use- 
 less task for her to try to become part of the 
 town's life ; she was as foreign to her sur- 
 roundings as a paradise-bird in a company of 
 thrushes. Her accomplishments were those 
 of a city dame, and these good housewives 
 valued the things they knew themselves 
 more than the unfamiliar learning she pos- 
 sessed. She was accused of that fatal mis- 
 take, "putting on airs;" and as one mother 
 in Israel summed it up, " I do suppose her 
 guardians may be proud of her upbringing, 
 but I cannot judge, as she may know what 
 I do not; I have never found her know any- 
 thing with which I was acquainted." 
 
 Vain and unadmired, the lady naturally
 
 21 
 
 turned to her husband for the adulation 
 which was the breath of her nostrils. But 
 he had been so effectually laughed out of 
 his old-fashioned, high-flown expressions of 
 tenderness that he had withdrawn his adora- 
 tion into a shell of silence where it was safe 
 from pin -pricks. He was, though, one of 
 the many people to whom the expression of 
 affection is a necessity for its continued ex- 
 istence, and in the silence he forced upon 
 himself his love was gradually but surely 
 dying for lack of light and air. 
 
 If his sense of humor was latent, his ap- 
 preciation of the ridiculous was abnormally 
 sharp where it touched any of his own be- 
 longings, therefore it was a futile attempt to 
 elicit the desired flattery from him with bait 
 of retailed compliments, which, she said, had 
 been showered upon her everywhere. There 
 were compliments to her eyes, her figure, 
 her grace, and her hair always her hair, 
 which she likened to a crown of glory, the 
 heart of a rose, spun gold anything, in short, 
 that was lovely. Indeed, she gave her van- 
 ity free rein, with her imagination for a
 
 22 
 
 driver, and so embellished the little expres- 
 sions of recognition which her beauty really 
 elicited that there was no courtier in all 
 France who could have made prettier speech- 
 es than she invented for herself and repeated 
 for her husband's delectation. She distrib- 
 uted the credit of them among the various 
 towns-people, which astonished him at first, 
 for he knew his neighbors better than she 
 knew her own heart. After a while an 
 uneasy doubt that she was lying dawned 
 upon him, a doubt that she was doing the 
 one thing which no barrier of use nor oath 
 of allegiance could bring him to pardon. 
 Ignorance he could forgive, vanity he might 
 condone, but in his calendar of sins lying 
 stood out supreme, a red-letter offence that 
 burned into the very heart of affection and 
 killed it root and branch. 
 
 He tried not to reason over her flights of 
 fancy, but in a man of active mind self-stulti- 
 fication is no easy task, and under the stress 
 of it he grew morose, and returned her pretty 
 frequent outbreaks of temper with a stolid 
 silence that maddened without curbing her.
 
 23 
 
 Every now and then he would make 
 some spasmodic attempt to get out of the 
 divergent ruts that were leading their spirits 
 to such different goals. In this vain search 
 after some common interest he tried to talk 
 of his profession, but was met by a half- 
 laughing protest against the introduction of 
 " shop " into his home conversation. He 
 made her dreams nightmares, she said, which 
 was " bad practice," she knew. He had no 
 better luck in his efforts to awaken her in- 
 terest in the charities about her. Her 
 sensuous spirit revolted at the pitiful sights 
 and sounds she encountered, and sympathy 
 fell dead when confronted by ugliness and 
 squalor. She frankly said she " would not be 
 willing to buy heaven at the price of evil 
 odors," and when he expostulated she told 
 him tartly that she would be charitable her 
 own way or not at all. There was a revolt 
 within her against the sense of being driven 
 into goodness that made virtue itself posi- 
 tively distasteful. 
 
 She remembered sometimes how she had 
 kicked and screamed as a child when they
 
 24 
 
 tried to insist on her doing what she dis- 
 liked ; there were times now when she could 
 have resorted to her old tactics with genu- 
 ine pleasure ; her husband's ideals irritated 
 her no less because she was unwilling to 
 fulfil them. However, she was not averse 
 to posing as Lady Bountiful before the 
 world as well as in her private sanctuary, 
 where she sang paeans to her own gener- 
 ous subscriptions to well-known objects for 
 which Wickford paid. It was not that she 
 experienced any unwillingness to stop the 
 mouth of poverty with a bounty that cost 
 her nothing, nor yet was she harassed by 
 transcendental scruples in regard to pau- 
 perizing the population. She simply was 
 not amused, nor in her day were there many 
 who, like the Doctor, already realized the 
 right of the poor to the overflow of the 
 rich. Therefore her descents into the shady 
 places of life were by no means frequent, and 
 when she did go, her excursions usually took 
 the form of visits to the poor-house and the 
 board-schools, where she could dispense her 
 favors without unnecessary contact with dis-
 
 25 
 
 gusting details, and at the same time garner 
 a sheaf of admiration and applause at slight 
 personal expense. 
 
 One of her good qualities was a genuine 
 regard for children, as long as they were not 
 troublesome. In common with most pretty 
 people, she possessed no small attraction for 
 them. This genius for making herself amus- 
 ing to the little folk won her the only cordial 
 friend she made in the old town a little 
 six-year-old boy living next door, who tod- 
 dled back and forth on his chubby legs until 
 he grew really puzzled as to which house he 
 belonged. His unsettled state of mind was 
 resolved by the random question of a passing 
 stranger. 
 
 "Where I lives?" replied Johnnie, after 
 much thumb-sucking. " I 'spect I must 
 live in here, 'cause, when I cries, Mis' Wick- 
 ford she sends me to mother till I'se good."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WITH the progress of the spring Madame 
 began to fill the house with relays of her 
 fashionable friends. The Doctor, who was 
 destitute of musical taste and cursed with 
 a countryman's sensitiveness to noise, was 
 disagreeably conscious of the piano, rattled 
 all day long by the pretty young women his 
 wife drew around her. 
 
 The officers in the barracks outside the 
 old town flocked in, quick to perceive that a 
 new centre of attraction had sprung up amid 
 the wastes of bourgeoise respectability. To 
 help out the military contingent there were 
 every now and then parties of young exqui- 
 sites down from the city off on a frolic and 
 determined to make the most of it. Ma- 
 dame had a genius for entertaining, and was 
 the envied possessor of a good cook. Even 
 the Doctor's taciturnity could be forgiven him
 
 27 
 
 when one remembered the unexceptionable 
 quality of his cellar. As Captain Read con- 
 fided to Miss Channing, " It was like drink- 
 ing with an Egyptian mummy, but this par- 
 ticular mummy, to be sure, footed the bills, 
 and that made a world of difference." 
 
 As a whole, Madame's friends were not an 
 ill-natured swarm of ephemera, and only par- 
 took of the failings of their class as well as its 
 virtues. Their real sting consisted in the con- 
 viction, which they harbored and impressed 
 upon Isabel, that she had very much under- 
 married herself. " The gray mare was the 
 better horse," as the men said to each other. 
 
 The old house was large, and under the 
 gay young mistress the silence was broken 
 that formerly brooded sanctuary -like over 
 the great reception-rooms. There were im- 
 promptu dances, reels, and old-fashioned co- 
 tillons, there were tea-drinkings and games, 
 merry supper-parties and picnics, rides a- 
 horseback, and, in fact, every form of junket- 
 ing with which the early part of the century 
 was acquainted. The female portion of the 
 town was scandalized ; the old women held up
 
 28 
 
 their hands in holy horror, and gossiped with 
 bated breath over stories of the " doings at 
 the Wickfords'," which, as often as not, had 
 no foundation in fact. 
 
 The younger members of society were, 
 perhaps, not so rigidly censorious, and had 
 Madame included them in her invitations, as 
 her husband wished, she might have avoided 
 the mortifying social ostracism which after- 
 wards fell upon her. But for the present her 
 own little set was all sufficient. They wrote 
 in each others' albums, sketched deformed 
 Cupids shooting impossible bows, bleeding 
 hearts, and the like ; the women exchanged 
 patterns for tambour -work, took and gave 
 confidences, copied music, and made abomi- 
 nations before the Lord in Berlin wool. 
 There were duets and trios with the male 
 contingent, and sleepy neighbors anathema- 
 tized " The Minute-gun at Sea," " We met, 
 'twas in a crowd," and the like antiquated 
 ditties that floated out into the perfumed 
 night through open windows. 
 
 Individually, the Doctor found his wife's 
 friends intolerably stupid company ; their
 
 29 
 
 gods were too emphatically not his gods for 
 much mutual interest to exist between them. 
 However, he had not anticipated the coming 
 of their guests entirely without pleasure, hop- 
 ing that the variety of human interest about 
 him would relieve this intolerable watch over 
 the death of his ideal. He considered, too, 
 that it was quite possible that his microscopic 
 and continued observation of Isabel might 
 have brought on a kind of mental strabismus, 
 which had cost him his sense of moral pro- 
 portion and made him unfit to judge her. 
 
 But he had, indeed, counted without his 
 hostess when he hoped for a betterment in 
 the condition of his home life ; for, with the 
 advent of a sympathetic audience, ten mock- 
 ing devils worse than the first seemed to 
 have entered into her. She spared neither 
 age nor physical infirmity, nor did she stay 
 her ridicule for any consideration of his fam- 
 ily feeling. The vagaries and absurdities of 
 his relations made excellent fun for her city 
 people, and the very knowledge that she 
 was in a measure confounded with them in- 
 creased her acute sense of their peculiarities,
 
 3Q 
 
 and made her more anxious to disassociate 
 herself from her surroundings in the eyes of 
 her old companions. It is always those who 
 laugh most who are most fearful of ridicule, 
 and with her the dread of being absurd be- 
 fore her own little coterie was overpowering. 
 
 It happened once that she followed him 
 into his office after one of these bursts of 
 mimicry where his paralytic uncle had been 
 the subject under discussion. Wickford was 
 disgusted with the vulgarity and displeased 
 with the heartlessness of it all. His keen 
 physician's sympathy taught him the sanctity 
 of pain, and rendered it as impossible for him 
 to laugh at deformity as to have joked about 
 the good name of his dead mother. He had 
 come away to be alone and smooth his 
 soul's ruffled plumage as best he could. 
 
 It had been raining, and although the sun 
 was now shining, turning the dripping leaves 
 to diamond -edged jewels, here inside the 
 room it was damp and the atmosphere heavy 
 with the odor of wet soot. In the black 
 fireplace a great puddle of inky water had 
 gathered.
 
 " Why, it has been raining down the chim- 
 ney again !" Madame exclaimed. He did not 
 appear to notice her as she entered, but con- 
 tinued to gaze abstractedly at the unsightly 
 hearth. She was sorry to have hurt him, 
 only she thought him vastly unreasonable to 
 be offended, so she touched him on the arm, 
 saying, half-laughingly : 
 
 "Wake up, Gordon, do, for goodness' 
 sake ! Was there ever such a man ! Why 
 didn't you call Chloe and have that fireplace 
 mopped up before it ruined the hearth-stone ? 
 Ugh ! It's as dank as a grave here. Come 
 outside, I want you to drive over to the 
 Hills' farm with Kittie Johnston and me." 
 
 He turned suddenly and pressed her face 
 between his hands, looking long and ques- 
 tioningly into her eyes, then 
 
 " Pussy," he asked, " would you laugh at 
 me, too, if I were disfigured ? Good God ! I'd 
 rather " He broke off, kissing her to stop 
 her protestations, and turned to the door, say- 
 ing : " No, no, dear, make no promises. Make 
 no promises. Let us pray you may never be 
 tempted."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE city visitors took their flight with the 
 arrival of midsummer heat ; yet the military 
 visitors still kept Madame company, and 
 time jogged along in the old house with an 
 ominous creaking of wheels. But although 
 the rift between the Doctor and his wife 
 grew daily greater, neither had probably any 
 adequate idea of its width until an incident, 
 trivial in itself, pricked the habitual screen 
 of courtesy with which he shielded her from 
 his incipient contempt. 
 
 Wickford returned late one night from a 
 business journey which had detained him a 
 little over a fortnight. He was too tired and 
 travel-stained to make anything but bed and 
 supper agreeable. He had not anticipated 
 anything but a solitary home-coming, and 
 it was a pleasant surprise to find Madame 
 awaiting his arrival and considering him in a
 
 33 
 
 thousand unaccustomed ways. She insisted 
 on carving his cold turkey for him, and min- 
 gled with her solicitude for his comfort all 
 the little bits of mild local news she had gath- 
 ered. Absence had laid a quieting hand on 
 his fevered irritation, the power of her beauty 
 asserted itself anew, and her little efforts to 
 amuse flattered him. At last she ceased talk- 
 ing, and, resting her chin upon her clasped 
 hand, stared at him with a quaint look of 
 mock desperation on her pretty face. 
 
 " Well," she queried, " how long am I 
 to wait?" 
 
 The Doctor looked up. " Why, my dear 
 Isabel, you must excuse me ; I supposed 
 you had eaten supper hours ago. Let me 
 help you immediately." 
 
 11 Oh, la ! Was there ever such an exas- 
 perating man !" she laughed. " I am dying 
 to hear news ; news, my dear Gordon, not 
 turkey, is what I am hungry for. Who did 
 you see? What did you hear? Where did 
 you go ? I am simply mad to know what 
 is going on in the city." 
 
 Wickford smiled back at the beautiful,
 
 34 
 
 eager face across the table. " You have giv- 
 en me a multitude of questions to answer all 
 in a breath," he said. " But I will do the 
 best I can. Let me see. Who did I see? 
 There was Colonel Yates and Doctor Pol- 
 teney ; I visited them yesterday. Then, of 
 course, I called on my old friends in Main 
 Street. That brings me, by-the-way, to what 
 I heard. There was some very interesting 
 talk while I was there about the new tariff ; 
 it seems to be a burning question among 
 the commercial men as well as our farming 
 neighbors ; Mr. Fletcher said ' 
 
 Madame broke out in a peal of laugh- 
 ter. " For Heaven's sake, Gordon, did you 
 think I wanted to hear political news ? 
 There's a dear, tell me how Fanny Fletcher 
 was doing her back hair, and if you found 
 out the particulars of Julia's elopement." 
 
 " I did not mention that unfortunate es- 
 capade. I knew it must be a painful sub- 
 ject to her family," Wickford returned, grave- 
 ly. " I imagined the news about the great 
 political movement might really interest you. 
 However, I do know something you might
 
 35 
 
 care to hear. There is an Italian opera 
 company at one of the theatres I was really 
 too busy to remember which." 
 
 " Oh !" she exclaimed, with sparkling eyes. 
 " A real opera ! How I wish I could have 
 seen it ! I am dying to know all about it. 
 Tell away, tell !" 
 
 "Since you seem to be amused," he said, 
 regretfully, " I am sorry I didn't witness a 
 performance ; but I have so small a liking for 
 that school of music that it seemed absurd 
 to waste time and money hearing a singer 
 pursue an ' if ' or ' and ' through the whole 
 gamut, like hounds in full cry after a fox. 
 You remember what Addison says " 
 
 Madame's slender stock of patience was 
 running low. " I don't care what Addison 
 says," she retorted. " Nor do I ever under- 
 stand how you can be so insensible to the 
 beauties of music." It was one of their 
 stock differences, so Gordon braced himself 
 to silent endurance in punishment for his un- 
 lucky speech expansiveness usually brought 
 him into trouble when, to his astonishment, 
 she suddenly stopped her tirade in mid-career
 
 36 
 
 and, running round the table, perched herself 
 on the arm of his chair, vowing that all the 
 music in Christendom should not make her 
 quarrel to-night. Sitting thus with her hand 
 on his shoulder she catechised the Doctor 
 about the playhouses, the dresses of their ac- 
 quaintances, and the like, but with such poor 
 success that she was glad when his fatigue 
 gave her an excuse for escaping to bed. 
 
 It was so unusual to be thus petted and 
 made much of that, in spite of physical ex- 
 haustion, Wickford could not sleep for de- 
 light and wonder. If, indeed, love was re- 
 turning to him " after many days," would it 
 not be sweetened by the long waiting for 
 her slow -born tenderness? He began to 
 build castles for himself, and, although she 
 was the ever - present heart of all things, he 
 determined that in their new relations he 
 would carefully refrain from any effort to 
 key her nature up to the pitch of his ideal. 
 He now realized what had been the discord- 
 ant note at the beginning of their married 
 life. He would not believe she was vain or 
 untruthful. Nothing so supremely fair, he
 
 37 
 
 argued, could be the casket of such mean 
 vices. She had imagination in excess, that 
 was true ; he would teach no, he must not as- 
 sume the role of school -master any longer. 
 He would make allowances. But to compro- 
 mise was to admit falsehood in her, and he 
 tried to bully his convictions into the belief 
 that he was mistaken. His memory trav- 
 elled back and forth over the familiar ave- 
 nues, seeking in vain a clew to her conduct 
 in a thousand instances which should not 
 lead him to the same impasse a sore convic- 
 tion of her want of rectitude. In the midst 
 of his chaotic, tossing thoughts a suspicion 
 began to crystallize that she had been actu- 
 ated by some ulterior motive in this new 
 assumption of amiability. She had wanted 
 something, and was buying it with feigned 
 affection. Although he drove the unworthy 
 thought from him, it recurred insistently in 
 spite of his angry self-contempt. 
 
 The gray dawn found him still sleeplessly 
 tossing with wide, strained eyes. At last the 
 day broke rosy and splendid over a steel- 
 blue sea. He would go out in the garden,
 
 38 
 
 he determined, and in the rich glory of the 
 summer flowers forget everything save that 
 his life was young and the year was at its 
 full. As he dressed and ran down the steep 
 stairway he knew just how the perfume of 
 the roses would greet him through the open 
 door, how the long, four -sided grass-plots 
 would sparkle with dew, and here and there 
 the spider's gossamer would be spread out 
 to bleach. Yes, he would go down to the 
 great apple-tree, where he could see the top 
 of his mother's monument stretching above 
 the box-hedge, and all these ungentlemanly 
 suspicions would take unto themselves the 
 wings of the morning. 
 
 " The wings of the morning," he mur- 
 mured ; " it is a beautiful image. I will go 
 seek them, and they shall waft my burdens 
 to the uttermost ends of the earth." So 
 meditating, he pushed back the bolt and 
 stepped out into a desert, whose tumbled 
 desolation was only appreciable when con- 
 trasted with the picture his imagination sup- 
 plied. 
 
 The old greensward was gone, the lilies
 
 39 
 
 dug up, the roses cut down, the bridal-wreath 
 planted at his christening destroyed, and of 
 his mother's violets not a plant remained. 
 Even the giant hollyhocks over in the cor- 
 ner of the hedge, that yearly waved the sum- 
 mer such a brilliant farewell, had been com- 
 pletely exterminated. There remained no 
 trace of the old garden save a few pear and 
 apple trees, which had been spared for their 
 utility's sake. Fresh gravelled paths traced 
 odd geometric patterns in the brown earth, 
 and on these beds stood plants, their droop- 
 ing heads and perfunctory manner of holding 
 themselves marking them as new-comers to 
 the soil. 
 
 Some were large growths that showed 
 their artificial breeding, and were evidently 
 getting their first taste of mother-earth ; 
 others were tiny seedlings. But everywhere 
 bloom and leaf proclaimed them members of 
 one family ; they were, without exception, 
 calceolarias. Some glared at him with scarlet 
 faces, others protruded great spotted under- 
 lips of brown and buff. There were blos- 
 soms with hairy, yellow mouths too. But all
 
 40 
 
 were equally scentless and gaudy " like her," 
 he thought, bitterly. He recognized them as 
 the cultivated sisters of the snap-dragons he 
 played with as a boy, squeezing their scarlet 
 jaws that he might look down the flowery 
 throats at the long stamens, which were, he 
 said, the dragons' tongues. There was here 
 even an exaggerated suggestion of this im- 
 aginary affinity with evil. The swollen, pout- 
 ing flower-faces reminded him, somehow, of 
 poisonous things; these unperfumed, soul- 
 less blossoms were suggestive of all that he 
 would have gladly believed foreign to his 
 wife. He could certainly, at the cost of a 
 scene or two, have the garden restored to 
 something like its former condition ; but the 
 sentiment, the inner heart of it all, was, alas, 
 gone beyond recalling. 
 
 It added a second sting to his sense of loss 
 that here was a simple explanation of all her 
 last night's tenderness, then he thought bit- 
 terly of his foolish dreaming. The indirect- 
 ness about her method of meeting the con- 
 sequences of an offence swelled the long list 
 of her prevarications, and carried away an-
 
 other one of the defences with which he 
 tried to fortify his belief in her truth. 
 
 " If she had only been frank about it," he 
 thought, as he fumbled at the lock of his 
 office door. The two rooms were semi- 
 detached, and possessed a separate entrance 
 where patients could go out and in through 
 the garden without disturbing the household. 
 As no one outside of his immediate family 
 knew yet of his return, he felt reasonably safe 
 from intrusion here. It was a place where 
 he might be alone to face his disappoint- 
 ment, and master his anger before he met 
 his wife, or could deal reasonably with her. 
 She had at once defied and robbed him of 
 his dearest possession. He knew if he spoke 
 now he would say vastly too much. 
 
 As the lock yielded under his impatient 
 hands he heard a shuffling step behind him, 
 and, turning, faced his mother's old factotum, 
 the presiding genius of the garden. The old 
 man stood twirling his cap in his earth-stained 
 fingers. The fustian breeches and knitted 
 stockings he wore were also spotted with 
 new mould, but his bent shoulders seemed
 
 42 
 
 to straighten themselves as he looked up into 
 the eyes of the young master he loved. As 
 Wickford gazed at the ugly Irish face that 
 beamed welcome on him, the hope flashed 
 through his brain that there might be a 
 mistake somewhere the gardener, perhaps, 
 misunderstood some trivial order, and worked 
 this dreary ruin on his own account; even yet 
 he might bear Isabel blameless. 
 
 "This is a bad affair, O'Connor," Wickford 
 said, pointing to the bare brown beds and 
 the sickly plants upon them. " How did it 
 come about?" 
 
 " Sure, Master Gordon, it's meself that 
 should be askin' that same question," replied 
 the old man, with no little reproach in his 
 manner. " Your lady gave me the orders, 
 but I was for holdin' out agin cuttin' up all 
 the pretty things your mother planted may 
 the saints preserve her ! I wanted to write you 
 a letter to tell you what the young Madame 
 was afther, and ask if it was accordin' to your 
 taste. Sez I, ' Madame, maybe you know a 
 dale more about these plants than I do who 
 have been tendin' 'em since afore you was
 
 43 
 
 born, but maybe again you don't. I'm not 
 forgettin', though, that the first gardener lost 
 his job without a charakter all along of 
 takin' a woman's advice bad cess to her ! 
 an' I'm waitin' for my young master's word 
 before I begin.' Sez I " 
 
 " Well, well, why didn't you write?" inter- 
 rupted the other, impatiently. O'Connor 
 was destroying his new-found excuses, and it 
 irritated the Doctor. 
 
 " An' I did so, your honor. But you never 
 came, and sorra a word did ye even sind to 
 yer old servant, till a week gone Thursday 
 my lady she comes out here with a letter in 
 her hand, and sez, ' John,' sez she, a-shakin' it 
 at me, ' I'm mistress in this house, and mis- 
 tress in this garden too, I'll have ye to under- 
 stand, an', as sure as there's a sky above us, 
 out of it ye go if my orders bean't obeyed, 
 and that quickly, an' here is his honor's letter 
 to prove it.' Well, I haven't lived to my time 
 o' life without 1'arnin' that ivery pretty live 
 woman gets what she wants mostly, spite of 
 dead people's wishin's, an', savin' yer honor's 
 pardon, your blessed mother's been in heaven
 
 44 
 
 nigh on five years. Thinks I, Master Gordon 
 has given up as usual. So when she got 
 some people down from the city I made no 
 more bother, and between us we put the 
 garden in the mess it's in now, with all them 
 sick little plants that the Virgin won't favor." 
 
 " Did she did she say I had ordered the 
 work done? Did she show you the letter?" 
 Wickford asked, but his voice sounded far 
 off and strange to him, and his throat con- 
 tracted as if he were strangling. 
 
 " Sure she told me right enough, and I 
 saw the outside of the letter, but not the 
 writin'. It hurt me heart, sir, so it did, to 
 be cuttin' down the plants I've been nursin' 
 since before you was knee-high to a duck. 
 You did write, didn't you ?" queried the old 
 man, peering up into the set white face 
 above him. Wickford made some sort of 
 rejoinder, he never knew exactly what, and 
 turned into his office, locking the door be- 
 hind him. There, alone with his discovery, 
 he set himself to face the calamity which 
 had overtaken him. In the bitterness of his 
 conviction that she would lie, lie even to
 
 45 
 
 gain a childish whim, he looked back upon 
 the time of his slumbering suspicion as on a 
 very heaven in comparison with his present 
 painful certainty. 
 
 He threw himself into a high-backed chair, 
 and sat staring at the empty fireplace, his 
 head bowed under a sense of personal dis- 
 grace that was almost intolerable. Anything 
 but this he could have forgiven ; but to pre- 
 varicate nay, to lie, for, though the word 
 stung him, there was no other that fitted her 
 proceedings gave a coup-de-grdce to his 
 lingering affection. Time slipped by; the 
 hot, heavy air of the closed room, charged 
 with the odor of many drugs, was stifling, but 
 the abyss of his mental dejection made him 
 oblivious to time and condition. The and- 
 irons blinked at him, and the broken sun- 
 beam stole unheeded through the chinks of 
 the closed shutter, and crawled inch by inch 
 across the floor as the morning advanced. 
 Some one came knocking; he heard the but- 
 ler's voice calling him to breakfast. The very 
 thought of meeting Isabel made him shrink 
 with a positive physical sickness. How was
 
 he to take up the burden of his life now that 
 he knew? And yet, did he know ? 
 
 Was it fair to condemn her unheard on the 
 testimony of a servant, even if he had found 
 O'Connor habitually truthful for twenty 
 years? After all, he had received no letter 
 from the gardener, and his sense of justice an- 
 swered quickly to the call of an almost mori- 
 bund affection. There was yet a chance she 
 might be able to explain. How he prayed 
 that she might prayed as people do in great 
 extremity, with convulsively clasped hands 
 and silently moving lips !
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MADAME WICKFORD was not enjoying her 
 usual morning nap either. She was perfectly 
 aware of the outrage to his sensibilities that 
 she had committed ; but as she considered 
 herself well within her rights as house-mis- 
 tress, and from experience felt that she could 
 rely upon his just temper answering her ap- 
 peal to reason, she was only excited and not 
 alarmed. After all, she thought, it was as 
 much her garden now as it had once been 
 his mother's. Of the real danger of her po- 
 sition she was totally ignorant. She had 
 wanted the garden done, and done quickly, 
 before he could return and interpose. The 
 obstinacy of the old Irishman maddened her, 
 as opposition usually did ; therefore, with her 
 characteristic impetuosity, she applied the 
 first expedient that occurred to her, con- 
 fiding in her personal charm to carry
 
 48 
 
 her through when the reckoning time ar- 
 rived. 
 
 However, there is no need of losing points 
 in a game, even when one is sure of win- 
 ning, so she gave more than usual care to 
 her breakfast costume, although she was at 
 all times too appreciative of her own beauty 
 to be careless of its setting. As she came 
 down the staircase her short and scanty 
 " India muslin " skirts clung so tightly that 
 they half revealed the movements of her 
 long, supple limbs. Her thin, low -heeled 
 slippers were attached by black ribbons that 
 crossed and recrossed her ankles until they 
 disappeared under the embroidered hem of 
 her petticoat. Great puffed sleeves en- 
 hanced by contrast the slenderness of her 
 short waist, and the full column of her throat 
 rose superbly out of its setting of lace and 
 frills. The little head was heavy with its 
 wealth of spun gold, which fell in curls on 
 either side of her face, and towered above 
 her in a huge bow of hair supported by an 
 immense Spanish comb. There was a fresh- 
 ness on her cheeks and a dewy look about
 
 49 
 
 her eyes that seemed to answer to the glory 
 of the new day, and to proclaim her an in- 
 tegral part of the summer morning. 
 
 She could not find him in either hall or 
 rooms. She looked into the wasted garden, 
 but there was no one, save O'Connor under 
 the apple-trees tying up the weak-stemmed 
 flowers, his shoulders expressive of rebel- 
 lious contempt. No one to see her, no one 
 to recognize how beautiful she looked in her 
 new frock. It occurred to her Wickford 
 might be over in the office ; so, gathering her 
 skirts well out of the way of damp and soil, 
 she tripped across, and began to beat so vig- 
 orous a tattoo on the closed door that it 
 made an impression even on the senses of 
 the unhappy man within. 
 
 He, like most conscientious people of nar- 
 row imaginations, endowed the culprit with 
 his own adequate sense of the vulgarity and 
 disgrace of falsehood. Nor did it ever occur 
 to him that had such an appreciation of its 
 nature existed, the temptation would have 
 been robbed of all charm, and have, therefore, 
 ceased to allure. He had been thinking of
 
 her as all besmirched with a contemptible 
 vice, and this moral aspect so completely oc- 
 cupied his mind that her jocund beauty 
 burst upon him with a strange sense of un- 
 familiarity a kind of revelation of loveli- 
 ness that gave him heart to hope again. 
 The old protest stirred in him anew. The 
 custom of believing that pretty is as pretty 
 looks, which is taught even in the nursery 
 fairy-tales, had struck firm root in his char- 
 acter; and though away from her he could 
 think and weigh evidence, the spell of her 
 physical beauty dwarfed his judgment. It 
 seemed preposterous to associate anything 
 cowardly with the proud perfection of the 
 woman before him. For a moment his soul 
 was besieged by the thought that this was, 
 indeed, a time when ignorance was bliss. 
 Perhaps he had better go on doubting than 
 put his faith to the test where so much 
 was at stake. Yet the doubt itself was, he 
 felt, an insult to her if innocent, a gross in- 
 justice to a life-long servant if, on the con- 
 trary, she were guilty. He would ask her, 
 and she would tell him the truth, he proudly
 
 decided, looking at the regal carriage of her 
 head. 
 
 " Come in, dear !" he said. " I have some 
 questions to put to you. Sit down." And 
 he motioned her to a chair. 
 
 " Gracious powers !" exclaimed she, look- 
 ing at his drawn face. " But you are ill are 
 you not?" 
 
 " No," he returned, " not ill, but very unhap- 
 py. It was a surprise to me to find the garden " 
 
 " What a pother !" she broke in. " Is it 
 all about a few flowers, of so common a vari- 
 ety that you may see their like in any 
 kitchen-garden?" 
 
 Her defiant attitude angered him, and he 
 cut her short with a peremptory gesture 
 that silenced her with astonishment ; then, 
 waiting a moment to regain command of his 
 voice, he began : 
 
 " Of course you are perfectly aware that 
 my mother's garden is destroyed beyond 
 repair, that the best part of what I call 
 home has been laid waste to gratify a fool- 
 ish fancy, which has neither beauty nor 
 charm to excuse it. Your vandalism "
 
 52 
 
 " Vandalism, indeed !" said she, with a toss 
 of her head. But he continued without no- 
 ticing her interruptions, speaking in a sin- 
 gularly low, distinct voice. 
 
 " It was vandalism of the worst kind 
 heartless vandalism at that. However, let 
 me congratulate you, Madame, upon having 
 succeeded in producing altogether the ugli- 
 est garden I ever saw. My servant tells me 
 that he expostulated and sought in vain to 
 restrain you until I should have returned. 
 He says he wrote to me, that he awaited a 
 reply to his letter which I never received, 
 until you gave him orders to go on with 
 this work of demolition orders which pur- 
 ported to come from me, and which we both 
 know you never received." 
 
 So far he had controlled himself admirably, 
 although her stormy face and angry protests 
 robbed his speech of gentleness ; but now the 
 fear of what she would say shook him like an 
 ague. He strode up to her, and, seizing her 
 wrists with unconscious violence, glared down 
 at her in an anguish of uncertainty. If she 
 harbored any latent intention of facing the
 
 53 
 
 matter out on open lines, his set mouth and 
 burning eyes frightened it away. 
 
 " Let me go, Gordon," she cried ; " you 
 hurt me, you hurt my wrists." 
 
 He shook them impatiently. "Answer 
 me !" he hissed, " and tell me the truth if 
 you never did before." 
 
 But in that moment of time her brain had 
 been working rapidly, and in the midst of 
 her astonishment and terror she had formed 
 her decision the letter must have been lost. 
 O'Connor's peculiarities of penmanship and 
 spelling were very much against its ever 
 turning up again. As matters stood there 
 was no proof that it had ever been written. 
 The whole circumstance simply resolved it- 
 self into a case of assertion against assertion 
 her word against the old Irishman's. With 
 a sudden movement she twisted herself free, 
 and sprang up facing Wickford furiously. 
 
 " You are behaving like a ruffian," she 
 said, lifting her angry eyes to his. " I will 
 defend myself for my own good pleasure, 
 understand, and not from any regard for 
 you or your estimate of me. You have
 
 54 
 
 gossiped with a servant about my doings, 
 which is despicable enough, at any rate. 
 And now on this valuable testimony you 
 presume to accuse me of falsehood." She 
 had instinctively taken her one line of de- 
 fence. Her red, bruised wrists pleaded against 
 him, and covered him with a sense of shame 
 at his ungovernable excitement. This out- 
 break had completely reversed their respec- 
 tive positions ; as she presented it, he was 
 now the offender, to be arraigned before an 
 injured wife. 
 
 " It's a pack of lies, of course," she con- 
 tinued ; " but it never occurred to you that 
 the old man was wild to try the newer plants, 
 and merely got up this absurd story under the 
 stress of your badgering. As you remem- 
 ber, no letter came, and I don't suppose you 
 accuse the whole postal service of being in 
 league against the existence of your moth- 
 er's precious garden. You would hardly 
 have dared use the physical violence to 
 O'Connor with which you have treated me. 
 He was a man and could defend him- 
 self."
 
 55 
 
 " I protest," he murmured. " I did not 
 intend " 
 
 " Oh, spare me !" she interrupted. " I have 
 but little more to say before I am done. It 
 was I who was persuaded into changing the 
 garden, therefore I had no object in fabri- 
 cating orders from you, nor would I allow 
 any servant in my house to bandy words 
 with me for an instant. You must, I hope, 
 see by now that this accusation is as im- 
 probable as it is untrue, and I hope that 
 you'll understand that O'Connor must go 
 immediately. Either he or I leave this 
 house before night." 
 
 " But he has grown old in my service," 
 Wickford expostulated. 
 
 " And I," she retorted, " have that unfort- 
 unate prospect before me. I will leave you 
 to choose between us." Wherewith she 
 swept out of the room as the servant depos- 
 ited a package of letters on the table. She 
 had silenced him effectually, and he turned 
 to open his correspondence, in a nervous de- 
 sire to find something that might change 
 the current of thoughts which raced through
 
 56 
 
 his brain, now shadowed by doubt, now bright 
 with surety. But everything was tinctured 
 by disappointment with his own bearing in 
 an interview in which he had hoped to be so 
 judicially cool, so perfectly self-contained. 
 
 There were some medical journals for- 
 warded from the city, a newspaper, and one 
 or two letters from patients. He opened 
 them, but could not command his attention 
 sufficiently to grasp their meaning as yet. 
 He was astonished to discover a packet di- 
 rected in the hand of his man of business, 
 whom he had left only two days before in 
 town. 
 
 It startled him to be thus closely followed 
 by a letter from that quarter, and he opened 
 it quickly, dreading some new form of dis- 
 aster, he hardly knew what. An enclosure 
 fell to the floor ; he let it lie as he hurriedly 
 read on through the usual excuses that ac- 
 company delayed letters " a careless clerk, 
 changes in the office," and so forth that 
 preceded his lawyer's expressions of regret 
 at the oversight. 
 
 Wickford sickened with fear as he bent
 
 57 
 
 down and picked up the belated letter. It 
 was a queerly folded, rather dirty paper, 
 sealed with a thumb-mark on red wax. 
 
 " To His Honor Gordon Wickford, who is a 
 doctor when he is home, but now is visiting in 
 P with Mr. Johnson" 
 
 He broke the seal, and the letter he had 
 devoutly hoped never to see stared him in 
 the face. 
 
 "Your honor," it ran, "the mistres is 
 thretnin to tare up the garden i am not 
 plesed so to do untill you say so so you had 
 beter com horn imegitly if not sooner. The 
 second grass is growen not to say nee hi but 
 we nead some clover seeds wich please bring 
 when you com wich i hope will be imegitly 
 John O'Connor gardener."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE Doctor did not appear until late that 
 afternoon, when the servants saw him enter 
 the still-room where Madame was busy with 
 her preserves. They were locked in for an 
 hour together, and the listening negroes 
 could hear their voices rising and falling in 
 angry tones. Then followed the sound of a 
 woman's sobbing, and the Doctor talking in 
 a low voice. At last the key grated in the 
 lock, the door opened suddenly, and he 
 strode out, calling to his man to follow as 
 the servants fell to various occupations with 
 suspicious haste. 
 
 That evening my lady met William pass- 
 ing down the hall with his arms full of the 
 Doctor's clothing. 
 
 "What are you doing?" she queried. 
 " Those things should be taken up in the 
 green-room."
 
 59 
 
 " I begs your pardon, Mistess," replied 
 the man. " Massa giv' me de order to fix 
 he's things in de room next de office. He 
 say he gwine to sleep dere." So this was 
 the end. Oh, if she had only known earlier, 
 only understood what she was losing before 
 it had been lost indeed ! She was one of 
 those women cursed with the masculine trait 
 of valuing that object most highly which is 
 hardest to obtain and most difficult to hold. 
 
 In the midst of his hot reproaches and 
 cutting speech a new-born respect for her 
 husband had kept her silent. When he 
 went out of the room, leaving her sobbing 
 on the hard, round bolsters of the old sofa, 
 she did not realize that such a flood of in- 
 vective could never pass the lips of a self- 
 contained spirit without blurring all the 
 tender outlines of his love. She now under- 
 stood the strength of his passion for the first 
 time, and recognized that so high a pressure 
 of feeling was alone possible in a nature 
 strong to resist and strong to bear. Up to 
 this time she had been conscious of a sense 
 of superiority, as of one more au fait with
 
 6o 
 
 the latest movements in the fashionable 
 world, less ridden by the narrowing tenden- 
 cies of sectarianism in religion, and broader 
 in her mental atmosphere. Indeed, she 
 had posed to herself as one unfortunately 
 matched with a slower yoke-fellow, whose 
 good qualities must be rated at their full 
 value to render them commensurate with his 
 want of spirit. It was a revelation to be 
 bullied by him. In the intense ennui of a 
 village life even a disagreeable incident was 
 welcome, if sufficiently unexpected. Recon- 
 ciliation she believed possible, nor did she 
 see that love which is patched with mutual 
 excuses is a sorry garment in which to 
 wrap a sensitive spirit. Explanations rather 
 pleased her, it had always been so easy to 
 get what she wanted, and rely on her charm 
 to mask the obstinate pertinacity with which 
 she held to her desire. As she thought of 
 it she smiled in anticipation, and so thinking 
 arose and went to her room, where she 
 bathed her red eyes, and dropped off to 
 sleep like a child tired with crying. When 
 Isabel came down refreshed and armed for
 
 6i 
 
 the fray in full panoply, she might, indeed, 
 have relied on her physical beauty to carry 
 her through worse straits than this, but she 
 had been unfortunate enough to marry a 
 man with an ideal whom the mere excel- 
 lence of outward seeming ceased to attract 
 when his respect for her spirit was mori- 
 bund. It is not alone to the individual who 
 harbors it that ideality sometimes proves a 
 scourge ; it has a way of whipping the ideal- 
 ist's neighbors as well. 
 
 The window was open on the garden, and 
 the summer air fluttered the curtains to and 
 fro; it made the candles gutter in their silver 
 sticks, notwithstanding their tall glass shades, 
 and lifted the light curls on either side of 
 Madame's face as she looked across the table 
 at her husband. The negro butler came and 
 went with the dishes, the Doctor answered 
 her questions courteously, but never sought 
 to catch the clews of talk which she indus- 
 triously threw out to him. In the stillness 
 between her tentative efforts at conversation 
 the clicking of the silver and china seemed 
 preternaturally loud, and the cry of the cicada
 
 62 
 
 outside in the shrubbery was almost deafen- 
 ing. She looked in his blue eyes, but she 
 could find nothing there. They reflected no 
 answering ray of tenderness, and surveyed 
 her critically without even apparent recogni- 
 tion of her beauty. She remembered he had 
 worn the same expression when he had set 
 her Blenheim spaniel's leg. " I am only a 
 ' subject ' to him, after all," she thought. 
 
 It was according to her nature to become 
 irritable under even temporary defeat. She 
 felt a sense of injured innocence too, for had 
 she not tried to be pleasant? Her good in- 
 tentions were so patent to her own eyes that 
 they hid the complexion of her past of- 
 fences. Therefore she could not understand 
 why he did not respond more promptly to 
 her flag of truce. The irritation increased 
 her characteristic disregard of consequences, 
 and she broke out at last : 
 
 " What are you sulking about, anyhow ? 
 I've done my best to talk on fifty different 
 topics, and you let them drop one after the 
 other so hard 1 can almost hear them fall. 
 At the worst the garden is only in decent
 
 63 
 
 order certainly I had a right to cut down a 
 few common old flowers and here you are 
 sulking, if you please, when, by rights, it is I 
 who am the injured party. You are per- 
 fectly insufferable, Gordon." 
 
 He deliberately laid down his knife and 
 fork and stared at her ; his eyes blazed with 
 green lights. Then he quietly sent the but- 
 ler away on some pretext before he began 
 in measured tones. 
 
 " Madame, it is, indeed, my misfortune to 
 have given you a right in my house and a 
 claim upon my forbearance. God knows, 
 were I lucky enough to be free again, no 
 persuasion of wealth, no temptation of beau- 
 ty, should shackle me to so miserable a des- 
 tiny as that of being husband to a liar. You 
 have neither sensibility nor decorum ; your 
 cheap wit is distasteful to me, your explana- 
 tions odious. Had you only uprooted my 
 mother's garden, it would have been enough 
 cause for serious anger; but that is not your 
 greatest offence. Keep the flowers as you 
 like, now ; you have destroyed more than 
 that, for by your deliberate falsehood you
 
 64 
 
 have killed my respect, my love for you. 
 Damn it, Madame, I stand no more badger- 
 ing in my own house, either now or hereafter." 
 His anger flared up at the last to a white 
 rage. He sprang up, overturning his chair 
 with a crash, and strode out of the room be- 
 fore she had time to collect herself. In a 
 moment she heard the door of his office 
 bang behind him, and through the silent 
 halls of the old house imagined she could 
 catch the gratings of the bolt in its staple. 
 
 So it was all about that despicable old 
 Irishman ! Well, Wickford could do as he 
 pleased, there was no more crying for her 
 now ; her face was flushed with anger as she 
 made her way into the parlor. If he wished 
 himself free of her, God knew she was pretty 
 enough to win favor from other men. Yet, 
 somehow, the appreciation of strangers had 
 suddenly grown tasteless to her. She had, 
 tucked away somewhere in her heart, a drop 
 of real affection for her husband, and that 
 modicum of genuine feeling now began to 
 leaven her whole thoughts. If she had cared 
 for him a little more, or even a little less,
 
 65 
 
 self-respect might have aided her at this 
 pass. But the sense of rejected affection 
 goaded her, and there was no underlying 
 stratum of principle to support her against 
 temptation. She was dominated by the in- 
 stinct of a strong animal to strike back when 
 it was offended ; she would strike, and strike 
 home, too, she thought. If he did not realize 
 how precious a possession he held she would 
 teach him her value by And at this mo- 
 ment the servant announced Captain Read. 
 The weapon lay to her hand, and she was in 
 a temper to use it. 
 
 As the tall, broad-shouldered man entered 
 he was obliged to bow his*curly head in the 
 low doorway. Although he wore the white 
 stock and bottle-green coat of a civilian, there 
 was a military suggestion in the carriage of 
 his whole body and the graceful promptness 
 of his movements that proclaimed his pro- 
 fession. Somehow he possessed the danger- 
 ous faculty of making the men about him ap- 
 pear ill-dressed and slouching, which quality 
 had been the cause of several broken engage- 
 ments marking the gallant Captain's course
 
 66 
 
 through the towns at which he had been sta- 
 tioned from time to time. His character 
 was neither very good nor very bad ; its 
 strong traits were a certain happy-go-lucky 
 philosophy with which he looked upon life, 
 a fund of brute courage, and a dangerous 
 liking for pretty women wherever he found 
 them. Madame Wickford was pretty enough, 
 Heaven knows, and recognized his jokes with 
 flattering rapidity ; besides, she happened to 
 be the discontented wife of a rich man, and 
 the house was a pleasant one for lounging. 
 The cook was good, and there was wine in 
 plenty. Although the Doctor drank little 
 himself, he was an irreproachable host as far 
 as passing the bottle went. So if the Cap- 
 tain was to be stationed out of the world for 
 a time, " these were mighty pleasant quar- 
 ters," and, to do him justice, he made the 
 most of his opportunity. 
 
 Such was the man who opportunely ap- 
 peared to add point to Isabel's vague pur- 
 pose. Vain as herself, he was able to swal- 
 low doses of flattery too direct to be alto- 
 gether refined red - blooded compliments
 
 67 
 
 which knocked sledge -hammer -wise at the 
 door of his affection. She therefore felt 
 quite certain of her game. A stormy atmos- 
 phere brooded about her which he noticed 
 immediately, but wisely ignored. " Poor lit- 
 tle devil," he thought, " I wonder if it's the 
 husband or the mantua- maker this time." 
 She threw down the embroidery she was fin- 
 gering nervously it was one of the Doctor's 
 disappointments that she would not read 
 and came forward to meet her guest with 
 outstretched hands. 
 
 " Where have you been ?" she asked. " It 
 is two weeks since I saw you. Two vastly 
 dull weeks. We looked for you in church 
 even, hoping you might have renounced 
 Tom Paine. You know a body always finds 
 you in the most unexpected places." 
 
 He pressed the two little jewelled hands 
 he held, saying: 
 
 " Not at all, my dear Madame. Here I 
 am in the very place where you of all peo- 
 ple ought to know I would turn up as soon 
 as I got back from the city. I came this af- 
 ternoon, and you see I have hurried to re-
 
 68 
 
 mind you of my existence. Yes, I will take 
 this chair ; I can see you better from here. I 
 
 have been up to P to hear the great 
 
 Mademoiselle Garcia. What a voice ! You 
 know her father always sings with her ; 
 strange is it not? to see parent and child 
 acting together." 
 
 "Yes, strange indeed," she answered. 
 " But is she pretty? You men are such sly 
 dogs that a woman might sing like the an- 
 gels if she were ugly, and she could only gain 
 your sympathies from behind a screen." 
 
 " She is pretty, very pretty," he returned. 
 "But, you know, I have been beauty-struck 
 by fair hair, and she is dark. I assure you 
 my case is worse than being blinded by 
 lightning, so far as that Spanish type goes." 
 
 She laughed, and bade him not be silly. 
 
 " 'Tis true all the same, and, moreover, I 
 have the weight of public opinion on my 
 side. Who, for instance, ever heard of an 
 angel with anything but yellow locks?" he 
 continued. 
 
 " Caught, caught !" she laughed. " You 
 have been ungallant at last, for whoever
 
 69 
 
 heard of a black-eyed angel either. And see 
 my eyes are as black as a sloe." 
 
 " My dear Madame," he protested, " even 
 St. Peter is only a beatified man, after all. 
 Do you suppose any member of the male 
 sex could withstand such glances as yours? 
 He will throw both gates open and rig tri- 
 umphal arches in the golden streets for your 
 reception, I warrant. I wonder how you 
 could forget that the eyes of all sailors' 
 sweethearts have been brown since the days 
 of Black -eyed Susan. And you know a 
 woman who places her affections on ship- 
 board must needs be an ' angel,' in honest 
 truth." 
 
 " Oh, you army men always have your 
 little fling at the navy," she answered, laugh- 
 ing. " But, you know, I have a cousin on the 
 Reindeer, and so have heard the other side 
 too. Sailors say a regiment leaves more 
 broken hearts behind when it marches 
 off than a whole fleet does as it sails 
 away." 
 
 " Dear lady," he said, sinking his voice. 
 " Since you champion the navy I begin to
 
 7Q 
 
 be dissatisfied with my profession for the 
 first time." 
 
 " Oh, la !" she exclaimed. " It never rains 
 but it pours. Here have I been for a solid 
 week without a compliment big enough to 
 make a school -girl change color, and now 
 you come back from town to turn my head 
 with an army of pretty speeches." 
 
 " I would gladly turn it my direction if I 
 could," he whispered, drawing closer to her, 
 and at the same moment the thought flashed 
 in his mind: " It's the Doctor this time; I 
 wonder how far she would go ?" 
 
 But Madame was new at the game, and 
 drew back haughtily. It was true he was 
 good company enough, and a fit person to 
 rouse her husband's jealousy, but for all that 
 he should keep his distance, she would see 
 to it. 
 
 " I am more interested in what you saw 
 in town than in discussing my own poor 
 charms," she said, coldly. " Be kind enough 
 to open the door into the hall. It is warm 
 this evening." He did as he was bid, and 
 seated himself at a more respectful distance,
 
 feeling a little as if he had been treated to 
 a shower-bath. But he had no intention of 
 going, for all that. Therefore he plunged into 
 a budget of news about the people they both 
 knew in the city, the new, fashions he had 
 seen on the streets, the last novel, some fresh 
 songs he had brought, and how people were 
 laughing at the story of old Johnston's quar- 
 rels with his young wife. He told her how 
 Jim Jones had married Polly Smith, how this 
 one was dead, that other impoverished. In 
 a word, all the chit-chat about her former 
 friends, from whom her country life and the 
 high rate of postage cut her off. It was 
 nectar to her thirsty soul, and, after long 
 weeks of silence, she drank it in with the 
 provincial delight which belongs to a city 
 dame exiled from her old haunts. " Now 
 here is a man with his wits about him. 
 Gordon came back from town with his finger 
 in his mouth," she thought, angrily, " like a 
 yokel from a country fair." 
 
 She did not know how time flew, for under 
 all his chatter there lay an exhilarating sense 
 of his admiration, too delicate to be defined,
 
 72 
 
 but which assured her that she was succeed- 
 ing in her plan of conquest. She felt that the 
 magic of her beauty was working upon this 
 man of the world, who, being of her own 
 kind, breathed the same moral atmosphere 
 in which she lived, a man whom she could 
 understand, and with whom she therefore felt 
 at home. The knowledge of it filled all the 
 sore places of her vanity and made them 
 whole. 
 
 When the Captain took his leave, he too 
 was elated by a sense of conquest, little less 
 agreeable than her own. And as he rode 
 along whistling through the summer night 
 he smiled to, himself over the anticipated 
 pleasures of this budding flirtation.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE next day they rode a long way to- 
 gether into the green fields and the leafy 
 wood beyond. He told her stories of the 
 Indian wars and of that great fight at New 
 Orleans where, boy as he was, he had ridden 
 up to an English battery to reconnoitre and 
 been cheered by the very enemy for his 
 daring. There was nothing she loved like 
 physical bravery, and his tales of wild ad- 
 venture made her eyes sparkle and her 
 cheeks burn with an incense of admiration 
 which was sweet in the Captain's nostrils. 
 When she returned home late for supper 
 that night the Doctor hated irregular meals 
 she walked into the dining-room in no very 
 submissive mood. She felt an exhilarating 
 sense of conquest and defiance. What was 
 the opinion of this sober-sided man compared 
 with the adulation of such a Mars as the Cap-
 
 74 
 
 tain? Her mind was full of the blare and 
 dash of Read's war stories, and the quiet hero- 
 ism of a life voluntarily subjected to daily 
 contagion was completely lost upon her. 
 The Doctor opened doors, set chairs for her, 
 and picked up her handkerchief when she 
 dropped it ; but except for such necessary 
 interchanges of speech as a divided pocket- 
 book and a regard for the servants' opinion 
 compelled, there was no conversation between 
 them. She tried once or twice to put her- 
 self on a more amicable footing, but her hus- 
 band met her with a wall of courteous but 
 decided antagonism which only added fuel 
 to her flirtation. In this unhappy condition 
 they passed through the summer. 
 
 About this time Madame remarked a little 
 red spot appearing on Wickford's face ; be- 
 lieving it only a pimple, she paid no attention 
 to it at first. But as day after day rolled on 
 and the angry place still burned on his cheek, 
 it impressed itself upon her more vividly. 
 Had she been as free as formerly with him, 
 she would have asked about his health, for 
 he ate almost nothing ; his eyes looked yel-
 
 75 
 
 low and feverish, set in dark rims, and she 
 knew he slept badly too. Sometimes, if she 
 were restless in the night, she could see the 
 light from the office window streaming out 
 across the garden. At first his vigils gave 
 her pleasure, for she fancied her scheme was 
 succeeding; but as time wore on, uneasiness 
 took possession of her. He made no sign of 
 relenting, nor did that storm of anger arise 
 which she relied on to break down his iron 
 reserve and make a new channel where their 
 old love and tenderness might flow back and 
 irrigate all her desolate existence. Could he 
 love her and not be jealous? To her mind 
 this was an impossible anomaly ; it must be, 
 after all, the thought of her that troubled 
 him. So she tossed her pretty head with a 
 reassuring sense of supremacy, and went her 
 own road, taking small notice of the town's 
 whisperings for people had begun to whis- 
 per, and with some purpose, too. 
 
 The truth of the matter was that the Doc- 
 tor at this time was wading through such 
 deep waters that he was blind to her doings. 
 The shadow of his life had fallen upon him ;
 
 76 
 
 the dread that had made him a melancholy 
 boy and a work-loving man took possession 
 of him now. He threw himself heart and 
 soul into his work of healing, hoping in a 
 dim way that, for the worth of the cures he 
 made, he might buy an answer to his prayer 
 that this cup pass from him. He could not 
 sleep quietly, for his dreams were haunt- 
 ed with the indescribable horrors of cancer 
 cases, where as yet no merciful disinfect- 
 ants and anaesthetics mitigated the disgust- 
 ing character of the disease. Waking, he 
 was pursued by the remembrance of his fa- 
 ther's fearful death, which- was constantly 
 before his mind's eye. Sometimes he would 
 beat his hands together wildly in impotent 
 protest as the great fear shook him, then he 
 would throw himself down on his knees pray- 
 ing, until great beads of sweat rolled from 
 his face, that twitched with the earnestness 
 of his supplication. The shadow dogged 
 him day and night. 
 
 When he sat looking at his wife a thou- 
 sand bitter imaginations tortured him. He 
 believed that she would gladly welcome her
 
 77 
 
 freedom that she was even heartless enough 
 to laugh at him and make game of his im- 
 pending disfigurement. So there grew with- 
 in him a fierce sense of antagonism towards 
 her that steered perilously close to hatred. 
 She, who was never ill, would be impatient 
 of him in his coming loathsomeness he de- 
 cided, remembering her derision of other suf- 
 erers. He was goaded by the recollection of 
 a thousand hard things she had said, a thou- 
 sand slight indications of thoughtlessness to 
 which he attached undue importance in the 
 face of his impending calamity, and which 
 hardened his resentment against her. 
 
 At first he smothered his own recognition of 
 the disease with a persistency born of despair. 
 He hoped fatuously that he might be mistak- 
 en in the diagnosis of his own case, promising 
 himself, day after day, that he would go to the 
 city shortly and consult medical authorities 
 about his condition. But there were so many 
 ready excuses with which he could stave off 
 this ordeal that the weeks wore away and the 
 months followed them without the fateful 
 journey being undertaken. He would laugh
 
 78 
 
 uneasily when the sense of what he called his 
 cowardice overwhelmed him. 
 
 " Ah, well !" he muttered, in extenuation 
 of his own dilatoriness. " Even OEdipus 
 thought twice before he questioned the 
 Sphinx. Occasionally she ate the people, 
 which was unpleasant for her interlocutors." 
 
 The furious ardor with which Wickford 
 pursued his calling took him more and more 
 from home, and it happened thus that, al- 
 though Captain Read was constantly in and 
 out of the house, they rarely met. 
 
 Autumn had dressed the old town in sober 
 suits of brown, laced with yellow and red ; 
 there was a sharp tang in the salt sea air 
 that sent the blood dancing. The smell of 
 the ripe apples, crushed by the cider-presses, 
 pervaded the orchards, and in the fields the 
 stacked dried corn showed the unsuspected 
 wealth of golden pumpkins that grew be- 
 tween rows. Out in the woods the ferns 
 had grown wan and pale, and the fading 
 leaves began to carpet the dead summer's 
 undergrowth. Day after day the officer and 
 the lady rode away from the tree-shaded
 
 79 
 
 streets to the silent autumn forests where sil- 
 ver-gray oak-boles upheld canopies of brown 
 velvet leaves. The gum-trees burned like 
 fire, and the hickory and sassafras gleamed 
 golden over the red sumach and whortle- 
 berry that made the old fields seem deluged 
 with the blood of some mighty battle. At 
 times the long lines of homing ducks would 
 pass them, or a V of wild geese would sweep 
 over their heads, crying " honk-honk !" 
 
 " Look," he said one day. " They remind 
 me of your good Aunt Hannah over the 
 way. She seemed just as scandalized as 
 they do when we rode off." 
 
 My lady laughed a little tremulously. 
 " Yes, I am a public benefactor," she said. 
 " What would they do for talk without me ? 
 I don't suppose you know that these esti- 
 mable women have decided me unfit to as- 
 sociate with them." 
 
 He turned on her in blank amazement. 
 " Poor little girl !" he exclaimed ; then lean- 
 ing over and patting her bridle arm, " Would 
 to God it were my right to defend you !" 
 He had grown really fond of her in their
 
 8o 
 
 close intimacy as fond as a man of his class 
 ever is of a woman by whom he believes 
 himself beloved. He did, indeed, possess 
 the animal instinct which would have prompt- 
 ed him to fight for a creature that was his 
 own ; but as for rendering any one the tribute 
 of perfect continence, it was as far beyond 
 him as the moon. Like the great Villiers, 
 he would have even been astonished had 
 such a thing been demanded of him. The 
 Doctor was perfectly incomprehensible to 
 him in many ways, but most in this, that, 
 although it was evident that Wickford was 
 on strained relations with his wife, there was 
 no other woman who had the faintest right 
 to boast of his devotions. She turned her 
 head away to hide her tremulous lips. It 
 was very, very lonely at Wickford house, and 
 this man, who asked nothing of her save the 
 cordial welcome so easily given, who in- 
 dulged and petted her as though she were 
 a child, flattered, sang, laughed, and rode 
 a-horseback with her, had come to be the one 
 cipher representing pleasure in the barren 
 sum of her existence.
 
 8i 
 
 " Don't !" she said, almost rudely shaking 
 off his hand. She knew she must keep rein 
 on herself or she would cry. She touched 
 her horse with her riding-whip and they 
 started forward, galloping briskly, until they 
 fell into a quieter pace as they threaded the 
 narrow woodland paths. 
 
 " Did you know I was going to take tea 
 with you to-night ?" he asked, laughing. " I 
 hope you remembered it, because I shall be 
 ravenous." He was making talk to save her, 
 and she recognized it gratefully. 
 
 " No, I did not remember, for the best of 
 reasons you were not invited ; but come 
 along, and take what O'Connor elegantly calls 
 ' pot-luck.' The Doctor's away, but, for the 
 matter of that, I might as well be ostracized 
 for a sheep as a lamb." 
 
 " Do you mean," he answered, gravely, 
 " that I am the cause of all this hubbub ? 
 Because, my dear young lady, I would not 
 for the world get you into trouble with your 
 most excellent husband or his very respect- 
 able kin. I don't want to take my march- 
 ing orders if I can help myself, for, indeed,
 
 82 
 
 though you won't let me say so, it will be a 
 hard day for me when you turn your back 
 on me. My life has not been one of roses ; 
 it's the thorns I ran against mostly, and un- 
 til you came into it there were precious few 
 influences to help me keep straight. If it 
 worries you, little woman, say so ; for though 
 the time I may have with you will probably 
 be short now, it would be sorry affection I 
 mean friendliness that would let you suffer 
 for my salvation. You have been friend, 
 comrade, angel, and everything since I have 
 known you. There never was so good a 
 woman that was so beautiful, or so beautiful 
 a woman that was so good." He had played 
 prodigal at too many women's knees not to 
 be letter-perfect in his part ; he really did 
 like Madame, and his big blue eyes ended 
 his appeal with a look eloquent of much that 
 he dared not express as yet in set phrases. 
 
 "What! Going?" she said, with a start. 
 " How soon ?" 
 
 Her pained surprise flattered him. " I 
 don't know exactly," he returned. " There 
 has been a rumor of our being ordered out
 
 83 
 
 to the frontier; our time for idling is almost 
 over. The Colonel was talking about it at 
 mess to-day ; it will be the hardest break-up 
 I ever made." 
 
 She was playing with fire, and she knew 
 it ; to be sure, she might burn her fingers, 
 but a sense of the danger gave her dull life 
 a zest it had lacked heretofore. Her love for 
 Wickford, though of an inferior variety, was 
 vital enough to protect her from any illu- 
 sion in regard to her present state of feel- 
 ing. She knew she did not love the Cap- 
 tain, yet the rectitude that would have sent 
 her beautiful lover to the right-about was be- 
 yond her. He was so handsome, she argued, 
 and at least he cared for her. Who else 
 minded where she went or what she did ? 
 Who else believed her good, or felt elevated 
 by her influence? Not even that cold, si- 
 lent man she called husband, who packed 
 himself off in the stage-coach the other 
 morning without even so much as a good- 
 bye for her. There was a good deal of child- 
 ish inconsequence about Madame which she 
 had not laid aside with her short petticoats,
 
 84 
 
 and just at present flattered vanity on one 
 side, and wounded pride on the other, lashed 
 her into a frame of mind in which she hated 
 everybody but the Captain, and would not 
 " be good " at any price. What was the use 
 of trying to win back a love she had com- 
 pletely forfeited ? She would make Wick- 
 ford pay for her rejected advances ! Be- 
 cause she knew it would displease him for 
 her to sup alone with the officer she was 
 doubly determined to do so. 
 
 " What do I care for a pack of toothless 
 old gossips ?" she broke out. " You are my 
 friend, and Heaven knows I have not a 
 plethora of that commodity ; my husband 
 does not trouble himself to object. Come 
 along then, and let us feast together ; I be- 
 lieve there is a duck and some salad, and we 
 will shock Aunt Hannah a little more. It 
 may act as a tonic for her blood, instead of 
 those nostrums she is always taking. I won- 
 der if I told you how she dosed me with 
 herb tea when I was first married and im- 
 prudently acknowledged to a cold. 
 
 "There were bottles and bottles of all sorts
 
 85 
 
 of decoctions setting along the window-ledge 
 and topping the mantel-piece the last time I 
 was there vastly ornamental to be sure ! I 
 protest it smelt so like Gordon's stuffy of- 
 fice that I felt at home for the first time." 
 
 He laughed good-naturedly, and answer- 
 ed: "I don't half blame the women for 
 hating you, you're so confoundedly pretty, 
 and you do make such game of them." 
 
 " Please don't you, too, begin to lecture 
 me," she implored. "Gordon used to, once 
 upon a time, on the vanity of human wishes, 
 I believe, when I wanted a new dress, or the 
 respect the Spartans showed the aged if I 
 told him about the absurdities of those old 
 frumps. Dear, dear, but applied classics 
 were tiresome until I routed out my school 
 history in self-defence, and found out about 
 those disgusting people. The next time he 
 began, ' My dear, I regret to see you dis- 
 play a levity in your conduct towards the 
 aged.' " She mimicked the Doctor's meas- 
 ured accents to the life. " ' The Spartans, 
 who were the nation best fitted to preserve 
 their autonomy in the Peleponnesus ' I
 
 86 
 
 let him get that far, and I made up my 
 mind I would not be bullied by the old im- 
 postors any longer." 
 
 " What did you say ?" queried the other, 
 bending a twig out of the way of her broad 
 plumed hat. 
 
 " Thank you ; what did I say ? Why, I 
 told him that I had more than my fill of 
 reproaches for my general impiety, and if 
 he would only be consistent in his demands 
 I should be most happy to amend my man- 
 ners. He naturally stared at this, so I ex- 
 plained. He was half worrying the life 
 out of me about that time to get me to 
 visit a sort of child's hospital he has at the 
 edge of town, full of all sorts of deformed, 
 ugly little creatures it makes one lose one's 
 appetite to think about them. He had also 
 been expostulating about the soup ; it was 
 bad, too I saw to that," she added, with an 
 upward glance and a ripple of laughter at 
 the memory of her stratagem. " Well, to 
 come back to my story, I asked him if I were 
 wrong in supposing that it was the Spar- 
 tans who exposed unsightly children on the
 
 87 
 
 mountains. ' Yes,' he answered, bewildered. 
 ' What has that to do with it?' I went on : 
 The Spartans ate precious bad food, too ; 
 they went a-hunting slaves when the game 
 was scarce, and told lies for a very living. 
 Now, as I am a thorough-going woman, if I 
 were to follow the example of these truly 
 genteel people at all, I insisted I should do 
 it consistently. He must therefore stop 
 tormenting me about his hospital, which 
 was a highly immoral institution from a 
 Spartan standpoint ; he must give up com- 
 plaining about the dinner ; and, I said, ' I 
 will trouble you to leave Thomas alone in 
 future when I send him with a message that 
 I am not at home.' I have heard nothing 
 of the Spartans since," she concluded. 
 
 They laughed together over the Doctor's 
 defeat, the Captain as merrily as a man may 
 at the mishaps of a supplanted rival, but in 
 Madame's heart there arose a longing for 
 the old days. Even if her husband scolded 
 her, they "were better, infinitely better, than 
 the eternal silence that crushed her like a 
 nightmare. Oh, he should say something,
 
 he should, even if it were only to anathema- 
 tize her! She was one of those coarse- 
 fibred women who revel in violent emotions 
 of any kind, but to whom silent disapproval 
 is torture. Had the Doctor stormed at her 
 it would not have disturbed her nearly so 
 much as did his studied civility ; quarrelling 
 and " making up " formed part of her ideal 
 of happiness. 
 
 She was rather silent on the way home, 
 while he drifted into stories of hunting ex- 
 periences in some Western post, to which 
 she answered at random. Though he rec- 
 ognized that her attention was not with 
 him, he talked on kindly to fill in the 
 pauses, imagining that the news of his near 
 departure was the cause of her abstraction. 
 A gray sea fog had blown up while they 
 rode, and now muffled the whole country 
 in ghostly indistinctness, through which 
 the waning twilight struggled feebly. A 
 colony of swallows were holding some kind 
 of conclave on the stone-wall by the way- 
 side. Every now and then one or another 
 would rise a few feet in the air, and, cir-
 
 cling about a moment, rejoin his fellows 
 again. 
 
 " Look at them !" said the Captain. " They 
 are as uneasy as a regiment under orders to 
 march. They'll be going soon." 
 
 " Ah yes !" she answered. " It is a bad 
 presage ; don't talk about orders or march- 
 ing, it makes me nervous. I believe there's 
 a storm brewing somewhere ; as Aunt Han- 
 nah says, I feel it in my bones." 
 
 They turned into the lane by the grave- 
 yard. The place looked more desolate than 
 ever, choked with its withered summer weeds 
 and rank grass dripping with the dampness. 
 In her overwrought state the gray head-stones 
 seemed to grin at her, and the long white 
 shaft over old Madame Wickford loomed up 
 like a shrouded figure in the mist. Isabel 
 shuddered, and pressed on to the garden gate. 
 
 " Come in here," she said ; " it's too late 
 to horrify the neighbors, so let's give up 
 going round to the front door. We will 
 have tea just as we are, and afterwards 
 we will try over the new music you sent 
 for. Let us get in to the light ; it's eerie
 
 90 
 
 out here. I feel like something was going 
 to happen to me to-night." He jumped 
 from his horse, and, lifting her lightly, set 
 her down by the gate. A negro hostler led 
 the animals away as Madame and the Cap- 
 tain crossed the garden. The calceolarias 
 had thriven during the summer, but the ear- 
 lier frosts had made a sad havoc among 
 them ; it was a desolate - looking place on 
 this dull evening. 
 
 " You don't know it," she said, " but this 
 garden is tragic ground." 
 
 " How do you mean tragic ?" he returned. 
 
 " Never mind now , it's a long story," re* 
 turned my lady. "And you are to be as 
 hungry as a hunter, remember." 
 
 " Well," he laughed, " it's the plain truth. 
 I would appreciate it better after supper. 
 'A sad tale's doubly saddened when it is 
 long,' you know." 
 
 As they entered the dim-lit hall a little 
 figure came running towards my lady, eager- 
 ly exclaiming, " Granma's sick, and mother's 
 gone. So I'se come to take tea and spend 
 the night, please."
 
 " Dear, dear," said Madame, kissing John- 
 nie. " I am vastly popular to-night, to be 
 sure ; you are my second uninvited guest. 
 But you are very welcome all the same, 
 little man." 
 
 The Captain groaned ; he and Johnnie 
 were fast friends, but there was such a case 
 as having too much of a good thing, and the 
 child was a very good thing, indeed, when 
 he was replete without being sleepy. The 
 two grown people made a good deal of the 
 baby, however, for he came in the nick of 
 time, to save what the Captain called " the po- 
 sition," and Madame " the situation." John- 
 nie ate and drank four times as much as was 
 good for him, and revelled in preserves and 
 sweetmeats to his heart's content, but greatly 
 to the detriment of his little stomach.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THERE was a wood fire crackling on the 
 hearth, and the candles were all lighted when 
 the three entered the sitting-room. 
 
 " I can't get this place to look like home," 
 Isabel said. " These straight - backed old 
 chairs always seem as prim and uncomforta- 
 ble as children with their company manners 
 on." 
 
 " I ain't uncomfoble," proclaimed Johnnie 
 from the Captain's shoulder, " and I ain't 
 prim either." 
 
 " Of course not, of course not ; you're the 
 nicest little gentleman that ever was," Ma- 
 dame hastened to assure him. " But we 
 are going to play music now ; don't you 
 think Chloe had better take you up to 
 by-by." 
 
 " I don't wa-a-a-nt to go by-by," began 
 the boy, with a suspicious prolongation of
 
 93 
 
 his vowels that presaged a howl. " Johnnie 
 ain't sleepy." 
 
 " Come, come, little soldier, don't pipe 
 your eye !" exclaimed the Captain, hastily 
 putting the child down. Both the grown 
 people had some experience of that young 
 gentleman's staying powers when he once 
 went fairly on the war-path. 
 
 " If Johnnie will be quiet he may stay 
 where he is, then," said Madame, wisely dis- 
 creet in the face of danger. The child set- 
 tled himself on the bear rug before the fire, 
 and began to amuse himself famously with 
 the numerous playthings his hostess pro- 
 vided, talking merrily to himself the while. 
 There were picture-books full of beautiful 
 ladies with high foreheads and very long 
 necks; there was the silver snuffer -tray for 
 a wagon, in which he drove the glass paper- 
 weight around the hearth-rug. He had 
 thoughts of demanding the late dahlias 
 blooming in a vase on the centre-table, but 
 luckily his intimate friend the cat appeared 
 just at this juncture, and he forgot about it. 
 
 In the meantime Madame threw aside her
 
 94 
 
 broad plumed hat, and, gathering up the am- 
 ple skirts of her riding-dress, searched here 
 and there for the music she wanted. 
 
 " I must have left it up-stairs," she said. 
 " Wait a minute while I run and see." 
 
 The soldier, Johnnie, and the cat were all 
 in a high romp when she returned ; between 
 them they were making such a noise that it 
 completely drowned the sound of her fum- 
 bling at the door with overburdened hand. 
 At last she got it open, but in the effort her 
 long skirt dropped from her arm and tripped 
 her when she tried to move forward. As 
 she stumbled, Read sprang forward and 
 caught her in his arms. She broke away 
 from him as soon as she could regain her 
 footing, exclaiming, with a scarlet face : 
 
 "How awkward I am, to be sure! But 
 here's the music ; let us begin at once." 
 
 The Captain bent to pick up something 
 from the floor ; his pulses throbbed violently, 
 and a thousand thoughts that are the better 
 for imprisonment knocked tumultuously at 
 the gates of expression. 
 
 " Wait an instant," he said, to gain time
 
 95 
 
 for self-command. " I have found some most 
 attractive metal ; how did this get here ?" 
 
 " Oh, that," she said, indifferently, glanc- 
 ing over her shoulder. " It's an old picture 
 of me that Gordon doesn't like ; my can- 
 dle blew out, and I knocked it over in the 
 dark. So, rather than keep you waiting 
 while I set things to rights, I brought it 
 along. Come, let's try the music now ; see, 
 here's a duet." She began humming as she 
 ran over the notes. He laid down the little 
 gold case, and joined her at the piano as 
 he was bid. 
 
 "O'er the far blue mountain, o'er the dark sea- foam, 
 Come, thou long-parted one, come to thy home " 
 
 rang the 'two voices through the house, 
 flooding the rooms with profane melody un- 
 der the very noses of the sour-faced pictures 
 of ministers and lawyers, who had each sat 
 in their father's place, successively, since the 
 Wickfords began to be a great family. 
 
 The little miniature which she had dropped 
 was one that Isabel ordered for her husband 
 in his courting days. Some post -marital
 
 96 
 
 comment about the likeness annoyed her, so 
 she had taken it away from him, and set it 
 up on a little stand among the essence-bot- 
 tles and brushes that littered her spindle- 
 legged dressing-table. When he begged it 
 again she refused, saying, laughingly, that 
 she wanted a standard to judge her age by 
 when the wrinkles came. 
 
 Song followed song, sometimes one and 
 then the other, sometimes the two voices 
 married in perfect concord. They were thin, 
 commonplace tunes, but are even now sweet 
 with the perfume of past years. In the cup- 
 board of the old house the same yellowed 
 copies of music from which they sang that 
 night lie mouldering quietly. There is 
 
 " From the white-blossomed sloe my dear Chloe requested 
 A sprig her fair breast to adorn," 
 
 which he set ringing through the house on 
 the tide of his splendid barytone. There, 
 too, is 
 
 " 'Twere vain to tell thee all I feel," 
 
 that she trilled to him, and
 
 97 
 
 ' ' Quick mount thy gay and gallant steed, my soldier 
 boy," 
 
 its cover adorned with a picture of an im- 
 possible horse, with legs of unequal length, 
 the bridle held by a deformed Greek soldier 
 in a semi-Turkish uniform, who touches the 
 hand of a lady in a steeple cap, floating 
 veil, and bloomer costume. She is supposed 
 to urge him to 
 
 " Mount, the foe is near 
 
 Greece calls thee in her hour of need, 
 And who but thou shouldst hear ?" 
 
 One feels dread forebodings for a nation de- 
 fended by such a solitary trooper. 
 
 Somehow the tinkling old tunes reflect the 
 spirit of those times when the lives of men and 
 women swung between the two poles of war's 
 brutality and a super-refined sentimentalism 
 which seems mawkish to their more prosaic 
 grandchildren. To us these songs are only 
 interesting as musical curiosities, over which 
 we smile indulgently ; but for the man and 
 woman at the piano they were the living 
 melodic expression of their generation, and
 
 98 
 
 in the shadow of their coming separation the 
 notes throbbed with a burden of sorrow, of 
 dreaded loneliness, and a weight of unspoken 
 passion that wrought them both to the high- 
 est pitch of nervous tension. 
 
 The little boy on the hearth-rug had gone 
 to sleep long before Madame shut the piano. 
 
 " I suppose I had better have him carried 
 up-stairs now," she said, tentatively, looking 
 down at the child's figure, relaxed in perfect 
 repose. " See, he has got hold of my minia- 
 ture, too, and has gone to sleep with it in his 
 hand." 
 
 " I would let well enough alone, if I were 
 you," returned her companion. " Listen. 
 Who can be knocking at this .hour? It's 
 nearly eleven by the clock." 
 
 The clatter of the brass knocker continued. 
 " Here, let me go to the door. It may be 
 some one who wants to see the Doctor." 
 
 A sudden apprehension shook her, every 
 overwrought nerve in her body seemed strain- 
 ed to listen ; the wind had risen since dark, 
 and was moaning in the chimney. She heard 
 him fumble with the bolts ; it seemed an
 
 99 
 
 age before the door flew open with a crash, 
 and the storm rushed in whooping, making 
 the candles flicker and starting the smoulder- 
 ing logs into a blaze. Some one was talking 
 to the Captain in the hall ; now the door 
 closed, and she heard his quick step coming 
 back alone. The presentiment of impending 
 evil that had oppressed her all day now took 
 the form of anxiety for her husband ; her 
 fear grew into an awful certainty of misfort- 
 une as she listened for the Captain's return. 
 Could Gordon have been taken ill ? Was 
 there an accident on the journey? Could 
 he even be dead ? " Oh, God," she prayed, 
 dumbly, "not without saying good-bye 
 not angry with me, and without good-bye !" 
 She stood with clasped hands waiting her 
 doom as Read entered. His face was white 
 and set ; he walked up to her and took both 
 her hands. " It's come, Isabel," he said, sim- 
 ply. Her anxiety lifted her out of the level 
 of small things, and she hardly noticed the 
 use of her Christian name. 
 
 " Not dead ! Oh, for Heaven's sake, say 
 he is not quite dead !" she implored.
 
 100 
 
 " Who's not dead ?" queried the mystified 
 Captain. " Worry has turned your brain, 
 child. There '11 be many a poor fellow stiff 
 and stark before we get back ; but we're 
 alive enough now, all of us. The Indians 
 are out on the war-path again, and the regi- 
 ment's ordered to the front." 
 
 The relief from the horror of her imagina- 
 tion was too great a transition for her over- 
 strained nerves ; she broke out into an hys- 
 terical fit of weeping, which the Captain 
 totally misunderstood. 
 
 He dropped on his knees beside her, and 
 drew her suddenly towards him. " Ah, be- 
 loved !" he said, " don't make it worse for 
 me ; God knows it's hard enough to leave 
 you as it is." 
 
 She struggled away from his embrace, 
 startled from the total absorption in her own 
 fears. " Worse for you !" she exclaimed, 
 springing up and facing him. " Worse for 
 you, because he is alive. Ah, why should 
 you care ? It is I who ought to be glad if he 
 died I, whom he tortures, who love him in 
 spite of it all, and would give my life, drop by
 
 101 
 
 drop, for even a little of the tenderness I did 
 not value when I had it. Oh, if you knew 
 what it is to sit face to face with the corpse 
 of your dead happiness, as I do every day 
 and all day, you would understand what 
 hell is!" 
 
 The Captain staggered to his feet. Here 
 was a revelation indeed. He had always 
 thought of Isabel with a half-contemptuous 
 tenderness, as of a pretty woman fallen an 
 easy conquest to his fascinations, but the dis- 
 covery of her absorbing love for Wickford 
 piqued him. "Why, in God's name," he 
 thought, wrathfully, " had she the bad taste 
 to hanker after that curmudgeon of a doctor, 
 who didn't even possess wit enough to keep 
 his wife out of harm's way?" He realized 
 perfectly that her tragic love set her beyond 
 his reach, and respect for her wifehood made 
 itself heard amid the crash of his falling illu- 
 sions. This respect, which had been absent 
 before in his feeling for her, put her whole 
 personality in a new light. It is doubtful if 
 he had ever been so genuinely fond of Isabel 
 as he was at this moment of his awakening.
 
 102 
 
 She looked very little and desolate, huddled 
 together with her face hidden on the arm of 
 her chair and her slender body shaken by 
 sobs. A great pity for her surged through 
 him, sweeping away the lingering remnants 
 of disappointed vanity, and leaving a regret- 
 ful, compassionate friendship in its place. 
 If he could have stayed now, he thought, he 
 could have been so much to her ; he might 
 have taken her part in brotherly fashion. 
 In his new-born respect there was contained 
 an instant oblivion of his past, that enabled 
 him to imagine himself capable of friendship 
 with a woman unalloyed by any baser im- 
 pulse. 
 
 The clock ticked stolidly on, the moments 
 were flying, the night was already old, and 
 there were many things to be done before 
 sunrise. It was time to say good-bye. 
 
 " Haven't you a word for me ?" he mur- 
 mured, reproachfully, as he bent over her. 
 " I am going into certain danger, perhaps to 
 my death. God knows, little friend, if we 
 will ever meet again." 
 
 She caught his hand, and laid her wet
 
 103 
 
 cheek against it. " Forgive me," she sobbed ; 
 " I had no right to burden you with my 
 griefs, to-night of all others. You have been 
 so good to me, though, all this dreary time. 
 Ah, why must I give you up, my one friend, 
 my one friend !" And a new paroxysm of 
 weeping shook her. He knelt down beside 
 her again, saying : 
 
 "All things have an end, Isabel even 
 this dear summer, that shall ever be sweet 
 with the memory of the only good woman 
 who has ever called me friend. Won't 
 you believe me, dear, and kiss me good-bye, 
 just as you might if I were dying? Only 
 once," he pleaded ; " this once for good- 
 bye." 
 
 She lifted her head and stared into his 
 face with terrified, questioning eyes. In his 
 calm, clear gaze there was no vestige of pas- 
 sion, only the kindly sorrow at parting that 
 his words betokened. 
 
 " I will not touch you unless you say so, 
 dear," he assured her. 
 
 " I cannot, I cannot," she cried. " He 
 would never understand ; I could never tell
 
 104 
 
 him. Oh ! my friend, anything but that 
 only I cannot do that." 
 
 A sudden thought took possession of her ; 
 she rose swiftly and passed over to the child 
 before the fire. He had awakened, and was 
 sitting up regarding the man and woman 
 with sleepy eyes. 
 
 " Johnnie, give me the picture," she said, 
 as she gently disengaged his clasp from the 
 tiny case. She next caught up a pair of 
 scissors that lay beside her tambour -work 
 and cut off one of her bright curls. 
 
 " Take these," she said, holding the two 
 keepsakes towards him, " and remember I 
 shall pray for your safety, day and night, with 
 all my heart. God bless you, and now 
 good-bye, good-bye." The tears were 
 streaming down her beautiful face as she 
 stood before him. . The Captain received 
 the little tokens speechlessly. He had not 
 intended to say anything but a formal fare- 
 well. But the temptation was too great ; 
 the habit of his life had formed no barrier to 
 stem the tide of his desire. He stooped and 
 kissed her hastily where she stood. Before
 
 she could recover she heard the great door 
 clang behind him and his horse's hoofs beat- 
 ing the road in a rapid gallop. 
 
 " I want my 'ittle picture," wailed the child 
 on the hearth-rug. " You's a bad girl to take 
 it, and I won't love you. I wa-a-ant my 'ittle 
 picture." 
 
 As Madame stumbled up-stairs, bearing 
 the kicking, crying boy in her arms, she 
 paused on the landing in astonishment, for a 
 long finger of light pierced the heart-shaped 
 openings in the office shutters. Fatigue and 
 sorrow clogged her mind, and she only won- 
 dered, in a dull, befogged fashion, how the 
 Doctor had managed his arrival so quietly.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 WlCKFORD returned from the city bear- 
 ing his death-sentence with him ; he had 
 heard the worst, and the worst had exceeded 
 even his expectations. Indeed, although he 
 thought he was fully nerved to meet what- 
 ever doom awaited him, the assurance of 
 such speedy disfigurement had broken down 
 the guards of his fortitude, leaving him a 
 prey to the purely animal longing for sym- 
 pathetic companionship. He would have 
 given the world if there had been any one 
 to whom he had the right to carry this in- 
 tolerable burden of sorrow, with the assur- 
 ance that he should find consolation and 
 comfort. He felt doubly cut off from hu- 
 manity by the loneliness which oppressed 
 him and added to the misfortune that would 
 shortly make him a sickening horror to his 
 fellow-men. In his supreme distress he even
 
 107 
 
 went so far as to form some project of throw- 
 ing himself upon his wife's mercy. But the 
 memory of the unfailing ridicule and disgust 
 with which she contemplated all traces of 
 bodily deformity made him pause. Yet he 
 had, at last, decided to see her and tell her 
 the full extent of his misfortunes informa- 
 tion which he judged it her right to possess ; 
 he would then be guided in his subse- 
 quent conduct by the manner in which she 
 received the very bad news he brought. 
 
 There were only two inside passengers in 
 the coach that night himself and a thin, in- 
 ferior-looking man, burdened with an appall- 
 ing number of bundles, that caused him 
 great uneasiness as the coach rattled and 
 bumped along the road. A sea fog in- 
 gulfed the surrounding country. The win- 
 dow-glasses dripped with moisture, until a 
 great wind sprang up rolling the mist aside 
 like a curtain. Wickford cleared the pane 
 with his handkerchief, and looked out at 
 the wrack of the coming storm blown across 
 the face of a watery moon. The trees 
 " stretched bare, protesting arms," which the
 
 io8 
 
 tempest whipped in its anger, tearing from 
 them the few dead leaves they could still 
 boast. 
 
 " It looks as though we were in for a wild 
 night, stranger," said the little, weazened- 
 faced man beside him. 
 
 " Like enough," said the Doctor, folding 
 his arms and drawing up the cloak round 
 his face. 
 
 " Be you going far from here ?" the little 
 man continued. " I won't get to my stop- 
 ping-place till to-morrow noon." 
 
 " I get out at the next change of horses," 
 Wickford answered shortly, and fell silent 
 again. 
 
 " Excuse me, stranger, but how did you 
 come by that sore on your face?" the other 
 persisted. " My wife she had one just like 
 it, and it killed her a year come Christmas. 
 She was a fine-looking woman when I mar- 
 ried her ; but before she died Lord ! her 
 jaw was clean eat off, and her nose " 
 
 Wickford glared at his neighbor until the 
 very dimness seemed luminous with his 
 anger. " Who permitted you the imperti-
 
 109 
 
 nence of putting personal questions to me?" 
 he thundered. " Be silent, or I will wring 
 your miserable little neck." 
 
 The little man shrank away to the far cor- 
 ner of the coach, flattening himself against 
 the opposite side of the seat, for he felt se- 
 cretly assured that he was shut up with 
 either a cutthroat or a dangerous lunatic. 
 Therefore he concentrated his mind upon 
 keeping still as a rat until help should be at 
 hand. 
 
 They bumped and rattled on through the 
 night, and in the silence within the vehicle 
 Wickford could hear the driver calling to 
 his horses and cracking his long whip now 
 and then to urge them to renewed exertion. 
 The sounds and sights around him partook 
 of the unreality of a dream, compared with 
 the sharp sorrow that was gnawing his heart. 
 Sometimes he wondered if he would not 
 awake and find himself in his own carved 
 four-poster; the terror of his situation was 
 too stupendous ; even this little human 
 weasel remarked his disfigurement already. 
 " Oh !" he thought, " if I only had the right to
 
 no 
 
 die if I could only kill myself with a clear 
 conscience!" He revolved in his mind the 
 thousand instances of self-destruction that 
 his classic education had taught him to re- 
 spect, and remembered with a wan smile 
 how he had admired Seneca for heroically 
 playing with the ebb of his existence. To 
 die now seemed so simple a thing in com- 
 parison with the duty of living, which his in- 
 grained religious prejudice thrust upon him. 
 At last, with one supreme jolt, the stage 
 drew up at the door of an old inn ; the lan- 
 terns flashed back and forth as the stable- 
 boys busied themselves about the steaming 
 horses. He heard the men calling to each 
 other, and the driver's half-laughing curses 
 on their tardiness. Why should he wait to 
 be driven the few steps to his own door? 
 He decided he would walk home and send 
 down for his traps in the morning. The still 
 watches of the darkness, he hoped, might help 
 him to face his sorrow quietly and become 
 acquainted, in a measure, with the aspect of 
 his own horrid fate. He opened the stage- 
 door and disappeared into the night.
 
 Ill 
 
 No sooner was the coast clear than the lit- 
 tle, thin man burst out of his castle of bundles 
 and stumbled down the coach-steps with shak- 
 ing knees. "Where's the landlord?" he cried. 
 " Show me the landlord." Mine host hurried 
 up. " For God's sake, give me a drink quick!" 
 stammered the little fellow, his teeth chat- 
 tering with fright. " I have been shut up 
 with a lunatic all the way from K ." 
 
 There was a great deal of bustling about, 
 and the little man was at last wrapped in a 
 huge quilt by the tap-room fire, with a stiff 
 tumbler of hot toddy in his shaking hand. 
 The broad-shouldered driver came in to 
 warm himself and hear the latest particulars 
 of his passenger's woes. 
 
 " What's the matter with that fellow ?" he 
 asked, as he strode into the circle of fire- 
 light. " There warn't no crazy people in the 
 coach at all. Him and Doc. Wickford was 
 the only passengers inside. I reckon he 
 won't pretend the Doctor's crazy." 
 
 The liquor and light had revived the spir- 
 its of the man with the bundles. " What 
 ails him, then, if he ain't cracked?" he de-
 
 112 
 
 manded in a shrill voice. " I was passin' the 
 compliments of the day with him, and I sez, 
 sez I, 'Stranger, what might be the matter 
 with your face ?' Then I told him about my 
 old woman, how she died of cancer, just as 
 polite as could be. I tell you, sir, he turned 
 on me like a rattler, and bid me hold my 
 tongue, a-threatening to kill me if I opened 
 my mouth again." 
 
 " Humph," ruminated mine host. " His 
 father died that way, and his grandmother, 
 too. Maybe that's how he come not to like 
 hearing about them diseases." 
 
 " Well," returned the little fellow, in whom 
 the toddy began to breed false courage, "it 
 may be all very fine, but it ain't to be ex- 
 pected that every passenger in a stage-coach 
 is up in his family history. I'll go as far as 
 anybody to keep up the conversation, if 
 agreeable, but if not well ' And he threw 
 out his hands with an expressive gesture of 
 helplessness. The horses were in now, and 
 the travellers resumed their places. The 
 whip cracked and the coach lumbered off on 
 its night journey.
 
 U3 
 
 Wickford entered the garden by the wicket 
 in the hedge, so no notice might be given of 
 his coming. He was unstrung and totally 
 unfit to meet his wife at the moment ; he 
 labored under the oppressive aloofness be- 
 gotten by sorrow, which endows even the 
 most familiar objects with a strangeness bor- 
 rowed from the new relation that we thence- 
 forth bear to our dead selves. The old land- 
 marks seemed to be obliterated by the tor- 
 rent of his anguish, and he felt no more of 
 the balm he anticipated from a sense of 
 home-coming than he might have experi- 
 enced in entering any way-side tavern. His 
 disease created a spiritual alienation from all 
 things, and in his heart, like the Jewish lep- 
 ers, he cried out perpetually, " Unclean ! un- 
 clean !" proclaiming his eternal separation 
 from humanity. He saw the light and heard 
 the bursts of music swelling out from the 
 drawing-room, and vainly tried to smother 
 an unreasonable sense of resentment towards 
 Isabel because she was enjoying herself so 
 thoroughly, while he shuddered under the 
 lash of his fate out here in the cold. No
 
 114 
 
 doubt she had guests ; he decided he would 
 not disturb her then ; it would be time 
 enough to thrust his sinister presence upon 
 her when they were gone. 
 
 Everything in his office and the adjoining 
 room was just as he left it, with a fire laid 
 against his coming. He soon kindled a blaze 
 upon the hearth and threw himself into his 
 high-backed chair, where, in the deep silence, 
 broken only by the howling of the wind and 
 the distant booming of the surf, he deter- 
 mined to fight out his great fight alone, and 
 win such quietness, born of desperation, as 
 was to be his spiritual meat and drink until 
 he died. In the tense agony he endured 
 he took no note of time ; all the forces of 
 his nature waged war within the narrow 
 confines of his heart, and their storming was 
 mightier than the rage of the winds without. 
 The temptation to self-destruction surged 
 over him from time to time, and his belief 
 in a personal devil made him feel almost as 
 if he could see the dim spectre clutching at 
 his laboring soul. There was a supreme 
 moral courage in the man that sustained
 
 "5 
 
 him in the midst of this spiritual upheaval, 
 and at last the silent dignity of resignation 
 began to settle upon him. He would live 
 yes, and carry on his work, too until the 
 end, nor should any man see him in the last 
 stage of his fearful malady; his plan was 
 fixed. Now he would go and say good-bye 
 to that sweet temple of all his ruined hopes. 
 He would look on her for the last time face 
 to face ; he would see the sheen of her hair, 
 the rosy flush of her skin once more, for 
 from the morrow all things would only come 
 dimly to him seen through the fold of a 
 black veil. The fire burned brightly, but 
 he lit a candle. Who knew when he would 
 come back? Perhaps she would meet him 
 with tenderness ; perhaps, after all, the dif- 
 ference between them might be bridged. 
 There were all sorts of half-fledged thoughts 
 nestling in his heart as he strode out into 
 the night ; the music was silent, so her guests 
 must be gone, yet there was still light burn- 
 ing in the drawing-room. However, he would 
 look in before he intruded upon her merry- 
 making. Thus thinking he drew close to
 
 the window, his footfalls silent on the car- 
 pet of damp, dead leaves. The picture in 
 the cheerful, warmly-lighted room seemed 
 ever afterwards etched into his brain as by 
 lightning. In a flash he saw her cut the 
 curl, he saw the Captain take it with some- 
 thing else that glittered, he saw the kiss, and 
 the soldier's hurried departure. Then, with 
 an inarticulate cry of rage, like a tiger's snarl, 
 he rushed madly through the garden tow- 
 ards the street ; but it was too late, he 
 could discern only the rapidly vanishing 
 figure of horse and rider as they galloped 
 through the night. 
 
 In his blind fury he ran forward, yelling to 
 stop them, but the wind drove his voice 
 back in his teeth, and clutched his garments 
 as if to hinder his mad race after vengeance. 
 Bare-headed and panting, he struggled on 
 until in his wild career he caught his foot 
 in a protruding root and fell heavily to the 
 ground, striking his head. 
 
 He never knew how long he lay there, but 
 when semi - consciousness returned to him 
 he staggered up, and with shaking limbs re-
 
 traced his steps. The whole night seemed 
 full of demons to his bewildered senses 
 devils who howled and laughed in his ears, 
 and blazoned his shame on the very house- 
 tops. He was obliged to sit down and rest 
 at times, but after a while he found himself 
 at his own door. 
 
 All the candles were snuffed out, the great 
 lower rooms lay in utter darkness save for 
 an occasional flicker of the smouldering logs 
 in the drawing-room. There was light up- 
 stairs in Madame's apartment, though. That 
 room he thought of, even in his present half- 
 crazed condition, with a great heart-throb. 
 It was the nest he had prepared for her with 
 so much loving care ; the chamber whose . 
 threshold he had not crossed since that day, 
 in midsummer, when his respect for his wife 
 suffered an untimely death. 
 
 Madame was nearly ready for the night ; 
 she had sent her maid away and was gazing 
 into the mirror unseeingly, with the full tide 
 of her hair rippling over her bare shoulders 
 and hanging on either side of her tear- 
 stained face in curling profusion. The sense
 
 of utter desolation and overwhelming fatigue 
 oppressed her, so she could not even sum- 
 mon the energy to go to bed, although 
 every nerve in her body ached with a sep- 
 arate pain of its own. She heard the door 
 open behind her. 
 
 " Go to bed, Chloe," she said, listlessly. 
 " I told you I should not want you any 
 more unless the child waked." Hearing no 
 answer, she looked up into the mirror, and 
 there above her was reflected her husband's 
 wild, white face, the purplish spot on his 
 cheek glowing with sinister distinctness, and 
 his hair disordered and clotted with blood. 
 Screaming, she hid her head in her arms, 
 cowed with abject terror at what she be- 
 lieved to be an apparition. 
 
 " Woman, make ready, I have come to do 
 the vengeance of the Lord," he said at last, 
 and his voice sounded toneless and unnatu- 
 ral, like that of a sleep-walker. "You shall 
 give up that beauty with which you sought 
 to kill men's souls. What you denied me 
 you shall give no man." 
 
 The heart seemed to go out of her, and
 
 "9 
 
 she slipped down to the floor, grovelling in 
 her agony of fright. " Ah, don't kill me !" 
 she begged, huddled at his feet. " For the 
 love of Heaven, don't kill me, Gordon. You 
 will be so sorry so sorry afterwards." She 
 threw her white arms around his knees in 
 the insistence of her pleading, and the glory 
 of her gold hair lay along the floor where 
 he stood. 
 
 He dragged himself from her clasp. 
 "Back!" he cried, his eyes burning with de- 
 lirium. " Back, woman ! do not try to mesh 
 me in your toils again. I saw you give those 
 tokens to your lover, and, by the living God, 
 I will shear you of your attractions, as Sam- 
 son should have shorn Delilah, then would 
 he never have been delivered bound to his 
 enemies." 
 
 "Ah, spare me just this once!" she plead- 
 ed. " I will go away, Gordon ; only don't 
 kill me. Oh, for God's sake, don't kill me !" 
 she begged, crawling along after him on the 
 floor. 
 
 " I will not kill you now," he muttered, 
 still in the same dull, cadenceless voice.
 
 120 
 
 " Not until I can kill him too, for there is 
 no justice in sending one soul to hell with- 
 out the other to bear it company. You 
 shall go down with your paramour when 
 your time comes, but it is not yet ; stand 
 up, stand up, I say ! your gold hair shall 
 wreck no other man's soul." 
 
 " It is not so," she sobbed. " Oh, Gordon, 
 you don't believe that of me ? You can't 
 believe me that bad ?" But, half lifting her, 
 he pushed her into a chair ; then, seizing 
 the scissors that lay upon the dressing-table, 
 he cut away the heavy masses of hair that 
 hung about her. She could hear the hiss 
 of the scissors as they reft her glory from 
 her, but she had neither strength nor voice 
 left to protest. She felt now that her life 
 was safe for the present, but even in her first 
 relief from the greater terror vanity asserted 
 itself in a throbbing sense of loss as he strode 
 to the chimney-place and thrust the glit- 
 tering mass into the heart of the fire. He 
 rammed it down with his heel, and in a mo- 
 ment the room was heavy with the stifling 
 odor of burning hair. She watched his move-
 
 121 
 
 ments with fascinated eyes as he disengaged 
 a long gold filament that had caught upon his 
 sleeve-button, and cast that in too, scrupu- 
 lously examining if any thread remained 
 about his person. Isabel's limbs seemed par- 
 alyzed by fear, she could not have moved 
 hand or foot even to save her life. 
 
 When nothing was left but a black mass 
 among the wood ashes, Wickford passed out, 
 muttering: 
 
 " And I have made a holocaust unto the 
 Lord, a burnt-offering " and his voice died 
 away as he descended the staircase. Isabel 
 tottered to the door and bolted it before 
 she crawled into bed and covered her head 
 with the blankets. Thus she lay shivering 
 with nervous chills until towards morning, 
 when she dropped at last into a leaden, un- 
 refreshing sleep.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MADAME WICKFORD awoke with a start- 
 led sense of some one banging on the 
 door. The sun was streaming into the 
 window, but her mind was so sodden with 
 yesterday's fatigue that she did not rec- 
 ollect the cause of the depression which 
 settled upon her. She involuntarily put her 
 hand to her head, and started up with a 
 frightened realization of all the events of 
 the past night. In the mirror she saw her 
 white face surrounded by stiff, ragged tufts 
 of newly cut hair. But she was denied even 
 the poor consolation of time in which to col- 
 lect herself, for the door resounded with 
 continued knocks, which augmented in force 
 as she listened. 
 
 " Mistiss, mistiss, please come !" wailed a 
 voice in the passage. " Master don't know 
 nobody." 
 
 Isabel hurriedly slid back the bolt. " Here,
 
 123 
 
 help me to dress," she called to the fright- 
 ened maid. 
 
 " Lord, Mis' Isabel ! what's the matter wid 
 yo' hair?" exclaimed the negro, paralyzed 
 with astonishment. 
 
 " Never mind that now ; get me my 
 clothes, and don't stand mooning," returned 
 Madame. As she went on dressing rapidly 
 she extracted the particulars of her hus- 
 band's sudden seizure from the negro, whose 
 unsatisfied curiosity about her mistress's 
 shorn locks for once silenced her love for 
 the horrible in all its details. Madame 
 learned that nothing remarkable had oc- 
 curred during the night. O'Connor, discov- 
 ering the office-door open at an unusual hour 
 in the morning, and fearing robbery, had ex- 
 amined the place; he found everything un- 
 disturbed until he penetrated to the sleep- 
 ing-room beyond, where the body of the 
 Doctor lay face downward along the floor. 
 They carried him to his bed, but he did not 
 appear to know any one. 
 
 " Sometimes he do speak, mistess, but he 
 jes' talk nonsense 'bout offerin' a whole lo-
 
 124 
 
 cust to the Lord. Dat show he plumb 
 out of his head, 'cos eve'ybody knows Goad 
 'ain't got nothin' to do wid locustes," ob- 
 served the maid, as Madame threw a scarf 
 over her disfigured hair and hurried down 
 the stairway to her husband. 
 
 The innate love of excitement, of which 
 a servant's life is so barren, had brought 
 the entire household together. They were 
 crowded around the supine figure, talk- 
 ing in excited voices, and too wrought 
 up to remember even the respect due 
 Isabel as their master's wife. Their disre- 
 gard stung her into asserting her right of 
 command. 
 
 " Let me pass," she demanded, imperious- 
 ly, as she pressed through them. " James, 
 ride for Dr. Stern ; you can take the bay 
 mare, and don't spare her. William, go 
 over to Miss Hannah, and ask her to come 
 immediately. Tell her your master is ill. 
 The rest of you had better get back to 
 work ; I will look after the Doctor." 
 
 The servants, white and black, took their 
 different ways reluctantly, but they went,
 
 125 
 
 nevertheless, for she was not one to be dis- 
 obeyed with impunity, even in a crisis. 
 
 Madame felt that at any cost she must 
 retain the reins of governance. All alone 
 with the man she loved and feared at once, 
 she sat looking at his flushed face, where the 
 red spot burned hotly ; her mind flew back 
 and forth, like a weaver's shuttle, among 
 the events of last night. In a moment 
 Aunt Hannah would be here; how and 
 what should she tell her or should she tell 
 her anything at all? No one had really a 
 right to know the particulars of their quar- 
 rel. She wondered now at the impulse of 
 helplessness that had prompted her to send 
 for the old woman at first. Certainly, Isabel 
 would gladly take the whole nursing upon 
 herself ; if she could only win him back 
 to her what sacrifice would seem great, what 
 labor hard? But when the events of last 
 night arose in her mind, the memory of her 
 recent terror made her shudder at being left 
 alone with him in his delirium. If he were 
 indeed mad, as she believed, what was to 
 prevent his murdering her at any moment,
 
 126 
 
 even now if he awakened ? Her unstrung 
 nerves trembled at the thought, and she 
 turned her face towards the door with an in- 
 stinctive effort to assure her possible retreat. 
 
 The clouds had lifted a little, and every 
 now and then a beam of watery sunshine 
 lighted up the desolate garden ; the chilly, 
 damp air was redolent of bruised, dead leaves 
 that spicy fragrance that only belongs to 
 autumn. She shivered with cold, yet she 
 feared to shut herself in with him, for as 
 long as she could see the outside world there 
 seemed an opening for her out of this cage 
 of despair and a possibility of near help in 
 time of need. Aunt Hannah would prob- 
 ably come by the passageway connecting the 
 two rooms with the house. What an inter- 
 minable time she was about it ! thought Ma- 
 dame, face to face with dangers whose ex- 
 tent she could not divine. Ah, there they 
 were at last ! 
 
 The door by Wickford's bed opened and 
 admitted the messenger accompanying an 
 old woman wrapped in an Indian shawl. 
 Her stiff, muslin cap, covered by a black
 
 127 
 
 silk handkerchief, bordered the wrinkled 
 face, whose kindly expression was marred 
 by a huge pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. 
 Her withered hands, worn with ministering 
 to the unhappy, were incased in cotton mitts, 
 and her bright blue merino dress hung around 
 her shrivelled form without any pretensions 
 to style or fit. With all there was a dig- 
 nity and a suggestion of native force about 
 the plain, unfashionable figure that brought 
 a sense of relief, and assured assistance to 
 Madame as she sat staring in dull hopeless- 
 ness. Aunt Hannah had been too often re- 
 buffed to make any advances towards friend- 
 liness with Isabel, but she greeted the girl 
 kindly as she bent over her nephew. 
 
 " Here, William," she called, " you get that 
 stock off your master, and undress him as 
 quick as you can ; he's had a fall somehow 
 and hurt his poor head." She blew the fire 
 into a blaze, shut the door, and pulled down 
 a window-blind to shield her patient's eyes 
 from the light. 
 
 " Can't I do something?" queried Madame, 
 humbly. Why had she not thought of all
 
 128 
 
 this before Aunt Hannah came, she won- 
 dered. 
 
 " If you want to help, Isabel, you better 
 go tell them to heat some bricks for his feet 
 and bring me a little warm water." 
 
 Madame ran on her message like a bidable 
 child, and returned bringing the water her- 
 self. Although there had been plenty of 
 willing hands to do it, she felt happier ren- 
 dering even such little personal service as 
 she could, than sitting idly thinking. She 
 watched Aunt Hannah bathing his face and 
 snipping away the stiff, clotted locks around 
 the wound. 
 
 " It isn't this that's the matter with him. 
 I've seen him with a dozen cracks in his 
 head worse than this when he was a young- 
 ster. I wonder " The old woman broke 
 off, looking at Madame with curious eyes. 
 Then she fell to examining the tiny wound 
 again. The sick man stirred uneasily once 
 or . twice and opened his eyes, moaning. 
 Madame gathered hope from these signs of 
 returning life ; perhaps, after all, it was only 
 a fall ; she might have been unreasonably
 
 I2 9 
 
 anxious. But as his gaze rested upon her 
 the pupils of his eyes contracted, and he be- 
 gan to throw himself about in bed, writhing 
 his long body like a serpent. " To the Phil- 
 istines !" he muttered ; " she has given me 
 bound to the Philistines ! Ah, they will 
 put out my eyes !" he screamed. " They'll 
 put out my eyes !" and he clung to his old 
 aunt as he had clung to her in the helpless- 
 ness of childhood. " Send her away ! oh, send 
 her away !" he implored. 
 
 " You'd better go out, Isabel," the old 
 woman urged. " It '11 raise his fever to fret 
 so. Maybe after a while he'll know you and 
 come round." 
 
 " He knows me now, Aunt Hannah !" re- 
 turned the girl, bitterly. " He knows me ; 
 that's what's the matter." So saying, she 
 went out quietly, but the shadow on her 
 heart lay black as night. 
 
 In an hour or two the physician arrived, 
 and, emboldened by his presence, she slipped 
 into the sick-room behind him. Wickford 
 had been lying comparatively quiet, moan- 
 ing at intervals, but as soon as he caught
 
 130 
 
 sight of her harassed face he started up, 
 crying: 
 
 " She has come back look how she glares 
 at me ! For God's sake, send her away be- 
 fore she puts out my eyes !" 
 
 " Gordon," she pleaded, " Heaven knows I 
 would lay down my life for you. Oh, let me 
 stay ! let me take care of you, dear!" 
 
 " Look at her head," he muttered, his voice 
 dropping to a hoarse croak. " There are 
 snakes that grow there. I killed them, but 
 they will come again, and they eat men's 
 hearts. Ah, they are biting me now !" he 
 screamed, as he twisted himself loose from 
 his aunt's arms. 
 
 It was no use ; his hatred of her was 
 stronger than disease. The physician mo- 
 tioned her to leave, and she went silently. 
 He had brain -fever, the medical man told 
 her afterwards; she must not worry about 
 his strange delusions. They often took un- 
 accountable dislikes to their nearest and 
 dearest, these fevered patients ; indeed, it 
 was best for her to keep out of the way. 
 Miss Hannah was so excellent a nurse that
 
 she need fear no neglect. Yes, on the whole, 
 it was better not to excite him ; and, in- 
 deed, Madame herself looked almost as bad 
 as the patient. " The sensitive hearts of 
 women were so susceptible." So the physi- 
 cian drove away in his gig very much 
 pleased with his own tact ; and the day 
 wore on in its dreary length till night 
 came. 
 
 It was tea-time ; Aunt Hannah had come 
 out of the sick-room for a half-hour, and 
 Madame Wickford knew that now the ordeal 
 was to begin, yet she had not decided what 
 explanation she should give for her shorn 
 locks ; those gray eyes, behind their horn- 
 rimmed spectacles, would see through any 
 flimsy tale, she knew. What if she told the 
 truth ? No one would believe her, no one 
 in all this little gossipy place. People were 
 moved here by great simple motives, and 
 they would not understand how her soul 
 was swept hither and yon by a maze of 
 counter- currents. She decided, at last, to 
 throw herself on the old woman's mercy. 
 At the worst she could only tell the town ;
 
 132 
 
 and as the town must know, anyhow, sooner 
 or later, they might as well hear the truth. 
 Isabel threw aside the lace scarf which she 
 had wound about her head, and waited the 
 coming of her inquisitor. There was Miss 
 Wickford turning down the hall ; she would 
 come in in a minute. Madame braced her- 
 self and waited. 
 
 " Please, Aunt Hannah, I have something 
 to say to you," she called, and her voice 
 shook in spite of her. The old lady turned 
 and caught sight of the disfigured head shin- 
 ing in the candle-light. 
 
 " Good lack !" she exclaimed. " You poor 
 child, what have you done with your pretty 
 hair ?" This one drop of kindliness broke 
 down the gates of Madame's last defence 
 and loosed the sluices of her tears. She 
 threw herself at the old woman's feet, and, 
 burying her face in the merino lap, sobbed 
 out the full story of her woe. 
 
 " I know I am bad," she ended, " but oh, 
 Aunt Hannah, I am not not what he thinks 
 me ! I never loved any one but him, and 
 now he believes oh, I can't tell you what
 
 133 
 
 he believes; it chokes me!" she cried, wring- 
 ing her hands above her head in impotent 
 appeal from her husband's judgment. 
 
 Deep down in Miss Hannah's withered old 
 frame there dwelt a spirit of all-embracing 
 motherhood, which spread its sheltering 
 wings over whatever unfortunate creature 
 came a-begging for her sympathy. It was 
 hard not to be just when equity lay upon 
 the side of her favorite nephew, but the girl 
 sobbing across her knees was infinitely ap- 
 pealing in her lonely and unfriended condi- 
 tion. It was only a moment that the old lady 
 let injured feeling and a sense of outraged 
 propriety stagnate the movement of her 
 good heart. Then she gathered the girl in 
 her arms and rocked her to and fro sooth- 
 ingly, patting and talking to her as if she 
 were a child. 
 
 " There, there, Aunt Hannah's pretty ! 
 don't cry any more, don't make your dear 
 eyes red. When Gordon's well I will make 
 him understand. There, there !" 
 
 Isabel had little hope of the result of any 
 mediation between her and the stern man
 
 134 
 
 whose hate dominated even the delirium of 
 his disease ; but the sense of being kindly 
 treated lay warm at her heart, and she kissed 
 the old woman lovingly when Miss Hannah 
 returned to her patient.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE weary weeks dragged themselves 
 along ; sometimes the news was that Wick- 
 ford was improved, and again the word 
 would come that he hung between life and 
 death. Then his wife would crouch in the 
 passageway outside his door, listening with 
 indrawn breath to his incessant moaning, 
 dreading lest at any moment it cease for- 
 ever. Once Aunt Hannah had spoken of 
 her fear that the red blotch on his face 
 was the herald of the hereditary distemper. 
 The old woman's acquaintance with disease 
 in many forms had blunted her sensibilities 
 to some extent, and she would have been 
 astonished and unhappy had she known 
 what intolerable pain her description of her 
 brother's death gave Isabel. To think of 
 Wickford as disfigured was monstrous her 
 beloved, whose physical beauty had cap-
 
 136 
 
 tivated and held her, in spite of their vital 
 unlikeness. She would not believe it ; it 
 would be even better that he go now than 
 awaken to such a living death as that, she 
 thought. 
 
 Except for the variations of the sick- 
 room, her life moved with silent monotony. 
 However, there was one event which tran- 
 spired about this time that momentarily 
 shook her out of the voiceless misery that 
 inwrapped her; one day a package arrived 
 for Isabel containing the little miniature, 
 dented and broken, and a blood-stained curl. 
 It enclosed a letter, too, from a boy-lieutenant 
 one of her old acquaintances in the regi- 
 ment. He told the story of a surprise by 
 night a massacre and a rescue a nameless 
 battle, replete with danger and devoid of 
 glory. The Captain's body was recovered ; 
 he spared her the details of its condition, and, 
 recognizing her face in the miniature over 
 his heart, his friend sent it back to her, 
 " hoping she would understand that a sol- 
 dier's honor was involved in the inviolable 
 secrecy he would preserve." The boy was
 
 137 
 
 only twenty - one, and secrets still smelt 
 sweet in his nostrils. 
 
 Madame cried over the letter and felt 
 sorry for a time, but her husband's illness 
 soon swallowed up all her thoughts again. 
 Although she regretted the death of the Cap- 
 tain, yet, as he had been the cause of much 
 of her present unhappiness, her grief was of 
 a temperate nature. Hers was not a char- 
 acter large enough to harbor more than one 
 deep sentiment at a time ; and at present 
 her anxiety for Wickford absorbed all her 
 small store of sympathy. 
 
 Gradually he crept back to life, reason 
 illuminated the darkened recesses of his 
 disordered brain, and he began to gain a 
 little strength. But as yet his nurses did 
 not dare to mention Isabel before him. 
 Madame awaited events with what patience 
 she could muster, although she fully appre- 
 ciated her mortifying position. 
 
 " I am classed among the disagreeable 
 subjects which everybody taboos before 
 the sick, like undertakers and importunate 
 duns," she thought, bitterly.
 
 138 
 
 Wickford recovered slowly, for even his 
 youth and sober life were small assistance 
 to a constitution already undermined by dis- 
 ease and broken by the stress of the emo- 
 tional pressure under which he had lived. 
 The autumn went, flecked with rain and 
 sunshine, but left him still an invalid. It 
 was not until the first snows whitened the 
 ground that Miss Hannah dared her initial 
 tilt for her new prottgte. 
 
 Wickford was sitting by the window look- 
 ing out at the purity of the untrodden snow 
 and enjoying a new overwhelming sense of 
 the world's beauty which comes to so many 
 of us when we crawl back exhausted out of 
 the Valley of the Shadow. Animal con- 
 tent with his surroundings lapped him 
 about ; he was glad merely to eat and sleep 
 and wake to eat again ; everything was new 
 and good to his freshly recovered percep- 
 tions, and he shrank from facing the problems 
 he knew awaited him like hungry wolves on 
 the other side of his sick-room door. The 
 very contrast between what lay before him 
 and his present state enhanced its comfort.
 
 The click of Aunt Hannah's knitting- 
 needles and the crackling of the wood fire 
 was all that broke the stillness; even the 
 occasional rumble of the carts or the beating 
 of a horse's feet in the street beyond were 
 muffled by the white blanket that covered 
 everything. He heard the gate click and 
 the mingled laughter of a child and a wom- 
 an. Then his face set, for Johnnie crossed 
 the garden, followed by Madame, who was 
 wrapped in a long velvet pelisse bordered 
 with ermine; a great beaver bonnet nodding 
 with lilac plumes framed her rosy face, all 
 flushed with cold and exercise. 
 
 " So the wolves will not wait longer on 
 the other side of the door," he thought, as 
 the old bitter contempt and anger began to 
 glow within him. He had grown almost 
 diseased in his estimate of her, and although 
 he would not have admitted it, she was the 
 one person in the world to whom he was in- 
 capable of either justice or mercy. She had 
 offended him in his weak point : she had 
 wounded his self-esteem, and he could not 
 forgive her. He felt Aunt Hannah's eyes
 
 140 
 
 upon him. " Her good spirits do not appear 
 to be much depleted," he observed, con- 
 temptuously, as the radiant figure passed 
 out of his field of vision. The old woman 
 stuck her needles into her work and seated 
 herself beside him. 
 
 " I have got something I want to talk to 
 you about," she began. " It's no use my 
 beating round the bush ; that poor child 
 told me everything concerning your quarrel 
 that night, and, although I can't say but 
 what it looks bad from your standpoint, I 
 don't believe there was anything in it that 
 that a foolish girl might not have done in 
 a pet." 
 
 He moved impatiently in his chair. 
 " There's no use fussing, Gordon," she con- 
 tinued. " I'm going to have my say, and 
 you might as well bear it quietly, my boy. 
 I'm not pretending I was pleased at your 
 marriage ; the very name of her Isabel, for- 
 sooth, instead of Mary or Jane or some- 
 thing else sensible showed her mother be- 
 fore her didn't have any common-sense. A 
 girl that's named that way is bound to be
 
 flighty, 'as the sparks fly upward.' I didn't 
 suit her nor her fine friends any better 
 than they suited me, and so I told her at 
 the time." 
 
 " If I remember rightly, there was, indeed, 
 not much love lost," he said, with a grim 
 reminiscent smile. 
 
 " That's neither here nor there, Gordon," 
 the old woman interposed impatiently. 
 " What I'm coming at is that if she did 
 carry on with the soldier, you've given her 
 a fine opportunity to exercise her Christian 
 charity in your behalf. You can't justify 
 yourself in my eyes, nor your own when you 
 remember what Paul says about the cutting 
 of a woman's hair ; how her hair is her " 
 
 " Will you kindly inform me what you 
 are talking about?" inquired the Doctor 
 with an irritated politeness. " I have so far 
 missed the point of your remarks. When I 
 was, unfortunately, in love with the present 
 Madame Wickford, I had the bad taste to 
 request a curl for a keepsake, which she 
 promptly refused. Really, my dear aunt, I 
 don't think you can find any sentence in the
 
 142 
 
 whole New Testament with which to con- 
 demn me for so usual a demand sentimen- 
 tal, silly if you please, but certainly usual." 
 He turned his head away, and looked out of 
 the window as if to dismiss the subject. 
 But Aunt Hannah was not to be silenced. 
 
 " Nonsense, Gordon," she returned. " The 
 child had a girl's vanity about her pretty 
 curls ; you had crushed it out of her quite 
 successfully before she ever heard of Cap- 
 tain Read." 
 
 "Aunt Hannah," he broke in, "what 
 Isabel chooses to tell is between you and 
 her, but as long as she is presented as my 
 wife I cannot let even you connect her name 
 with any man's." 
 
 " Well, well," said the old woman, pettish- 
 ly. " If you wish to ride your high horse, of 
 course I have nothing more to say ; but, as 
 you are so monstrous particular, what, in the 
 name of common sense, induced you to cut 
 off her hair and make her character common 
 talk about town ?" 
 
 " Good God, aunt !" he exclaimed, with 
 irritation, " where did you hear such non-
 
 '43 
 
 sense? Ask Isabel herself even she will 
 tell you that I never did a brutal thing to 
 her in all my life. We don't get on, that's 
 the truth ; but as for cutting her hair off, 
 you ought to know that I am too much of a 
 gentleman for any caper like that. I won- 
 der you believed it. When I am out 
 of this I'll make somebody answer to me 
 for such stories. Who is your author- 
 ity?" 
 
 " Why, Gordon," the old woman replied, 
 looking him full in the eyes, " Isabel told me 
 herself. The day you were taken ill she 
 showed me her head with the curls all hacked 
 away, and said you did it the night before 
 when you came home." 
 
 "She lies!" he burst out; "you know 
 she " Then he controlled himself with an 
 effort, and continued more quietly: "No, if 
 she says I did it, let us accept the statement 
 for civility's sake. I don't know what her 
 object is, but if my wife told you I was guilty 
 of this unwarrantable act, pray tell her from 
 me that No, don't tell her anything. 
 Give me a pencil and paper. I want to write
 
 144 
 
 her an apology ; it is more polite," he con- 
 cluded, with a bitter laugh. 
 
 The old woman laid a detaining hand on 
 him. " My boy," she said, " you were very 
 ill that night and greatly excited ; maybe 
 you forget. Think, you might have been 
 out of your head when you did it." 
 
 He was still suffering from the irritability 
 of weakness, and this startling accusation, 
 which he believed to be one of Isabel's in- 
 ventions, stung his pride. He caught the 
 kind old hand and laid it across his eyes 
 where the hot tears were starting. 
 
 " Even you, dear old aunt ! even you ! Ah, 
 if I only could forget what passed that night ! 
 Don't let us talk about it ; bring me my port- 
 folio, and we will put an end to this forever. 
 Surely you know what that means," he said, 
 touching his livid cheek. " A man does not 
 lie when death has set its finger upon him, 
 and I swear to you that I never harmed 
 But what is the use? I have my death to 
 face alone. In the presence of such a calam- 
 ity one aspersion upon my character, more 
 or less, makes but little difference to me ; she
 
 will have everything her own way soon, at 
 any rate." 
 
 " But, Gordon," she insisted, " you were 
 crazy with fever, maybe " 
 
 " Aunt Hannah, I tell you I could not do 
 such a thing under any conditions. It is 
 impossible. Did she say any one else saw 
 me ? I'll be bound there was no other wit- 
 ness ?" He waited for an answer. " Ah ! I 
 thought so. Well, I will write now, and it 
 would be kinder for you to deliver the letter 
 yourself, I think. You have done so much 
 already, may I ask this one service more ?" 
 
 She brought him writing materials, and 
 kissed him as she passed out of the room, 
 puzzled and anxious. 
 
 Thus he was left alone with his dilemma, 
 to thresh out, as best he might, the motive 
 that had induced his wife to be guilty, as he 
 believed, of this new perfidy. The insistent 
 credence the old woman gave her shook his 
 inward assurance for a moment, and before 
 he put the final end to their relations he 
 wished to be doubly sure of his justice tow- 
 ards Isabel, as he intended to show her no
 
 146 
 
 mercy save such consideration as the pro- 
 tection of his own name demanded. He 
 tried the case in the courts of his own mind, 
 setting her assertion against his self-respect ; 
 and although he sought to be an impartial 
 judge, it was beyond nature for any man in 
 his position to refrain from clothing the evi- 
 dence on his own side with undue impor- 
 tance. There was, he reasoned, the fact that 
 he had been found in his own room, which he 
 had entered by the garden door, that would 
 indicate that he came in immediately out of 
 the night, nor could he believe that the most 
 callous-hearted woman, though he placed his 
 wife high in that category, could have locked 
 her door quietly and have gone to sleep, 
 leaving the dangerous maniac she pretended 
 to believe him loose upon the community. 
 Yet this must have happened if Aunt Han- 
 nah's theory was correct. Again he assured 
 himself that his memory could have played 
 him no tricks about the events of that fate- 
 ful evening. As he sat looking out at the 
 sharp blue tree shadows traced on the snow, 
 and the glinting of the evening sun on its
 
 147 
 
 crystals, he could recall every incident of the 
 scene in the fire-lighted drawing-room. Even 
 the smell of the damp leaves under foot and 
 the sound of the dripping eaves came back to 
 him. The picture was bitten into his brain 
 by an acrid hate that spared him no detail. 
 He perfectly remembered the mad race 
 through the storm, the fall, and had even 
 dim glimpses of the struggle homeward ; but 
 of the interview in Isabel's room there re- 
 mained, strange to say, no vestige of remem- 
 brance to cloud his conviction that she had 
 borne false witness against him. Having 
 sacrificed her hair to some caprice of her 
 own, she now utilized the loss, he thought, 
 to throw odium upon him in the eyes of his 
 neighbors. He was puzzled and curious to 
 discover the motive that actuated her in 
 the first instance, and, after much cogitation, 
 came to the conclusion that a morbid liking 
 for theatrical effects, coupled with the terror 
 of the results of her imprudence, had induced 
 her to create the situation and the accom- 
 panying tale of ill-usage as a catch-sympathy 
 for the women of the town, and more par-
 
 148 
 
 ticularly for his old aunt, whose heavy re- 
 spectability, if enlisted, would shield even a 
 worse reputation than Madame's. 
 
 Although the Doctor honestly believed 
 that there was no question about her guilt, 
 he had no intention of rushing into the di- 
 vorce courts with his family disgrace. He be- 
 longed to a class and age when the soiled 
 family linen was most rigorously cleansed at 
 home, though, as was sometimes the case, 
 the culprit was rubbed out of life in the 
 washing of it. Nor had he any idea of taking 
 the law into his own hands further than he 
 judged his position as head of the family de- 
 manded. But the rift between them was far 
 too broad to be bridged by ordinary courte- 
 sy, and that he intended to make her under- 
 stand. He drew his portfolio towards him 
 and wrote : 
 
 " MADAME, I am informed by my aunt, 
 Miss Wickford, that you allege I cut off your 
 hair the night of my return from the city. 
 How you have managed to make an impres- 
 sion on so upright a soul I cannot imagine,
 
 149 
 
 unless your success has arisen from the inno- 
 cence of guile which has characterized my 
 aunt's whole life an innocence which I am 
 sure you will agree with me is very foreign 
 to so tortuous a nature as your own. 
 
 " I am led to understand, from what I hear, 
 that you are aware of my discovery in re- 
 gard to your amour probably you saw me 
 through the window and I infer from the un- 
 mitigated falsehood of which you have been 
 guilty that you justly dread the consequences 
 of such revelations as I could make. How- 
 ever, let me assure you that the mutilation of 
 your good looks was perfectly unnecessary. 
 It has not been the custom in my family 
 to blazon misfortunes from the house-tops 
 disgraces we had none until you honored us 
 by marrying me. 
 
 "I am a man stricken by disease over whom 
 the doom has been spoken ; were it otherwise, 
 I might be swayed to sever the connection 
 which, I regret, shackles us to each other. 
 When, however, a person has but a few years 
 to live at most, he harbors less concern for the 
 happiness of his future than for his present
 
 I5Q 
 
 tranquillity. I therefore shall permit you to 
 continue to bear my name and appear at the 
 head of my household, although I suppose it 
 is unnecessary to say that between us all rela- 
 tions have absolutely ceased, save such sur- 
 veillance of your conduct as my good name 
 dictates. I warn you that any further indis- 
 cretion will be as summarily dealt with as 
 your past levity might have been had not the 
 death of your accomplice in crime removed 
 you forever out of the way of the same temp- 
 tation. From this, my decision, there is no 
 appeal, save by way of the courts, and you 
 will, I fancy, hesitate before you place your 
 conduct under the light of legal examination. 
 " GORDON WICKFORD." 
 
 He folded and sealed the paper, then he 
 lay back among his cushions with a sense of 
 rest in the certainty of his decision. The 
 lines of his lonely future were painted in 
 dark colors, but at least they had assumed a 
 definite pattern, and anything definite was 
 bearable, he thought. 
 
 The shadows crept out of the corners of
 
 15* 
 
 the room, ingulfing one object after an- 
 other, the lights in the houses beyond the 
 hedge began to glimmer, and the snow took 
 on an unearthly bluish tint in the light of the 
 young moon. Yet he sat there gazing out 
 of the window, ' seeing all his own mischance 
 with a glassy countenance." Memories of his 
 dead mother, of the first bright promise of his 
 manhood, the short but all-absorbing dream 
 of his love, the rude awakening against which 
 he had struggled manfully, the falling of his 
 hereditary malady upon his devoted head 
 all this he could endure with the fortitude of 
 a strong man ; but the disgrace of his wife's 
 conduct, as it appeared to him, presented to 
 his soul a cup whose bitterness seemed 
 greater than he could bear. The sense alone 
 of having something to hide was distasteful 
 to his open character, yet he would shelter 
 her to the extent of giving her a name and 
 place in society this his family honor de- 
 manded, but more than this his self-respect 
 forbade.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 WlCKFORD's reverie was disturbed by the 
 entrance of a servant bringing candles and 
 his evening meal ; his aunt followed in a lit- 
 tle while. 
 
 "You have been asleep?" she queried, 
 hopefully. 
 
 " No," he answered. " My letter is written. 
 I have not slept, Aunt Hannah." 
 
 " Gordon, dearie, I hope you have been 
 kind in what you wrote ; and have you 
 thought over what I said ?" she suggested. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he replied, listlessly. " I have 
 thought it all over again and again, but I'm 
 just as sure as I was before that I am inno- 
 cent of the brutality with which she charges 
 me. Delirijous or sane, the general trend of 
 a man's character is the same, and, whatever 
 I may be, I am at least a man and a gentle- 
 man ; to have used physical force towards her
 
 153 
 
 would have been to forfeit my claim to both 
 distinctions. 
 
 Miss Wickford began to remonstrate, but 
 he stopped her pleading. " Dear aunt, let 
 us not talk about it any more," he said. 
 " What I have written is written. Come and 
 sit beside me, and tell me about yourself. 
 Tell me about yourself won't you? Do 
 you remember how you used to keep me 
 quiet with the stories of grandfather's Ind- 
 ian adventures when I was a boy. What I 
 want to hear now is of your own doings. 
 Somehow your life always seems so whole- 
 some and of a piece not like the patchwork 
 that most of us make of our existence." 
 She knew his every turn of expression, and 
 she understood that expostulation would be 
 useless now. Indeed, as she looked at the 
 firm, set face, where the bones were sharply 
 articulated by illness, the assurance she har- 
 bored of her power to heal the breach be- 
 tween Wickford and his wife began to ebb 
 away and leave her high and dry on the 
 sharp fact of their difference. 
 
 When he was tired she bade him good-
 
 154 
 
 night, and, picking up the letter, went to find 
 Isabel, hoping, good soul, that she might 
 help the girl through the first bitterness of 
 the bad half-hour before her. 
 
 Madame was toasting her feet at her bed- 
 room fire, too anxious over the fate of Miss 
 Wickford's mission to occupy herself in any 
 way. She looked so pretty in her " loose 
 gown " and short, curling hair that Miss Han- 
 nah wondered if it had not been unwise to in- 
 terfere instead of sending the young creature 
 to make her own peace with beauty for advo- 
 cate. The girl greeted her lovingly. 
 
 " Well ?" she asked. " Tell me quickly ; 
 what did he say? Will he see me? Oh, 
 Aunt Hannah you have a letter give it to 
 me give it to me quickly !" 
 
 " Isabel, my dear," said the other, " don't 
 be in such a hurry ; I'm afraid this isn't a very 
 nice letter Gordon has written you, though 
 I said everything I could think of in your 
 behalf. I told you he could not remember ; 
 and if he don't God help you, child, for the 
 Wickfords are powerful set in their ways. 
 There, there, don't look so white ; we still
 
 155 
 
 have shot in our locker as my father used 
 to say ; you must see him yourself if it comes 
 to the worst." 
 
 The young woman took the letter contain- 
 ing the decision of her fate ; she tore it open 
 with feverish haste, and carried it over to the 
 far table, feeling unable to face its possible 
 contents under even such kindly scrutiny as 
 Miss Hannah's. Madame read it through 
 with that lightning rapidity which great anx- 
 iety begets. It seemed only a few lines to 
 her in her breathless hurry, but in that mo- 
 ment any illusory hopes of happiness she 
 might have entertained were stripped from 
 her, and she was brought face to face with 
 the extent of his overwhelming contempt. 
 " Read it !" she whispered, with white lips, 
 extending the letter ; it rattled in her shak- 
 ing hands. " Read it, and see what hope 
 there is for me." It seemed to her as if 
 hours elapsed before the old woman's spec- 
 tacles were adjusted and she had mastered 
 the contents of the faint, trembling lines 
 which bore testimony to the writer's bodily 
 weakness. Somehow the tremulous hand-
 
 156 
 
 writing made the harsh resentment of the 
 note more impressive by contrast. 
 
 " Poor child! poor child!" murmured Miss 
 Hannah. " Don't lose heart, Isabel ; give 
 
 7 " o 
 
 him time, dearie time does a deal in this 
 world, though it's hard for the young to be- 
 lieve it." 
 
 " No," the girl returned, in a queer, stifled 
 voice. " He has written exactly what he 
 means. I shall not try any more ; the spirit 
 has gone out of me. I will stay and bear 
 my punishment for folly no greater than 
 many another woman has been forgiven. 
 Aunt Hannah, as God is my judge, I have 
 been guilty of no crime, save a foolish flirta- 
 tion. You will go now, dear, won't you ? 
 I shall be able to talk in the morning. Just 
 now I am too unhappy." 
 
 The old woman called her servant, and 
 with a lighted horn lantern to guide her foot- 
 steps for the moon was now long abed 
 she picked her way through the snow to her 
 own door. 
 
 Isabel wrote a pitiful little protest of her 
 innocence, begging forgiveness for her follies,
 
 157 
 
 which she sent the Doctor, but he took no 
 notice of it, and she subsided into despair. 
 Her spirit was, as she said, gone out of her. 
 She performed the ordinary daily tasks that 
 presented themselves, getting through one 
 thing after another with a stolid determina- 
 tion not to be idle, for she knew very well 
 that she could only keep back her insistent 
 sorrow by unremitting employment. The 
 countless avenues of helpfulness that her posi- 
 tion would ordinarily have opened were her- 
 metically sealed to her by the ostracism of 
 society. Although she was debarred from 
 natural relations with her equals, there were 
 always abundant opportunities in a seaport 
 town for the expenditure of energy and 
 money among the suffering. These chances 
 of unselfish occupation she seized upon, and 
 sought out cases of distress with real eager- 
 ness, hoping always that Wickford might 
 some day understand that her tardy love for 
 him and a longing for his approval was the 
 charm which lured her into these unaccus- 
 tomed places. 
 
 In spite of her internal revolt against the
 
 158 
 
 repulsive squalor of poverty, she tried to in- 
 augurate physical comfort and humanizing 
 influences in the hovels of the very poor ; 
 but it was a mortification to find that even 
 here, although her money was accepted readi- 
 ly enough, it was impossible for her to get 
 into any personal relations with the women. 
 The actual assistance she gave they treated 
 as their due, but her timid advances to kind- 
 liness were repulsed, and any morsel of advice 
 she hazarded was overlooked with a certain 
 hauteur that these blameless wives felt justi- 
 fied in assuming towards one who had, as 
 they said, " not a shred of character to bless 
 herself with." Formerly, her pride might 
 have taken up arms at the rebuffs she expe- 
 rienced, but in her desolation it had com- 
 pletely deserted her, leaving her a prey to a 
 great hunger and thirst after affection, in 
 which she gladly accepted even such crumbs 
 of toleration as fell to her share. It was 
 strange to remember the vanished sense of 
 personal power and the combative desire to 
 meet a difficulty more than half-way which 
 had formerly characterized her, when, at pres-
 
 159 
 
 ent, she was conscious of a morbid shrinking 
 from an issue of any kind, and even her man- 
 ner was permeated by a deprecatory courtesy 
 with which she sought to buy every one's 
 suffrages. 
 
 Although Miss Wickford championed her 
 loyally, insisting that a decent amount of 
 consideration be shown Isabel, even the im- 
 pact of the old woman's immense influence 
 could not compel those cordial and intimate 
 relations which are the best substitute a 
 country town can offer for city gayety. A 
 certain number, indeed, did call upon Ma- 
 dame Wickford when it was clearly under- 
 stood that the Doctor intended to uphold 
 her reputation, but there was absolutely 
 no spontaneity in their coming, and both 
 hostess and guests were painfully aware that 
 their presence was a tribute to the position 
 of the Wickford family, and in no sense any 
 indication of their belief in Madame's per- 
 sonal respectability. Probably the only pleas- 
 ure anybody derived from these visits was 
 the mutual relief they all experienced when 
 the door closed behind the departing callers.
 
 i6o 
 
 With the exception of Aunt Hannah, there 
 was really only one person who came to the 
 old house for love of its mistress. Johnnie 
 ran in and out as usual, welcomed with new 
 tenderness by Isabel, who found a great sol- 
 ace in the child's companionship. While she 
 was with him it was possible to throw aside 
 the eternal sense of disapprobation that op- 
 pressed her in the presence of grown people ; 
 she could laugh, talk, and run about with- 
 out any fear of misconception, and the very 
 quaintness of the channels in which his child- 
 ish thought flowed seemed to drain the stag- 
 nant morasses of her heart, whose natural 
 outlets had been unfortunately dammed. It 
 was one of the few pleasures of her life to 
 play with him and tell him stories by the 
 hundreds. They were once sitting by the 
 fire in the twilight, hand in hand, as she fin- 
 ished the account of the miseries of the un- 
 fortunate prince and princess whom the Yel- 
 low Dwarf persecuted so shamelessly. 
 
 " So the mermaid turned them into two 
 beautiful palm-trees by the ocean, and al- 
 though they are near together and the same
 
 breeze bends them to and fro, they never 
 touch and they never will touch, Johnnie, 
 never as long as the world stands," she con- 
 cluded, gazing into the hot wood fire. The 
 child also sat silently thinking for a few mo- 
 ments, then he looked up at her. 
 
 " Aunt Isabel," he demanded, " what makes 
 all your stories end up bad? Mother's 
 always have 'So they lived in peace and 
 died in Greece' at the finish, and 'Once 
 upon a time when pigs were swine and pea- 
 cocks chewed tobacco,' to begin wif." 
 
 " Ah, little boy," she replied, " I expect 
 that's because mother has you all for her 
 own to love her. Maybe if you belonged to 
 me my stories would turn out better, too." 
 
 The child ruminated for a while, then he 
 announced : " I 'spec I can't give you much 
 of me, 'cos father and mother wants such lots, 
 but" with an air of great generosity " I'll 
 give you the end of my nose all for your 
 owny own if you'll tell me Jack the Giant- 
 killer." 
 
 She put her black mood from her, and 
 laughingly kissed him before she bought the
 
 162 
 
 right in his very small pug at the price de- 
 manded. They had their tea together after- 
 wards, and, as usual, Johnnie ate too much, 
 but was perfectly happy after his own fashion. 
 The peculiar strain of childishness which per- 
 meated Isabel's character made it no great 
 effort for her to bring herself into tune with 
 the little fellow's amusements ; indeed, she en- 
 joyed his companionship only less than he 
 did hers during the long days of her hus- 
 band's convalescence, when the sharp fear of 
 present danger had given place to the re- 
 actionary lassitude that comes with the assur- 
 ance of danger past.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WlCKFORD had not yet come out of his 
 room, but Aunt Hannah, who visited him 
 daily, told Isabel that she might expect to 
 see him about at any moment. The good 
 old woman kept her further observation of 
 his condition to herself. It was impossible 
 for her to add to the girl's already heavy 
 burden, and although she reproached herself 
 constantly for the cowardice, as she called 
 it, that fettered her tongue, the time never 
 arrived for telling Isabel of the ravages of 
 the cancer, as it progressed with alarming 
 rapidity in the Doctor's weak condition. 
 The disfigurement was already very notice- 
 able; it could not be very long before his 
 face would become disgusting, Miss Wick- 
 ford thought, with heavy forebodings of the 
 suffering that lay before these two, whom 
 she would so gladly help, were it possible,
 
 164 
 
 but whom fate and inherent spiritual differ- 
 ence had put asunder. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, if Madame har- 
 bored hope from any quarter, it was in her 
 husband's very infirmity that she saw her 
 one chance of reconquering some portion of 
 Wickford's affection. There were no trained 
 nurses in that day, and from what she heard as 
 well as from what her recent charity-visiting 
 among a scrofulous, fish-eating people had 
 taught her, she knew that in the course of 
 the disease it would reach a period when 
 constant and arduous nursing was demanded. 
 It was then that she reckoned upon the sac- 
 rifice of her entire life, winning from him 
 some belief in her protestations of innocence 
 and love. Even this mirage of a reconcilia- 
 tion, which must, she knew, take place under 
 the shadow of death, was something in the 
 desert of her loneliness, and it enabled her to 
 bear the succeeding days of a life that had 
 lost all savor. 
 
 Upborne by the thought of possible re- 
 union even under such circumstances and 
 after so long a time, she plunged into the
 
 slums of the seaport town, helping where 
 she could, and neither sparing herself nor her 
 purse in the effort to fit herself for the care 
 of that dear sufferer whose approval was now 
 the inspiration of her life. She managed at 
 the cost of incredible patience and effort to 
 create a place for herself in the old town, 
 although her reputation clogged her at every 
 step, and at times she cringed under the sense 
 of the unjust proportion her punishment bore 
 to her offence. 
 
 " It is like paying off a mortgage," she 
 said to Miss Wickford. " With my utter- 
 most efforts I only seem able to keep down 
 the interest on gossip, but never to reduce 
 the principal of my past folly." 
 
 The two women had become very fond of 
 each other, and spent much of their time to- 
 gether. But, as it happened, the old lady 
 was not with Isabel when Wickford made his 
 appearance, after so many months of seclu- 
 sion. 
 
 It was one of the soft days that come 
 now and then in late winter truant chil- 
 dren of spring, that deceive even the home-
 
 1 66 
 
 keeping birds into a summery twittering, 
 days that make the evergreens hold up their 
 heads, sure that their verdant doublet is the 
 " only wear," and sometimes tempt gold cro- 
 cuses and over-anxious trees to an untimely 
 blossoming. Although Wickford had seized 
 upon one excuse after another to delay his 
 first appearance, there seemed to be no fur- 
 ther reason imaginable why he should not 
 resume his duties, if he ever intended, as he 
 said, " to do what good he could, instead of 
 skulking behind closed doors with despair 
 for a companion." 
 
 In his silent meditations he had more 
 than ever determined that no human eye 
 should ever look upon his disfigurement, 
 and his preparations for hiding his face 
 were already made. There, in a box, lay 
 the broad-brimmed Quaker hat with a deep 
 ruffle of doubled crape sewn on around 
 the edge of its brim. Sooner or later he 
 must let that veil fall between him and all 
 the glory of the outer world that dear, 
 beautiful world which called him to forget 
 his misfortunes in ministering to suffering
 
 16? 
 
 humanity. It seemed to him as if he were 
 assuming the position of chief mourner at his 
 own funeral indeed, the feeling of human 
 kinship between him and the healthy people 
 around him was buried under a weight of suf- 
 fering that was great enough to have ground 
 out all human sympathy in a lesser man. 
 
 Evening had come on, and the bare boughs 
 were etched black against a lemon-colored 
 sky, which melted into orange where it kissed 
 the horizon. He could see even the rough 
 little swollen buttons on the nearest tree that 
 betokened the coming blossoms. A soft 
 blue haze permeated the still atmosphere, 
 through which the smoke of the chimneys 
 rose straight as an arrow. If he were going, 
 " then it were well it were done quickly." 
 All this gold and purple, these red browns 
 and tender grays, must henceforth come to 
 him dulled by his veil. He looked about 
 him, greedily drinking in the flood of color 
 as a man might for whom the executioner 
 waits. Then, with a gasp, he settled the hat 
 upon his head, and the black crape fell be- 
 tween him and the outer world forever!
 
 i68 
 
 He strode out into the garden, too full 
 of his own sad thoughts to notice Johnnie 
 as he passed him. The horrors that his veil 
 covered were too deeply impressed upon 
 his imagination for him to realize fully the 
 strange and repellent figure he presented, so 
 soon do we become familiar with any phe- 
 nomenal circumstance that is allied with our 
 individuality. He was astonished, therefore, 
 to hear a child's scream behind him, and, turn- 
 ing with his natural instinct to help anything 
 in distress, he lifted the frightened boy in his 
 arms. 
 
 " Why, little man !" he exclaimed, as 
 Johnnie redoubled his howls, twisting him- 
 self like an eel in the Doctor's grasp. " You 
 must tell me what is the matter what hurts 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, let me go please let me go ! I'll 
 never be bad no more !" wailed Johnnie, quite 
 sure that the devil had him in very earnest 
 this time. He was too wrought up to heed 
 Wickford's expostulations, or to answer his 
 questions. 
 
 The puzzled man did his best to soothe
 
 i6g 
 
 the child, for he was by this time nearly 
 frightened into a fit ; his screams had be- 
 come hoarse and his lips were livid when 
 Madame, hearing the commotion as she 
 sat at her embroidery, ran down bareheaded 
 to find out what was the matter. 
 
 As she stepped into the twilight she, too, 
 shuddered as her eyes fell on the gaunt, 
 sinister figure, with the crape- covered face, 
 whose clothing bagged over emaciated limbs. 
 
 " Who are you ?" she demanded, in as de- 
 cided a voice as she could muster. " Put the 
 boy down don't you see you are frighten- 
 ing him ?" 
 
 Then the situation dawned upon the Doc- 
 tor. He set the child on his feet, and the little 
 fellow lost no time in hiding his head in Ma- 
 dame's skirts. She laid a reassuring hand 
 on the boy's head, and turning towards the 
 veiled figure, " If you are a patient of the 
 Doctor's," she said, " he is too ill to see 
 any one ; if not, you are trespassing most 
 unwarrantably." 
 
 Wickford looked at her, and even the twi- 
 light revealed to him the tangle of short, sun-
 
 170 
 
 ny curls and the new wistful expression that 
 gave her an appearance of almost preternat- 
 ural youth. If he noticed these changes in 
 her, they must both be changed indeed, he 
 thought, since she evidently did not know 
 him at all. There was a certain bitter humor 
 in being ordered out of his own house, and 
 a low, mocking laugh came from behind the 
 veil. ''Why don't you go?" she demanded, 
 as Johnnie began to sob anew. " You have 
 no business here; you are frightening the 
 child." 
 
 " He must get used to me as best he can," 
 Wickford answered. " I am his mother's 
 physician. As for you, it matters very little 
 whether you like my appearance or not, as 
 we shall not often have the ineffable felicity 
 of seeing each other." 
 
 She knew the voice instantly, and stag- 
 gered back under the revelation of the dire 
 wreck disease had wrought. 
 
 "I I did not know you," she stam- 
 mered, and her words died in her throat. 
 The Doctor was walking down the garden 
 now, without noticing her halting excuses.
 
 Ah, God ! that she should have stabbed him 
 thus on his first return to the world. 
 
 " Johnnie, dear !" Isabel whispered, " you 
 were frightened at nothing. It was only 
 your dear Doctor please run after him, 
 Johnnie, and tell him you are not afraid any 
 more." 
 
 " But I am 'fraid ! And I don't want to 
 go after him," cried the boy. 
 
 " Ah, but it will hurt him so. Do it just 
 because you love me," she pleaded. 
 
 " I won't go! It ain't my dear Doctor, an' 
 I'm scared!" cried the little fellow, resolutely 
 clinging to her skirts. 
 
 " But I thought you were such a man, 
 dear," she argued. 
 
 " Well," said Johnnie, lifting his tear- 
 washed eyes to her face, " I'm a man when 
 it's day, but I'm jus' a 'ittle boy now." 
 
 It was no use arguing any longer; the 
 gate clicked as the tall figure turned into 
 the road and was soon lost in the waning 
 light. 
 
 Wickford was hurt and grieved to an un- 
 reasonable degree by the boy's terror. It
 
 172 
 
 brought home to him the sense of his disfig- 
 urement in a new and poignant fashion. 
 
 He had always been a special favorite with 
 children, and he remembered now that his old 
 nurse once told him that God gave the love 
 of His little ones as indemnity to men fated 
 for sudden death or great misfortune. The 
 prophecy had been fulfilled in his case, and 
 he now prayed humbly as he walked that at 
 least this consolation be not taken from him 
 in his affliction. 
 
 Remembering Johnnie's fright, he chose 
 an old paralytic whom he knew to be be- 
 yond surprises for his first attempt at pro- 
 fessional visiting. But even here the bit- 
 terness of seeing the effect he produced 
 was not spared him, for the servant at the 
 door fled screaming to assure her mistress 
 that a masked footpad was below. Wick- 
 ford controlled the almost ungovernable 
 impulse to return immediately to his own 
 rooms, where he might at least be spared 
 the sight of the horror he inspired. It was 
 probably the hardest and longest ten min- 
 utes of his life when he stood there waiting
 
 173 
 
 with outward quietude, but inwardly tort- 
 ured by the anticipation of what lay before 
 him. 
 
 This was a household of women, and he 
 could hear the flutter of skirts and the whis- 
 pering going on up -stairs before the mis- 
 tress put her head over the banister and 
 tremblingly asked what he wanted. 
 
 " I am Doctor Wickford," he answered. 
 " I have come to see your father. May I 
 come up?" 
 
 Again the beauty of his voice claimed 
 recognition, and the old man's daughter 
 bade him welcome. But although she would 
 have given a finger to have known his 
 reason for wearing it, she could not mus- 
 ter courage to ask him the explanation of 
 his crape veil. There was a silent dignity 
 about him that kept impertinent curiosity in 
 check. People questioned his aunt, his wife, 
 even his servants, but somehow no one had 
 the temerity to ask him personally about 
 his peculiar dress. 
 
 Indeed, in an incredibly short time the 
 town became accustomed to the strange
 
 174 
 
 figure of the veiled Doctor, and he ex- 
 cited as little comment among his neigh- 
 bors as the town pump. It was true that 
 some of his old patients talked of calling 
 in another physician, but they came back 
 before long, glad to buy his superb skill at 
 the cost of a few disagreeable sensations that 
 soon wore off. As for the children, if they, 
 like Johnnie, cried at first, it was not a great 
 while before he reconquered their suffrages 
 and taught them to search his capacious 
 pockets again for sweetmeats just as they 
 did before his illness. He was astonished 
 and pleased to find how rapidly the excite- 
 ment over his appearance wore away, and 
 he gradually came to forget it even himself 
 until a chance encounter with some stran- 
 ger reminded him that he was not and could 
 never again be a man like other men. 
 
 So Wickford took his old place in society, 
 healing and comforting wherever his pro- 
 fession called him, infinitely pitiful, infinitely 
 tender to all conditions of suffering human- 
 ity save always the one woman who sat in 
 his desolate home. Gradually his mind ac-
 
 175 
 
 customed itself to the burden he had to 
 bear, and the strength of the man enabled 
 him to accept the inevitable at first with 
 silent stoicism, which custom softened into 
 resignation.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 EVEN an insignificant occupation, followed 
 systematically for its own sake, will reward 
 the devotee with at least temporary relief 
 from mental depression. But Wickford's 
 genuine enthusiasm for his profession did 
 even more than this for him. By-and-by it 
 filled all the waste places in his life with a 
 sense of vital and personal usefulness to hu- 
 manity, that brought him a peace so nearly 
 akin to happiness that he rarely missed the 
 other acutely. 
 
 However, with Madame there was no such 
 beneficent result attainable, primarily be- 
 cause, womanlike, the chief energies of her 
 existence concentrated themselves in what 
 she felt rather than in what she did, and for 
 the second reason that her whole life being 
 planned with a view towards the reconquest 
 of her husband's affection, her mind was
 
 177 
 
 / 
 consequently occupied with the reflection of 
 
 her charities on him more than with the di- 
 rect good she accomplished. 
 
 She saw him going back and forward on 
 his rounds, and although she sought once 
 or twice to get speech with him, he would 
 walk on without heeding her until she gave 
 up her attempts in despair. Aunt Hannah 
 argued with him in vain ; he did not defend 
 himself, but remonstrances made no varia- 
 tion in his conduct. 
 
 Once when the spring had become well 
 established and the swallows were returning 
 to their old nests, she ran across him in one 
 of her visits to a house where poverty and 
 disease had made themselves direfully at 
 home. 
 
 The child slipping away from life in this 
 tumble-down place possessed a certain an- 
 gelic beauty that fascinated her and awak- 
 ened a tender interest she could not feel 
 for the bedridden old men and women or 
 the loathly diseased creatures who claimed 
 her assistance. His delicate beauty sep- 
 arated him from his surroundings, and she
 
 fancied he must suffer under their dearth 
 of prettiness as much as she would have 
 done in his place. Therefore she usually 
 added to her basket of dainties something 
 that might amuse the little invalid, shut in 
 by four mouldy walls. To-day it was a crab- 
 apple branch she carried ; full of soft pink 
 bloom and rosy buds, it made the air sweet 
 with its rare, fresh perfume, the most delight- 
 ful essence that the whole year distils. 
 
 As she stopped a moment on the threshold, 
 the sinking sun turned her curls to a golden 
 aureole and the soft wind blew her light 
 skirts more closely about her; standing thus, 
 with her flowery bough as sceptre, it seemed 
 to the weary Doctor within that she must 
 be the embodiment of Spring herself pass- 
 ing through the land. Her beauty appealed 
 powerfully to the aesthetic impulses of his 
 nature, which were tortured with the hours 
 he had spent watching the dying child in 
 the fetid atmosphere and unlovely surround- 
 ings that belong to the narrow quarters where 
 poverty makes its grim fight with starvation. 
 
 Isabel did not see Wickford at first ; all
 
 179 
 
 the glory of the outer world was still in 
 her eyes and blinded her to the half-dark- 
 ness of the cottage. She crossed the room 
 and laid the apple bough near the child's 
 thin hands. 
 
 " How are you, Tom ?" she asked, kindly. 
 Then, as her sight became accustomed to 
 the dim light, " Why, poor little fellow !" 
 she exclaimed, "you don't seem as well as 
 usual. Mrs. Saunders, has he been worse ? 
 Why didn't you let me know ?" 
 
 A gaunt woman, in rusty black, who sat 
 staring before her at the foot of the bed, 
 looked up stolidly and answered : " It ain't 
 no use, Madame Wickford. He don't know 
 nobody now ; he'll go out with the tide, 
 same as his pa did a year ago." 
 
 Isabel looked over at the wasted little 
 figure, the transparent claw-like hands, the 
 white face where purplish eyelids lay over 
 soft eyes that had always greeted her so 
 gladly. Was this stillness death already? 
 she wondered. She had never seen the King 
 of Terrors ; he awed her, and made her 
 throat contract and her heart beat violently.
 
 i8o 
 
 If she could only run away, she thought, or 
 if she could help Tom ; but to sit here quies- 
 cent, waiting for the awful presence, as his 
 mother did, was intolerable. In her effort 
 to find help somewhere she exclaimed : 
 
 " But you must send immediately for the 
 Doctor; maybe he can do something yet." 
 
 " I am here already; there can be nothing 
 more done," answered a voice from the 
 gloom, and, coming forward, Wickford felt 
 the boy's fluttering pulse. 
 
 Isabel could have screamed with her sense 
 of nervous terror as the tall, veiled figure 
 emerged out of the gloom. Her impulse to 
 flight was almost irresistible. Every nerve 
 trembled as she looked from the Doctor to 
 the child, and then to the stony, hard-faced 
 mother, with her gnarled, work-worn hands 
 clasped before her, awaiting the last flicker 
 of the fading life. If only the woman would 
 cry out, if only Wickford would speak again ; 
 but they sat silent, while the child's labored 
 breathing and the ticking of the clock were 
 all that broke the stillness in the chamber 
 of death.
 
 i8r 
 
 The rosy glow in the west faded to ashen 
 gray as the day burned itself out ; still they 
 sat there waiting. Sometimes the woman 
 would rise and look at the child for a mo- 
 ment, or lay her hand on him with an awk- 
 ward but infinitely tender caress. Some- 
 times the Doctor's rich voice broke the si- 
 lence reciting a comforting text, or he would 
 pass over to the bedside and stand beside it. 
 
 The woman made no protest against her 
 grief; she was acquainted with sorrow, and 
 bore it with that pitiful stoicism the very 
 poor acquire from long familiarity with mis- 
 fortune. Isabel felt herself outside of the 
 relations which her husband had established 
 with the other two. She belonged to a dif- 
 ferent world ; in joy they might bridge the 
 chasm that lay between them, but in great 
 sorrow she must always stand aloof. 
 
 It was a still evening, but the little house 
 stood so near the docks that the faint lapping 
 of the water on the wooden piers was some- 
 times audible. Isabel strained her ears to 
 catch the soft, rippling sound the tide makes 
 when it turns, that tide which was to carry
 
 182 
 
 the child out alone into the Unknowable. 
 She knew the superstition was a common 
 one among the towns-people, and although 
 at another time she might have laughed at 
 it, her present credence was commanded by 
 the stony agony of the woman before her. 
 
 There it was now she caught it at last ! 
 the sibilant voice of the receding waters. 
 The mother heard it too, and leaned over the 
 bed with a white, twitching face. Wickford 
 drew near and laid a kindly hand on her 
 shoulder. The child's eyelids fluttered for 
 a moment, then they opened ; he seemed to 
 recognize his mother, and smiled. Near the 
 window where Isabel was sitting a cat cried ; 
 the animal suddenly sprang to the window- 
 ledge and began scratching at the panes. 
 Isabel's blood curdled ; she sickened at the 
 idea suggested, and started up as the deso- 
 late wail of the bereaved mother rang out, 
 filling all the silence : 
 
 " Oh, my God ! my God ! He was all I 
 had !" Isabel felt as if her ears would burst ; 
 her terror choked her, and she fled out into 
 the soft, spring night, leaving the Doctor
 
 to comfort the childless woman as best he 
 might. 
 
 In the blaze of contempt he felt for his 
 wife's unwomanly cowardice her last chance 
 of reconciliation was consumed. 
 
 As she sped on under the light of the 
 young moon, the oily waters that crawled in 
 and out of the dock-yard piers seemed to 
 hunger for her life ; her shadow dogged her 
 steps; every bush was a hiding-place for some 
 skulking terror. If her thin skirt caught in 
 twig or bramble she ran on heedlessly, tear- 
 ing it loose, afraid to look behind her. When 
 she reached her room at last she lit all the 
 candles she could find, and kept her maid 
 with her, on one pretext or another, until the 
 shadow of this frightful presence had lifted 
 a little. 
 
 This, then, was Death, the one certain thing 
 that must come to her to him to every 
 creature under the sun. If one were shot" like 
 Captain Read it would be bad enough, but 
 to lie still and have those invisible fingers 
 slowly strangle one was too fearful to think 
 about.
 
 1 84 
 
 She belonged to an age when the physi- 
 cal side of dissolution was painfully promi- 
 nent in the mind of humanity. Society had 
 lost the delicate Greek sense of proportion 
 which had ornamented the very sarcoph- 
 agi of the ancients with processions of all 
 that made life lovely, and suggested thereby 
 the hope of a happier future existence. She 
 was accustomed to the horrible mortalities 
 which made the tombstones of her own 
 generation hideous. 
 
 " Though worms destroy this body, yet in 
 my flesh shall I see God," Wickford had 
 said. 
 
 " Though worms " Her mind reeled at 
 the thought of what must come after death, 
 and it was characteristic of her animal nature 
 that bodily corruption should occupy her 
 thoughts to the exclusion of spiritual beatifi- 
 cation, as she tossed to and fro during the 
 long night. The idea that she had run away 
 tormented her also run away in the face of 
 distress deserted under the eye of the man 
 in whom she most desired to inspire confi- 
 dence.
 
 She formed all sorts of projects for the be- 
 reaved mother's assistance, and anticipated 
 their fulfilment with a glow of self-gratula- 
 tion. It did not strike her that, to one un- 
 acquainted with the nervous shock she re- 
 ceived in watching this, her first death-bed, 
 her conduct must seem selfish and heartless 
 in the extreme. 
 
 Next morning she told Aunt Hannah 
 about the scene in the cottage, and they 
 did what they could together to help Mrs. 
 Saunders. But Miss Wickford appreciated 
 the effect Isabel's flight might have upon 
 the Doctor much more justly than the girl 
 herself could do. She judged accurately 
 the contempt which he would visit upon 
 the head of any one possessing less sto- 
 icism than he had trained himself to exer- 
 cise. She lost no time, therefore, in pay- 
 ing him a special visit, when she dwelt 
 upon the extenuations of Madame's con- 
 duct with all the eloquence at her com- 
 mand. However, Wickford pursued his tac- 
 tics of absolute taciturnity with regard to 
 his wife ; and as the old lady said to her-
 
 1 86 
 
 self, " no man can open an oyster with his 
 fingers." 
 
 She thought it best to tell Isabel what a 
 grave mistake hers had been, and Madame's 
 sense of being in disgrace aggravated her 
 morbid dread of meeting her husband. 
 When they found themselves together in 
 the houses of the poor she would slip away 
 as soon as possible, making the excuse that 
 as the Doctor was here now, there could be 
 no possible need of her. She fancied that 
 she had thus mystified these ignorant peo- 
 ple about the relations existing between her 
 husband and herself until a woman once 
 stopped her at the threshold, saying: 
 
 "You won't want to come in just now 
 the Doctor's here." Much as she would 
 have liked to run away, Isabel did pay her 
 visit, nevertheless, for her pride's sake, but 
 she got off as soon as she could without ex- 
 citing comment.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE summer came, but it brought no 
 guests to the great house. Autumn followed, 
 spreading its rich India carpet of leaves be- 
 fore the retreating footsteps of the dying 
 year. But Madame never rode a-horseback 
 now. Her pleasure -loving nature starved 
 in the existence she was enduring; it could 
 hardly be called a life where so much of her 
 personality perforce found no food. 
 
 Her affection belonged to Wickford not 
 to humanity; yet she devoted herself to the 
 sick and suffering, and her husband seemed 
 to reck nothing of her doings. Even the 
 love that animated her life was not of the 
 variety "which casteth out fear." She was 
 torn between her desire to be with him and a 
 nervous dread of his reproaches, should they 
 ever find voice. The internal conflict robbed 
 her of any elasticity she had preserved, and
 
 1 88 
 
 her joyless mode of living began to tell upon 
 her physique. She grew thin, and people said 
 Madame Wickford was losing her good looks. 
 When Isabel heard it, the idea of becoming 
 less beautiful gave her sharp pain even in 
 the midst of her more serious troubles. 
 Sorrow had brayed her as in a mortar, but 
 the vanity of the woman survived all her 
 other characteristics. 
 
 During the second winter she was astonished 
 to see how often the Doctor made use of his 
 gig in paying his visits even in the immedi- 
 ate neighborhood. In roundabout ways she 
 picked up scraps of information which she 
 pieced together, and thus learned that his 
 disease was beginning to sap his vitality per- 
 ceptibly. Aunt Hannah told her that even 
 his voice was changing to a harsh, metallic 
 sound ; personally, though, she knew noth- 
 ing, as she had not exchanged a dozen words 
 with him for a twelvemonth. 
 
 Her solitary holidays were nearly the 
 hardest hours of Isabel's life ; the feast 
 tides were associated in her mind with the 
 junketings which she had known as a girl.
 
 189 
 
 But she had a sentiment about going away 
 from home at Christmas or Easter; it was 
 to her as if she were trying to shirk her por- 
 tion of the burden of loneliness which had 
 fallen upon the old house. So she would 
 eat her turkey and mince-pie over against 
 the empty chair she always ordered placed 
 for the master of the house, who never came. 
 
 Two years slipped away in this dreary 
 fashion. People had accustomed themselves 
 to the rift between Wickford and his wife, 
 much as they had grown familiar with the 
 Doctor's veil. There was a certain amount 
 of pity for Isabel in her neighbors' hearts, 
 not unmixed with contempt, as pity is apt 
 to be. She could not keep her own husband, 
 the prosperous mothers of families averred ; 
 and " that always showed there wasn't much 
 in a woman, after all." 
 
 As for Wickford, his popularity was an in- 
 tegral part of the man. He fitted exactly 
 into his niche in society ; he was essentially 
 of the same weave with his neighbors, only 
 of a finer texture. They understood him ;
 
 190 
 
 therefore the towns-people loved him as one 
 of themselves, who only had attained the 
 greatest possible elevation of character. It 
 used to be a saying among the fishermen 
 that " Doctor Wickford would make the 
 finest funeral in the county," which here, as 
 in the old days of Egypt, was, after all, the 
 real test of a man's acceptability to his fel- 
 lows. 
 
 It was in the autumn of the second year 
 that Wickford's indomitable will succumbed 
 to the ravages of disease. He had, of course, 
 been obliged to keep his room at times when 
 he passed through some ephemerally dan- 
 gerous crisis. But the periods of seclusion 
 had of late grown more frequent and of 
 longer duration; he had struggled with a 
 nearly superhuman endurance against the 
 inevitable, but physical weakness vanquished 
 him at last ; he knew his end was near, and 
 he concentrated the energies of his whole 
 soul in the effort to preserve his distorted 
 features from the scrutiny of strange eyes. 
 
 The thought of being talked over, as he 
 knew only too well the dead are discussed
 
 in every country town, commented on, and 
 described with a plethora of disgusting de- 
 tail, was intolerable to him. The same senti- 
 ment that had induced him to shroud his 
 face in crape during his life animated his 
 preparations for the death he expected, at 
 furthest, in a few days. There had been a 
 hemorrhage during the night and he was 
 very weak, but he managed to dress him- 
 self after a fashion, and, adjusting his veil, 
 rang for the man-servant whom he had rea- 
 son to believe loved him enough to follow 
 his injunctions to the letter, even after he 
 should be forever beyond enforcing his 
 orders. 
 
 When the man came he bade him put 
 fresh sheets on the bed, and set the room 
 in order. "Ain't you goin' out, master?" 
 the negro inquired, as he went about his 
 work. 
 
 "No," Wickford answered; " I don't think 
 I'll ever go out again, William ; that's what I 
 want to see you about." 
 
 " O Lord, master, please don't say that ; 
 it's just a-begging of death to come 'long,
 
 192 
 
 de way you's talkin' !" the servant ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 " I don't think supplications one way or 
 the other would make much difference," the 
 Doctor answered. " Stop blubbering, Will- 
 iam, and listen to me." 
 
 The man grew quiet instantly. 
 
 " If any one wants to come in," Wickford 
 continued, with an intensity of utterance 
 that might well have impressed a stronger 
 mind than the negro's, "stand at the door 
 and prevent it by force, if necessary. Tell 
 them my curse the curse of a dying man- 
 is on the one who crosses this threshold be- 
 fore I am cold. And listen, William, if you 
 never listened to a word of mine before : 
 get O'Connor to help you watch ; let no- 
 body you understand ? nobody, not even 
 your mistress, enter this room while I am 
 alive, or, as I believe in a living soul, I 
 will haunt you till the day of your death!" 
 There was something terrible in the con- 
 centrated energy of the last words, spoken 
 in a generation when the belief in ghosts 
 was prevalent among all classes. The negro's
 
 193 
 
 eyes rolled in their sockets and he shook 
 with terror. 
 
 " I won't, Mars' Gordon hones', I won't ; 
 only please, sir, don't ha'nt we all. If yo' 
 got to die, fur de' Lord's sake don't come 
 back no mo' !" 
 
 " Very good," resumed the Doctor, in his 
 ordinary tone of voice. " Now get me some 
 milk, and leave it there by the bed. Take 
 out that suit of black broadcloth in the bot- 
 tom drawer and a change of linen ; lay them 
 on a chair by the bed, too. I will then have 
 a letter to give you, and we will say good- 
 bye." 
 
 The negro sobbed once or twice as he 
 moved back and forward, occupied with his 
 task. Wickford's slender reserve of strength 
 was nearly exhausted, but he got up and tot- 
 tered about, making such ghastly prepara- 
 tions as he deemed necessary. There were 
 the dressings and bandages, a pencil and 
 paper in case he had anything to say at the 
 last moment ; now everything was complete 
 save this letter, which he must get off his 
 hands at once, then he could die easily. The 
 13
 
 194 
 
 pain gnawed him so, he could hardly com- 
 mand his mind as he wrote with trembling 
 fingers : 
 
 " MY WIFE, This is the second letter I 
 have had the occasion to address you in our 
 short married life. There never was any real 
 congeniality between us, and your levity and 
 unfeeling conduct have alienated any affec- 
 tion I ever bore you. Our marriage was a 
 huge mistake; but now that I am a dying 
 man it would ill become me to sit in judg- 
 ment on your conduct. We do not love each 
 other, and, in the best sense, there was never 
 any real affection between us. On the brink 
 of eternity let us not prevaricate, even to 
 ourselves. Some men could have perhaps 
 forgiven you your unchaste conduct and 
 your habit of falsehood ; I could not. 
 
 " I may have been to blame towards you in 
 some regards ; if so, I shall soon stand before 
 a tribunal where all things are made clear. 
 What is past is past ; but what I have to say 
 to you relates to the present. As I wrote, I 
 am a dying man, completely in your power,
 
 195 
 
 therefore it rests with you to earn my ever- 
 lasting gratitude, or my curses, which shall 
 dog you for the remainder of your life. Of 
 course, you can order the door of my room 
 broken down, and force yourself or let others 
 thrust their presence upon me in my last mo- 
 ments. What I beg of you is, that you use 
 the power conferred upon you by your posi- 
 tion as my wife to preserve the quiet of my 
 end, and keep the secret of my disfigured face 
 inviolate even unto my burial. 
 
 " When I am found I shall be dressed as I 
 wish to be for my last sleep, and I conjure 
 you, by all you deem holy, that you follow 
 my instructions and lay me in the grave as 
 you find me. If you do so, I grant you full 
 and hearty pardon for any of your offences 
 against me, and I pray God I may have op- 
 portunity in the Hereafter to thank you for 
 the service you will have rendered me. 
 
 " My will is in the safe in the office ; you 
 will find I leave you everything, outside of 
 a few legacies to the servants, on condition 
 that you follow this my last request. Pray- 
 ing that no diseased curiosity or false idea
 
 196 
 
 of kindness will tempt you to transgress my 
 commands, 
 
 "I remain, what I have always been, 
 " Your faithful husband, 
 
 "GORDON WlCKFORD." 
 
 When he had folded the paper, addressed 
 and sealed it, he extended his wasted hand 
 to the waiting negro. 
 
 " You have been a good friend of mine, 
 William," he gasped. " Better than many a 
 one who deserved more from me. I have re- 
 membered you in my will see when I am 
 gone." 
 
 " Oh, Mars' Gordon !" the poor fellow 
 sobbed. " Please git well ; I don't want no 
 money nor nothin' ! You has been a good 
 master, and I jes' want to see you round 
 again like you used to be. You cured such 
 a lot of people, Mars' Gordon can't you 
 cure yourself?" he queried. 
 
 " No, William," the Doctor answered. " It 
 is my time to go now; we must say good- 
 bye forever." 
 
 " Lemme stay with you please lemme
 
 197 
 
 stay," the negro urged, " for Goad's sake, 
 Mars' Gordon ! I won't never breave a word 
 of what I sees ; only lemme stay and take 
 care of you." 
 
 Gordon smiled faintly behind his veil. " I 
 can't, my poor fellow," he answered. "You 
 are making it unnecessarily hard for me. Go 
 now ; tell Miss Hannah good-bye for me, and 
 say I did not send for her because I was 
 afraid she might insist on staying and seeing 
 the last of one to whom she has always been 
 most kind. Go now, William, and God bless 
 you." 
 
 As the man passed out of the door sob- 
 bing, Wickford shot the bolt behind him, and 
 tottered over to the bed exhausted.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MADAME was not in the house when Will- 
 iam looked for her to deliver the letter, so he 
 ran over to Miss Hannah with the message ; 
 such portentous news was too big for him to 
 hold alone. He rushed into the sitting-room, 
 where the old lady was busily sewing. 
 
 "Oh, Miss Hannah, Miss Hannah!" he 
 gasped ; " Mars' Gordon's dyin', an' he done 
 shut we all out of his room. He say I mus' 
 say good-bye to you, and tell you he don't 
 want no one fussin' roun' him, or he'd have 
 sent for you befo' he goes." 
 
 "What's that you're saying?" said the old 
 lady. " The nigger's crazy !" 
 
 " No, ma'am, I ain't crazy !" asserted Will- 
 iam. " Here's a letter I mus' give Madame 
 Wickford ; does you know whar' she's gone?" 
 
 " No, I don't ; but I'm going right over to 
 see Gordon myself," she answered, with a de-
 
 199 
 
 cided snap of her old jaws. She remembered 
 another letter her nephew had written his 
 wife, and she determined to shield the girl 
 from the contents of this one if it were pos- 
 sible. 
 
 "You kyant go see him, Miss Hannah," 
 the negro urged. "Ain't I done tole you 
 he say nobody kin come in ?" 
 
 The old lady did not stop to argue, but 
 sailed over the street, the cold autumn winds 
 fluttering the strings of her cap and blowing 
 out her shawl as she walked. She stalked 
 through the office, and was about to try the 
 inner door when William pushed in front of 
 her. 
 
 "Don't, Miss Hannah! please, ma'am, 
 don't !" he said. " 'Cause I ain't a-goin' to 
 let you git in, an' it's no use talkin*. 
 
 " Stand back !" she exclaimed, perempto- 
 rily. But William kept his place, protest- 
 ing, 
 
 " I don't want to hinder you, Miss Han- 
 nah ; but, 'fore God, you kyant go in dere as 
 long as I'm a livin' nigger !" 
 
 " Gordon !" she called " Gordon, come,
 
 2OO 
 
 open the door! It is I Aunt Hannah; 
 won't you let me in ?" 
 
 There was no sound from beyond, and the 
 old lady stood wrathfully surveying the black 
 guardian of the door. 
 
 " Wait till your mistress comes home, and 
 we'll see " she said, at last, as she realized 
 how helpless she was to carry her point in 
 the face of such opposition. " Give me that 
 letter to Madame Wickford !" she demanded, 
 and, seizing the paper, she hurried away in 
 search of Isabel. 
 
 Madame had come in from her morning 
 walk, and was in her own room, laying aside 
 her plumed bonnet, as the old woman en- 
 tered. 
 
 " Good-morning, Aunt Hannah !" she said. 
 " You're over here early. Sit down, I want 
 to talk to you about Gordon ; he has not 
 been out of his room for days. Won't 
 you look in on him, and see what is the 
 matter?" 
 
 Aunt Hannah said nothing for the moment. 
 How was she to break the news to this poor 
 tarnished butterfly she wondered. "That's
 
 2OI 
 
 just what I came to talk about," she said, at 
 last. 
 
 Madame turned and looked at her. There 
 was something strange in the old face that 
 made her tremble. " Oh ! is anything more 
 the matter?" she faltered ; everything in her 
 poor young life had gone so vitally wrong 
 that the unexpected must, she thought, al- 
 ways mean the most terrible. 
 
 " Don't get frightened, dearie !" the old 
 woman said, reassuringly. " William came 
 to me with some trumped-up story about 
 Gordon's having locked himself in and for- 
 bidden any one to come near him. Do you 
 believe it, that crazy nigger won't let me pass 
 the door!" 
 
 Madame sat down ; her knees would not 
 bear her any longer. Could he have taken 
 the one hope from her was she not even to 
 claim the right to be his nurse, and assuage 
 the final torture as much as was humanly 
 possible ? 
 
 " I've got a letter here that your husband 
 wrote you ; have you got strength to bear it, 
 Isabel ?" Miss Hannah queried, gazing com-
 
 2O2 
 
 passionately at the young woman's white 
 face and trembling hands. 
 
 "Yes; give it to me," Madame answered. 
 "I will take it now." 
 
 She read the letter through ; then, as she 
 had done on that other night which seemed 
 so long ago, she handed it to the old lady, 
 saying, simply, " Read it, Aunt Hannah." 
 She could not cry, she could not storm, and 
 she sat there wondering at her own impas- 
 sivity in the face of such fearful tidings. One 
 thing was clear in Isabel's perturbed mind. 
 She would grant his strange wish, even if it 
 killed her, for she was determined to buy one 
 kind thought, at least, from him before he 
 died ; for this she would pay any sacrifice he 
 demanded. 
 
 Miss Wickford had finished the letter 
 now, and looked up grieved at the shock- 
 ing news it contained. She was aston- 
 ished, as well, at the unusual request it 
 embodied. " You are not going to hear to 
 such nonsense, are you, Isabel?" she que- 
 ried. " His shutting himself up in this way 
 is just like an animal dying in his hole. It
 
 203 
 
 isn't a decent ending for a Christian gentle- 
 man." 
 
 " Please don't think ill of me," Madame 
 answered. "You see what he says; I can 
 never convince him now that I was not a 
 wicked woman, but at least he shall know 
 that I was an obedient wife. I'm not going 
 to let any one go in there unless he wants it." 
 
 Miss Wickford was crying softly. " But, 
 good land !" she exclaimed, " if he should 
 think better of it, think what he is going 
 to suffer, child ! It's downright unnatural of 
 you to leave him alone. I shall go myself if 
 you don't." She arose as she spoke, and 
 started down the steep stairway to help 
 speed the last of the Wickfords on his long 
 journey. 
 
 Memories thronged about her: figures of 
 her former self ; of her parents ; of that boy- 
 officer who had gone away to the Revolution, 
 never to return; of Wickford as a child; of 
 his father. The family ghosts were haunting 
 her as she took her way along the cold pas- 
 sage to Wickford's inner room ; it was use- 
 less to argue with William at the office en-
 
 2O4 
 
 trance. She knew Isabel was following, but 
 the girl had been so bidable for years, and so 
 malleable in Miss Wickford's hands, that the 
 thought of her interference never occurred to 
 the resolute old lady. As she reached the 
 door Madame passed in front of her. 
 
 " Dear aunt, I don't want to worry you or 
 do what you think wrong, but you must 
 not try to go in," she said, softly. Her face 
 was white, and her eyes shone out of dark 
 sockets ; it touched Aunt Hannah to see the 
 stolid misery of the girl. Even a year ago 
 Isabel would have cried out under the lash, 
 but now she felt the futility of protest. 
 
 " Let me pass, you poor child," the old 
 lady insisted, trying to brush her aside. 
 
 " I cannot," Madame returned, with a spice 
 of her old decision. " He is master in his 
 own house, and even if he wishes what is not 
 wise, he shall be obeyed. You cannot pass 
 here." If a tame pigeon had flown in her 
 face, it could not have astonished Miss Wick- 
 ford more. 
 
 "Why, Isabel, are you crazy?" she asked, 
 in amazement.
 
 205 
 
 " No ; but as long as I have the power I 
 shall keep watch beside this door. His bed 
 is so near I can hear everything, and if he 
 wants me even at the last Oh, Aunt Han- 
 nah, even if he whispers that he wants me, I 
 shall hear it !" 
 
 She crouched down on the sill, and leaned 
 her head against the door with a look in her 
 brown eyes that reminded Miss Wickford 
 of a faithful dog. She saw it was useless to 
 reason with the girl now. She got Isabel a 
 shawl to wrap herself in, and determined to 
 see what could be done later. The young 
 woman thanked her for the covering, and 
 then fell to listening again, every nerve 
 strained to catch the faintest rustling on the 
 other side of the door. 
 
 Miss Wickford sat with her for a time ; 
 she then bethought her of the minister, and 
 hoping that he might have the necessary 
 influence, she determined to bring him to 
 argue with Madame. In about an hour 
 they returned together, and found the same 
 huddled figure keeping guard over the 
 door. The gray-headed old pastor greeted
 
 2C>6 
 
 Madame kindly; she hardly seemed to no- 
 tice him. 
 
 " My child," he said, " you must try to 
 look at this matter reasonably ; the hand of 
 the Lord is heavy upon you, but you must 
 strive to bear it with meekness. This is a 
 foolish idea of Wickford's, and although a 
 wife should always be submissive, looking up 
 to her husband as ' the church does to the 
 Lord who is its head," yet in this case 1 
 would counsel you to place wisdom before 
 obedience. There is no question about it, 
 his request is the result of delirium ; I con- 
 sider it even your duty to disregard it for his 
 good." 
 
 He waited for an answer, but as she made 
 no sign he continued : " The wisest thing is 
 to insist upon doing what religion and medi- 
 cal science could accomplish for his relief. 
 Break open the door!" 
 
 Madame sprang up to her full height, 
 stretching out her arms across the doorway. 
 Her eyes blazed as she turned on the old 
 man. 
 
 " Who are you that talk of breaking doors
 
 207 
 
 in my house?" she demanded, imperiously. 
 " Understand now, once and for all, both of 
 you, that the Doctor's wishes shall be obeyed 
 as long as there is life in my body to en- 
 force them. I am his wife, and mistress here 
 in his absence. Leave me alone, I say; I will 
 watch by my own dead." She sank down 
 again on the threshold, moaning softly to her- 
 self as she heard a stifled cry of pain in the 
 room beyond. They tried to reason with her 
 from time to time, but she would only shake 
 her head and bid them leave her. The day 
 wore on, and the sun streamed in the little 
 passage window looking westward. The 
 old man bade Aunt Hannah good-bye, and 
 passed out, leaving the two women together. 
 
 As night fell Miss Wickford brought Isa- 
 bel food, and, although she refused to eat 
 anything, she drank some water greedily, 
 and then fell back into her old position. 
 
 " Won't you go to bed, dearie ?" Miss 
 Wickford asked. 
 
 " No, Aunt Hannah, I'm not going to 
 leave him ; he knows I am here if he wants 
 me," Madame answered.
 
 208 
 
 With the habit of an experienced nurse 
 Miss Wickford determined to save herself 
 wherever she could ; she knew there might 
 be more watching to do than one person 
 could manage, so she settled herself as com- 
 fortably as possible, and dropped to sleep 
 after a while. In the stillness of the night 
 Isabel could hear Wickford stirring on the 
 other side of the door. 
 
 " Husband," she whispered, " won't you let 
 me come in ?" 
 
 The queer, metallic voice answered her, 
 " No ; go away." 
 
 "Gordon," she pleaded, "I will keep every 
 one else out ; but oh, for our old love's sake, 
 let me help you, dear!" She waited, but 
 there was no answer. " Believe me, for 
 God's sake ; I am an innocent woman ! Oh, 
 let me in! If you knew how I have tried 
 to make myself ready for this time, when 
 I might serve you ! how I have done every- 
 thing I hated and given up everything I 
 liked, you would believe me! Don't you 
 remember that day under the plum-trees? 
 Please let me in, dear please ! I won't come
 
 209 
 
 unless you say so, and no one else shall either, 
 unless they force me away. Won't you let 
 me in and kiss me good-bye, beloved ?" She 
 waited to listen, and to her horror she could 
 hear nothing. Her brain reeled as she 
 crouched there. " Speak to me !" she plead- 
 ed ; " only tell me you are alive, and I will be 
 silent. Oh, for Heaven's sake, speak to me !" 
 
 " I am alive," a faint voice answered her. 
 So she lay on the door-sill listening to his 
 intermittent meanings, all her being concen- 
 trated in her ears, while the night waned 
 and the dawn broke in the east. Miss Han- 
 nah sought to persuade her to take food, 
 but she would not eat. From time to time 
 the neighbors dropped in ; they joined the 
 old woman in her remonstrances, but Ma- 
 dame Wickford heeded them not ; she hardly 
 seemed even to hear them as she sat, every 
 nerve strained in her watchful listening. Ail 
 her faculties seemed absorbed in her watch, 
 and the nearer sights and sounds came to her 
 muffled by her abstraction. 
 
 It was equally useless to argue with the 
 negro and the old gardener; threats and
 
 210 
 
 bribes made no impression upon them ; the 
 master-will of the sick man inside there still 
 swayed all the members of his household. 
 He had said he wished to die alone, and they 
 banded together to carry out his injunctions, 
 irrespective of their neighbors' opinions in 
 regard to their conduct. That he deemed it 
 advisable seemed enough for them, which 
 spoke volumes for his just and wise sway in 
 former times. It was a great scandal to the 
 town ; but what was to be done ? O'Connor 
 and William watched alternately at one door, 
 the grief - stricken woman sat at the other. 
 Without violence there could be no intru- 
 sion upon the Doctor possible, nor did any 
 one feel authorized to use drastic measures 
 in the face of Isabel's decided protest. Al- 
 though she was discredited in the town's 
 eyes, yet she was Madame Wickford and in 
 her own house ; that still counted for some- 
 thing.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 DAY and night had become the same to 
 Isabel, except that in the quiet darkness she 
 could better hear the microphonic sounds 
 and the occasional stifled groans that told 
 her Wickford was still alive. Sometimes, 
 when the silence lasted an intolerable time, 
 she would plead with him to let her under- 
 stand, if he could, that he knew she still 
 watched beside him, and the queer, unfamil- 
 iar voice answered faintly, yet her quick ear 
 caught it with glad assurance that he could 
 respond. 
 
 Towards daylight on the second night 
 the moans became more frequent. There 
 was a cry of agony, which broke the still- 
 ness. She writhed on the hard boards of 
 the passage as though she would bury her- 
 self out of hearing, mental torture shook 
 her like an ague, but she never moved from
 
 212 
 
 her post. Miss Wickford had dropped asleep 
 in her chair, and, looking at her, Isabel won- 
 dered how rest was possible with that fearful 
 cry pulsating yet through the empty house. 
 She heard him moving now; it seemed as if 
 he had fallen somehow ; now he was up again. 
 Oh, if she could only help him ! From the 
 quiet that intervened between the small 
 rustlings he seemed to rest every now and 
 then. At length all was still. She waited 
 for what seemed an age ; then she called his 
 name. There was no answer, but she heard 
 a little motion from within. Perhaps she 
 troubled him with her insistance ; she deter- 
 mined, therefore, to lie still and wait. 
 
 Again the dawn swept up out of the sea, 
 rosy and clear ; she could see the pink light 
 of a new day on the western walls of the pas- 
 sage ; she wondered to herself if Wickford 
 slept, he was so quiet. Her own eyes, 
 though, seemed as if they were buttoned 
 open. At last there was a scream from the 
 other side of the door faint, but freighted 
 with untold anguish. The old woman heard 
 it, and awoke shuddering. The Irishman
 
 213 
 
 and the negro heard it, and drew closer to- 
 gether. To Madame it was only an assur- 
 ance that he still lived, while to these 
 others it meant the beginning of the end. 
 
 Everything was silent again ; the day 
 moved on in majestic glory of blue and 
 gold. There was the banging of an open- 
 ing shutter, a cart rolled by, and some one 
 passed on horseback. Then the multiplic- 
 ity of sound became tangled in her ears as 
 the town awoke, but within there all was 
 deadly quiet. She would try again to awa- 
 ken some response. "Gordon!" she called, 
 but only her own voice echoed down the 
 bare passage " Gordon, speak to me ! make 
 some sign ! Oh, my love, my love, be merci- 
 ful ! Make some sign ; the suspense is kill- 
 ing me !" Her voice reached a cry of an- 
 guish ; but the dead are silent sleepers, and 
 there was no answer. The old woman sat 
 looking at her pitifully. 
 
 " He doesn't answer," Isabel whispered, 
 turning her questioning eyes on her compan- 
 ion. " Could he be Oh, Gordon, Gor- 
 don !" she cried, " won't you speak to me
 
 214 
 
 this once?" Springing up in her agony of 
 terror she beat upon the door with open 
 palms, screaming to him, calling vainly to 
 dead ears, begging vainly for an answer from 
 dead lips. Miss Hannah tried to soothe 
 her, but she shook off the old woman's 
 detaining hands and struck the door with 
 frenzied force, bruising her delicate flesh in 
 the mad effort to make him hear her. 
 
 The lock was old, and the wood around it 
 too rotten to resist even her slender strength. 
 It gave way under her hands, and she stum- 
 bled forward into the dark room, falling 
 senseless across the bed, where he lay stark 
 and stiff, dressed for his burial. The great 
 hat was tied down upon his head, the veil 
 drawn about his face, and in his waxen hands 
 there was a paper. He must have been dead 
 for hours. 
 
 It was Aunt Hannah who took the letter 
 from between the stiff fingers and deciphered 
 the faint, wavering scrawl : 
 
 " I have heard it all, dear wife ; you have 
 endured even unto the end. God bless you, 
 Isabel ! Forgive me ! I have no strength
 
 215 
 
 for more. Bury me as I am, for Jesus' 
 sake !" 
 
 So they buried him according to his wish, 
 and the green mound over by old Madame 
 Wickford's marble shaft hides forever the 
 secret that his veil kept for so many years.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 ISABEL did not die. The towns-people 
 wondered why she remained among them 
 instead of returning to her own kin in the 
 city ; but she preferred to live on alone in 
 the old house, where all the fires of her life 
 burned themselves out during her short years 
 of marriage with the veiled Doctor. 
 
 It required a spiritual upheaval, such as her 
 long vigil before Wickford's door, to awaken 
 the sleeping soul that had been so wofully 
 tardy in taking upon itself the governance of 
 her actions. The good or evil she had done 
 heretofore proceeded from momentary im- 
 pulses as evanescent as a child's, for, having 
 no settled principle to give cohesion and 
 purpose to her life, she had drifted rudder- 
 less amid the temptations that surrounded 
 her, and whatever spiritual wisdom she had 
 at last achieved was solely the outcome of
 
 217 
 
 bitter personal experience. Her mistakes 
 were plain enough to Isabel now, and in 
 looking back upon her past she could recog- 
 nize the falsehood that had injured her cause 
 with her husband on one side, the foolish 
 vanity that had ensnared her on the other. 
 It did not detract from the bitterness of her 
 retrospect that this knowledge had come all 
 too late to prevent the shipwreck of her 
 youth. She grieved heartily, yet she grieved 
 according to her kind. Therefore, at first, 
 her own mistakes, her own losses, occupied 
 her exclusively. Sorrow's furnaces had a 
 mighty work to do in refining away the mass 
 of vanity and exaggerated selfishness that 
 formerly had blocked all the outlets of her 
 sympathy. 
 
 It is impossible that a crisis such as the 
 one through which Isabel had passed should 
 leave any spirit unchanged, but it remains 
 for the individual to determine if his soul's 
 road thenceforth shall lead up or down- 
 ward, though the degree of this elevation 
 or descent is fixed by the original nature 
 of the spirit itself. Isabel was no embryo
 
 218 
 
 saint, for whom only the forcing -house of 
 suffering was required to produce an inflo- 
 rescence of holiness ; yet, faulty and all hu- 
 man as she was, a gleam of higher light had 
 fallen upon her in her sorrow, and lifted her 
 above her old self for all time. Whatever 
 germs of good lay hidden in her natural dis- 
 position now shone out purer and stronger 
 for the trials through which she passed. 
 
 When she again took up the round of char- 
 ities that had occupied her before her widow- 
 hood, she was conscious of a new quality 
 within herself that bridged the dislike and 
 prejudice which formerly divided her from 
 those she helped. Perhaps neither she nor 
 they could exactly define the difference in 
 their relations, but that a vital change had 
 occurred was recognized by both sides, and 
 for the first time since her coming to the 
 old town she began to feel a comforting 
 sense of being at one with the community 
 in which she lived. It was sweet to know 
 that she was no longer an Ishmaelite among 
 her husband's friends. 
 
 Isabel's charities were not now a mere
 
 219 
 
 scattering of alms. She spent her sympathy 
 generously too, and in return the love of 
 those whom she served sprang up about her 
 and refreshed the barrens of her wasted ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Nor did her solace stop here ; with her 
 childish faults nature had also endowed her 
 with a childlike capacity for forgetting the 
 disagreeable, in a kind of day-dreaming, in 
 which she saw the past as she would have it 
 rather than as it really was. Thus in the 
 recesses of her bruised heart she created for 
 herself an ideal of Wickford woven from the 
 few happy moments they had enjoyed to- 
 gether. She dressed out her dead love in 
 this shimmering array, and so successfully 
 muffled the horrors of her old life that, as 
 time still further blurred her memory, she 
 could think and talk of her husband with a 
 tender pleasure that would have been incom- 
 prehensible to a woman of keener sensibili- 
 ties. 
 
 Living thus amid the transmuted scenes 
 of her past life, she drifted into a quiet and 
 not unhappy old age, useful and beloved
 
 220 
 
 among her neighbors, and enshrined to their 
 eyes in a kind of perennial romance, which 
 was hers by right of the tragedy of her stormy 
 youth. 
 
 So at last she fell peacefully asleep, and 
 the old house passed into the hands of 
 strangers. 
 
 THE END
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 CAYLORD 
 
 PMINTCOINU A