THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON
 
 jfftre. barton 
 
 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY. 
 
 AN ERRANT WOOING. 
 
 A BACHELOR MAID. 
 
 SWEET BELLS OUT OF TUNE. 
 
 CROW'S NEST AND BELHAVEN TALES. 
 
 GOOD AMERICANS. 
 
 THE ANGLOMANIACS. 
 
 A DAUGHTER OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 FLOWER DE HUNDRED. 
 
 THE MERRY MAID OF ARCADY. 
 
 A VIRGINIA COUSIN AND BAR HARBOR 
 
 TALES. 
 A SON OF THE OLD DOMINION.
 
 THE 
 CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. BURTON HARRISON 
 
 4^^l 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1899
 
 Copyright, 1899, by 
 MRS. BURTON HARRISON 
 
 THE DEVINNE PRESS.
 
 ft; 
 vi 
 
 *? 
 
 TO 
 
 TWO LITTLE MAIDS 
 CONSTANCE AND URSULA 
 
 428099
 
 PART I 
 IN OLD NEW YORK
 
 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 PART I 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 FTER 1787, when the new order of things 
 national began to assert itself in New 
 York, the little city, worn by armies of 
 occupation and ravaged by the many 
 fires during the Revolution, took on a 
 new lease of life. 
 
 The hearts of her faithful dwellers beat high with 
 the sense of returning prosperity. Their old houses 
 were made to blush in coats of ruddy paint, their 
 gardens were restocked with shrubs and flowers, their 
 rooms refitted with foreign furniture and ornaments. 
 Everywhere substantial homes and tenements sprang 
 up like Aladdin's palace. The brick sidewalks, that 
 until recently had extended northward no higher than 
 St. Paul's Chapel in Broadway, were repaired and 
 pushed farther, although they could not, alas ! recall 
 the vanished glory of leafage that had arched over 
 them before so many of the shade-trees of these streets
 
 2 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 were cut down orf Uel-by "beleaguered residents while 
 the war lasted., .. (i ... 
 
 The th6rbu'gttfarWw.e!r.e.elea.ned and better lighted ; 
 trade flourished ; markets and warehouses, late lean as 
 Shylock's purse, knew again the sensation of fullness 
 to satiety. Every ship from the old countries that 
 braved the boisterous Atlantic in search of Manhat 
 tan's shores arrived laden with dainties and novelties 
 for her shops. 
 
 New York may have been more picturesque, more 
 stately, more literally aristocratic in her days of 
 Dutch or English domination, but never so interest 
 ing as when the new wine of Americanism was thrill 
 ing in her veins. She at once took the lead, ever 
 since maintained, as the most cosmopolitan city of 
 the republic. 
 
 But although willing in some degree to accept the 
 doctrines of republican simplicity since called Jeffer- 
 sonian, New-Yorkers had no idea of parting with all 
 the habits and customs acquired from their sponsors 
 in an older civilization. Among the upper classes 
 personal luxury was the rule. Ladies and gentlemen 
 walked in silk attire, wore powdered periwigs, jeweled 
 buttons, and ruffles of cobweb lace, drank rare wines, 
 and kept a host of negro or mulatto servants. When 
 some gentry took the air, it was in chariots with lac 
 quered panels, painted cream and gold, each drawn by 
 four shining horses, and presided over by coachmen 
 such as nowadays are seen only at some great func 
 tion of a European court or upon the stage in a f airy 
 pantomime. One trembles at what the " society col 
 umns " would have to say in derision of the leading
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK t 3 
 
 New-Yorker who might venture in these times to go 
 abroad in his great-grandfather's customary state ! 
 
 Ah, well ! There is hardly a panel or a hammer- 
 cloth left of those brilliant old-time vehicles, and the 
 jeweled buttons of their great-grandfathers' coats 
 serve Maud and Mabel of to-day to deck their gowns 
 at fancy balls. Our leading citizens allow themselves 
 to be jammed past recognition in overcrowded cars of 
 the elevated railway, or hang upon the straps of agi 
 tating trolleys. But it is pleasant to remember that 
 these outward and visible signs of the age of Beau 
 Brocade once flaunted in the dull lower streets of our 
 island city ; and to write of them brings back a whole 
 pageant of high-stepping thoughts and courtly fancies. 
 
 The high-water mark of this renaissance of Goth 
 am's fashionable display was reached when General 
 Washington came from Mount Vernon to accept the 
 supreme trust of the infant nation in the balcony of 
 Federal Hall. That month of May, 1789, after the 
 President had taken up his residence in the Franklin 
 House in Cherry Street, was a dizzy round of routs, 
 balls, dinners, tea-drinkings, and card-parties. No 
 wonder New England held her breath in amazement 
 at what she called the "vortex of folly and dissipa 
 tion " in the giddy metropolis of New York. 
 
 The echoes of the inauguration ball in the Assem 
 bly Rooms, where the Boreel Building stands in 
 modern Broadway, had not yet died away, but were 
 augmented by those of the fete given the week fol 
 lowing by M. de- Moustier, the diplomatic represen 
 tative of France, who, in common parlance, was called 
 the French "Ambassador."
 
 4 THE CIKCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 When two women put their heads together to talk 
 about " the General " leading out that lucky Mrs. Max 
 well for the minuet, and one asked the other if she 
 had secured one of those lovely fans distributed at the 
 Assembly Rooms, somebody was sure to interrupt 
 with the enchanting decorations of De Moustier's 
 house, and the buffet supper there. 
 
 Enough could not be said of the clever surprise and 
 inventions planned for her brother's guests by the 
 ambassador's artistic sister, Madame la Marquise de 
 Brehan. Where did such an odd, wliimsical old lady 
 get her wonderful sense of color ? 
 
 These matters were under discussion one afternoon 
 in the drawing-room of a large house situated near 
 the lower end of " the Broadway," past which, cus 
 tomarily, streamed and flaunted the fashionable world 
 of promenaders. Built of glazed brick, its roof sur 
 mounted by a platform with balustrades meant for 
 taking the air of a summer evening, and the front 
 door by a plaque with armorial bearings, this dwelling 
 was the most important one in the vicinity, and in 
 the highest condition of good repair. Its windows 
 opened at the rear upon a garden terraced to the 
 river, from which now floated in a refreshing odor of 
 salt water tinctured with a scent of wallflowers and 
 hyacinths in bloom. By peeping through the shut 
 ters of the drawing-room, bowed on the street side, 
 one had a capital view of the thoroughfare. 
 
 During the recent months of her widowhood of 
 course, not at first Mistress Lucilla Warriner had 
 established outside another of the windows, at which 
 she was wont to sit with her tambour-frame, a small
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 5 
 
 circular mirror. In this she could see, without being 
 likely to be seen, people ascending her broad steps 
 to pull the jangling bell behind which black Pompey 
 sat and napped, in waiting to admit or refuse visitors. 
 
 To-day Pompey had received no instructions ex 
 clusive or prohibitory. Mrs. Warriner's drawing- 
 room was full of people. The cream of governmental, 
 professional, and higher mercantile circles mingled 
 there with the gentry of independent means content 
 simply to adorn society. Around the fair hostess 
 gathered, as usual, an admiring coterie. It was a 
 subject of congratulation to them all that her " sec 
 ond mourning " was now, at last, merged into visible 
 lavender, and that she had appeared at two balls in a 
 week. 
 
 "And how many more are to come? It 's posi 
 tively killing," declared Mistress Lucilla. 
 
 The widow did not look as if she had any idea 
 of paying nature's last debt. Her chestnut hair, 
 worn in a high tour, and surmounted by a coquettish 
 wisp of Mechlin lace, to match that on her pinner, 
 sleeve-ruffles, and muslin apron, was shot with sunny 
 gleams. Her lips and cheeks were living roses. Her 
 eyes of warm hazel could as easily dance with mis 
 chief as cloud with sympathy. And her complexion 
 of fine translucent texture ! Only Mrs. Jay's and 
 Queen Marie Antoinette's of France could equal it in 
 brilliancy of tint ! 
 
 Nine years before, when a girl of seventeen, coming 
 of a good family in Albany, Miss Lucilla Chester had 
 been wedded by her ambitious parents to Octavius 
 Warriner, Esquire, lord of a great manor on the
 
 6 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 Hudson, owner of one of the finest houses in New 
 York, and descendant of a line of feudal rulers in 
 the colony. The young lady had been seen by him 
 first when a school-girl at a ball for the Continental 
 officers of Morristown, in New Jersey, and the close 
 of the war had witnessed the accomplishment of their 
 nuptials. 
 
 Just what those years of dazzling fortune had 
 really meant to Lucilla none knew save her confiden 
 tial servants, and perhaps her husband's cousin, Cap 
 tain Arnold Warriner, late of the Continental Army. 
 Lucilla's father had died ; and the journey from Al 
 bany to the Manor-house was said to be too formi 
 dable to be often taken by Mrs. Warriner's mama, 
 who, however, knew the real reason why she so rarely 
 visited her son-in-law. 
 
 The outer world, impressed by the pomp of Octa- 
 vius's appearances in public and his benefactions to 
 State and charity, could not be supposed to guess that 
 his wife and her vast household of servants had actu 
 ally lived like mice on cheese-parings ; or that her 
 elderly husband had held in check every impulse of 
 Lucilla's girlish spirit, weighed and measured every 
 item of her personal expenditure, treated her with 
 cold formality, and, in sum, withheld from her young 
 life all save the bare necessaries of existence. Nothing 
 but the immortal elasticity of youth had kept her 
 from asphyxiating of ennui. 
 
 And when he died he had left her everything. His 
 will, extolling her virtues with the turgid grace of a 
 tombstone, placed in her inexperienced hands control, 
 so long as she should survive, of one of the largest
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 7 
 
 fortunes in the State. She was now, at six-and4wenty, 
 like a nun emerged from a cloister to rule over a 
 principality ! 
 
 Octavius Warriner's demise had occurred at the 
 Manor-house nearly two years before our story be 
 gins. Arnold, who had been always kept at a for 
 mal distance from this household, together with a 
 few remoter relatives, saw to it that the chief of their 
 family was consigned to his last rest in a style be 
 fitting his high place in the community. Madam 
 Chester came from Albany to take up permanent 
 abode in a mansion of which she had been long itch 
 ing to advise the management. The funeral was im 
 posing. A pipe of spiced wine, with rivers of beer 
 and cider, were dispensed to its attendants, while the 
 gloves, hatbands, scarfs, mourning-rings, and monkey- 
 spoons conferred on the pall-bearers and the execu 
 tors of the will were the costliest money could buy. 
 The lord of the Manor was followed to his ancestral 
 tomb in the Hudson wilderness by a long train of 
 kinsmen, tenants, servants, and dependents, leaving 
 his wife clinging to her mother in the great empty 
 house at home. But not crying. Lucilla was too 
 dazed for that ! 
 
 As months passed, and her nature had rebounded, 
 Lucilla had been shocked by experiencing a glad, 
 mad sense of joy. In the first year of widowhood 
 she had elected to spend most of her time at their 
 country-seat, of which the surrounding groves and 
 brawling streams and mighty, placid river were al 
 leged by her mother to exercise a soothing influence 
 on her sort of grief.
 
 8 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 Often and again would she escape from the sitting- 
 room, done in prim sunflower-yellow damask and 
 scented with strange foreign odors, wherein Madam 
 Chester sat before a fire of hickory logs, knitting in 
 hand, a smile of satisfied ambition wreathing her 
 handsome lips at thought that no male creature with 
 obstinate ideas stood now between Lucilla's and her 
 own enjoyment of luxurious life! Lucilla had lis 
 tened, until endurance ceased to be a virtue, to old 
 saws, placid self-gratulations that Madam Chester 
 had been enabled by Providence to furnish poor Mr. 
 Warriner with such a devoted helpmeet, and agreeable 
 forecasts of a wider material outlook when their days 
 of mourning should be past. She often longed for 
 indulgence in her own thoughts, for a fresher air, for 
 a tramp in the wintry woods, guarded only by her 
 hound. Sometimes, when snow lay glistening on the 
 Highlands opposite, she would go down the steep 
 hillside to the ice-bound river, and, attended at a dis 
 tance by two negro footmen, skate for miles, coming 
 back reluctantly to where the blue curls of smoke 
 rose from her chimneys on the eminence above. 
 
 Far as her eye could reach on either hand it was all 
 her own domain. He had left it to her without re 
 striction for her lifetime ; the use of it all, and all the 
 income, were hers ; though at her death the lands, and 
 whatever should then be left of the principal of the 
 personalty, were to go to Arnold Warriner. The whole 
 great estate with its gardens, lawns, fruit-orchards, and 
 deer parks, the mansion with its appendage of forty 
 black slaves to do her bidding, and the town house, 
 not to speak of the long rent-rolls and fat hoardings
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 9 
 
 of her late penurious spouse ! Lucilla was a princess 
 in fortune and surroundings. 
 
 But are not all princesses at times a little dull? 
 The young widow whom fate had so richly dow 
 ered was the kind of woman whose ambitions are 
 bounded by the hearth-rug, provided Love sits on the 
 other side. She had never known a hearth-rug with 
 this embellishment. But in her heart she longed for 
 happy young companionship, for sympathy, fun, con 
 tact with other people's lives, and low be it whis 
 pered ! two things in special : a real lover, and a pale- 
 blue satin paduasoy ! Blue was her color no doubt 
 about that ; but she had never owned a satin, rich, 
 thick, lustrous, that would make an imposing " cheese " 
 when she courtesied in company. And the petticoat 
 to go with it should be of blue-and-silver stuff, the 
 stockings silk with silver clocks, the feathers blue 
 marabou with silver fringe ! With a guilty start, 
 Lucilla often found herself wondering when the law 
 of etiquette would allow her to realize this dream. 
 
 Since our grown-up child was not in China, where 
 custom prescribes the celestial colors to those be 
 reaved, the last-named longing had not yet been 
 satisfied. Even at the De Moustier ball the night 
 before she had worn puce, with black bows, because 
 mama said poor Mr. Warriner would be pleased 
 with it if he were looking down. To-day, in the 
 privacy of her own home, she had gone so far as to 
 add a few knots of pale violet-tinted ribbon to her 
 cap and handkerchief and to the pockets of her apron. 
 Clearly, the blue satin was in sight ! 
 
 But the lover ! Where was he ?
 
 10 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 " I protest," went on Mistress Lucilla to her bevy 
 of listeners, "the court quadrilles last night were 
 the prettiest ever seen. I could not make up my 
 mind whether to avow myself for the red rose of 
 France or the bluebell of Columbia, and so would not 
 dance in them at all." 
 
 "But you danced three times afterward with a 
 gentleman in red regimentals, my dear angel ! " ex 
 claimed her friend, Miss Betsy Crewe. "Now, I 
 would not for the world have appeared on the French 
 side in the quadrilles, even though the master of cere 
 monies and the Marquise herself teased me to wear 
 the rosy scarf. Well content was I to take my steps 
 in Columbia's ranks, with such a partner as I had in 
 the blue and buff! But I might have spared my 
 pains, for my captain did nothing but look over 
 toward the benches where a certain puce gown with 
 black' bows was sitting, trying to look so demure, 
 so old-ladified, with all the dowagers ! My liveliest 
 sallies produced from him nothing but glum answers 
 and melancholy smiles ; and when the sets were over, 
 amid all the applause we received, he asked me only 
 if I thought his Cousin Warriuer had gone out to 
 her chair. Really, Lu, you treat him shockingly. I 
 never saw a youth so far gone in the tender passion. 
 And so handsome he is, too quite the beauty among 
 our beaus ! " 
 
 " My vote would -be for his friend and rival in 
 good looks, Captain Laurence Hope," cried Miss 
 Polly Clinton. 
 
 At this point their hostess, who had been serving 
 chocolate in her pretty flowered cups, was so unfor-
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 11 
 
 tunate as to drop the cover of the china pot con 
 taining that fragrant beverage upon the rim of the 
 sugar-dish, breaking it to bits. And hearing the 
 crash, Madam Chester, who was pouring out tea at 
 another table, hurried across the room and chided 
 her daughter smartly. 
 
 " That Dresden set, child, that poor, dear Mr. War- 
 riner had brought out on the Lovely Kate, and thought 
 so much of that he kept it under lock and key ! I 'in 
 surprised at your heedlessness ! One would think 
 you 'd forgotten your husband's feelings." 
 
 " Here come the two captains now," interposed Miss 
 Crewe, properly ignoring the lesson in domestic ethics 
 she overheard. " Adonises in philopena, I call them ! " 
 
 The heavy door of carved mahogany swinging in 
 ward revealed Pompey, in his coat of half-mourn 
 ing livery, strutting ahead of two young gentlemen. 
 " Vastly pretty fellows " they were sometimes styled, 
 in the phrase of that day ; but we may see at a glance 
 the inappropriateness of the term as applied to this 
 vigorous and manly couple, who, having both entered 
 the service of the Continental Army as lads, had 
 gone through 'the war with credit and were now 
 returned to New York. 
 
 Arnold Warriner, the more regularly handsome of 
 the two, was first to greet the lady behind the choco 
 late-pot, a ceremony performed with the easy and 
 confident grace of one who feels his feet to be upon 
 firm ground. 
 
 During the last three months he had fulfilled the 
 prophecy of the gossips at the outset of Lucilla's 
 widowhood, and had come forward gallantly and
 
 12 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 devotedly as the avowed suitor of Ms late kinsman's 
 fair relict. 
 
 " J T would be a thousand pities," quoth the voice of 
 society, "for these two young people, so obviously 
 intended for each other, to delay much longer in 
 announcing their engagement." True, it averred, 
 Mistress Lucilla, with her long purse and charming 
 beauty, might aspire with reason to any match nay, 
 even to the most illustrious alliance with foreign rank 
 ever made in our country ! And Captain Warriner 
 might yet find that, whilst he was philandering, some 
 visiting grandee had swooped down and carried off 
 the prize. 
 
 The captain was known for a sad dawdler in love 
 matters, and elsewhere was suspected of being a black 
 sheep. Until the present time no one could have 
 counted upon him to remain faithful to one fair. But 
 now, some people said, he could not afford to wander. 
 He had lately lost much at cards j his horse, Ajax, that 
 had been heavily backed by him to run from the Pali 
 sade Gate, at Wall Street and Broadway, out to Kings- 
 bridge and back, in an hour and forty minutes, had 
 failed by five minutes; and he was out of pocket 
 in many other ways. What a shame for such a good- 
 looking Warriner to be needing money, when there 
 was his cousin's great property, to which he had blood 
 right, and Mistress Lucilla none ! 
 
 If he did not get her, no doubt she would soon 
 marry some one else, have a houseful of children, 
 live to a green old age, and spend her first husband's 
 money upon a brood of a different name and race. 
 
 Poetic justice and the suffrages of the fair being
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 13 
 
 tlius all on the side of Captain Arnold, it becomes ns 
 to inquire what were his own feelings in this important 
 matter. Outwardly his homage was laid without re 
 serve at his pretty cousin's feet. No other woman had 
 the ghost of a show when Lucilla was in the room. He 
 looked at her, languished from afar, or was on hand 
 to render her service as assiduously as a confessed 
 Strephon should have done. Lookers-on applauded 
 his frank surrender to Lucilla's charms. 
 
 Truth to tell, the captain applauded himself. Since 
 He had resolved to go into this thing, he thought he 
 had done it thoroughly. What did he realty care for 
 the rivalry of the other suitors, who, in three months, 
 had sprung up like weeds in the widow's pathway? 
 Neither masqueraders on the French side in red regi 
 mentals, nor his fellow-revelers in blue and buff, had 
 afflicted him with fear. He could not bring himself 
 to feel apprehensions of the distinguished member of 
 the new Congress, or yet of the head of the most solid 
 mercantile business in town, of the widowed physi 
 cian, or of the old bachelor lawyer, all of whom had 
 entered the lists beside him. If it pleased Lucilla to 
 fancy her fish tortured upon her hook, he was willing 
 to let her play him, too. 
 
 Least of all did Arnold fear that most outspoken 
 opponent of his claims, Madam Chester. He was 
 shrewd enough to see that the lady would use her 
 influence to keep at bay all pretenders to her daugh 
 ter's hand. Never since her own marriage-day, 
 twenty-seven years before, had Madam Chester en 
 joyed so long a space of freedom from contradiction 
 by a man. During Lucilla's marriage she had been
 
 14 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 kept in indignant resentment of her daughter's hus 
 band's claims. Was it likely that in the dawn of this 
 day of better things the good lady would wish to lay 
 her scepter down ? Besides, so said Captain Warriner 
 irreverently, the old bird knew that her nest was well 
 lined with the down of Lucilla's fortune, and would 
 not be likely to step out of it without a conflict. Let 
 her address to him all the sarcastic speeches in her 
 repertory, he did not mind. One word, one downcast 
 look, one heavenly blush of Lucilla's, would give him 
 his revenge ! 
 
 He was really growing quite enamoured of this cou 
 sin, who in her married life had seemed to him a 
 silent, shrinking girl, without initiative, and with only 
 a good figure and skin to recommend her. Suddenly 
 she had burst into a rose of beauty ! As much as 
 Captain Arnold could admire anything besides him 
 self, he admired his prospective wife. By and by, when 
 he should feel quite ready to renounce celibate joys, 
 he would propose to her in form. Till then, let 
 Lucilla fancy him her humble captive. In matters 
 like this a man has sometimes to stoop to conquer. 
 
 To-day, after saluting with reverence her white 
 hand, he drew back and allowed Captain Laurence 
 Hope to take his place. Now, there would have been 
 no law 1 in the social calendar broken by Captain Hope 
 in following the example of his late brother in arms 
 and bending to kiss the lily of Lucilla's hand in 
 greeting. But he did not do so, remaining stiffly 
 erect until the widow, whose face had been half 
 averted at his approach, turned upon him the full 
 gaze of her eyes.
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 15 
 
 " You are later than you promised ! " she said, softly 
 reproachful. 
 
 " I have been in attendance upon the President in 
 the fourteen-mile ride/' was the answer. " And the 
 mud left on us by the chief's pace, when we were well 
 out of sight of men, necessitated a prolonged toilet on 
 my return. Jove ! he is a wonder in the saddle ! " 
 
 " As in all departments of life," replied Mrs. War- 
 riner, primly. She wished not to lose these moments 
 of tete-a-tete in discussing the General, and began 
 to fear lest some one else should come in and claim 
 her attention. It was so hard to see any one alone ! 
 This pomp and homage that surrounded her cut her 
 off from many little privileges dear to her sex. And 
 then, Captain Hope was always, in a way, inscrutable. 
 One minute she was convinced that she, and she alone, 
 possessed his heart; the next she feared, nay, was 
 assured of, his complete indifference. 
 
 At that moment some story-teller on the other side 
 of the room began retailing a delicious bit of gossip. 
 So nice was the stomach of the French Ambassador, 
 't was said, and so contemptuous his sister, the Mar 
 quise, of the American cuisine, that when invited 
 to dinner, even with the heads of government, 't was 
 the custom of his Excellency to sit without eating, 
 crumbling bread upon the cloth, till the mo*ment for 
 the service of the releve. Then in would march the 
 Ambassador's chef, in snowy cap and apron, a damask 
 napkin on his arm, carrying a mighty pie of truffled 
 game of his own making. The dainty was placed 
 before his master, who, after serving it to his neigh 
 bors, ate of it and of no other dish !
 
 16 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 This anecdote, followed by others as savory con 
 cerning the eccentricities of the Marquise, had the 
 effect of diverting to the fortunate speaker the whole 
 attention of the room. M. Brissot de Warville, the 
 cheery little traveler and teller of strange tales, com 
 ing in soon after, was quite cast into the shade. 
 
 Lucilla only, and Hope who said little and was 
 more than ever a victim of reserve remained by the 
 table supporting Mr. Warriner's now totally unheeded 
 Dresden chocolate set. When the widow found that 
 they were not to be interrupted for this little precious 
 time, she could not restrain the almost pleading note 
 that crept into her tones : 
 
 "You did not see fit to join me in the promenade 
 yesterday, after all ! And when I found that a certain 
 gentleman had not pressed to claim my hand for the 
 Columbian side of the quadrilles, I went over in a 
 secret pet, and took my place among the ancients, 
 where I suppose he thinks I fain should be." 
 
 " Where, by heaven, your beauty shone forth with 
 redoubled splendor," cried he, irrepressibly. "Ah, 
 madam, what have I done that you should add this 
 to my burden of self-denial ? I believe you know 
 full well that during the quadrilles I sulked in the 
 card-room, as savage in my solitude as an Indian 
 chief." 
 
 " I, too, was sulky," said she, pouting, but with an 
 inward glow. His impassioned speech had trans 
 formed his whole face and manner. Never had she 
 found him so noble, so beautiful. But now that she 
 had won him to give her this much, she must at once 
 restrain him from giving more.
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 17 
 
 " I felt cross because of my gown. Although sober 
 in hue, it was half covered with lace no woman in 
 town can match ; and an officer, whose name I won't 
 tell you, since he has threatened to commit suicide for 
 his awkwardness, had just allowed his sword-hilt to 
 make a fearful rent in the left side of my tunic. Now, 
 picture my predicament! To mend this properly I 
 must, perhaps, send to Brussels, where 't was made, 
 and go without wearing it for horrid ages. Though 
 that reminds me, Captain Hope. No longer ago than 
 last week a friend told us that your mother knows of 
 a Scotch-Irish person a protegee of hers the most 
 skilled mender of laces in the town. Perhaps you 
 might help me to the services of this Miss what did 
 they call her? Miss Eve Watson was it not!" 
 
 Now, indeed, had Mrs. Warriner opportunity to 
 observe an excellent display of Captain Hope's before- 
 mentioned peculiarity of changing mood with star 
 tling suddenness. He became stiff as a ramrod, grew 
 red, then pale, then fixed upon her a piercing look as 
 if seeking to read her thoughts. 
 
 " Whatever can you mean ? " she cried, with a per 
 fectly natural surprise. "I ask you the simplest 
 favor, and one would think I had committed a capital 
 offense. Be sure, captain, that after this I shall tres 
 pass no more on your good nature." 
 
 " Then you had no ulterior motive ? Nobody has 
 been you are quite unaware ? Oh, no ! I see it ; you 
 are as innocent as a child, and I am an ill-mannered, 
 touchy brute, who deserves to be crossed off your list 
 of acquaintances. Mrs. Warriner, although you have 
 known me three months, it has alwa) s been under the
 
 18 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 eyes of strangers and t outsiders. Not so much as a 
 stroll with you have I had without some idiot of a 
 man or gossip of a woman coming up and interrupting 
 us. For many a whole sleepless night I have plotted 
 to gain speech with you alone, and been foiled when 
 the time came. If you could know me as I am if 
 somewhere in this overcrowded world there were 
 allotted to us two a spot secluded from observa 
 tion" 
 
 Lucilla, in the not unhappy confusion of her feel 
 ings, cast a thought to the lonely acres of Warriner 
 Manor, wondering if she would find them quite the 
 same in the company of this handsome, petulant fel 
 low, who had again checked himself, and was biting 
 his lip in vexation at having said so much ! 
 
 Then into her mind sped a little, tempting winged 
 thought. In the garden at the rear, where spring 
 flowers were a-blow and trees leaned their leafy 
 branches toward the river's brink, there was a bench 
 where she often sat alone. 
 
 " If to-morrow is fine, and you care to come through 
 the wicket of my garden toward five o'clock," she said, 
 blushing deeply, " I think I can show you a bed of 
 tulips that would do credit to any goede vrow of earlier 
 days." 
 
 What Hope would have answered, Lucilla could 
 but surmise. While a new arrival claimed her, again 
 the too-frequent cloud came upon his brow, and ho 
 drew back, then waited until he could say in a low 
 whisper : 
 
 " Be it so, then. I shall be there, though I have 
 no right to give myself such happiness."
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 19 
 
 "And you won't forget the lace-mender?" replied 
 Lucilla, joyous that she had conquered, and hardly 
 knowing what she said. 
 
 For answer he hurried from the room. 
 
 And now Lucilla was again surrounded. 
 
 " I can't divine what ails Captain Hope," said Miss 
 Polly Clinton, who had seen something of what had 
 passed. u I '11 vow he 's completely changed, this month 
 past. So fickle in his moods, and so prone to get into 
 gloomy spells ! " 
 
 " They say," put in an acidulated widow of forty, 
 who had not yet succeeded in replacing her lost trea 
 sure of a spouse, "that since their reverse of fortune 
 his mother never ceases to urge on him the necessity 
 to marry money. And what with this pressure at 
 home, and his poor father a paralytic in his chair, and 
 the Hopes knowing themselves bygones, it can't be 
 supposed that Laurence can take a cheerful view of 
 life. Besides, what old New-Yorker does n't know 
 that on his mother's side of the family there is de 
 rangement? His great-aunt Prissy used to fancy 
 herself the wife of the man in the moon. Dear 
 knows 't would be a risk for any sane woman to take 
 up with Captain Hope, be she young or getting on in 
 life." 
 
 And with this last not barbless shaft Mistress 
 Malice took her flight. Mrs. Warriner took this 
 painful weapon to bed with her that night, turned 
 it in the wound, and cried over the smart. At one 
 moment she was resolved to play him false by failing 
 to be in the garden at the appointed time. At the 
 next she smiled with sweet triumph and confident be-
 
 20 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 lief that lie loved her for her own loving self alone ! 
 But how very abrupt and odd he had been about 
 doing her the simple favor she had asked ! What 
 could there be about a mere lace-mender to come 
 between her and the monarch of her heart ?
 
 II 
 
 HE dwelling in Queen Street toward 
 which Captain Hope directed his steps 
 after leaving the widow Warriner's 
 tea-table was already beginning to take 
 rank in the town as a relic of antiquity, 
 the one marking the earliest pretension of New York 
 to luxurious living. 
 
 Built in 1695 by his father's grandfather, its bold 
 facade, and generous dimensions of sixty by eighty 
 feet, together with the carvings and decorations of 
 the exterior, and the great empty stables and coach 
 house in the rear, excited much reverence from 
 lookers-on. 
 
 What of the inside failed to be revealed in the air 
 ings and cleanings Madam Hope's black women from 
 time to time bestowed on it was invented by lively 
 imagination, and handed down to swell tradition's 
 blast. 
 
 People loved to talk of the old French nutwood 
 furniture, the velvet cushions trimmed with gold lace, 
 the mirrors and pictures of the rooms of state on the 
 first floor. They said less of the smaller apartments 
 up-stairs, kept warm and cozy for the two invalids 
 who were all that was left to represent the proud 
 line of founders of the house. 
 
 21
 
 22 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 For the predecessors of Laurence Hope had figured 
 conspicuously, and at times brilliantly, in the political 
 and military aif airs of the province. Their name was 
 writ high in history ; and the fact that, through one 
 accident of fortune after another, the present repre 
 sentatives of the family were near the bottom of the 
 ladder did not cause their fellow-citizens to regard 
 the Hopes as of less social consequence than before. 
 
 But these circumstances, however soothing to pride, 
 failed in making Laurence Hope's home a pleasant 
 resort for a man in the vigor of his youth. He well 
 knew what he would find there : his father, helpless 
 and almost childish in his chair, eager to ask ques 
 tions, forgetful before the answers came, still more 
 eager about the little dishes and dainty menus the 
 women-folk managed to provide for him ; his mother, 
 whose courage and ceaseless effort to hold up the 
 falling pillars of their house had failed, with her 
 health, a few years back, upon the death of her elder 
 son, who, though a rake and a gambler, was yet the 
 darling of her heart ! She was now a creature of 
 whims and exactions, whose bursts of temper were 
 succeeded by hours of frozen silence. 
 
 And Eve there was always Eve ! 
 
 Eve was twenty, now. She had been "taken up" 
 by Madam Hope, then in full possession of her rare 
 gift of management, when b^ a waxen-faced girl of 
 sixteen with a mop of thick red hair, the child of a 
 Scotch-Irish mechanic, who had brought her, an infant 
 in arms, across the sea to try his luck in the New 
 World. Job Watson had prospered at his trade of 
 carpentry, but, losing his wife, had been glad to secure
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 23 
 
 a home for Eve in the house of gentlefolk, where she 
 co aid be trained for domestic service. 
 
 In the beginning Madam Hope had found out the 
 girl's talent for finest needlework. Were there a 
 moth-hole in some web of Indian loom, a " snag " in 
 priceless lace, or worn place in rich old table-damask, 
 Eve's twinkling fingers could make it as good as new. 
 From keeping her mistress's wardrobe and table-linen 
 in repair she had passed on to be amanuensis, secre 
 tary, sick-nurse, companion, accountant, and at last 
 manager and mainstay of the household. Under her 
 rule, comfort was now maintained where otherwise 
 there would have been a barren waste. And during 
 the period of her development to high womanly use 
 fulness, and while reflecting the refinement of her 
 surroundings, a common miracle of nature was ac 
 complished. Eve had grown beautiful ! 
 
 Many eyes and tongues had made note of this fact 
 before. When the girl was just turned nineteen 
 Captain Laurence was ordered to New York. One 
 can imagine the effect upon young Hope's imagina 
 tion of this sweet and helpful vision in his stricken 
 home. Modest and self-effacing, Eve never pushed 
 herself upon the interviews he held daily with his 
 parents ; but as to her they looked for services he 
 could not render, he had been for months seeing her 
 continually, and had owed her the most substantial 
 consolations of his difficult position. It was Eve who 
 made smooth the rough places inevitable in their 
 intercourse. It was Eve who had been his friend- 
 confidante and latterly something nearer. 
 
 Spite of this magnet, Hope did not now seem to
 
 24 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 hasten to reach, his home. He made a detour, walk 
 ing far and hard before going back to the neighbor 
 hood of the paternal mansion. When he again turned 
 into their street the afternoon was closing into even 
 ing, and the tall house, looming up against a daffodil 
 sky, seemed to him steeped in shadows. 
 
 Above the portal at the front was a massive bal 
 cony from which bygone governors of the province 
 had been wont to review troops. Looking up at it 
 through recent habit, Hope saw fly out toward him a 
 fluttering square of white. 
 
 At once Laurence turned and retraced his steps. 
 When at a point secure against observation from the 
 house he waited. His lips were drawn, his forehead 
 knotted. Whoever was coining to be his comrade, 
 no buoyancy of welcome was in the mien of Laurence 
 Hope. 
 
 Almost immediately he was joined by a girl in a 
 gown of oft-washed dimity, carrying in her hand a 
 traveling-bag, and wearing a veil of green gauze 
 drawn closely over the front of her straw scoop- 
 bonnet. 
 
 " So you are for the water, after all ? " he said, with 
 attempted lightness. "Had I known you could re 
 lent in my favor I 'd have come home earlier. Last 
 night, when I dropped in to show the old people my 
 regimentals for the ball, you were adamant about 
 going out alone with me, unknown to them. What, 
 Eve crying ! Take my arm, dear, and let us walk 
 on. Then you can tell me what has troubled you." 
 
 " Laurie, the most dreadful thing has happened ! 
 She found that note you wrote asking me to go out
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 25 
 
 for a row with you to-day. You know how you 
 signed it. It is all over j she has ordered me from the 
 house." 
 
 " Eve ! " 
 
 " Yes. Don't speak till I tell you, for I Ve no time 
 to lose. I 'd have walked the three miles to father's 
 farm but that I waited to speak to you. And now 
 it 's too late for me to walk alone, and and I have 
 no money for a chaise." 
 
 Her voice, broken by weeping, failed her. 
 
 "Eve, my mother must be mad if she sent you 
 away penniless." 
 
 " She does not know that I am so. There are 
 reasons I can't explain why it is thus. But that is 
 nothing beside the way she spoke. Laurie, she can 
 be terrible when you are in question. She was like 
 a tigress robbed of her young." 
 
 " Come back, then, and let me tell her that I will 
 brook no such interference in my affairs ! " exclaimed 
 the young man, fiercely. " We shall see whether or 
 not I have the right to choose a wife for myself." 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! She has shown me too plainly the in 
 solence of such pretension on my part. The madness 
 was mine, even to listen to you, to dream that I could 
 be accepted by your family. Laurie, it would have 
 been a thousand times better had we been firm at 
 first, and not let ourselves drift into this thing, that 
 can bring us nothing but misery. Wherever I look 
 ahead there is no hope for us. My father " 
 
 11 That rigid old Bluelight ought to have served 
 with the Covenanters, and by hacking and hewing 
 worked out his objections to my class. Is it only
 
 26 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 because I am what I am, Eve, that you think he 
 would refuse you to me? Or is there another 
 reason ? " 
 
 " He has always warned me against you 1 since the 
 first time you came home, and I think he honestly 
 believes that a man who plays cards and goes to the 
 playhouse is on the highroad to perdition. But I 
 must tell you the truth, Laurie. He has set his heart 
 on my marrying a young man, a fellow-workman of 
 his ; and because I won't hear of Luke Adam son for 
 a suitor he has been very violent. My last visit home 
 was such as I try not to think about. And when he 
 knows I have promised to marry you" 
 
 " There '11 be the deuce to pay, then, at your house, 
 as well as mine. Eve, little girl, we are n't the first 
 couple that failed to count the cost of falling in love. 
 But I '11 stand by you, and never fear but we '11 pull 
 out of this trouble. How far you were excusable for 
 your share in the matter it does n't become me to say. 
 But are n't you the only bright spot of my home ? " 
 
 " Don't remind me of that ; after all, I owe the best 
 of my life to your dear mother ! For I do love her, Lau 
 rie, in spite of her cruelty to-day. She was not her 
 self. She has had many sore trials, and it should n't 
 have been I who added to them. What can they do 
 without me? Who will there be to take my place 
 this evening? He '11 never sleep without my read 
 ing aloud; and she calls me always, the last thing 
 before she drops off, to lay my hand upon her fore 
 head and soothe her nerves. It was my fault. I pre 
 sumed too far and forgot my station, and now my 
 poor benefactors will never ask me to come back.
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 27 
 
 Oh, Laurie, Laurie, already my sin has found me out ! 
 Help me to get home and brave my father's anger ; 
 and do you go back and tell them that I swear never 
 to think of you again, except as the child of my dear 
 est, truest friends." 
 
 The glad bounding of Laurence Hope's heart al 
 most took away his powers of speech. What he 
 would have answered was restrained by the burst of 
 grief that now overwhelmed his young companion, 
 shaking her slender form until he was forced to put 
 his arm around her for support. 
 
 Although the streets were nearly deserted save by 
 the muffin-man, and the carts carrying water from the 
 tea-house pump he feared to attract the notice of 
 passers-by, and looked about him for some place of 
 refuge. 
 
 By good fortune they were just then passing the 
 thread-and-needle and comfit shop of Mrs. Pips, one 
 of his mother's beneficiaries, a lone woman whom he 
 had known over her little counter from the days of 
 his earliest purchases. By looking through the glass 
 of the closed door he could see that the tiny place was 
 empty of customers, and leading Eve within, he ex 
 plained to the proprietor that she had been suddenly 
 taken faint upon the street adding that he was off 
 to secure a chaise in which to take her home. 
 
 " Dear heart, and that 's little enough to ask for 
 Eve Watson, who brings me all the custom o' your 
 house, captain," exclaimed the dame ; " let alone what 
 Madam Hope did when my poor Pips lay a-dyin' in 
 that very room behind the shop, where I '11 take the 
 girl and let her sit in quiet."
 
 28 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 As Hope hastened away, a sense of relief arising 
 amid his perplexity, he did not observe that two 
 young bucks of fashion strolling on the opposite 
 sidewalk had stopped to take notice of the little 
 episode. 
 
 " Oh, ho ! Sits the wind in that quarter, Master 
 Laurie?" said Arnold Warriner, executing a low 
 whistle of surprise. " I wonder who 's the Dulcinea ? " 
 
 " Why, man, where have you been, never to have 
 seen Eve Watson, Madam Hope's tirewoman or com 
 panion, who is reputed to be one of the most deli 
 cious beauties of the town, though so stiff-necked 
 and uppish no one can get her to turn her head in 
 passing ? " 
 
 " So that 's she, is it ? " replied Arnold. " I saw 
 her but once, at the play, under Madam Hope's wing, 
 and got no encouragement when I waited to ogle her 
 coming out. Laurie keeps his affairs so close, and 
 that old house of theirs has become such an ogre's 
 castle, nobody can peep in through the keyhole even. 
 You, Bellingham, who manage to pick up every shred 
 of gossip for the clubs and drums, must have heard 
 of this before?" 
 
 " Never, upon my life ! " said Bellingham, eagerly. 
 " But what a rich titbit we have now ! If my eyes 
 did n't deceive me, that pretty head had a very affec 
 tionate cant toward Laurie's shoulder when he led 
 the drooping sufferer indoors. By Jove, it 's an 
 elopement, or I '11 eat my hat ! " 
 
 " Then, as dusk begins to favor us, we '11 see the 
 end of it," added Warriner. " By stepping behind 
 this friendly wooden Indian who serves the tobacco-
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 29 
 
 nist as a sign we can stay a few minutes unobserved 
 by casual eyes." 
 
 " "What will the Hopes say to these divagations of 
 their son and heir ! " went on Bellingham, savoring 
 the choice morsel under his tongue. " The proudest 
 woman we have is the old dowager Hope, and her 
 ruling passion the desire that this son shall build up 
 the family fortunes by a wealthy match. And only 
 this afternoon Laurie was playing swain to your 
 bewitching cousin. How will the lovely widow bear 
 wreathing her head with willows for such a rival ? " 
 
 " There is little to fear in that regard/' said War- 
 riner, contemptuously. " My cousin, like all pretty 
 women, may enjoy making sunshine and storm for 
 her admirers, but when the time comes for definite 
 choice another than Hope may be in question." 
 
 Bellingham, although a fop and quidnunc, was 
 quick enough to perceive the proprietary note in the 
 other's voice, and could not resist an attempt to tease 
 him. 
 
 " Oh ! I 'm an echo of common talk, that 's all," 
 he said, shrugging. " And any man with half an eye 
 could have seen that Madam Lucilla's gaze was all 
 for Laurie last night and to-day. Take my advice, 
 Warriner, and if you are interested in the chances of 
 any aspirant for the widow's hand, contrive to let 
 her know of the pretty scene we have just enjoyed. 
 Hist ! Here is a hackney-coach drawing up opposite, 
 and egad ! Master Laurie steps out of it. I would n't 
 have missed this for a kingdom. Prodigious fun, 
 is n't it ? " 
 
 While Arnold Warriner's sluggish passion for Lu-
 
 30 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 cilia was thus fired to instant activity, and the two 
 observers drew back into an alleyway whence they 
 could still further pursue their investigations, Lau 
 rence Hope rushed into the little shop. 
 
 " La, captain, you startled me ! " cried Mrs. Pips, 
 who had returned behind her counter to vend lollypops 
 to a deliberating urchin. " Go in, sir ; you '11 find all 
 quiet again, and the young person none the worse for 
 her faint turn. 'T is but a step to Queen Street, sir, 
 and I think she might walk ; but you know best gen 
 tlefolks know best. Miss Watson ought to be grateful 
 all her life for such kindness and condescension on 
 your part. A tidy, industrious girl, captain, as I 'm 
 sure your mother has found out ; and comes o' de 
 cent, God-fearin' people. Before Job Watson took 
 up carpentering and bought his little place, he was 
 hired to help in a tool-shop near ours. And though 
 I 'm a Churchwoman and they Presbyterians, we 'd 
 never a word pass between us but what was befittin' 
 good neighbors. They do say, captain, that Eve is 
 gettin' finer prices than ever from the gentry for her 
 lacework and those grand darns she puts into silken 
 hose. Vastly kind o' Madam Hope to allow miss to 
 make a nest-egg for herself. Should n't wonder, 
 now, if she 's given her money all to Job to lay by 
 for her ! Canny folks, those Scotch-Irish, as poor 
 Pips used to say. Can't think what she 'd do with 
 her earnings, if they 're not in bank. Plain as a 
 pikestaff in her dress, and that straw hat bleached 
 three times." 
 
 " Eve, dear," said the young man, when, finally es 
 caping the beldam's eloquence, he went into the room
 
 IN OLD NEW YOKE 31 
 
 behind the shop, " I have brought a coach, as you de 
 sired, and purpose to drive out with you to your 
 father's, telling him frankly the circumstances of our 
 case, and that I am ready to keep my pledge to you. 
 Don't say me nay. I should feel like a poor stick if 
 I let you go there alone, at this hour, after having 
 been turned out of my mother's house under such 
 conditions. I have been thinking it over since I left 
 you, and there seems but one way for an honorable 
 man to act." 
 
 " I, too, have been thinking it over, Laurie," replied 
 the girl, resolutely ; " and if I was weak enough to 
 give way and cause you such trouble awhile ago, I 
 am strong now. I shall never consent to afflict your 
 poor mother by asking her to countenance our mar 
 riage. Already I have forgiven the hard words her 
 passion wrung from her. I should return, God 
 knows, if she would have me, and do for her as be 
 fore. But that can never be now. I have a home 
 waiting for me, and will go to it. Humble as it is, 
 I can find happiness, or at least content, in doing my 
 duty. By and by my father will see that I am not, 
 as he thinks, spoiled for him by living with people 
 above my sphere. I will make myself needful to 
 him. You will find some one more fit for you some 
 one who would never be a reproach, a thing to apolo 
 gize for, a person to be explained before she could 
 be accepted." 
 
 " Is this you, Eve ? I '11 swear I hardly know you ! " 
 exclaimed the young man, bewildered at her passion 
 ate earnestness. 
 . " Nobody knows me, I think," said Eve, smiling
 
 32 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 mournfully ; " and least of all my own father. The 
 truth is that all this reading to your father about the 
 doctrines of the new government had set me to ponder 
 ing and studying out the question of social equality, 
 till I suppose I thought the real me good enough to ac 
 cept your love and try to make your happiness. But I 
 was self-deceived. Your mother has shown me that, 
 whatever their theories, the time is not ripe for Ameri 
 can aristocrats to put that into practice. And, Laurie, 
 there is something else something that for days past 
 I 've tried to nerve myself to say to you. I 've been 
 thinking that your fancy for me has cooled ; that you 
 acted on impulse when you asked me to be your wife. 
 If this is true, how much better that we should part 
 now than let our bond go on till it becomes a chain 
 on you ! " 
 
 " Poor little Eve ! " sighed the young man, compas 
 sionately. 
 
 There was nothing of the coxcomb in his sym 
 pathy. Eve, recognizing this, did not shrink from it. 
 The mortal pang was that truthful Laurence could 
 not bring himself to contradict her statement that his 
 love for her was diminished. 
 
 " Say no more about it now, little girl," he said 
 gently. " You have suffered too much, and through 
 no fault of yours, to-day, and have still an ordeal be 
 fore you. Eve, I would give anything to spare you 
 this interview with your father to help you through 
 it, if I could" 
 
 " You can't help me, Laurie. If you were there it 
 would be far, far worse. But although he is violent, 
 my father is a conscientious man, and will in time see
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 33 
 
 that I have done nothing to shame him, even if I am 
 sent away in apparent disgrace from my employers' 
 home." 
 
 " It is your home or will be one day, if you will 
 take it, Eve," he exclaimed hotly. 
 
 " Laurie ! as if I did n't know you to be the most 
 generous, impulsive fellow alive one who would 
 share your last shilling with a friend in distress ! 
 Don't let your pity for me run away with your judg 
 ment. Go back, dear, to your parents. They will be 
 needing some one sorely now at this very hour. Old 
 Chloe can never make them as comfortable as I could. 
 You '11 tell her not to forget your father's drops at 
 nine, won't you and a spoonful of port wine in your 
 mother's gruel before she goes to sleep f Oh, Laurie, 
 it breaks my heart to have to leave them to them 
 selves ! " 
 
 " Then come back with me, Eve, and let me make 
 peace between you and my mother." 
 
 " She would never forgive me that ! " cried Eve, 
 shuddering away from the arm he put around her. 
 "No, no; let me go to my own people, whom I 
 should never have left ! " 
 
 " But I refuse to have you break with me, remem 
 ber," he protested, holding his head erect, with a gleam 
 of obstinate purpose in his eyes, that she, alas ! had 
 seen in other, older eyes like his that day. " My mo 
 ther knows that I will not submit to be coerced. She 
 shall answer to me for her cruelty to you ! " 
 
 " Laurie, Laurie, her heart is bound up in you ! 
 She is an old, broken woman, and you must be mer 
 ciful to her as you are strong."
 
 34: THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 Clinging to his arm and looking pleadingly into 
 his face, she would not part with him until he had 
 given her his promise to deal gently with his mother j 
 that secured, she let him put her into the coach. 
 
 "The driver tells me that 'two of the gentry 'were 
 over yonder whispering and spying on our actions till 
 a minute since," he said, following her within the 
 vehiple. "And, if that be the case, there may be 
 annoyance in store for you from some impertinent 
 fellows who might see you set off unprotected. I in 
 sist upon accompanying you till you are within sight 
 of home ; and then, if you must, you may go the rest 
 of the way alone." 
 
 Eve's protest was in vain. In another moment 
 they were driving at a brisk pace up-town and east 
 ward in the direction of the Boston Road. 
 
 Under a swinging oil-lantern with which a street 
 official had just faintly illuminated the darkness be 
 fore Mrs. Pips's shop door, Warriner and Bellingham 
 saw the couple set off upon their drive. 
 
 " The best luck ! To think that we should have 
 seen it with our own eyes, not heard it at a miserable 
 second hand, after half the tongues in town had prated 
 the tidings to their next-door neighbors," cried Bel 
 lingham, slapping his thigh in an ecstasy. " Laurie 
 Hope, the son and heir of the most confoundedly up 
 pish family in the town, to run off with a little bag 
 gage of a serving- woman and all the aristocratic 
 fair left in the lurch ! Favorite against the field ! 
 Gad! Warriner, I can't rest till I 'm among the 
 people who have n't heard the news ! " 
 
 "Did you speak?" asked Captain Warriner.
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 35 
 
 Now that he had something to reveal that Lucilla 
 could not doubt, he had begun to study ways and 
 means by which to convey the intelligence to her with 
 out letting Hope be aware that he had condescended to 
 play the spy upon his movements. As he knew by 
 experience, Hope was not a man to be trifled with ; 
 and Arnold had no mind to have an " affair of honor " 
 on his hands at this critical moment when courtship, 
 not fighting, was the occupation of his thoughts. As 
 for little Bellingham, Hope would not consider him a 
 f oeman worthy of his steel.
 
 Ill 
 
 ROM the moment when Job Watson with 
 his wife and baby had quitted his birth 
 place in a green hillside village in the 
 north of Ireland to take packet for 
 America, it had been his resolve to own 
 land in the New World. 
 
 To that end all else was subordinated. The foot of 
 a stocking serving to hold shillings, wrenched from 
 his scant wages, gave place in time to a strong box 
 of his own fabrication, wherein guineas were hoarded 
 until transferred to the bank. 
 
 After his wife's death and his daughter's engage 
 ment in the service of Madam Hope left him free 
 from such minor considerations as the care of woman 
 kind, Job toiled until his ambition was attained. He 
 became the proprietor of a small house standing amid 
 several acres of field and orchard on the east side of 
 the island, some three miles out of town. It was just 
 above where the tunnel of the Fourth Avenue Railway 
 now sees passengers speeding in swift trolley-cars 
 underground and out to the Grand Central station 
 and upper Madison Avenue. 
 
 The locality, while isolated, was on high ground, 
 close to one of the main arteries of coach travel into 
 the interior of the State. Job's dwelling, although he
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 37 
 
 would have preferred a different style of architecture, 
 happened to be a trim little crow-gabled cottage of 
 Dutch pattern, standing amid fruit-trees now flushed 
 with apple-blooms. The bowerie surrounding it was 
 under fair cultivation, and in the outbuildings Job 
 had already installed a cow, two pigs, an oldish horse 
 bought cheap, and a miscellany of ducks and geese 
 and chickens. 
 
 Beneath a pear-tree in the yard he had placed a 
 couple of beehives in deference to his one sentimental 
 recollection of early youth in the old country that of 
 his weeping mother going out to whisper to, the bees 
 that his little brother had passed out of life. A few 
 lilac-bushes and straggling syringas stood between 
 the door-stone and the gate leading in from a rough 
 road that straggled up from the public highway. 
 Job's east windows, whether shining in the morning 
 sun, jet black in the shadows of afternoon, or vaguely 
 red at night from the economical glow within, were a 
 sort of pharos to the neighbors scattered on the lower 
 grounds to the southward, or nearer the East River. 
 
 Few of those neighbors felt tempted to go up the 
 hill on fellowship intent. Job's temper was not hos 
 pitable, even when they carried him a nice job of car 
 pentry, or when some fine piece of furniture belong 
 ing to the gentry, for which an ordinary craftsman 
 would not suffice, was sent on from the shop whither 
 it had been taken for repair. For Job would no longer 
 work with journeymen, and kept his tools sharp more 
 from habit than conscience. 
 
 The feet that oftenest came up the hilly road were 
 those of Luke Adamson, a young man after Job's own 
 
 428099
 
 38 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 pattern in the matter of thrift and industry. He was 
 a tall, brown, heavy-featured fellow of thirty, slow of 
 speech, slow of action, but possessed of a dogged de 
 termination to carry to an end things begun. Having 
 already laid up a respectable sum of money in his 
 trade as joiner, and bought for himself a little house, 
 some of Job's old customers had learned to resort to 
 him, and more were coming. In his begrudging way, 
 Job certainly favored Adamson more than any other 
 of his acquaintances. 
 
 People thought this was on account of Luke's hav 
 ing come out of the same county with the Watsons, 
 although at a later date. Common speculation pointed 
 to a marriage between the stalwart youngster and 
 Job's fine-lady daughter, since they had been seen 
 together walking after church in the wake of Eve's 
 somber sire. With the "good will and fixtures" 
 of his father-in-law's trade, and Luke's capacity for 
 work, to say nothing of Eve's needlework and patron 
 age among the great families of the town, Adamson's 
 chances were considered to be pretty well assured. 
 
 But nobody envied Luke his prospects. To live in 
 that relation with crabbed Master Watson was a pill 
 few young men were prepared to swallow. And most 
 of them considered it a risky business to take up with 
 a wife trained among the gentlefolk. On the rare 
 occasions when the girl relapsed into association with 
 her own class, she made them feel their deficiencies 
 and fidget for an easier-going comrade. 
 
 Public opinion condemned Job's cupidity for send 
 ing his girl away from him to earn her bread, instead 
 of keeping her to make tidy his own hearthstone.
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 39 
 
 Eligible females who had previously aspired in vain 
 to perform that function were wont to say that Mr. 
 Watson was a hard man in more ways than one, and 
 they pitied the poor thing, be she the wife or daugh 
 ter, that would have to keep house for him. Young 
 and old combined to decide that Luke Adamson would 
 rue the day when he tried to get a piece of porcelain 
 to stand upon his shelf, instead of the work-a-day delft 
 everywhere to be had for the asking. 
 
 Adamson, apparently, did not covet delft. He de 
 fied his critics in the exasperating way of men, who in 
 all ages have followed their own perverted ideas about 
 selecting wives. From the beginning of their acquain 
 tance he had loved Eve with the full strength of his 
 tenacious heart. For her sake he had submitted to 
 the yoke of Job, until he had won that far-seeing 
 parent to look upon him as a son and the literal prop 
 of his old age. When Eve stood beside her father in 
 his pew at church looking, the people said, like a 
 governor's, or at least a general's, lady Luke gazed 
 at her from a distance, yearning for the day when he 
 should have amassed the sum of money Job required 
 to see laid down before he would give consent to their 
 marriage. 
 
 After service Adamson used to join the Watsons 
 and walk with them to the door of the Hope mansion, 
 where they parted in the street. Job did not ask his 
 daughter to go home with him oftener than once a 
 month, since it was too far for her to walk both ways, 
 and he liked his horse and cart to be idle on the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 Luke's best outlet for a lover's feelings was to be-
 
 40 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 stow upon his fair one bunches of wild blossoms from 
 the woods on the upper part of the island, or to leave 
 at the Hopes' back door strings of fish of his taking 
 and game of Ids shooting. He was surprised at the 
 animation of her thanks for these latter favors. How 
 could he imagine that while the flowers went to deck 
 Mrs. Hope's room, the edibles, after passing through 
 old Chloe's hands, were transferred on silver dishes 
 and platters of costly china to furnish forth the mea 
 ger table of Eve's employers. 
 
 And here comes in Eve's secret, hoarded jealously 
 in her faithful breast a secret she would have died 
 rather than reveal to Laurence Hope. For more than 
 a year past she had been not only receiving no wages 
 from his parents, but in order to supply them with 
 needed delicacies and comforts was surreptitiously en 
 gaged by night and at odd moments in fulfilling com 
 missions in needlework from the dames of high society. 
 
 Strange caprice of heredity that implanted in Job 
 Watson's child this spirit of tenderest self-sacrifice ! 
 Eve's delight when she found herself able to give to 
 these poor gentlefolk dependent on her care, and half 
 unconscious of their decadent fortune, was rapturous. 
 Her position as manager of finances enabling her to 
 act without fear of interference, her chief dread had 
 been that in some way Laurence might find out a fact 
 so humiliating to his pride. But Laurence had never 
 been taken into his parents' confidence about their 
 affairs, and Eve exerted all her powers to keep him 
 ignorant. Anything rather than cut down the slender 
 income with which the captain supported the family 
 honors before the world !
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 41 
 
 Another source of anxiety was the forced diminu 
 tion of the sum her father had always exacted from 
 her earnings to lay aside, as he said, until her marriage- 
 day. To provide this and fulfil the other claims upon 
 her slender purse taxed her to the utmost. Job, in 
 dignant at her supposed decrease of pay, had seriously 
 threatened to take her away from service altogether, 
 and to marry her to Adamson. Only last Sunday he 
 had told her that he would soon demand her release 
 from the Hopes. 
 
 And Eve, torn by conflicting emotions, now felt 
 herself doubly a guilty creature, in that not only had 
 she held back from her father a " part of her price, 77 
 but concealed from him, as from Hope's parents, her 
 far greater offense in exchanging vows of affection 
 with Laurence ! It was under this double burden 
 that she bent. 
 
 Oppressed by these reflections, and filled with 
 poignant grief that the hour had come for parting 
 with her lover, with whom she had hardly exchanged 
 a word during their drive, Eve quitted the coach at 
 the foot of the hill upon which stood her father's 
 cottage. By the light of a horn lantern lent her 
 by the friendly coachman, and carrying her bag in 
 the other hand, she began picking her way up the 
 uneven surface of a short cut to the top of the 
 ascent. 
 
 In vain had Laurence urged her again to let him 
 go with her and at least explain to Job that her part 
 ing with his famity involved nothing to her discredit. 
 Eve's common sense convinced him that he was the 
 last advocate to plead her cause with success. But
 
 42 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 his parting words were : " Remember, I consider my 
 self bound." 
 
 He pressed her hand, and watched the glimmer of 
 her lantern recede farther and farther up the path, 
 until it reached the crest of the hill, where it hovered 
 for a moment, uncertainly, before the gleam of Job's 
 taper shooting out through the uncurtained pane to 
 meet it. Then it went out altogether, and Laurence, 
 with a heavy sigh, gave the order to drive back to town. 
 
 When he reached town, paid and dismissed the 
 driver, and walked home, gloom filled his heart. Let 
 ting himself into the silent old house, he mounted 
 the wide, winding stairs, which from above sur 
 rounded a well of darkness that seemed to be peopled 
 with phantoms of the past. On the upper landing, he 
 tapped at the door of a chamber converted, for the 
 use of the invalids, into an up-stairs parlor. 
 
 No answer. Pushing the door open, he stepped 
 into the dimly lighted room. The noise of his entrance 
 roused from napping the old man sitting amid the 
 pillows of his easy-chair, before a handful of wood 
 embers in a grate. 
 
 " You 're back at last, Eve ? " asked a querulous 
 voice. " Deuce take it if I know what has bewitched 
 this house to-day. Old Chloe seems to have gone out 
 of her wits. She came in here just now and babbled 
 something about your being out, and the supper late, 
 and my wife ailing. Now you are here, all 's right, 
 lassie. No wine whey or slops for me, remember. Get 
 me something savory " 
 
 "It is I, father; not Eve " began Laurence, but 
 was interrupted peevishly :
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 43 
 
 " And where 's Eve, pray ? The only person in the 
 house that 's got a head on her shoulders ! What does 
 everybody mean by leaving me here alone ? Not that 
 I 'm not glad to see you, Laurie, my boy, but it 's a 
 brisk little woman who can trot about, and make 
 things comfortable, that a man needs most when he 
 comes to be where I am. Goin' to the ball, eh ? Dropped 
 in to show me your fine new uniform, have you ? Be 
 gad, you 're a good-looking fellow, sir, if I do say it. 
 A figure like mine when I was your age. Make my 
 respects to his Excellency, the President, and say I 
 would wait on him to-night but Eve, Eve, I say ! 
 is my supper never comin' ? " 
 
 While Laurence in his awkward way attempted t6 
 do for his father the things he had seen Eve accom 
 plish with so light a touch, old Chloe, carrying a tray, 
 hurried into the room. 
 
 " Thank the Lawd, you 're here, Marse Laurie," she 
 exclaimed, then added in a tone meant for his ear 
 alone : " We ain't dared let old master know yet." 
 
 " My mother she is ill ? " he said in the same under 
 tone, struck with foreboding by her somber air. 
 
 " Oh, sir, you have n't heard ? And we have been 
 sending everywhere to find you. Step outside in the 
 entry, sir, till I give old master his food, and I '11 tell 
 you all." 
 
 "I will go to her room at once," he said impa 
 tiently. 
 
 " No, sir ; please not now, Marse Laurie. Some one 's 
 in there you would n't like to meet. Oh, honey, for 
 Gawd's sake, don't let poor old master know till he 's 
 had his supper and night's rest."
 
 44 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUKY 
 
 Despite her whispered pleadings, Laurence went 
 out and strode across the hall to his mother's door. It 
 was locked, but in answer to his knock a strange, grim 
 woman came out to meet him. 
 
 " She's quite ready now, captain, and looking beau 
 tiful," said the functionary, pursing her lips with pro 
 fessional pride. " Twenty years younger, anybody 'd 
 say, and a treat to see her smile." 
 
 " Marse Laurie, dear, I wanted to spare you this," 
 exclaimed the old slave-woman, hobbling in pursuit 
 of him. 
 
 " When did it occur ? " he asked in a voice that did 
 not seem his own. 
 
 " We don't know exactly, honey. My poor lady had 
 hot words with Miss Eve, and ordered her out of the 
 house. After Miss Eve left, my mistress came in here 
 and told me to keep away. 'Bout an hour later, when 
 old master told me to call her for a game of cribbage, 
 I found her lying half across the bed. She must have 
 thrown herself down to cry. She could n't ha' lived 
 without Miss Eve, poor dear. I could ha' told her that. 
 We sent for the doctors, but 't was some time before 
 we got 'em here. 'T was the heart, they said. There 
 war n't anything earthly could ha' saved her. But 
 don't you think we did n't try to find you, honey for 
 we did." 
 
 Laurence, shaking the affectionate old creature off, 
 went inside and closed the door.
 
 IV 
 
 RS. WARRINER'S maid and household 
 had never found their mistress more 
 hard to please than on the day suc 
 ceeding her kettledrum. Lucilla had 
 slept ill, awakened late, gone out for 
 an early airing in her sedan-chair, had refused to see 
 inquiring friends, and been pettish with her mama. 
 
 When, at three o'clock, dinner was announced, the 
 lady was in her Joseph with her hair down about her 
 ears, reading a book of poems, and declining all food 
 save a cup of bohea and two little tarts of the variety 
 known as maids of honor, in the construction of 
 which Mrs. Warriner's cook was not excelled. This 
 light refection was served in her own room, and 
 immediately afterward Madam Chester announced 
 (through the keyhole, for the tiff between the two 
 ladies was still on) that, since her daughter preferred 
 to keep herself so close, she presumed there was no 
 objection to her taking the chariot and pair for the 
 remainder of the day. 
 
 "None whatever," said Lucilla, opening the door 
 far enough to exhibit the tip of her little nose.. " I 
 had not intended going out, and I hope you will enjoy 
 your drive." 
 
 " And find my child in a better temper when I come 
 
 45
 
 48 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 back from it!" supplemented the dowager, briskly. 
 " I '11 vow, Lucilla, you are growing more like your 
 poor father every day. Surely it was not from me 
 that you got this habit of seeking your own conve 
 nience, and not allowing any one around you to say 
 their soul 's their own " 
 
 "Will you not tell me this, too, when you come 
 back, mama?" asked Lucilla, angelically meek, but 
 still holding the door on the chink, and determined 
 not to yield it, at the risk of an hour-long lecture. 
 
 " Lucilla, you are sadly wanting in the respect due 
 a parent. But if you will just let me tell you about 
 that chit of a laundry-maid of yours, whom I caught 
 flirting with the footman " 
 
 " When you come back, mama," persisted the lady 
 of the house. 
 
 Madam Chester flounced off in a pet, which, how 
 ever, disappeared as by magic when she found herself 
 installed upon the brocaded cushions of the chariot, 
 with a coachman in front and two footmen at her 
 back. What would the Albany people who had 
 known her in her pinched days say, could they see 
 her now? And, as luck had it, no sooner did the 
 shining carriage with its champing bays and stately 
 servitors turn into the Bowery Road, and while 
 madam was in the act of bowing and smiling to 
 another private equipage as fine, than she espied 
 a lady from her native city, gazing at her from 
 the shabby depths of a hackney-coach, wherein the 
 stranger had been well content to view the fashion 
 able drive. 
 
 Then who so radiant, so condescending, as the
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 47 
 
 widow Warriner's mama? Madam Chester, set 
 tling her hood and tippet, called to the coachman to 
 go slow, following up her first bow to her old ac 
 quaintance by a series of nods whenever the hackney- 
 coach, taking heart of grace, ventured to move up 
 and be abreast the grander vehicle. The only draw 
 back to the dowager's now complete satisfaction was 
 the fact that she could not fully distinguish the ex 
 pression of the Albany dame's countenance without 
 putting on the huge silver-rimmed distance-spectacles 
 that had been imported for her from London. In 
 those days a self-respecting woman who was getting 
 along in life preferred to be blind in public, rather than 
 disfigure her appearance by such a pair of frights ! 
 
 But, all told, one lady from Albany impressed by 
 the splendor of another, resident in New York, could 
 not entirely dissipate the cares attendant upon 
 Madam Chester's position as owner and chaperon of 
 the chief toast and richest heiress of the time. She 
 could not help associating her daughter's whimsical 
 humor of to-day with some complication arising from 
 one of the troublesome sex. And the mere hint of 
 such a thing gave her an agitating pang. 
 
 With all the strength of her dominating nature 
 the mother had tried to disincline her child to a 
 second venture in matrimony. In this she was at 
 least consistent, since 't was well known in Albany 
 circles how Madam Chester had herself refused the 
 Rev. Dr. Kershaw, a suitor of her girlhood's days, 
 who had wooed her twice within the year after Mr. 
 Chester's demise; not to speak of others, less im 
 passioned than the divine.
 
 48 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 No ! Madam Chester was, and had long been, out 
 of conceit of the married state for women ! Let all 
 who wished a yoke put their heads into it. The con 
 stant presence in the house of an imperative, unrea 
 sonable, illogical, irritable masculine, sanctioned by 
 Providence to cross, thwart, contradict, and peck at 
 the so-called partner of his privileges, had been ex 
 perienced once by Lucilla and herself. That should 
 suffice. To her mind, Lucilla's present position, 
 brilliant, free as air, surrounded, feted, flattered, and 
 on the very top of the social wave, was not to be 
 exchanged for any other so far in sight. 
 
 The risk was that her child would let herself be 
 cajoled or gossiped into a change of state. Madam 
 Chester had no patience with that universal hue 
 and cry about whom a widow will take next, directly 
 her black is lightened. In order to keep Lucilla's 
 thoughts composed on this subject, had not she made 
 a point of resurrecting the late Mr. Warriner keep 
 ing him and his edicts continually before the house 
 hold and its mistress? Really, one would think it 
 was she, not Lucilla, who systematically mourned the 
 departed ! Something in Lucilla's manner yesterday, 
 during and after the kettledrum, had excited her 
 alarm. Of all the men present there were but two 
 for whom those blushes, that girlish tremor, ill con 
 cealed from her mother, could have been assumed. 
 Which of these two was it ? 
 
 Not Arnold Warriner, Madam Chester hoped and 
 prayed. The mere fact that he was to inherit the 
 estate in the event of Lucilla's death made the mother 
 inimical to him. She fancied him treacherous when-
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 49 
 
 ever he asked how Lucilla did. And if he now 
 wanted to marry her child, was it not the same as 
 acknowledging that Lucilla's good health was his 
 despair? Of course he coveted the money and the 
 rule of the Manor and to take the control of things 
 out of Lucilla's (and Madam Chester's) hands. Trust 
 that kind of a smooth, specious fellow for plotting 
 and planning for his own advancement ! 
 
 Besides, last, not least, had not Warriner always 
 coolly ignored the dowager, and once trodden upon 
 her spaniel's toe ? 
 
 There was no assurance that Lucilla really favored 
 him. She was so very outspoken in his praise, and 
 let him attend her everywhere. Was there not more 
 danger in the direction of Captain Laurence Hope ? 
 
 Of all the offensive class of eligible young men, 
 Madam Chester had least fault to find with Hope. 
 
 Once, long ago, there had been a ball, when Mr. 
 Christopher Hope, Laurence's father, had declared 
 her to be the most bewitching minikin in the room. 
 " Bewitching minikin " ! She had worn her pink 
 tabbinet. And afterward, at the supper, he had 
 pledged her in a glass of Constantia wine. People 
 began to say but it ended there ! 
 
 Next year he had married Laurence's mother, and 
 she had remained single for three years longer. She 
 always maintained Mr. Christopher Hope to be the 
 finest beau of his day. Now he was old and poor 
 and a cripple in his chair, and his wife had gone all 
 to pieces in her looks. Much better that things had 
 turned out as they did; but still, Madam Chester 
 would always remember " bewitching minikin."
 
 50 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 Laurence Hope was certainly handsome as a picture, 
 and better than the rest of her child's hangers-on. If 
 it were he for whom Lucilla had blushed and palpi 
 tated, Madam Chester might even partially condone 
 the folly; but it would never do to encourage him 
 too far. The Hopes were as poor as church-mice, a 
 family of "has-beens " on the verge of ruin. It would 
 be really nothing of a match should Lucilla but 
 of course Lucilla would n't. Madam Chester settled 
 that. 
 
 Thus scheming, speculating, dreaming old dreams, 
 and casting horoscopes for the confusion of young 
 men, the dowager rolled on her way through the 
 pleasant rural countryside along what is now Third 
 Avenue, crossing Murray Hill on the line of Lexing 
 ton Avenue, and bearing westward to McGowan's 
 Pass, now the upper end of Central Park. 
 
 Here, on such a day of jocund spring, met and 
 crossed and overtook each other the equipages of 
 men and women of first distinction in the temporary 
 seat of government. 
 
 The President, out behind six horses, acknowledged 
 all salutations with a courtly bow. The Vice-Presi 
 dent and Mrs. Adams had driven over from their seat 
 at Richmond Hill, near Lispenard's Meadows, where 
 Varick and Charlton streets now intersect. 
 
 There were the Secretary of War and jolly, portly 
 Mrs. Knox, whose brusque speeches and original do 
 ings were quoted and gossiped about everywhere ; 
 Sir William Temple beside his lady, nee Bowdoin of 
 Boston, one of the chief dinner-givers of the town; 
 the Secretary and Mrs. Jay, whose still existing
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 51 
 
 supper-list records the fine flower of that society; 
 Colonel Alexander Hamilton with his spouse, who 
 joined to the graces all the candor and simplicity of 
 the American wife, said M. Brissot de Warville ; Mrs. 
 Peter van Brugh Livingston, the Livingstons of Cler- 
 mont and Queen Street, the New Jersey Livingstons, 
 M. and Mme. de la Forest, the Clintons, Duanes, 
 Izards, Bayards, Keans, Van Zandts, Van Rensselaers, 
 Gerrys, Langdons, Edgars, McCombs, Kings, Clark- 
 sons, Varicks, Bishop Provost and wife, Whites, 
 Beekmans, Ludlows, Bards, Rutherfurds, Van Cort- 
 landts, Montgomerys, Lynches, Fishes a goodly 
 company, a representative or two of each of which 
 families always helped to swell society's tide. 
 
 Among the titled ladies of the republican court, 
 besides Lady Temple, were the widowed Lady Ster 
 ling, her daughter, Lady Mary Watts, and the more 
 famous and fascinating Lady Kitty Duer. 
 
 Lady Kitty had been ten years married to Colonel 
 William Duer, but her charm and vogue were not in 
 the least exhausted, in the estimation of her towns 
 people. Only the year before she had played minis 
 tering angel to Baron Steuben, when that hero and 
 Secretary Jay were both wounded by stones thrown 
 in the people's riot against the New York medicos. 
 Whenever Lady Kitty went abroad all eyes followed 
 her with pride. 
 
 Lady Christina Griffen took the air beside her digni 
 fied husband, the president of the old Congress. The 
 Spanish minister, D'Yrujo, was away, but the Marquise 
 de Moustier, who wore ear-rings and red-heeled shoes, 
 sat with Mme. de Brehan, opposite that lady's black
 
 52 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUKY 
 
 page, who nursed her monkey on his knees. The Dutch 
 envoy, M. Berckel, brought his pretty daughter, one 
 of the season's belles. Young Frank Berckel was 
 seen, perched upon the box of a mail-phaeton so high 
 as to have been caricatured in public print. There 
 was extant a representation of the passage beneath 
 it of a low pony-trap belonging to the good physician, 
 Dr. John Charlton, long familiar to the public eye in 
 his red coat and cocked hat, accompanied by his aged 
 negro groom. 
 
 Among the other notabilities whose appearance 
 made memorable a May drive in 1789 were Chan 
 cellor Livingston, Burr, Steuben, Brissot de Warville, 
 Gardoqui, Richard Henry Lee, Arthur Lee, General 
 Henry Lee, Schuyler, Mason, Fisher Ames, Butler, 
 Armstrong, De Peyster, Walton, Cadwalader, Richard 
 Harison, AJsop, Rutledge, Edmund Randolph- 
 many a giant in debate and master of statecraft who 
 helped to make our nation what it is. Match me this 
 gathering in Central Park or Riverside Drive to-day ! 
 
 On and on, serene in her borrowed plumage, passed 
 Madam Chester. So exhilarated was she by good 
 company, fine clothes, and dazzling sunshine, it never 
 occurred to her to notice that from the cortege of 
 golden youth deployed around her were missing both 
 Arnold Warriner and Laurence Hope. 
 
 No sooner had Lucilla's horses and their burden 
 trotted away from her front door than that languid 
 lady sprang from her easy-chair, ran to the windows, 
 pulled back the chintz curtains, and rang for her 
 maids. 
 
 Her hair dressed over a beautiful crape cushion,
 
 IN OLD NEW YOKK 53 
 
 quick as she could set her slow-moving ebon damsels 
 into action, open flew drawers and wardrobes, till the 
 room was strewn with gowns and falbalas, succes 
 sively presented for approbation to their owner. 
 
 In vain did Saba and Myrtilla hold out the choicest 
 treasures of her wearing-apparel. Petticoat and 
 paduasoy, tuckers, frills, and neckerchiefs, failed to 
 attract. She would not even smile upon her new 
 lustring the color of a pigeon's neck, shot with rose 
 and lavender and blue, like gleams of dawn in an 
 early-morning sky the one mama had said Mr. 
 Warriner would not approve of till after the 6th of 
 June, when the two calendar years of her mourning 
 would have expired. But Lucilla did not discard 
 this because it was too gay. The sad fact was, she 
 wanted something gayer. 
 
 " Look, Myrtilla, on the top shelf in the north cup 
 board," said the widow, finally, endeavoring to subdue 
 the faint tremble of exultation in her voice. "You 
 will find there a pale-blue sarsenet. 'T is of the fashion 
 of two years back, and I dare say I shall look a bar 
 barous fright in it. But I Ve a mind to try whether " 
 here she paused and invented a daring flight " whe 
 ther I Ve grown stout in growing old." 
 
 Cunning Lucilla ! Well she knew that the girlish 
 outlines of her rounded form had but taken on more 
 stately beauty since her emancipation. 
 
 " Mistis looks lovely in blue," said Myrtilla, pres 
 ently. " If mistis was to put on her new neckerchief 
 of satin-striped gauze ! Run, Saba ! what you mean 
 by staring, child ? Run fetch mistis' box of necker 
 chiefs. There, now, 1 7 clare to gracious, it 's too pretty
 
 64 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUKY 
 
 for anything ! Would n't think mistis was over eigh 
 teen, to look at her. What flowers for the belt, mistis f 
 That bunch o' white star-flowers that came yesterday 
 with a gentleman's card tied onto it? Mistis took 
 the card and put it in her lacquer cabinet. The 
 flowers are fresh, mistis took such good care of 'em." 
 
 "It is not your business to know what I do with 
 things, Myrtilla," flashed out the lady, sharply. " But 
 you may bring me the nosegay of which you speak. 
 I believe I left it on the stand in my dressing-room 
 by the open window." 
 
 "Found one of them posies under her pillow when 
 I made her bed," whispered Myrtilla to Saba, as she 
 passed that handmaiden by. " Reckon mistis thinks 
 a heap more of 'em than she 's willing to let on." 
 
 With all their warm, color-loving natures, the black 
 damsels had enjoyed the fairy-tale of their lady's 
 translation into gay young life. The whole house 
 hold flourished and waxed fat in these days of gener 
 ous living, abundant company, and interchange with 
 the social world. But the two lady's-maids had about 
 made up their minds that it was time " mistis " was let 
 ting the sentimental element take possession of her 
 life. Eagerly they now watched for straws to show 
 which way the wind blew ! 
 
 And at last Lucilla stands before her toilet-table, 
 surveying her image in a round mirror surmounted 
 by a gilded swan. From the darkling depths smiles 
 back at her a vision of perfected womanhood ! The 
 blue sarsenet, whatever its deficiencies in mode, was 
 delightfully becoming. From the soft folds of Italian 
 gauze crossed over her bust rose a throat white as
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 55 
 
 cream, and above, a rosy, happy face. In her belt, 
 close to the beatings of her heart, nestled a bunch of 
 white narcissus. But something was yet lacking. 
 
 " Quick, Myrtilla ! My patch-boxthough I shall 
 wear only one to-day." 
 
 The black atom, moistened upon the tip of her 
 tongue, was for some time poised on her finger at a 
 little distance from her face. Whether to place it on 
 chin or cheek, that was the question. In the end, she 
 remembered what the " Book of the Toy let " said : 
 " A beauty-spot upon the temple giveth a sedate air " ; 
 and, with a sigh, clapped the tiny thing above her 
 left eyebrow. 
 
 " Now, Myrtilla, since I am tired of trying on, you 
 may go, and I will sit down as I am and do a sprig 
 of my embroidery. By and by I will call you to 
 change me to my silver- gray." 
 
 " Mistis must n't change. Mistis must keep like she 
 is now, and let all the beaus that call see her ! " pleaded 
 Myrtilla, genuinely eager. 
 
 " No, no, no. Of course not. How can you think 
 of such a thing? I shall wear no colors till after " 
 The Gth of June occurred to her, and she hastened 
 to put the dismal thought away. Certainly there 
 would be no harm in remaining dressed as she was 
 till nearly five o'clock. He would not be likely to 
 step through the garden gate till five. 
 
 She sat on alone, worked two sprigs, knocked over 
 a china shepherdess, cut the cards to see whether 
 he would come or not, then took up a copy of 
 Pope's "Essay on Man," and read, to compose her 
 mind.
 
 66 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 Inevitable result ! 
 
 Lucilla was awakened by the clock on the landing 
 striking five vigorous strokes. Alarmed, she sprang 
 to her feet. The house was quiet. Below-stairs her 
 indulged servants were amusing themselves in their 
 own way. Lucilla, never stopping to think what 
 gown she had on, ran down the broad steps with their 
 railing of carved mahogany, across the Turkey rugs 
 spread on the polished boards of the lower hall, past 
 some tapestries of Gobelins that she thought ugly 
 things, into the drawing-room, where the women had 
 just been putting fresh flowers and boughs of blos 
 soming shrubs into every vase, making a carnival of 
 spring. 
 
 No one there ! Breathing easier, she went out into 
 the garden in the rear. 
 
 That, too, was empty. Lucilla, trying to walk as 
 befitted the mistress of the mansion, stepped down a 
 gravel path, on either side of which, under a verdant 
 canopy of leaves, box hedges shut off borders filled 
 with bushes in recent leaf and bud, and the flamboy 
 ant flowers of the Northern spring. 
 
 Since it was the family's habit to retire to their 
 seat on the Hudson with the first warm days of June, 
 the gardener's orders were to decorate these beds and 
 parterres with whatever made April and May most 
 beautiful. Thus had he delayed the bloom of tulips 
 and jonquils, and hastened that of lilies-of-the-valley 
 and bleeding-hearts. The result was as if the earth 
 had broken up in flowers. And beyond the trees, 
 at the lower end, flowed the silver current of the 
 broad river; beyond that again rose the far green
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 67 
 
 heights in New Jersey, more beautiful only in their 
 many-hued garments of October. 
 
 In pleasant proximity to the water stood a kiosk 
 of latticework, covered with thick foliage, in which 
 a bench and table offered repose to the passer 
 by. Here Lucilla dropped into a seat, her fears and 
 coquetries merged suddenly and irresistibly into the 
 thrilling realization of her first passion. She could 
 struggle against it no longer. She did love him, de 
 votedly, tenderly. For his sake she would as lief 
 abandon all her state and riches to follow him like a 
 beggar-maid throughout the world. 
 
 Since she might not put away these riches, what 
 joy, what glory, to lavish them on him ! She had 
 heard of the failing fortunes of his family, of the ne 
 cessity upon him to deny himself many things enjoyed 
 by other men of his rank and place ; and her chief fear 
 was lest these circumstances might continue to keep 
 him at a distance. During a restless night she had 
 convinced herself that they alone were accountable for 
 his brusque, almost rude manner at their parting the 
 day before. 
 
 The revealer of sweet secrets called intuition had 
 assured her that Laurence's heart was really hers. 
 It could be, then, only his poverty that kept him from 
 declaring himself. And to Lucilla that seemed such 
 a little, little thing. What were her youth, her 
 charms, her fervor, if she could not conquer that ? 
 
 A man's step upon the gravel. 
 
 Lucilla clasped her hands in a supreme effort to 
 hold herself in restraint. With her breath shortened 
 by the quick pulsing of her heart, against which his
 
 68 THE CIRCLE OP A CENTURY 
 
 flowers rested, her blushes rising, her eyes deeper 
 with feeling than any one had ever before seen them, 
 she turned to meet her lover, and beheld, instead 
 Arnold Warriner ! 
 
 Cruel disappointment ! Her voice sounded thin as 
 she cried out to him : 
 
 "You here? I gave no orders. I wanted to be 
 alone." 
 
 " I felt sure of it, sweet cousin," he said placatingly ; 
 " and, believe me, I should never have followed up the 
 hint Pompey gave about his mistress being out of 
 doors had I not thought you would be inclined for a 
 little chat with me." 
 
 " Chat? I am tired of chat ! Tired of gossips and 
 prating tongues, and of my house being a thorough 
 fare for idle people ! " she exclaimed, with scant 
 civility. 
 
 Arnold bore it well. With a slight shrug, he said : 
 
 " I had thought my late cousin's home was open to 
 his nearest kinsman ; but it seems I was overtrustful 
 of Mrs. Warriner's hospitality ; and, if it so pleases 
 her, I shall go." 
 
 " No, no, Arnold ; stay till I have asked your par 
 don for my pettishness. I slept little last night, and 
 have had much to worry me. I sent mama off in the 
 chariot in order to have a long afternoon alone. If you 
 must go now, come back and sup with us later, and 
 give me my revenge at piquet," she concluded, with a 
 little too much cordiality. 
 
 Warriner fixed his eyes upon her as if to read her 
 soul. 
 
 "You want to be rid of me, Lucilla? Me, who 
 have"
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 59 
 
 " Oh, please don't !" she interrupted, detecting with 
 dismay a sentimental cadence in his tones. " Be con 
 tent that you have made me feel ashamed of my bad 
 manners. I suppose the country mouse can't stand 
 living with the town mice. At any rate, I am out of 
 tune with people." 
 
 Although she seemed desirous to make amends, 
 Arnold saw the young woman was unhinged, nervous, 
 impatient of interruption. For the first time, he 
 owned to himself that this might mean preoccupation 
 with thoughts of another man, and a wave of jealous 
 resentment swept over him. Could it be that Bel- 
 lingham's babble of the night before had foundation 
 in reality? That while he, Arnold, had been daw 
 dling, deliberating in the primrose path, Hope had 
 marched boldly up to the citadel and taken it by 
 storm ? 
 
 Yet never, to Arnold's knowledge, had the two met 
 in private. Hope's opportunities were those of every 
 other caller in the discreet Lucilla's drawing-room. 
 When they had been seen in company together, Hope 
 had, rather than otherwise, kept his distance from the 
 widow. The thing was incredible. Arnold Warriner 
 outwitted, outstripped, made to feel himself a boy in 
 the art of which he was passed grand master the 
 winning of feminine hearts ? 
 
 " Rumor has it that you are in tune melodiously 
 in tune with at least one person of your acquain 
 tance," he said, not pausing to choose his words, his 
 eyes flashing, his handsome mouth wreathed with a 
 curl of satire. " But I can hardly believe that the 
 woman who has the honor to support my family's
 
 60 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 name and place could stoop from her eminence to 
 care for a " 
 
 " Take care, cousin," put in Lucilla, now more under 
 control than he. Her light laugh stung him. 
 
 " I tell you it is a scoundrel you are permitting to 
 toy with your fancy," he blurted out, beside himself. 
 " A man doubly false if he has let you think you rule 
 his heart." 
 
 " Whatever he is, for I shall not deny that I know 
 to whom you would allude," she said haughtily, 
 " Captain Hope will soon be here to answer for him 
 self." 
 
 "You are expecting him him?" exclaimed War- 
 riner, opening wide his eyes. " Is it possible you 
 alone are unaware of the incident with which all the 
 town is ringing the death of both of Hope's parents, 
 within a few hours of each other? But everybody 
 does not know, as I do, the fact of his elopement last 
 evening with Eve Watson, his mother's pretty ser 
 ving-girl, which must have precipitated the attack 
 from which the poor lady died." 
 
 " It is false false ! " cried poor Lucilla, starting 
 electrically, and turning deathly pale. "Did you 
 come here to torture me?" 
 
 " Heaven knows I did not ! I came because I knew 
 that your mother had gone abroad alone, and I 
 wanted the opportunity of a private talk with you on 
 my own account. But I cannot let you were there 
 no feeling on my part, my relation to you would not 
 permit me to let you be unwarned about this man. 
 Oh, Lucilla, why did I allow matters to go so far ? " 
 
 "Speak tell me give me proofs!" she cried
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 61 
 
 wildly, and then dropped exhausted on her bench, 
 burying her head in her hands on the table before 
 her. 
 
 Her brain seemed about to burst as she listened to 
 his tale of what Bellingham and he had witnessed 
 the day before in the dusk in front of Mrs. Pips's shop. 
 To follow up the disclosure by giving Hope the bene 
 fit of a doubt did not occur to her. In that moment 
 she was only a loving woman, chilled, tricked, scorned, 
 by the man she idolized. 
 
 In a flash came back to her Hope's emotion at her 
 suggestion of Eve. With this certainty, reason could 
 have no power to guide her. As impetuously as she 
 had loved, she resented the slight he had put upon 
 her. To go to that low-born girl after leaving her 
 after stopping, on the way, to send her the flowers so 
 fondly treasured ! With a movement of disgust she 
 tore the starry blossoms from below her heart and 
 dashed them upon the gravel. Into this tumult of 
 feeling entered no sympathy for the domestic afflic 
 tion that had overtaken her false lover. She could 
 feel only that he had deliberately appropriated her 
 love whilst himself the lover of another woman, and 
 had had the misfortune to be found out. Good 
 heavens ! how could she have thought of this creature ? 
 
 Warriner, although he had a man's natural antipa 
 thy to scenes in which an hysterical woman takes the 
 leading role, held his ground pertinaciously and with 
 considerable tact. He saw that this was no time to 
 press his own claims upon her notice. Rather would 
 he wait until an opportunity might offer to soothe 
 her sorrow and make her feel his virtues in compari-
 
 62 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 son with Hope's iniquity. Therefore, when, after a 
 burst of crying, she lifted her tear-stained face toward 
 him, Warriner was gazing at her gently, forbearingly, 
 as one does at a grieved and disappointed child. Lu- 
 cilla was conscious of a sense of gratitude. Amid 
 her confusion of wounded pride and slain love, it was 
 good to feel that some one wanted to shelter her from 
 evil-doers and lift her up again to her pedestal among 
 women revered and honored. 
 
 " Forgive me, Arnold, that I was so cross with you. 
 You are my* kind brother, and I thank you for your 
 sympathy. Let us speak no more of one unworthy 
 to be mentioned between us." 
 
 " But, cousin," answered the suave captain, " let 
 us give the devil his due. Even if Hope whom I 
 must regard as a monstrous simpleton had prom 
 ised to attend you here, how could he in decency 
 have done so to-day? I have heard that he has re 
 turnedhas been recalled to his home. Perhaps he 
 has already repented of last night's flitting ; but" 
 
 " Oh, don't ! I can't bear you to speak of it so," 
 she interrupted. " If he did repent, trust me, it 
 would not be I who would value so light a love. 
 Cousin," she added drearily, " I need not appeal to 
 your respect for me to keep what you have discov 
 ered, so far as I am concerned, to yourself. It is my 
 part to put Captain Hope and his affairs out of my 
 thoughts forever ! " 
 
 The cruel resolution was too much for her. She 
 faltered and again dropped her face into her hands 
 upon the table. 
 
 Arnold remained speechless, immobile, but full of
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 63 
 
 speculation. He was considering that esoteric con 
 dition of femininity, old as the hills, depicted by a 
 writer much later than Arnold Warriner's date who 
 remarked: "With women there 7 s nothing between 
 two poles of emotion toward an interesting male 
 acquaintance. ; T is either love or hate." 
 
 He was filled with wonder at the easy rolling of 
 a great stone from his path. So far as appeared, 
 matters between Lucilla and Hope had not gone to 
 lengths which would leave on her a lasting impres 
 sion. After this, the widow would not wish to hear 
 Hope spoken of, whatever the outcome of his affair 
 with the beautiful Eve. Most lucky of all was it that 
 the public had not been taken into confidence. No 
 one could positively aver that Lucilla had cared for 
 Hope ; and it should be Arnold's task to have a very 
 different rumor shortly spread abroad ! 
 
 Warriner, judging Hope by himself, did not doubt 
 that he had been playing a double game making 
 hay with pretty Eve while opportunity offered, and 
 at the same time plotting to win the richest prize 
 in the matrimonial market. As to serious purpose in 
 the " elopement," Arnold could not impute to any 
 man in Hope's circumstances such lunacy. 
 
 Hope's present withdrawal, through conventional 
 necessity, from the arena of love-making, was a god 
 send to Warriner. He had not been able to restrain 
 an uncomfortable fear that, if Hope chose, he could 
 yet smooth matters over ; and was haunted by doubts 
 whether no man living but himself could step into the 
 unoccupied niche at Lucilla's side. 
 
 The livelong day, until late afternoon, Laurence had
 
 64 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 sat like a statue in the room up-stairs, near that which 
 contained the mortal remains of his parents. 
 
 Early in the evening we last saw him, they had 
 found Christopher Hope sleeping his last sleep in 
 his bed. He never knew the blow that had robbed 
 him of his wife. 
 
 And now only Laurence was left of his long line. 
 Friends had come and gone, but no relatives of his 
 name were there to mourn with him. It had been 
 intolerably slow, the passing of these hours during 
 which he had reckoned up the mile-stones of his life 
 in the old house, vainly sorrowing because he could 
 not recall things done or left undone with refer 
 ence to the two who lay near him locked in eternal 
 silence. 
 
 "When their feet should have been carried out from 
 it the young man felt that he would wish to fly for 
 ever from the ghostly place. Continually he longed 
 for the light step and gentle voice of Eve. With her 
 were associated the only stirrings of young and 
 wholesome life these rooms had known since he 
 and his brother had sported there as boys. It had 
 been so good to meet the gleam in Eve's eye respon 
 sive to his occasional bursts of youthful spirit. He 
 recalled their whispered conversations, their smo 
 thered laughs, their comradeship, the fact that they 
 were the only ones in the house on the hither side of 
 half a century in age ! 
 
 Eve would have known how to answer the kind 
 inquiries, the neighborly offers, that all day had been 
 coming in, and that he had repulsed so stupidly ; and 
 oh, how he wanted to have with him somebody who
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 65 
 
 had loved them somebody to weep for him the tears 
 that would not come into his own eyes ! 
 
 But Eve did not come. Early in the day he had des 
 patched a note to her, as was her due, telling her the 
 sad story of his bereavement. He had felt so sure it 
 would bring her that he did not stop to consider what 
 might keep her back. 
 
 And there was a deeper disappointment rankling 
 in his heart. News in that small community flew 
 fast, and it was not possible Mrs. Warriner had not 
 heard of his misfortune. Among all the cards and 
 notes and offered sympathies, there had been none 
 from her. Could it be that she willingly ignored 
 him? 
 
 If ever woman read man's heart in his eyes, she 
 must have seen, when they parted yesterday, that he 
 loved her only her; and seeing this, she had con 
 sented to make tryst with him. At that very hour he 
 should have been treading upon air to lift the latch of 
 her garden gate, to breathe the sweet odors of spring 
 around her, to own the world with her alone ! And, 
 instead, he was waiting here, face to face with grim 
 sorrow, whiling away the leaden moments in con 
 straint and solitude. Heaven ! were all women made 
 like these two, who had forsaken him in his first dark 
 hour of need ? 
 
 In those days a house of mourning was made more 
 gruesome by the universal livery of Woe assumed, 
 outside and in. The gloomy officials who had charge 
 of such matters looked in upon the desolate young 
 man, asked for directions, and glided out again. 
 Chloe, a very Niobe of tears, wept afresh every time
 
 66 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 she approached her young master, and in the effort 
 to restrain herself contorted her face so comically 
 that once Laurie laughed aloud, making her believe 
 he was following the example of his maternal ances 
 tress darkly spoken of in the family as " deranged." 
 
 At last, in despair, he opened a chink of the heavy 
 shutters at the west, letting in a last ray of light 
 from the setting sun, and sought for a book on the 
 little stand beside which his mother had been wont to 
 sit. On this piece of furniture hung a ring of brass, 
 and by pulling it Laurie had been used, as a little 
 boy, to evoke the mystery of a certain sliding desk. 
 
 Mechanically he presently turned from his volume, 
 of which he had not understood one word, to try at 
 the desk as of old. He could almost hear his mother 
 say, " Don't, Laurie ! " in her clear, masterful tones. 
 The desk glided into sight, revealing its well-worn 
 upper surface covered with cotton velvet. Lifting 
 this, he found the interior stocked with appurte 
 nances for writing and a series of Eve's account- 
 books, neatly kept. 
 
 In sheer weariness of spirit he opened one, then 
 another, of these. They had all to do with recent 
 expenditures in the household, and were accom 
 panied by statements from his father's man of affairs, 
 that the poor gentleman had not been allowed to see. 
 
 As Laurence read, the blood mounted to his face. 
 For a long time, it would appear, their house had 
 been tottering to its financial fall. The revenues of 
 the family did not pretend to equal its necessary out 
 lay. Who, then, had supplied deficiencies that should 
 have been met by him f 

 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 07 
 
 In a flash came to him Mrs. Pips's hint about Eve's 
 private needlework and the money supposed to be ac 
 cruing to her account. He recalled the girl's con 
 stant application to odds and ends of fine stitchery, 
 the nature of which he had not understood, but that he 
 had often urged her to put down. For him and his 
 she had stripped herself of hard earnings. To bar 
 the wolf from the Queen Street door the brave little 
 girl had lent all her strength. And none of the 
 Hopes had, apparently, been the wiser. They had all 
 used her, called her hither and thither, depended upon 
 her; and, in the end, she had been chased like a dis 
 graced menial from beneath their roof ! 
 
 Laurence choked, and sprang to his feet. He could 
 no longer endure the air of this room, borne down with 
 familiar scents. It seemed to him to be redolent of 
 ingratitude. For the first time in hours he crossed 
 the threshold, passed the door behind which death's 
 mystery was couched, and went down to the floor 
 below. 
 
 Rarely, if he could help himself, had he entered 
 these great, deserted rooms. The treasures of their 
 bygone finery, so admired by his townspeople, were to 
 him inexpressibly dreary and depressing. The hoi- 
 land bags in which the furniture was shrouded made 
 whitish patches in the dusk. The wide parquetted 
 floor was a gleaming desert. But upon the cabi 
 nets and pier-tables of the chief saloon stood certain 
 objects of value imported from the Old World in the 
 palmy days of the family, and of these he now wished 
 to assure himself. He knew they would find ready 
 sale among the wealthy residents of the town, and his
 
 68 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 intention was, from the proceeds of such sale, to settle 
 a sum upon Eve which she should be made to look 
 upon as a bequest from her late employers. That 
 would be little enough in requital for her self-sacri 
 fices. What a heart of gold was hers ! He had been 
 blind and foolhardy to turn aside from her to fix his 
 fancy upon a spoiled coquette. 
 
 Through all his loyal desire to do Eve justice the 
 longing for Lucilla had been struggling uppermost. 
 He was cut to the heart that she still withheld from 
 him even the smallest token of her regard. 
 
 As his wounded feelings found vent in this final 
 bitter thought, Eve ran in through the rear door. 
 She was bathed in tears, and her dress, muddy and 
 disordered, showed that she had come in haste and 
 afoot. But her face, illumined with love and sym 
 pathy, brought him a quick sense of renewed life 
 and cheer. 
 
 " It is against my father's orders," she cried bro 
 kenly. " Oh, Laurie, did he suppose I could leave 
 you alone to-day?" 
 
 " Eve ! my brave, true little heroine ! It would 
 need a lifetime to tell what I think of you. For I 
 have found you out, dear. Your generosity has put 
 me to keen shame" 
 
 "What was it to do for them for you?" she said, 
 faltering. " Laurie, take it from your sister, who has 
 come to mourn with you our dear ones. Oh ! since 
 we parted I have seen things in a new light. 
 Your poor mother had right on her side, and all that 
 has passed between you and me must be forgotten by 
 us both. Go with me, and by her side I will renew
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 69 
 
 the vow made to my father never to think of marry 
 ing you." 
 
 Her voice failed through heartfelt sobbing. Lau 
 rence, waiting until he could venture to take her up 
 stairs, stood beside her, gently stroking her bright 
 hair. 
 
 While they remained together thus, the heavy ma 
 hogany door leading into the entrance-hall creaked 
 inward on unused hinges, and from without floated 
 to Laurence the soft accents of a voice that made his 
 heart stand still. 
 
 " You will say that of course I do not expect your 
 master to come down that I called merely to 
 inquire." 
 
 Directly Chloe appeared, ushering into the dusky 
 room a vision so resplendent in youth and timorous 
 beauty that the young man started away from Eve as 
 if he had been shot but not until the newcomer had 
 taken in a full impression of the scene. 
 
 It was Lucilla, in hood and tippet, as she had just 
 stepped from her chair outside ! Lucilla, who, after 
 her passionate denunciation of him to Arnold in the 
 garden, had gone to her room and straightway lapsed 
 into hot repentance for hasty judgment! Lucilla, 
 who, yielding to an irresistible impulse, had come 
 here, regardless of all else, to mourn with him in his 
 sorrow ! 
 
 Eve could not fathom the moment of freezing 
 silence that ensued, but with a bow full of modest 
 dignity she passed the stranger by and left them 
 together. 
 
 "You do not speak?" cried Laurence, imploringly.
 
 70 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 "Yet you could extend to me this act of womanly 
 compassion in the stunning blow that kept me from 
 seeking you to-day ? Surely you don't regret it ? Oh ! 
 if you knew how I have wearied for even a line in 
 your handwriting to say that you feel my grief " 
 
 "You see you were not disappointed," said Mrs. 
 Warriner, holding her beautiful head high and speak 
 ing in a clear, metallic voice. "And now, perhaps 
 you will be so good as to recall your servant and have 
 me shown to my chair ? " 
 
 " Lucilla ! " exclaimed he, making two strides to 
 where she stood with her hand upon the knob of the 
 door, then pausing, remembering the dread presence 
 in his home. 
 
 Lucilla did not exert herself to answer his mute 
 appeal. With one look that spoke volumes, she turned 
 and vanished.
 
 was not easy for her friends to under 
 stand why Mrs. Warriner, interrupting 
 capriciously her career as a leader of 
 fashionable life, should have shut up her 
 Broadway house so early as the latter 
 days of May, and set out, with her family and atten 
 dants, in a slow-sailing sloop for her manor on the 
 Hudson. 
 
 That her name was down as patroness of several 
 active charities, that she left many engagements un 
 fulfilled, that her blooming health gave no excuse of 
 illness, made her flitting the more mysterious. For 
 a few days the matter was discussed, in these times 
 it would have been disposed of in a few hours, then 
 people began to declare that Lucilla had accepted her 
 cousin, Captain Warriner, and the marriage would 
 soon take place from the Manor, so that the captain 
 might literally " come into his own." 
 
 When Arnold was approached on the subject he 
 did nothing to dissipate the impression, but, smiling, 
 bowing, looking conscious, left all the world to believe 
 that he was the proverbial happy man. Yet, strangely 
 enough, as the weeks went on he did not leave New 
 York. No doubt Mistress Lucilla was preparing 
 some surprise. She was always original !
 
 72 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 Of the two factions of admirers, one of whom had 
 held up Warriner's banner, the other ranging itself 
 under that of Laurence Hope, the "Warriner cham 
 pions were now triumphant. Their man, having be 
 haved with excellent discretion, was clearly favored 
 of the gods. 
 
 Hope, on the contrary, had passed under a cloud 
 of adverse circumstance. Nobody thought of quoting 
 him as a pet of fortune. Since the tragedy of his 
 loss of both parents in a night, and after the daylight 
 of disclosure had been let in upon their family affairs, 
 a sad discovery had been made. To meet liabilities 
 contracted by his parents, chiefly to pay the debts of 
 his late spendthrift brother, it was found necessary 
 to sell house, furniture, and other real estate, leaving 
 Laurence almost penniless but for his army pay. 
 
 The world, not always ill-natured, was glad when 
 a purchaser for the Queen Street mansion appeared 
 in the person of a rich member of Congress anxious 
 for installation in a desirable quarter near the East 
 River. There had been no such activity in securing 
 residences known since the war, and other sales were 
 as good; but Laurence reaped little benefit; very 
 nearly all of the proceeds went to his father's creditors. 
 
 However pitiful Captain Hope's condition, some 
 thing stood between him and public sympathy. It 
 was that ugly story concerning his affair with a hand 
 some girl, an employee of his mother. No one denied 
 't was the shock of discovering their intrigue that had 
 precipitated Madam Hope's demise. What mother of 
 sons but could feel for the poor lady and turn a 
 frown upon the offenders! And the conditions so
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 73 
 
 repulsive ! She hoodwinked, trusting both of them 
 implicitly, and the thing carried on under her eyes, 
 nay, in the very sick-room of the father. The hussy 
 must be deep ! 
 
 The story of the elopement, having gone through 
 various phases, had settled down to this : The couple 
 had been overhauled by a messenger on horseback, 
 bearing the news of the captain's mother's death, when 
 they had got no farther on their journey than Harlem 
 Plains. They had returned before the minx had en 
 trapped Laurence into marriage. What had become 
 of her nobody knew or cared. Such schemers were a 
 constant menace to the young men of good families. 
 The least that could be done with Master Laurie was 
 to send him, for a while, to Coventry. 
 
 Smarting under the odium of ill-natured lies, made 
 to stand in a corner by society, ignored like one 
 dead by the woman he loved, Laurence had violently 
 wrenched himself as much as possible from contact 
 with the world. Of the meager military establishment 
 the new government had taken over from the late Con 
 federation, General Knox, the Secretary of War, was 
 his only official superior then present in New York ; the 
 Secretary had need of him for duty at headquarters, 
 and thought it best to let his fit of spleen work itself 
 quietly out. Though in the offices of the War Depart 
 ment they smiled at his passionately expressed wish 
 for active service in the field to remove him from the 
 sphere of slander, for a chance to warm his blood anew 
 in an honest fight, the impulse was understood by the 
 veterans who had recently laid aside their arms ill 
 hard-earned peace.
 
 74 THE CIRCLE OP A CENTURY 
 
 Even President "Washington, by whom most things 
 concerning his old followers were observed, smiled 
 gravely when, addressing Captain Hope one day in 
 public, he bade him remember there was harder work 
 for the Sons of Liberty in maintaining what they had 
 won than in striking for it with their swords. 
 
 The sound of his chief's voice in kindly admonition 
 made the fire leap into Hope's eyes, his face flush, 
 every muscle of his body stiffen with new resolve. 
 Not trusting himself to speak, he bowed his acknow 
 ledgment. 
 
 After that there was no more moping. The perilous 
 illness of the President, occurring at this time, inspired 
 all classes with anxiety, and knit in a common bond 
 many hearts previously driven asunder by political 
 dispute. Hope despised himself for his late selfish 
 indulgence in despondency. What could he what 
 would not he do now to prove himself worthy the 
 injunction of his peerless commander, now lying so 
 near to death ? 
 
 He threw himself into present occupation with zeal 
 so marked that the report of it was carried to the 
 President in his convalescence. Shortly afterward 
 Hope's heart was made glad by receiving orders to 
 go on an extended journey on horseback through the 
 Eastern States to visit certain military posts still in 
 possession of the British, about which the President 
 was known to feel concern, and to report his observa 
 tions to the government. 
 
 It was a mission requiring sound knowledge of his 
 profession, as well as diplomatic skill. His choice 
 by highest authority for the task was equivalent to a
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 75 
 
 public declaration of his deserts. When he presented 
 himself at the President's levee to take final leave, 
 before setting out on the expedition, Laurence met no 
 more averted looks. All eyes beamed on him approv 
 ingly. The most important members of the govern 
 ment had kind words of farewell for him, and by 
 his contemporaries in service in the now disbanded 
 Continental Army he was congratulated in envying 
 terms. 
 
 One voice in the choir was silent. Arnold Warriner 
 turned on him darkling looks, and, at a men's supper 
 given on the eve of Hope's departure, got up pointedly 
 and left the table when Hope sat down to it. The in 
 tention of insult was unmistakable ; but Hope, by the 
 advice of his friends, decided not to take notice of it. 
 The next day he was to set out to be absent for several 
 months in the special service of the Chief. That duty 
 should be paramount ; his own quarrels could wait. 
 
 For some time before this outburst Arnold Warri 
 ner had felt with stinging certainty that Lucilla had 
 slipped between his hands. He had made sure in the 
 beginning that after a brief time in which to get over 
 her pique with Hope she would recall him to resume 
 his role of cousinly consoler, from which post it would 
 be but a step to divert her affections to himself. So 
 convinced, he had fervently indorsed her resolution to 
 go out of town ; but his very first offer of himself as a 
 guest at the Manor had been met by an excuse and a 
 delay. 
 
 Arnold could understand a high-spirited woman 
 feeling shy about again meeting one who had been 
 witness to her despairing tears over another man's
 
 76 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUKY 
 
 desertion ; but as weeks passed into months, and he 
 was still kept at bay, he lost patience, objurgating 
 Lucilla, her mother, and Hope in terms hardly flatterin g. 
 In an access of disappointment and wounded vanity, 
 he had even addressed to her a letter hinting that she 
 should have more womanly pride than to remain in 
 consolable about Hope. To this Lucilla deftly ans 
 wered that if indeed she had tried to think forgiv 
 ingly of the offender, it was in deference to Arnold's 
 advice, and she should ever thank him for his recom 
 mendation to Christian charity. Whereupon Warriner, 
 remembering how he had blown cold, then hot, in the 
 widow's garden, again devoted Lucilla and her swain 
 to all evil. 
 
 If he could only be sure about the state of affairs 
 between them ! Hope's exoneration from the charge 
 brought against him to Lucilla was now known by 
 his best friends to be complete. Already the world 
 was beginning to accept it. Had not Lucilla, ascer 
 taining this, offered Hope a renewal of her friendship ? 
 And was not Arnold held responsible for the slander ? 
 How else could he interpret the sarcasm of her letter ? 
 In Arnold's eyes, women had no business to be sarcas 
 tic, or investigating, or anything but loving recipients 
 of the dicta of mankind. Lucilla had evidently re 
 covered ground to some extent ; and Hope's return to 
 cheerful looks and vigorous work was in the highest de 
 gree suggestive. Oh ! if it were true that fellow had 
 
 Arnold stopped short at the reflection of his own 
 face in his mirror, before which he was dressing. It 
 was well Lucilla had never seen those handsome 
 features so disturbed by black rage.
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 77 
 
 It was more than a sentimental fury that possessed 
 him. Since the spring, events had transformed the 
 faineant ex-captain into a desperately anxious man. 
 His passion for high play, fostered by a complaisant 
 age, had brought him to the brink of dishonorable 
 ruin. Unless he could soon lay hands upon fortune 
 through Lucilla this incident, this intruder into the 
 Warriner family, who had stepped before him by a 
 whim of fate his crash was soon to come.. 
 
 Lucilla must be his. And the only obstacle was 
 Laurence Hope ! 
 
 Thus matters stood when Captain Hope was an 
 nounced at headquarters to have come in for that 
 most coveted designation for special employment by 
 the President's own selection. Then Arnold's smolder 
 ing fire had leaped into flame. 
 
 What was this but the effort of influential friends 
 to rehabilitate his rival before the public gaze ? After 
 it, Hope might pretend to anything. Under the in 
 fluence of the galling thought, he had tried to insult 
 Laurence before the assembled supper-party. Feeling 
 sure it had been perceived, Hope's failure to notice 
 him in return filled his soul with frenzy. Quitting 
 the house to wander out into the night, he carried 
 prisoned in his breast a demon that gave him no rest 
 from its vengeful promptings. 
 
 EVE, sitting alone on the door-stone of her father's 
 cottage, listened drearily to the voices of the night. 
 Job had gone into town to deliver a piece of com 
 pleted work, but at parting had addressed to her no 
 expression of hope that she would not mind her soli-
 
 78 THE CIKCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 tude. Words between them were few in these days 
 of her new life. 
 
 It was broad moonlight of September, and she 
 could see the river shining. With a companion with 
 whom she could interchange congenial thoughts, the 
 scene and hour would have been a luxury. But Eve 
 was dull and still. She was thinking of days forever 
 gone, of joys snatched from her. 
 
 She sometimes wondered if it could be true she was 
 ever so blended with the Hopes that her thoughts and 
 f eelings were their own ; that she had ever believed 
 Laurie could be her husband. It had been so long 
 since she had done anything but bend her head like 
 a reed before the storm ! 
 
 Eve's had been a sad trial. The scandal that had 
 slipped like a mantle from the man had overwhelmed 
 the woman. 
 
 The first intimation coming to Job that idle tongues 
 were busy with the good name of his child was a visit 
 from an elder of his church. The story, in detail, of 
 Eve's alleged offense was then laid before him, and 
 Eve summoned to meet an investigation behind closed 
 doors. Either she must satisfy the church of her in 
 nocence or retire from its membership. This was to 
 wound Job Watson in his tenderest sensibility alle 
 giance to the religion handed down to him by his 
 fathers. In his rage and shame, he refused to give 
 her a personal hearing. 
 
 The incidents of her abrupt return home, her con 
 fession of dismissal from service, her disobedience in 
 leaving him to go back to the house of death, arose 
 as confirmation of her guilt. Laurence Hope's manly
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 79 
 
 letter exculpating the girl from any suspicion of of 
 fense leading to her discharge became a piece of 
 specious insolence. How much more so the seemingly 
 considerable sum of money sent as " wages due " from 
 her late employer ! Job, who had at first laid this 
 away in his strong box with some relaxation of feel 
 ing toward the Hopes, now took it out with a dark 
 flush upon his cheek. He would not delay a moment in 
 sending it back, with a message of fierce and bitter re 
 jection, to the agent through whom Hope had preferred 
 to act. And then, with lamentations for the disgrace 
 that had come upon his house, Job led his child before 
 the judges who were to decide her fate. 
 
 Eve's heart bled for her father as he stood beside 
 her throughout the ordeal. She had never seen his 
 head bowed like this, when it was a question of ban 
 ishing his child from the fold that had been the refuge 
 of his forebears for long generations. The presence of 
 Mrs. Pips an affectionate if confused witness and 
 of a few grave elders Eve had looked up to from child 
 hood gave her courage to speak in her own defense. 
 All she could do was to tell her simple story of the 
 facts. When she had finished, an aged leader came 
 forward and held out his hand to her. 
 
 " You have made a plain statement, my child," he 
 said, tears starting to his eyes ; " and I '11 venture to 
 say there 's not one of us few who have met here to 
 pass on you to-day but what feels you have spoken 
 truth. But we must confer together, and God grant 
 all the rest are of my mind." 
 
 Then only did Eve cast herself in a passion of 
 weeping into her father's unwilling arms.
 
 80 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 In the end, with much deliberation, and after con 
 victing her of the less serious offense of having been 
 present at a performance of public theatricals the 
 year before, Eve was exonerated from the graver 
 charge. Following certain discipline, she was to be 
 reestablished in her old place in the church. 
 
 The shame of the ordeal had fallen like a lash upon 
 her father's spirit. She felt it would be to him a life 
 long humiliation, and the sight of her in his house a 
 continual offense. 
 
 Their days together, after this, were intolerably 
 strained. For a time Eve went about her household 
 tasks in dumb endurance of her lot. Now and again 
 the thought of what she had lost in renouncing 
 Laurie's love swept over her like a flood, and she felt 
 she must see him and speak to him, or die. But for 
 the most part she was heroically calm. 
 
 Once the idea came to her to relieve her father of 
 her presence by taking a room in the town and get 
 ting work on her own account. With a feeling of 
 new life at the prospect, she went to consult Mrs. 
 Pips, who received her with effusive welcome. But 
 at the first disclosure of the girl's ambitions the good 
 woman mournfully told her the scheme had objections 
 she had not thought of. 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! it goes against me to give you pain 
 I that well knows what trouble is," said the dame. " It 
 is n't that I 'd fear to take you in, and charge you as 
 little for it, too, as anybody in the street, for my 
 spare room is empty now. And I don't doubt the 
 gentry 'u'd come back to you in time. There ain't 
 many hands at a needle like you, and they know it.
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 81 
 
 But no matter what your clmrch said, there '11 be 
 people to be always casting what was charged against 
 you like mud on your skirts as you walk by. If you 
 leave your father now they '11 be gospel sure you 're 
 in the wrong. It 's only sticking by him till the 
 thing 's forgotten that '11 help you in the least." 
 
 " I think nothing can help me," said Eve, in a low, 
 distressful tone, as she turned to walk away. When 
 she had gone some distance, she came back and cried 
 in the old woman's bosom, and was . cried over in 
 return. 
 
 After that it was again silent suffering, until her 
 loneliness grew almost more than she could bear. In 
 her desperate isolation she often thought of Luke 
 Adamson. So long had he stayed away that she was 
 conscious of a sickening fear lest he belonged to the 
 body of those still unconvinced of her rectitude. It 
 seemed natural that he, more than another, should 
 feel the sting of these charges against the woman 
 everybody knew he had long hoped to win. If he 
 would only give her a chance to set him right ! 
 
 But Luke had not appeared ; and Job, little gifted 
 with tact, had outspokenly told Eve the lad knew 
 better than to have people say he was still hanging 
 on to a girl that had been disgraced before the 
 church. 
 
 At the moment when, sitting under the moonbeams, 
 her thoughts had again reverted to her humble lover, 
 Eve was startled by the figure of a man with his hand 
 upon the garden gate. Her throb of despairing hope 
 that it might be Laurie was dashed away by the ap 
 proach of Luke Adamson.
 
 82 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 "I met your father carrying back Judge Chater's 
 escritoire," he said, after bidding her a shy good even 
 ing and sitting down at the other end of the step, " so 
 I knew you would be alone. Do you like heliotrope ? 
 a gardener gave me this." 
 
 " I love it ! " cried Eve, receiving the large cluster 
 he held out, and burying her face in its luscious blos 
 soms. "We have only common flowers as yet, but 
 next year, if my father is willing, I mean to have a 
 fine border." 
 
 " Are n't there some things that would bloom this 
 autumn that we could set out now ? " he asked, relieved 
 by her acceptance of his token. " I know that gar 
 dener well. He is the Scot who laid out those famous 
 beds in that grand house in Broadway the ones 
 everybody stops to look at through the railings 
 they call it Widow Warriner's." 
 
 " Oh ! I don't want them," interrupted Eve, letting 
 fall her heliotrope into her lap and sitting upright in 
 a sort of defiant pose. 
 
 Poor Luke could not know that the name he had 
 mentioned brought back the most poignant of all Eve's 
 sufferings her first glimpse of the splendid Lucilla 
 in the Hopes' drawing-room, and her instant convic 
 tion that this was Laurie's love. 
 
 " No offense meant," said the young man, after an 
 awkward silence. 
 
 " Please, Luke, don't mind me if I seem fretful and 
 nervous. I see so few people that I 'm forgetting how 
 to behave. Indeed, when you came I 'd just been 
 thinking of you and wishing for the hundredth time 
 that you'd take it into your head to come and see
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 83 
 
 an old friend, who, though appearances are against 
 her, has never done anything to forfeit your good 
 opinion." 
 
 " As if I 'd ever thought so ! " he cried. " Eve, I Ve 
 been just hungering to come, but your father told me 
 my visits would not be welcome. And I could feel 
 myself that the sight of a man who loved you would 
 be always reminding you of him you 'd lost. If I 'd 
 had the right to be by your side, do you think I 'd 
 have left you alone through such trials ? Eve, lassie, 
 I sometimes think girls like you can't picture to them 
 selves what they rouse in a man's heart. If you did, 
 you 'd not be fancying I could stay away, unless it was 
 because I loved you better than I love myself. But 
 this is n't what I came for " 
 
 "You believed in me from the first?" she inter 
 rupted, soothed by the delicious sense that here, at 
 last, was one who had felt her sorrows as his own. 
 
 " Never for one minute did I doubt you. If I had, 
 I 'd ha' killed him, instead of calling him my friend." 
 
 "Him you have seen Captain Hope? "she asked 
 eagerly. 
 
 " All summer he and I have been meeting and talk 
 ing about you, and plotting to help you. But in this 
 sort of case a young man is worse than nothing, Eve, 
 and we had both the sense to know that, to serve you, 
 we must keep away from you." 
 
 " I suppose so," she said, sighing. " But ah ! what 
 heartaches it would have saved me to feel that he 
 that you" She stopped, confused. 
 
 " Eve, he came to me first because you had told him I 
 was to be trusted. And you will trust me now, when
 
 84 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 I tell you the thought that 's in your mind must not 
 be allowed to stay there. Captain Hope has no idea 
 of coming back to you, my dear. He has put you out 
 of his mind for always, except as a brave, true girl 
 who has suffered through his fault. He would give 
 anything in the world to undo what has been done. 
 But he can't, and I can't. Nothing can, but time. 
 Some day he hopes to meet you again, but not now." 
 
 He paused for a moment, but Eve did not answer. 
 Then, catching his breath, the man went on again : 
 
 " You were not the only sufferer, Eve. The captain, 
 too, had sore trials coming out of your affairs. It is 
 only just now that he 's beginning to look and act like 
 himself again. Now, dear, let me tell you what he 's 
 made me do for you take into my charge that money 
 coming to you from the Hope estate, that he says is 
 yours by right. He can't touch it, if you won't ; and 
 so I 've promised to hold it, subject to your claim. 
 He 's been urging this on me a long time, but I held 
 back, and to-day he has persuaded me to do it, and to 
 come here and tell you, without putting it off an 
 other day. He thinks you need me, Eve, and God 
 grant he 's right ! " 
 
 "I do need you, Luke. My heart would have 
 broken soon if some one had not come," she said, 
 swallowing a sob. 
 
 It was a critical moment for Luke, who was yearn 
 ing to clasp her to his heart and carry her away into 
 his home forever. But he had gone there determined 
 to be impersonal, and would not yield. 
 
 " The captain gave me a message for you, Eve. He 
 said I was to beg you, for his sake, to call on me when-
 
 IN OLD NEW YOKE 85 
 
 ever anything or anybody makes life hard for you. 
 He wanted to be sure there '11 be some one to stand 
 by you through thick and thin." 
 
 "He is what is he going to do?" she asked, her 
 heart beating quick. 
 
 " That 's my news, Eve. 1 'm afraid it may give you 
 pain, but it 's the best thing that could happen to the 
 captain. He 's going away on a long journey of three 
 or four months. It 's a great chance for him, and 
 he 7 s rare proud of it, I tell you." 
 
 " Going away ! " Eve repeated blankly. Nothing 
 that Luke could do or say could alter the force of 
 that. All these sad months of separation she had 
 been at least able to think of him as near her, and to 
 know that he was well. 
 
 "Yes; 't was n't fit for him to be moping on here, 
 and you and I must be glad for him, Eve. He asked 
 me to say good-by for him, and to tell you that, what 
 ever comes, he '11 always be your loyal and devoted 
 friend. I wish I could speak like the captain, Eve, 
 but I can't. I 'm only a plain workingman, without 
 education, down at the bottom of the ladder, while 
 he 's at the top. If the time ever comes when I or 
 mine could befriend him, I 'd be glad to do it, for he 's 
 given me the chance of my life. I Ve kept this for 
 the last, Eve ! He 's got me the contract to build a 
 big warehouse that 's going up on some city lots, once 
 belonging to the Hopes, that were bought in by a 
 friend of his father's. And if our town goes on 
 spreading over this island, as it 's like to do, and I 
 give satisfaction as a master builder, there '11 be more 
 work of the kind to follow. I 'm to go to-morrow and
 
 86 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 sign the papers. How 's that for a beginning, Eve ? 
 No job-work after this, if I succeed ! " 
 
 " Dear Luke, you deserve the best always," she said, 
 " and I am thankful that you 've found such a friend." 
 
 " It is you that found him for me in the beginning, 
 Eve ; and I won't say that I did n't at first mistrust 
 him mightily. But he 's a man, every inch of him, 
 and if your father were to ask me, I 'd say so to his 
 face. But as long as water runs to the sea you 'd 
 never get Job Watson to think any better of such as 
 Captain Hope as a husband for you than the captain's 
 people thought of you as a wife for him. Don't 
 shrink from me, Eve. I 'm not going to hurt you any 
 more. I had to say this to make all straight between 
 us." 
 
 " You don't hurt me ; but wait a minute ! " she said 
 feverishly. Luke was silent, and together they thus 
 remained for a long time. Then she began to speak 
 to him of things irrelevant. 
 
 When Eve lay down to rest that night she was, 
 despite the touch upon her sorest spot, happier than 
 for weeks past. The knowledge that Laurence had 
 been watching over her, though from afar, blended 
 with the comfort of Luke's tender if homely words. 
 Poor Luke! He had done her more good than 
 anybody, even if he could not fill the void in her 
 breast ! The world was not all desolate, now that she 
 had tasted some of the love and sympathy her nature 
 craved. 
 
 WHILE these things are going on in town, we may 
 hark back to the beginning of Mistress Lucilla's ex-
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 87 
 
 perience as a world-renouncing celibate amid the for 
 ests around her beautiful home on the Hudson. 
 
 After about a week of it her spirits flagged, her 
 tasks lacked interest. Neither books, work, exer 
 cise on the pianoforte, nor visits to the poor on her 
 estate gave her comfort. Still-room, dairy, poultry- 
 yard, stables all palled on her fancy. Forever 
 and ever she was thinking how she hated Laurence 
 Hope. 
 
 With her cousin Arnold's disclosure still rankling 
 in her mind, after her first burst of jealous anger 
 against Hope, in which she had declared she would 
 never look upon his face again, had she not merci 
 fully and graciously reconsidered that determination ? 
 Had not she on the spur of the moment ordered her 
 chairmen to carry her across to the Hopes' house, de 
 termining to give her lover the most generous proof 
 of her continuing trust in him? And once there, 
 what spectacle had met her gaze ? Laurence standing 
 as close as he could get beside that little red-haired 
 person, bending over her with every expression of 
 affectionate solicitude, and oh, horrors ! stroking 
 her hair ! 
 
 It would be of no possible use for him to try to get 
 over that. Let him marry whom he would ! Mrs. 
 Warriner wanted nothing of a man who could stroke 
 another woman's hair red hair ! flaming ! 
 
 All her sweetness was turned to gall by this dis 
 closure ; she returned home and resigned herself never 
 to think of happiness again. When a letter in Hope's 
 handwriting had come to her one evening, she had 
 pounced upon it, and then by an exercise of heroic
 
 88 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 fortitude had locked it up unread. Two days later 
 another missive came. Mrs. Warriner, finally inclos 
 ing both of them unopened in a sheet of paper, sealed 
 twice with her husband's seal displaying the Warriner 
 coat of arms, sent them back to the writer. The next 
 day she left town. After that she had heard from 
 him no more. 
 
 Later in the summer a letter from Miss Polly Clin 
 ton had given her the information that people were 
 coming round to think better of that scandal about 
 Laurence Hope. In Polly's next letter Hope's justifi 
 cation was set forth at greater length; and the third 
 carried with it this balm for Lucilla's heart : " Captain 
 Hope has not set eyes on Eve Watson since his 
 parents' funeral." With this Lucilla was obliged to 
 be content ; but she held Arnold accountable for much 
 of her trouble, and treated him accordingly. 
 
 In this frame of mind, dewy June, hot July, and 
 sultry August had passed over the lady of the Manor. 
 September, well past its middle, having given up its 
 struggle to be reckoned among the summer months, 
 was coming out bravely as a beauty in decline. 
 
 The hills on either side of the river, that here wid 
 ened into a glassy lake specked with the sails of lag 
 gard craft, were beginning to be touched with purple 
 and orange and crimson ; apples were dropping in 
 her orchards ; the flight of ducks southward had be 
 gun; Lucilla's wood walks were enlivened by the 
 noise of full-grown coveys under command of Bob 
 White, the squirrel's fussy note, and the loud tapping 
 of woodpeckers. And in the general stir of nature 
 toward provision against the chill future, Mrs. War-
 
 IN OLD NEW YOKE 89 
 
 riner began to realize that she was tired of living by 
 herself. 
 
 Madam Chester, who had her own reasons for sat 
 isfaction with the situation, noticed the symptoms of 
 her daughter's state, and took alarm. She had en 
 joyed a good long rest from her prevalent anxiety. 
 In town, every breeze that blew threatened a husband 
 who might send his mother-in-law into banishment. 
 What a relief to pass the days without having Arnold 
 Warriner marching up to the front door, or seeing 
 Laurence Hope's chctpeau bras lying upon the table ! 
 No one could imagine the strain it had been, not to 
 know when the former might come to a halt for good 
 inside of Lucilla's front door, or the hat be hung up 
 with an expression of proprietary right in the hall ! 
 
 Lucilla had not realized her talent as a dissembler 
 until she found her mother in ignorance of her real 
 feeling toward these two. She sometimes amused 
 herself by playing upon the good lady's fears. 
 
 " I have been thinking, mama, that it would be a 
 polite attention to invite Betsy Crewe to pass a week 
 or two with us. And there is poor Polly Clinton, who 
 needs a change, since she has just been nursing her 
 mother in bilious fever. They can come by the stage 
 coach to the Green Man, whence the chariot and I 
 will fetch them." 
 
 " Would not such gay creatures feel imposed upon 
 by the dullness of our seclusion ? " replied the dowa 
 ger, snuffing the wind. " Might they not be expect 
 ing the society of beaus ? " 
 
 "Even so," answered Lucilla, smiling. "I fancy 
 we could render ourselves endurable to one or two
 
 90 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 gentlemen of my acquaintance should I bid them to 
 the Manor." 
 
 "Any one but that designing Captain Warriner," 
 cried her mother, unmasking boldly. " I '11 vow, Lu- 
 cilla, I can't promise to treat him with common civility. 
 And I fear me Captain Hope is not much better." 
 
 " I think neither one of those you mention will be 
 likely to come here now," answered Mrs. Warriner, 
 with sudden gravity. " On the whole, we will leave 
 Adam out of our Eden, and have the girls alone." 
 
 WHEN Mrs. Warriner's traveling-chaise, drawn by 
 four fine, mouse-colored steeds all a-sweat, pulled up 
 before the door of the roadside hostelry known as 
 the Green Man, where it was the custom of the 
 stage-coach from New York to stop to feed passen 
 gers and change horses, the lady inside spied waiting 
 for her on the porch two roseate faces, enframed in 
 large calashes of green silk. 
 
 These were none other than her expected guests 
 from town, who, through the mischance of one of her 
 horses casting a shoe, had been kept waiting at the 
 tavern some time after the conveyance that brought 
 them had jogged northward. 
 
 A painter in genre might have found excuse for lin 
 gering upon the scene. The little inn, nestling under 
 the shoulder of a high hill, was surrounded by an old- 
 world garden where sunflowers and snapdragons 
 blended with asparagus and onions. At the back 
 were stables and coach-houses, in size, like the sign 
 board, out of all proportion with the tiny place. In 
 the middle distance a group of country people and 
 children stood gaping at the unwonted presence of
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 91 
 
 lady visitors in greatcoats of dove-gray lined with rose- 
 color, carrying in their hands flowered band-boxes, 
 and surrounded by stylish portmanteaus. And before 
 the steps stood a vehicle known and admired over 
 the whole countryside, while a footman was just let 
 ting down the steps to allow the exit of the lady of 
 Warriner Manor. When Lucilla was seen to sub 
 merge herself successively in the embraces of her 
 Betsy and her Polly, there was a general feeling 
 among the assemblage that, the height of spectacular 
 effect having been attained, they might as well be 
 preparing to go home. 
 
 What, therefore, was their astonishment when, on 
 the receipt of information from one of the new-comers, 
 supplemented by a breathless announcement from 
 the other, interrupted by the first speaker, and then 
 chorused by both, Mrs. Warriner was seen to totter 
 and grow pale, and sink again into the arms of her 
 friends. The landlord, who brought her a glass of 
 water and received the usual assurance that she was 
 "better now," finally helped to put the three ladies 
 into the chaise. After, with much pomp of footmen 
 and postilion, the vehicle had rolled away, the specta 
 tors flocked forward to know what had occurred. 
 
 Landlord Nixon, a satisfactory neighbor in that he 
 never tantalized by holding back news too long, was 
 prompt to relieve anxiety. There had been a duel 
 down York way of which the coach had previously 
 brought details between two young sprigs of the 
 gentry, fighting for heaven knows what. A Captain 
 Hope, the challenged party, had been badly wounded 
 by madam's cousin, Captain Arnold Warriner, and 
 was not expected to survive.
 
 VI 
 
 one need say a word to me, mama ! " 
 cried Lucilla, stamping her foot pas 
 sionately. "I am going to town to 
 look after him, and there 's an end of 
 it. I have given my orders to my 
 people, and nothing on earth shall stop me. If 
 I could take him to my house and give him every 
 thing it contains, I 'd do so. You don't know how 
 mean and base I 've been to him to send back all of 
 his dear letters unread; and oh, how I wish I had 
 them now ! 
 
 "When I say unread, I will tell you the truth, 
 mama. I peeped into one of them, and it said he is 
 mine till death. Mine till death, and I not go to him 
 now ? If I had n't been hard as a flint, and so jeal 
 ous I could n't think, I 'd have taken his word then. 
 Polly says he has never been near that girl since, and 
 that everybody knows it. He has behaved so beauti 
 fully since he has been in trouble that even the Presi 
 dent has praised and commended him. To think I 
 was the only one to hold back, and now oh, it is too 
 cruel ! I meant to bring him back to me just as soon 
 as we could get into town, when there 'd be some ex 
 cuse for it. Mama, you must speak ! You must say 
 
 92
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 93 
 
 you are sorry for me, or I '11 never confide in you 
 again. Don't you see that my heart is breaking ? " 
 
 " If you will cease speaking yourself long enough 
 to give me a chance, Lucilla," said Madam Chester, 
 dark with disapprobation, " I should be glad, at least, 
 to ask how you know this scandalous duel was on 
 your account?" 
 
 " Polly says the town is full of it. Arnold had 
 failed once to provoke him into a quarrel, and again 
 that same night repeated the insult in such a way that 
 Captain Hope could not avoid taking the matter up. 
 They met at daybreak the next morning the day lie 
 w r as to have set off on the journey that promised him 
 such honor and credit. He purposely avoided aiming 
 at Arnold, who in return shot him. 
 
 " Oh, the monster ! the murderer ! Mama, he won't 
 die you don't think he '11 die till I get there? See, 
 I am doing my best to be brave and strong and 
 worthy of him. If he only had known I love him if 
 I can but tell him so once I '11 be satisfied. I believe 
 the girls don't suspect me. No one but you knows 
 that if he dies I '11 never smile again. They think I 
 am going to town to make what amends I can for 
 Arnold's dastardly act. But you know, mama you 
 know, you know ! " 
 
 " Lucilla, my child, calm yourself. Your eyes are 
 wild, and your face is dreadfully flushed. Don't you 
 think 't would be better to lie down ? My duty as a 
 parent, however little exercised, cannot be put aside, 
 and in your present condition I should consider it not 
 only an impropriety, but madness, for you to go to 
 town."
 
 94 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 " Madness be it, then ! " cried Mrs. "Warriner. " I 
 have made all my preparations. I take with me 
 Myrtilla, and Peter on the box with the coachman. 
 Both of them are entirely to be trusted, and will suf 
 fice to protect me in an emergency. See, there comes 
 the chariot to the door. I am sorry to take issue 
 with you on a question of propriety, but of this I 
 must be judge. And if my blood is hot, there '11 be 
 time a-plenty for it to cool before we get there. 
 Good-by, mama ; and be sure I shall ask for no more 
 of your sympathy." 
 
 Sweeping a courtesy to the angry dowager, she 
 dashed out of the room. Myrtilla, waiting in the 
 entry, perilously near to the keyhole, was swept along 
 by her mistress's impetuous movement. 
 
 Betsy and Polly, perched like caryatids one on 
 either side the front door, received Lucilla's farewells 
 with differing emotions. Poor little Polly, who had 
 long ago renounced her nascent admiration of Lau 
 rence in the widow's favor, whispered in her friend's 
 ear something that made Lucilla turn and kiss her 
 once again before she hurried off. 
 
 After the departure, Miss Crewe, in the general de 
 nunciation of Arnold Warriner, kept her opinion to 
 herself. She was afraid to advance her poor little 
 theory that perhaps Captain Warriner had received 
 provocation of which no one was aware. Madam 
 Chester, to rid herself of feelings implanted by her 
 daughter's rebellious action, chose frequently to turn 
 the conversation to the crime, previous shortcomings, 
 and certain doom of the next heir to the Manor. 
 
 Two days of this sort of thing were endured by
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 95 
 
 Miss Betsy in subjugated silence. On the third, dur 
 ing a forecast of Arnold's variety of punishment in 
 the event of Hope's death, she ran out of the room. 
 Reappearing with red eyes and a distressed aspect, 
 she offered to read aloud to the other ladies from 
 " The Belle's Stratagem," which they were just then 
 enjoying together; then, in the middle of the read 
 ing, broke down in a passion of sobs and again 
 disappeared. 
 
 Miss Polly, a gentle little soul, sped after her com 
 rade, and, without alluding to its cause, employed 
 every soothing art to banish her Betsy's grief. From 
 that hour she displayed also much finesse in always 
 turning the chat from Captain Warriner's offense to 
 Bowen's waxworks, the prospect of a review arid 
 sham fight by the companies of militia the town 
 could boast, the theater in John Street, the high price 
 of house-rent (her papa having been asked to pay 
 forty pounds a year for a moderate dwelling, with 
 stable), the hair-dressers' getting up to charge twenty 
 shillings a month, the excellence of M. Singeron's 
 marchpane and gilt gingerbread, whether Miss Cham 
 pion's color was her own, and the birth of Mrs. 
 Johnson's twins. 
 
 We who are privileged to read Miss Betsy's thoughts 
 may know that day and night she dwelt on the image 
 of the captain, who had won her heart, vowing to 
 herself that if the whole world went against him she 
 would not. 
 
 The last stretch of the road was, as usual, the long 
 est. Lucilla, who had come post, traveling day and 
 night, and paving her way with gold to secure the
 
 96 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 best horses at every stage, was at close of day but 
 just passing into the scattered village of Harlem, 
 when her chariot, that had been dragging slower and 
 slower, came to a full stop. 
 
 "What is the matter?" she cried impulsively, let 
 ting down the glass to put her head out at the 
 window. 
 
 A dismal evening ! After a day of hard rain a fog 
 had crept up from the water to submerge the travel 
 ers, and the footman, appearing from under its gray 
 curtain to answer his lady's call, exuded moisture at 
 every pore. 
 
 " Light the lamps, will you ? " she went on. " I can 
 see nothing. And, pray, why have we stopped ? " 
 
 " It 's the beasts, mistis. They won't budge another 
 step," said the black man patiently, while proceeding 
 to take out of his pocket a tinder-box, and by the help 
 of flint and steel to cast a faint illumination from the 
 lamps into the surrounding gloom. 
 
 " Don't be so stupid, Peter, or I '11 sell you to some 
 one who will teach you better sense. How dare you 
 pretend these horses have broken down ? Tell John 
 Coachman I '11 sell him, too, if he does n't make them 
 go on." 
 
 Peter, grinning at a time-worn threat among her 
 pampered slaves, answered his mistress serenely : 
 
 " Ain't no use telling Coachman, mistis ; it 's jes a 
 fac', the leaders are dead beat, an' the wheelers most 
 as bad. We 've come at a mighty pace, mistis, an' de 
 mud 's been nigh to the hubs in spots. If mistis 'u'd 
 give the order to stop at Marse Tom Clapp's tavern, 
 a little piece beyond here, we might be so lucky as to
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 97 
 
 get fresh bosses that is, if mistis must go on to 
 night." 
 
 "Clapp's Tavern? We are near there?" cried 
 Lucilla. 
 
 " Yes, mistis ; jes a little piece furder on." 
 
 The resignation in Peter's manner did not deceive 
 his mistress. Nor did the hypocritical calm of her 
 maid, Myrtilla, who, gaping and weary, now roused 
 herself from her nap in the cushions opposite to listen 
 to the conversation. Mrs. Warriner well knew that 
 all three of her present body-guard were acquainted 
 with the merits of the famous road-house, whither the 
 pleasure-seekers of Gotham were in the habit of driv 
 ing out for oyster suppers, turtle feasts, and dances at 
 all seasons of the year. More than once had Mrs. 
 Warriner's attendants tasted the quality of its good 
 cheer. " I don't believe a word you say about the 
 horses ! " she exclaimed, thoroughly annoyed. " You 
 are a pack of good-for-naughts, who think of nothing 
 but your suppers." 
 
 " Supper 'd be might' good now, mistis," replied 
 the stolid Peter ; " an' if mistis don' trus' me 'bout the 
 hosses, she 's on'y got to git down an' look at 'em 
 herself." 
 
 Descending to the muddy ground, Lucilla followed 
 Peter's lantern to the front, to find it as he had said. 
 With drooped heads and tails quivering, mired to the 
 middle, a reek of steam arising from their sides, the 
 poor brutes gave plain evidence of their exhausted 
 state. It seemed doubtful that they could pull on as 
 far as Clapp's. 
 
 But amid shouts and adjurations 2rom the men,
 
 98 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 and much cracking of the whip, the heavy chariot 
 again lumbered forward, shortly coming to a halt be 
 fore a long, low building, whose lights shone cheerful 
 to the sight. 
 
 Great was Tom's astonishment and deference when 
 he found what an important passenger the chariot 
 contained. He conducted Madam Warriner through 
 the ordinary, with its pleasant aspect of every day, 
 into the great, bare ball-room, where a fire pf logs 
 was ordered to be kindled on the hearth, then stood 
 before her, his apron swelling with a sense of the 
 honor done his house. To her demand for horses he 
 demurred mournfully; to that for supper for her 
 attendants as joyfully assented. 
 
 "Indeed, ma'am, the best the house affords is at 
 your orders ; and I can back my cook to serve you a 
 dish of broiled oysters and a roast partridge that 
 would give satisfaction to any of the quality. Would 
 you be pleased to have tea, ma'am, or port- wine negus, 
 or a leetle drop of punch Tom Clapp's punch with 
 a whiff of cognac, a dash of old Jamaica, a squeeze 
 of lime-juice, and a slice of Seville orange ? Not for 
 getting the water, though you must have had your 
 full share of that to-day, ma'am. Ho ! ho ! ho ! " 
 
 "I said supper for my servants," interrupted the 
 lady, sharply. " The quicker the better. But horses 
 horses before all. Surely you must have a pair that 
 will take me on to-night." 
 
 " Nothing in the stables at present, I 'm ashamed 
 to say, ma'am. It sha'n't happen again, Madam War 
 riner. There 's just a chance neighbor Simmons 
 may n't have had his nags out to-day. It 's a matter
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 99 
 
 of half a mile over to Simmons's, and I '11 send Ostler 
 straightway. Meanwhile you won't refuse my cook 
 the honor of preparing a bite for you, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Go quickly send quickly bring me some horses 
 quickly, and you may prepare anything you please," 
 said the lady, pacing impatiently back and forth. 
 " But stay, landlord don't hurry off so. You must 
 have later news than I. Has anything been heard 
 about the condition of of the gentleman whom my 
 kinsman, Captain Warriner, was so unfortunate as to 
 wound in an affair of honor recently ? " 
 
 " Surely, ma'am ! " exclaimed Clapp, a light of in 
 telligence breaking upon his puzzled face. " 'T would 
 be only natural for you to feel mortal anxious on that 
 score. Such a fine, noble gentleman as Captain War 
 riner is so free with his money many 's the treat 
 he 's paid for in these rooms and no doubt there 
 was trouble behind it we know naught about. They 
 do say" 
 
 " For heaven's sake, answer my question, and spare 
 me what they say ! Is Captain Hope recovering ? " 
 
 " Captain Hope was alive at last accounts, ma'am, 
 but very low. A party in Italian chaises drove out 
 yesterday for a partridge supper, and, if you '11 be 
 lieve me, ma'am, they brought Billy, the German fid 
 dler, and his goblin wife, tucked away in one of the 
 vehicles. Such a bow as Billy handled yesterday ! 
 It 's never been beat under my roof. The little dwarf 
 outdid himself. They do say, Madam Warriner, that 
 Billy was taught his music by the great Mozart him 
 self. And the dancing such pigeon wings and 
 chasses ! Lord, ma'am, you 're looking ill ! Shall I
 
 100 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 call your black wench for you or my wife 'u'd be 
 proud to wait on you herself " 
 
 "You said Captain Hope was very low ?" she 
 repeated in a terrified whisper. 
 
 " So one of the gentlemen said to the other in my 
 hearing, ma'am. They 've got him in a poor enough 
 house a joiner's in Sweetbrier Lane, near where they 
 fought ; but he 's the best medical skill in the city, 
 and friends are with him, and the gentry are flocking 
 to ask for him all day long. Nobody thinks of aught 
 but Captain Hope's grave situation. That 's not 
 to say Captain Warriner has no friends, Madam 
 Warriner. Just at present he 's keeping out of the 
 way, and nobody knows his whereabouts. But, de 
 pend on it, he '11 get off scot-free. Everybody makes 
 allowance for the hot blood of these buckish young 
 dandies. I would n't take it so to heart, ma'am ; that 
 I would n't. There, her color 's coming back, Lord 
 be praised ! Shall I send the women now ? " 
 
 "Send no one but your man to fetch the horses. 
 Pay any price, and the sooner you get them here the 
 better you, too, shall be paid. Go ! " 
 
 Boniface, eager to communicate some of his varied 
 emotions to curious souls in the coffee-room, ran off at 
 a dog-trot, and Lucilla dropped into a chair before the 
 fire, which had now blazed up smartly, and was 
 diffusing its ruddy glare over the whole room. 
 
 " ' Still living, but very low.' Great heavens, what 
 might not have happened since this was said yester 
 day? Friends were caring for him! Who could 
 have claimed this precious privilege ? " 
 
 If he could only know that she loved him, that the
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 101 
 
 going out of his young life would plunge hers into 
 darkness ! If she mig/it-aary: kneel at JiifT side, win 
 from his dying eyes one 1 l6ok of recognition, press a 
 last kiss upon his lip's i /, ' ; . J J J . \ ,' J . : A 
 
 No matter who looked on, she should not fear to 
 reveal what he was to her. The world with its thou 
 sand tongues, its hydra-headed gossip, was nothing. 
 Only to let him know ! 
 
 Perhaps and a shiver ran through her he was 
 past knowing anything ; it might be he was already 
 Oh ! not that, not that ! In her anguish she sprang 
 upon her feet and looked about her, trying to shake 
 off the ghastly fear. The large, empty room with 
 the narrow mirrors and hunting prints in black 
 frames divided by oil-lamps set in sockets around the 
 walls, the prim benches covered with red moreen, 
 the musicians' dais at one end, the dark floor pol 
 ished by the feet of many dancers how they brought 
 back the day last winter, soon after her first meet 
 ing with Laurence Hope, when they had been together 
 here! 
 
 It was a great sleighing-party that came out from 
 town to find Tom Clapp's tavern warmed from the 
 core by mighty fires, and decked with garlands of 
 spruce and holly. Every one was keyed to hilarity by 
 the drive in crisp air, through a white world, under a 
 sky of dazzling blue. 
 
 Could it be she, Lucilla, this woe- worn creature, 
 who had then led down the middle of the reel with 
 Laurence Hope ? 
 
 She saw herself all in white like the heart of a 
 Lamarck rose, a coif bordered with swan's-down
 
 102 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 upon her proud young head, a laugh upon her lips 
 that seemed fixed tl^ere for kli time. 
 
 When the' dance'* was* proposed, her cousin and 
 Hope hM-s^tartea. together a'cross the room to secure 
 her as a" partner. Hope "had reached her first, and 
 Arnold had fallen back in vexation. On the way in 
 to town she had accorded to Hope the place beside 
 her occupied in going out by Arnold. Her cousin 
 had taken offense, and had not come near her for a 
 week. That was the beginning of their rivalry. 
 
 Pure coquetry possessed her then. Not a thought 
 beyond the hour, and the pride of absorbing the two 
 handsomest men of the party. After that day Lau 
 rence had piqued her by seeming to draw back. She 
 had tried to make him feel her power ; and then with 
 out warning she had felt his power. " Her mind was 
 crowned with him." 
 
 Oh ! to think of his activity laid low ; the heart she 
 had made to quicken by a look or word ceasing to 
 beat ; the hand that had clasped hers warmly growing 
 chill. And all for her ! She could not deceive her 
 self on this point. Arnold's letters had shown her 
 his growing wrath and jealousy of Hope. The dark 
 mystery was why fate had brought the three of them 
 together in this room, only to work out such results. 
 
 Lucilla could not eat the food they brought to her. 
 She drank tea and crumbled bread, chafing at the 
 delay. 
 
 The lapse of what, in those old unhurried days, was 
 really a short time for securing and harnessing new 
 horses, seemed to her an eternity. 
 
 Through the night, onward ! The mist from the
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 103 
 
 river deepened until all save a few yards on either 
 side and ahead of the chariot-lamps was swathed in 
 gray. The men on the box, recognizing the spirit 
 that impelled them from within, and warmed by tank 
 ards of Tom's ale after a liberal supper, urged the 
 horses to their best speed, never heeding what might 
 be in the Way. Up hill, down dale, the coach rocked, 
 plunging through mire and water, and taking stones 
 with absolute impartiality. 
 
 Past mansion and cottage locked in the silence of 
 the fog, along the highroad from Boston, over the 
 Kissing Bridge at Old Wreck Brook, past the poor- 
 house, the negro burying-ground, the pot-bakers, tan- 
 yard, ropewalk, and Jews' graveyard. John Coach 
 man did not permit himself a word to his colleague 
 till, with a grunt of satisfaction, he drew up at last 
 before the Dog and Duck tavern, at the beginning of 
 the Bowery. 
 
 " We 's alive, Peter," was then his utterance. 
 
 The landlord of the Dog and Duck, bustling out to 
 the rencounter of customers on this dripping evening, 
 was, as it happened, an ex-soldier of Hope's war regi 
 ment. Lucilla, knowing this fact from Hope himself, 
 had ordered a stop there, in the belief she would re 
 ceive definite news from the invalid. 
 
 " No worse, thank God, but not to say better ; his 
 life hanging on a thread," answered the man, saluting 
 to the inquiries from a lovely ghost who hung out of 
 the coach window, looking as if she would devour 
 him with her eyes. " 'T was to one Adamson's, a 
 joiner, they took him first, and there he lies still, poor 
 gentleman. 'T is in Sweetbrier Lane, madam, a little
 
 104 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 distance from the old City Hospital, behind which 
 they fought in an orchard so overgrown 't was a hid 
 ing-place none suspected. If the captain dies the 
 world and the service will be the losers, for a braver, 
 nobler young officer I never served under though he 
 but a lad then, and I with gray hairs coming at the 
 time." 
 
 " Oh, thank you, my good man ! " she cried fer 
 vently, putting a shining object in his hand. " You 
 are very good, and I think you keep the nicest tavern 
 on this road. To Sweetbrier Lane, Peter; and tell 
 Coachman to try if he cannot drive a little fast." 
 
 The gold in his palm, from which he turned to 
 stare after the departing chariot, convinced Corporal 
 Stubbs, late of the Continental Line, that he was not 
 bewitched. Narrating the incident to his wife, she 
 called him a fool not to have seen how matters were 
 from the first : of course 't was the captain's intended ; 
 and she 'd thank Stubbs to hand that guinea over to 
 her for safe-keeping before he should spend it on any 
 old loafer that might come limping along declaring 
 himself a veteran of the war. 
 
 Inside her mud-bespattered coach Lucilla cowered, 
 striving for strength to encounter what might be to 
 come. She thought nothing of fatigue, hunger, the 
 ordeal of the journey. Every feeling was merged 
 into intense present anxiety. And now the lanterns 
 of the town, swinging at intervals upon ropes stretched 
 before the houses, peered at them dimly through the 
 fog. They passed quiet little homes, whose inmates 
 had already gone to rest; Dogberrys prowling moist 
 and solitary, who gazed after them in astonishment
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 105 
 
 at the apparition ; and so to the quarter designated by 
 the landlord of the Dog and Duck. 
 
 It was a modest suburb, given over to the dwellings 
 of artisans, who esteemed themselves fortunate in 
 possessing one of its small, detached cottages set in 
 gardens on either side of an unpaved country road. 
 At the turn into Sweetbrier Lane a smithy in full 
 blast threw a red glare upon the way, making it 
 harder for the horses to plunge into the Stygian 
 darkness beyond. They came finally to a halt before 
 the only dwelling wherein there was a light. 
 
 And to this humble refuge had her beloved come ? 
 Poor Lucilla, stumbling between the wet bushes of a 
 little path under Peter's escort, felt as if she were 
 wandering in a dream. The sound of their footsteps 
 startled from his attitude of utter despondency a man 
 sitting on a bench in the shelter of an arbor of vines 
 built as a canopy for the door-stone. As he got up 
 with a dazed air, Lucilla uttered a stifled cry : 
 
 " Arnold ! you here ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is I, Lucilla. Don't shrink from me, please ; 
 I am miserable enough, God knows. I have been 
 coming here secretly and waiting these three nights 
 past to see to see what my sentence is to be. I could 
 not breathe in that little room inside, hearing the 
 clock tick and the noises overhead. Lucilla, would 
 you mind if I come in with you now ? It is cold, and 
 my clothes are wet." 
 
 "How is he?" she asked, trying to keep the shud 
 der out of her voice. 
 
 " Quiet for the last hour, and that gives hope. If 
 he lives, 't will be thanks to his glorious little nurse.
 
 106 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 And Adamson there are no words for his pluck and 
 unselfishness about the whole affair. He feels for 
 me, Lucilla, if you can't. He has given me leave to 
 come and go in his house as I will. See, the door is 
 on the latch, and we may go in. Now and again they 
 come down to tell me how he is. If you could bear 
 to be alone with me, send your servants back, and we 
 will watch together. But you are tired ; you have 
 traveled far. Will you not rather go home, and let me 
 see that you have the first news of a change ? " 
 
 " When I came post from the Manor just to be near 
 him ? " she said, tightening her lips. 
 
 As they stepped indoors, his dress, brushing hers, 
 drew from her a movement of repulsion that Arnold 
 did not miss. The faint light from a single taper in 
 a saucer of fragrant bay-berry wax upon the mantel 
 shelf showed each the other's face hers pale, care 
 worn, his haggard, pleading, wretched. His dis 
 colored clothes were saturated with dampness, his 
 eyes heavy for want of sleep, his expression that of 
 one on the verge of extremity. 
 
 "Lucilla, don't turn from me. If I never have 
 another chance, let me tell you here and now that, 
 before God, I did not mean to kill him. My hand 
 wavered when I saw he would not aim at me, and a 
 cloud came over my brain. I saw myself as I was, 
 and confusion filled my heart. I was totally unnerved 
 when I fired the fatal shot. Lucilla, Adamson believes 
 me ; and he loves Hope like a brother. If the worst 
 comes to the worst, I am prepared to make atonement 
 by giving my own poor life. Should he die to-night I 
 shall not be living by to-morrow."
 
 IN OLD NEW YOEK 107 
 
 " Arnold, is that the part of a brave man ? " she 
 said, a sense of pity coming into her aching heart. 
 " Will you not promise me to dismiss such terrible 
 thoughts from your mind, and, if it is as you say, to 
 try rather to live down your misfortune ? " 
 
 " I can no longer judge between right and wrong. 
 My misery has left me weak and dizzy. For days to 
 have wandered like Cain, hiding from the sight of 
 men, knowing I had lost you forever, and carrying 
 this awful weight" 
 
 " I feel for you, Arnold, truly," she replied, stretch 
 ing out her hand. 
 
 He would not take it, but fell on his knees beside 
 her, clutching at the hem of her garment and crying 
 like a child. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Lucilla, starting suddenly, a rush of 
 color coming into her cheeks. 
 
 There was a sound of footsteps on the narrow stairs. 
 A man whom Lucilla did not know came into the room, 
 and, seeing her, stopped in astonishment, looking from 
 her to Arnold, who had risen and turned away his face. 
 
 " I am Mrs. Warriner," explained the lady, with all 
 her stately grace. " It has been very painful to come 
 and find my cousin here, as you may know. But oh, 
 speak ! you have news ; tell me no, no, don't ; I can't 
 bear it yet, if it 's not good. Tell me only that he 
 that he-" 
 
 11 He will live ! " said another voice, as Lucilla's was 
 choked with tears. It was Eve who spoke, coming 
 out of the shadow of the little entry to be among 
 them Eve, pale and worn, and the light of a great 
 joy on her face.
 
 108 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 In her moment of supreme relief, Lucilla was con 
 scious of a new, dull pain. 
 
 " He is sleeping sweetly, and the fever is all gone," 
 went on the girl, joyfully, " and the physicians have 
 told us that if this were so to-night he will get well." 
 
 Arnold Warriner, shaking like a leaf, turned and 
 strode from the room, followed by Adamson. 
 
 " And now that you are here," added Eve, with ex 
 quisite self-effacement, " he will do even better soon. 
 If he should wake and find you near, instead of Luke 
 and me, it would seem like heaven to him. Since the 
 first he has thought of you, called for you, till my 
 heart ached because I could n't satisfy him. Ah, 
 madam, should you need assurance, believe me, 't is 
 you only and always that have possessed his love." 
 
 " This from you ! " stammered Lucilla, wondering. 
 "You, whose happiness it was to come first to him 
 when he fell whose right it is to stay by him in this 
 house" 
 
 " It was my happiness to be of service to the child 
 of my dearest friends and benefactors. And I have 
 the right to remain in this house," she went on, her 
 voice breaking, but holding her head bravely aloft, 
 " because I am its owner's wife." 
 
 The words were scarce uttered when Lucilla, born 
 again to radiant happiness and love and beauty, 
 threw her fair arms around the other's neck and 
 clasped her to her breast. 
 
 " Married married to another man ! And I could 
 so misjudge you as to think you wanted him ! Oh ! I 
 have been so afraid of you, have so dreaded lest you 
 should some day draw him away from me ! But I see
 
 IN OLD NEW YORK 103 
 
 now how, as usual, I have done wrong ; I see that you 
 are an angel of good news ; and since you have saved 
 him for me, I could go down on my knees to thank you 
 and ask your pardon. Let me be your friend, your 
 sister. Bring your good husband back again, that I 
 may kiss his hand and bless him for his goodness to 
 my Laurence. For mine he is. I shall win him to full 
 health, and make his life a glory with my love. 
 
 " What ! crying now, dear soul, when all is well ? 
 Fie ! you and I must smile together, and I must save 
 your strength and let you rest. Go, find my cousin 
 bid him take my coach and servants and use my house 
 as his own, and say I shall stay here. If you '11 have 
 me, that is and you won't turn me out, will you? 
 me that have come so far ? And then take me to him. 
 Never fear I '11 disturb him. I '11 nurse him gently as 
 I would a cradled babe. Ah, I can't wait ; take me to 
 him quick, quick, quick ! " 
 
 Eve bowed her head. She could not trust herself 
 to answer, now that her sacrifice was made complete. 
 She could not tell Lucilla that she had married Luke 
 the morning after the duel married Luke because 
 otherwise there would have been no chance for her to 
 be with Laurence and give him her hourly care. 
 
 Presently, hand in hand, the two women went up 
 the stairs.
 
 PART II 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY
 
 PART II 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 
 
 EX ADAMSON sat after dinner with 
 his father on the first evening of his 
 return from a voyage around the world. 
 It had been bitter weather on the North 
 Atlantic a succession of storms strew 
 ing the home coast with wrecks, and sending many 
 a ship adrift at the mercy of the waters, to be heard 
 from days afterward, or never. 
 
 Rex had enjoyed the distinction of steaming up 
 New York Bay in a huge ocean liner completely 
 sheathed in ice, her decks and rigging looking as if 
 hewn from Pentelic marble, rosy with morning sun 
 a sight of a lifetime for the eyes waiting her on shore 
 to greet her arrival. 
 
 His father had been among those who had more or 
 less reason to welcome home passengers thus deliv 
 ered from the perils of the deep. Rex had never be 
 fore seen in the paternal countenance, as viewed from 
 the deck while the ship was pulling in beside her pier, 
 the look of yearning of a parent for his beloved off 
 spring. 
 
 8 113
 
 114 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 It made Rex feel rather uncomfortable and shy. 
 He could hardly believe that the usually shrewd and 
 unemotional face of Job Adamson, the famous finan 
 cier, was drawn into lines resembling that of an old 
 woman about to cry. But the shabby old derby hat 
 tilted backward, the rusty overcoat, and hands covered 
 with woolen mittens garments that among New- 
 Yorkers of the business world had long inspired an 
 appreciative sense of a power that was fairly rever 
 encedleft no doubt of Job's identity. 
 
 "The old boy is cut up since my poor mother's 
 death," thought the son though he was ashamed to 
 consider the phenomenon with a feeling so imper 
 sonal. " How strange, when they were always spar 
 ring over her ambitious schemes for me ! The ques 
 tion is, am I glad she carried her point, and gave me 
 every advantage of foreign training and wide ac 
 quaintance ? Hum ! Can't answer yet, till I 've been 
 shaken into place a bit. Jove ! I 'd forgotten what a 
 queer outfit the pater wears. And he looks shriveled, 
 somehow. Who 'd believe they 'd kotow to me on ac 
 count of his name, in all sorts of odd corners of the 
 globe ? 
 
 "He 's not written me a line in six months only 
 cabled to acknowledge my letters. Well, if he does 
 care, there '11 be one more to welcome me than I ex 
 pected on Columbia's shores, since Jack 's out West. 
 Bru-r-r ! Cold as Greenland, and looks like it, too. 
 What a snowfall they 've had ! No wonder all those 
 people huddled down there seem frozen up and life 
 less." 
 
 When Rex walked down the gang-plank, for the
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 115 
 
 first time in his recollection his father smiled as he 
 shook his hand. 
 
 " I 'm glad you 're all right," said the elder, briefly. 
 "There was a meeting of the directors of Y. & Z. 
 Company this morning, but I excused myself and 
 left them to come down to meet you. You '11 get up 
 to the house alone, I suppose, unless you want to 
 stop at your club for luncheon ? I '11 join you at din 
 ner-time. Bad trip, was n't it ? " 
 
 "The toughest I ever made. The waves regular 
 corkers, looked sixty feet high, and she cutting right 
 through the crest of 'em. For three days the water 
 poured over the decks like a mill-race. But she be 
 haved like a duck, bless her ; and here we are. Very 
 good of you, sir, to take the trouble to meet me. As 
 soon as I can get my luggage out of the maw of your 
 customs officials, I '11 be off to see your new palace. 
 It '11 be like a fairy-tale, I 'm sure the way Americans 
 always do things." 
 
 " ' Your ' customs why did n't you say ' you Ameri 
 cans,' Rex ? " asked the older man, peevishly. 
 
 " Never mind, father ; I '11 get straight in a day or 
 two," said Rex, good-humoredly. He recognized a 
 reproof dating from his first return from an English 
 university, whither his mother had insisted upon his 
 going. 
 
 As he drove in a cab up-town through blizzard- 
 smitten streets, between banks of high-piled snow, 
 along house-fronts fringed at top with drooping white 
 mantles, Rex whistled in astonishment at the desolate 
 appearance of the city of his nativity. He felt as 
 forlorn as Macaulay's New-Zealander on the ruins of
 
 116 THE CIRCLE OP A CENTURY 
 
 London Bridge. But in Fifth Avenue there "was a 
 semblance of returning life, and his spirits began to 
 rise. 
 
 Eastward of Central Park the cab came to a final 
 halt in its toilsome progress before the portal of one 
 of the lordliest of the many palaces in that locality 
 a dwelling from which upholsterers with their step- 
 ladders and hammers, and delayed decorators, had 
 not yet fled. 
 
 " By Jove ! " thought the young man, as he followed 
 the new butler and footman inside the spacious, mel 
 low-tinted hall. " The thing 's actually well done." 
 
 He had found reason to repeat this eulogy more 
 than once before the servants, withdrawing after 
 dinner, left the two men to themselves. The slaves 
 of the lamp that in former days were so difficult to 
 secure in New York, no matter what the money paid, 
 had come at the call of an expert housekeeper and 
 butler, both of English origin, to supply his every 
 want. Remembering the old house farther down the 
 avenue, wherein his mother had fussed over incapable 
 domestics during all his visits home, Rex could hardly 
 refrain from expressing his glad astonishment at this 
 reform. But he thought it better to take the whole 
 business of translation into new splendor as a matter 
 of course, until his father should choose to invite his 
 comments. 
 
 The great room, arranged for a girdle of electricity 
 above the pictures, was now left in shadow, save for a 
 few side-lights and the gleam of candles on the round 
 table that stood like an island of snow in a sea of 
 Turkey rugs, aided by the flicker from logs burning
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 117 
 
 in a deep hearth underneath a fine old carved mantel 
 piece, carried off bodily from an impoverished schloss 
 in Germany. 
 
 All over the place Rex had been running upon 
 spoils of the Old World assembled with marvelous 
 cleverness to deck this mansion of an American who 
 did not know a Gobelin tapestry from a landscape rug 
 woven in Connecticut. Pictures, books, carvings, ar 
 mor, lacquers, bronzes, floor-coverings, walls, and fur 
 niture were eminently well chosen and well brought 
 together. Only the drawing-rooms, boudoir, and an 
 up-stairs sitting-room were left partly in the rough, 
 with the doors closed on them, which Rex had noted 
 with a shrug and smile. 
 
 " I 'm glad you like the house," said his father, under 
 the exhilaration of three glasses of iced water drunk 
 during dinner and a cup of black coffee afterward. 
 "I had the best man there is, and told him to go 
 ahead and do it as if he meant to move in here him 
 self. I guess that put him on his mettle. I had 
 nothing to do but sign the checks, luckily. This last 
 has been 'bout as busy a year as I remember." 
 
 " There must have been a good lot of your auto 
 graphs sent out," said Rex, indifferently. 
 
 "Well, I guess the year's work has paid for it," 
 answered his father, the muscles around his mouth 
 relaxing faintly. "I promised her I 'd do the thing 
 in style, and it seems I have." 
 
 " You have, certainly, and I congratulate you. Poor 
 mother ! I wish she could have lived to see it ! She 
 was a woman of such boundless energy, I can't think 
 of her as forever still. y
 
 118 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 " She was a good wife to me, and a good mother 
 to you, though there were some mistakes that never 
 can be righted. If the others had lived it would n't 
 ha' mattered so much, but I 've no stock in a name 
 like Reginald. Lukes and Jobs and Johns and 
 Samuels we 've had a-plenty since the first of us 
 settled in America; and I carried my point 'bout 
 naming the four boys born before you. But Mis' 
 Adamson your mother, I should say wa'n't lucky 
 in raising any of her children past babyhood, till you 
 came along. Then she would n't have any of the old 
 names used over again for the child of our middle 
 age. Said 't would be tempting Providence. And I let 
 her have her way. Reginald ! I declare, I'm sometimes 
 ashamed to write it in a check." 
 
 Rex, accustomed to the old grievance, laughed aloud 
 a hearty, boyish laugh that did him good, and in 
 sensibly brightened his father's fretful face. 
 
 " So long as your feelings don't compel you to with 
 hold that kind act altogether, I'll get along, father. 
 And as to the name it 's linked to, I sometimes think 
 you 'd be more forbearing with foreign countries if 
 you could see what weight that carries everywhere 
 with people who read newspapers and can appreciate 
 honorable success. True, it 's nearly ruined me some 
 times, by turning all the harpies on me, in good so 
 ciety and out of it. Do you know, sir, I can't get 
 anybody to believe you 've never crossed the sea ? " 
 
 " America 's good enough for me," replied Mr. 
 Adamson, a smile visible only in a few additional 
 wrinkles around his eyes. " I did n't care a continen 
 tal 'bout a new house for myself. But 't was her plan.
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 119 
 
 She wanted I should build it against the time you got 
 tired of roving and came home to settle down. She 'd 
 have come out in fine society, no doubt. Mis' Adam- 
 son your mother, I should say was a powerful am 
 bitious woman, in some ways. I felt sort of driven 
 to get it done before you got here. Perhaps I wa'n't 
 always what she deserved to have me be." 
 
 " Your architect brought conscience to his work," 
 said the young man, looking about him critically. 
 " I might as well own up I expected to have my teeth 
 set on edge, remembering that other poor, dear, awful 
 old shanty of ours." 
 
 " 'T was a fine house in its day," answered Job. 
 " She always said we 'd educated you above our tastes, 
 and she wanted we should try and catch up with you. 
 This one is nice enough, I s'pose, but too darned big. 
 I 've given up trying to sleep in the room they fixed 
 up for me, and have got an iron bedstead in the dress 
 ing-room. The library 's 'bout the best of the bunch, 
 to my thinking. I sit there of a morning to read my 
 newspaper before I go down-town in that window 
 where the sun comes in. Sometimes I doze in there 
 of an evening, or play solitaire before I go to bed. 
 Your mother and I used to play cribbage together of 
 an evening." 
 
 " Poor old dad, this house is too big for you alone ! " 
 said the son, with an impulse of sympathy. " Now 
 I 'm home for good, we must try to brighten it." 
 
 " It 's to be yours when you marry, Rex ; and then 
 I '11 get out and go back to the old one. They wanted 
 me to let that, but I would n't. I 've kept every stick 
 of the furniture as it was, and left a man and his
 
 120 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 wife to care for it, just as if I were going to step in 
 any day." 
 
 " It 7 11 be a long time before you step out of here, 
 old gentleman ! " exclaimed Rex, who was not a lady's 
 man, and had, as suggested, so far successfully eluded 
 all efforts to constrain his freedom from mothers and 
 daughters in two hemispheres, to say nothing of 
 widows on shipboard and all manner of women to 
 whom the name of Adamson and American millions 
 were synonymous. 
 
 " Father, speaking of names, have you no record 
 of your progenitors? Not that it makes the least 
 difference to me to have anybody behind me except 
 you and my splendid old grandsire, whose portrait 
 I 'm glad to see you have hung out yonder in the hall. 
 His was an astonishing personality. Fellows whom 
 I tell about him won't believe how he made his pile 
 from sheer sagacity and mastery of men. He knew 
 how to choose his tools better than any one I ever 
 heard of. There must have been something in his 
 veins that came down to him from earlier sources 
 some strong woman, probably ; and I 'd like to make 
 her acquaintance, even now." 
 
 " It 's little I know 'bout 'em," replied Job, reflec 
 tively. " My father, as you know well, was too busy 
 a man to talk much, and he put me to business just 
 as soon as I was out of school. All he ever told me 
 was his people had moved out of New York city 
 down into Long Island when he was a kid, the last 
 to survive out of their family of five sons. Queer 
 there ain't ever been more 'n one son to a generation 
 of us that reached middle life. They were North of
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 121 
 
 Ireland folks. I know that. And there 's a family 
 Bible that turned up when we were moving that 7 s 
 got all their names and dates. My father was Samuel, 
 his father was Luke, and my name came from a great 
 grandfather named Job Watson. 
 
 "When I was a little shaver, I remember well 
 father taking me down to spend Sundays with my 
 grandmother on Long Island ; but she died when I was 
 still a boy, and that was the end of 7 em. Her husband, 
 Luke Adamson, was a master builder in New York 
 when 't was the seat of government, and after ; and 
 he laid up a good sum of money for those days ; but 
 they lost one child after another, just like us, and 
 moved to the country to try to save my father, so he 
 always said. You hit the nail on the head, Rex, when 
 you said there was a strong woman behind us. Take 
 her all in all, I don't believe there was ever such 
 another as my grandmother Adamson." 
 
 ^ What was her Christian name ? " asked Rex, 
 wondering at his own late-found interest in these 
 questions of genealogy. 
 
 " The name of the mother of all humanity plain 
 Eve ; though she was anything but plain. As I re 
 member the old lady, she 'd been a widow for some 
 years, but was dressed always in gray, with a kind er 
 crimped white cap. Her face at seventy-odd was as 
 near like an angel's as ever I expect to see one, and 
 her hair high-colored reddish, her step as light and 
 her back as straight as a girl's. My mother was 
 jealous of her, I reckon, as there wa'n't much socia 
 bility between ; em. My mother was a cl'ar-grit Yan 
 kee girl from Massachusetts ; a fine woman, but shut
 
 122 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 up in herself. Father did n't get to see grandmother 
 as often as he 'd ha' liked. But she 'd plenty to do, 
 sick-nursing and missionarying her neighbors, and 
 entertaining the elders of her church. There was 
 a room set aside for them, kept white as a lily, 
 sir. I was always afraid to set foot across the sill. 
 You won't laugh, Rex, if I tell you I bought back 
 that little house last year, and am getting it repaired 
 and fenced in, to keep in memory of her." 
 
 " I like my great-grandmother Eve. Tell me some 
 more of her," said the young man, surprised by the 
 flush of interest in the speaker's parchment face. 
 
 " Father always said she 'd taught him honesty and 
 justice first, then to be brisk and act when the mo 
 ment came. She 'd more common sense than any 
 woman he ever saw, he said, and an A 1 temper 
 (which my mother had n't), but was never over-gay. 
 Sort of sad, and no end pious and particular, you 'd 
 think. He 'd never been let set foot in a theater, 
 and would n't touch a card. She 's buried down yon 
 der in the little graveyard at Chinquasset Cove, and 
 last year I put a monument over her as high as my 
 wife's the best money could buy. 
 
 "You see, when a man comes to my time of life, 
 and is living all alone, he begins to think of these 
 kind of things, Eex. I never was much of a one for 
 sentimental notions ; but nowadays sometimes this 
 last night or two especially, when the storm was 
 raging and I was thinking about your ship" 
 
 He stopped, and took another sip of water from a 
 carafe left at his hand. Rex did not say a word, 
 greatly to Job's relief.
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 123 
 
 "I s'pose if those good folks could look in on us 
 now they 'd wonder," Mr. Adamson resumed. " They 
 thought themselves mightily set up with a sitting- 
 room and best bedroom over and above the wants of 
 the family. Father said his mother kept her house 
 like honeycomb; and I never walk along West 
 Twenty-third Street and smell that lavender the 
 peddlers sell on trays without thinking, somehow, 
 of my grandma. There, now, boy, I 've told you 
 all I know. Some day we '11 get out the family Bible 
 and have a regular orgy of ancestors and dates. Say, 
 Rex, d' ye know some of these Revolutionary so 
 cieties were after me, the other day, to become a 
 member? Think they 'd be satisfied with grand 
 father Luke and great-grandfather Job as my contri 
 butions ? No, sir ! I rather beg to be excused. No 
 pretense about me. I 'm satisfied to be Samuel L. 
 Adamson's son and representative. The fortune my 
 father left me I Ve doubled and trebled, but I Ve 
 never put on frills." 
 
 ''The L stood for Laurence, did n't it, in my 
 grandfather's name? Now, why in the dickens 
 did n't you dub me that instead of your hated 
 Reginald? And, by the way, where did the Lau 
 rences come into our family annals ? " 
 
 "It 's a queer thing. I asked father the same ques 
 tion once, and he told me it was given him in recol 
 lection of one of his mother's ' earliest and dearest 
 friends.' Those were her very 'words when he in 
 quired of her, as boys will, where he got his middle 
 name." 
 
 " That reminds me," exclaimed Rex, rebounding to
 
 124 THE CIECLE OP A CENTUEY 
 
 the present, " that a man came over in the ship with 
 me a capital young fellow named Laurence Hope. 
 He 's in Hartley, Lauder & Odenheimer's law firm, 
 and they sent him across the ocean to question a 
 fellow they wanted to get as a witness in the Spang 
 will case, and had failed to find in this country. 
 Hope spent only three days on the other side, found 
 his man in a hunting-box at Melton Mowbray, got an 
 interview with him, and returned. I asked him 
 once when the steamer was alternately standing on 
 her head and carrying it high in air in the midst of 
 our worst gale, and we were all battened down below 
 what he thought of the Spang will case ; and he 
 told me to go to thunder. I don't know when I 've 
 met anybody I liked so much on short acquaintance 
 as that lad. Who are they, do you know? I 'm 
 awfully behind on my New York." 
 
 "They 've put a 'Social Register 'on the library 
 table," answered his father, dryly ; " and I think it '11 
 be better worth your while to study that, and leave 
 the family Bible be. Seems to me I 've heard of the 
 Hopes somewhere, though." 
 
 " It appears they live in an old-fashioned house in 
 an old-fashioned quarter some ' Place ' or other, of 
 which the name escapes me. I should judge they are 
 rather poorish ; and I know there 's a pretty sister, 
 for he showed me her photograph one day on the 
 Banks when it was blowing holy Moses, and we were 
 trying to hang on by our eyelids in the smoke-room. 
 And he knows Jack Warriner. Confound it, I wish 
 old Jack were in town ! " 
 
 At this moment the butler, returning on tiptoes
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 125 
 
 with a confidential air, announced that Mr. John 
 Warriner had called, and wished to know whether 
 Mr. Rex could see him now, or should he come back 
 later. 
 
 " Come back later ? Great snakes, tell him to come 
 in here!" cried Rex, delighted. "Father, this is 
 the best luck I 've struck. No, don't run away, please, 
 if you won't be bored with our talk oh, I forgot; 
 Jack 's always been in your black books, has n't he?" 
 
 "I 've no use for him, sir, no use," answered the 
 great man, putting his hands together behind him in 
 a characteristic attitude and looking obstinate. 
 
 " You think he was my evil genius at Oxford, and 
 all that ? But there 's no harm in Jack, I '11 swear ; 
 and a more delightful fellow never drew breath. 
 Since they 've lost all their money it 's been hard for 
 him to keep along, and he 's had to try different 
 trades. But you must remember my poor mother 
 had a great fancy for his sister, and never failed to 
 urge on me to try to win Miss Euphrosyne for a 
 bride." 
 
 " Mis' Adamson your mother, I mean had some 
 notions I never understood," said that lady's relict. 
 " One of 'em was wanting to hitch our wagon on to 
 some one of 'old colonial stock.' Who cares for 
 colonial stock, anyhow?" 
 
 "So long as he holds your number of shares in 
 Standard Oil," replied Rex, laughing, " I suppose, no 
 body. But do stop and shake hands with Jack, sir, 
 and I '11 take him off to my own den up-stairs. Capi 
 tal quarters, those you 've got for me. And I say, 
 father, would n't it be as well not to forget to inquire
 
 126 THE CIKCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 for Miss Euphrosyne ? Hope tells me she 's studying 
 to be a trained nurse. You know my mother was 
 really fond of her." 
 
 But Job, after the unwonted expansion of his retro 
 spective mood, had now relapsed into his gray, shy, 
 customary self, and was gliding out by another door 
 as the butler ushered in the object of his dislike. 
 
 To a casual observer young Warriner was certainly 
 a pleasing semblance of a man. Women admired his 
 tall, erect figure, straight features, the bloom of a girl 
 upon his olive cheeks, and what they called his " look 
 of race." Men satirized Jack's female devotees, but 
 were as closely drawn to him by a certain manly 
 quality in his make-up. He was an athlete of renown, 
 a good sailor, horseman, golfer, dancer, and everything 
 requiring active skill and daring. 
 
 Every now and then, in his checkered career, Jack 
 would go under and disappear from the sight of his 
 friends ; it was understood that the demon of drink 
 had him in his clutches ; and then the world's trumpet 
 cried him outside the pale. But again, unexpectedly, 
 he would turn up, handsome, debonair, with clear 
 eyes and rosy cheeks, and people asked each other 
 how could such things as they had heard be true ; 
 and Jack would step into his old place with a beam 
 ing smile, and all would be forgiven -till next time. 
 
 Rex, who had met him first at Oxford, felt Jack's 
 fascination keenly, and had surrendered without a 
 protest. He had since befriended him in a thousand 
 ways had taken him off for cruises in Job Adam- 
 son's famous yacht, that otherwise would have re 
 mained out of commission ; for shooting expeditions
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 127 
 
 in the great West, crossing the continent in Job 
 Adamson's special directors' car; and would have 
 invited him to be his guest in the recent circuit of 
 the globe, but for Job's positive refusal to give the 
 scheme his sanction. 
 
 The Warriners were old New-Yorkers, long of the 
 steady, solvent variety. For years they had lived in 
 an ancestral mansion sorely jostled by down-town 
 trade, and kept their hold upon New York society. 
 During the period after the" war between the States, 
 when shoddy aristocracy first came to the fore, the 
 Warriners were still in a position to arch their eye 
 brows at the mention of any prominent new-comer 
 whose pedigree had yet to be brought out of chaos 
 into form and substance. In fact, as Job Adamson 
 had once been heard to say, they were " little tin 
 gods on wheels." 
 
 The present incumbents of the family honors were 
 the widow of the late ruling Warriner who had died 
 insolvent years back, her son and daughters three. 
 The son we have just seen enter Mr. Adamson's 
 dining-room. The eldest girl, straightforward and 
 rather " intense," had cut loose from her mama and 
 gone to study the fine art of nursing in the grand 
 new St. Jude's Hospital on the Riverside Drive. The 
 second girl, Emily, was a handsome devotee of fashion, 
 which, as she could now no longer enjoy it from the 
 top, she was content to take from any quarter acces 
 sible below the apex of the pile. 
 
 Mrs. Warriner, herself a blue-blooded personage 
 with a high nose and dissatisfied expression, had been 
 obliged since her widowhood to struggle hard to
 
 128 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 keep her children supplied with the means of living. 
 She and the girls had moved out of the old house, 
 now occupied by a Society of Occult Sciences on the 
 ground floor, a bookbindery, a tailor, and a Swedish 
 masseur higher up. The only niche known to belong 
 to this once dominant family in the city of their birth 
 was a flat up-town, pinched as to entryways, and with 
 barely space for beds in its chambers, but rejoicing in 
 an elevator and in servitors with buttony attire. 
 
 Miss Bessie Warriner, youngest of the three dam 
 sels, and not so confirmed in worldly observance as 
 her mother would have liked, was a pleasant little 
 body, good to look at, but not pretty. She had been 
 christened " Betsy" after some long gone grand 
 mother, and now threatened to take back the nomen 
 clature discarded by her mother in her infancy, and 
 adopt the profession of conducting pet dogs out to 
 walk. 
 
 "Betsy Warriner, spinster, and likely so to remain, will 
 be pleased to take engagements for the daily exercise of ca 
 nines belonging to the Four Hundred. N. B. Great Danes 
 preferred. 
 
 " How would that look, mummy, in the daily pa 
 pers ? " the young woman had inquired. " You know 
 it is really quite chic to earn one's money nowadays. 
 And I believe that vocation would develop my latent 
 genius as nothing else could do. I have thought over 
 every other conceivable branch of industry." 
 
 " Bessie, you are impossible," said the wan mother, 
 who had been lying broad awake half the night before, 
 plotting how to secure for her daughters new dresses 
 for a coming ball, as well as to provide a certain sum
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 129 
 
 Jack had told her he must have by the end of the 
 month or be " irrevocably squashed ! " She got no 
 credit for it from her offspring, no sympathy from 
 her friends, who thought she had much better throw 
 up the sponge and go somewhere to live in the prov 
 inces, or, better still, in respectable vacuity abroad. 
 
 Mrs. Warriner did not want to go abroad. She 
 loved New York, she believed in it, clung to its tradi 
 tions, tried desperately to keep her place and her 
 children's in its esteem ; but year by year the tide had 
 swelled more strongly against her. She would soon 
 be overborne and carried out to sea. How was it 
 possible for her little frail earthen pots to go on 
 much longer in company with those made of iron but 
 overlaid with gold ? 
 
 She saw disaster ahead, and shuddered, but deter 
 mined to keep on while she might. Perhaps Emily 
 would marry ; perhaps Jack would reform, and win 
 for himself an heiress, of whom there was, dear knows, 
 always a supply cropping up. Jack, her beautiful, 
 winning Jack, could, in her opinion, once have mar 
 ried whom he chose. But Jack had not chosen. He 
 laughed at his chances, took no notice of women whom 
 Mrs. Warriner considered had actually thrown them 
 selves at his head. She had a horrible, heart-sicken 
 ing fear that Jack was secretly smitten with the most 
 detrimental person of her acquaintance a mere child 
 a chit just out of the nursery of another old 
 family, reduced like themselves, just about to make 
 her appearance in society ; and, worse still, she feared 
 the chit was in love with Jack. 
 
 When, earlier that winter, Jack had formed a busi 
 ness alliance with an artistic photographer (in the
 
 130 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 exercise of the one paying accomplishment Mr. War- 
 riner possessed), and had been sent to a Western city 
 to establish a branch studio, his mother had heaved a 
 great sigh of relief. 
 
 But alas ! Jack had soon written her that he had 
 had a blooming row with the Johnnie who considered 
 himself his boss; next, that the rows were increas 
 ing ; lastly, that he 'd thrown up the whole business 
 and was coming home. 
 
 And now he had come home Bessie flying into his 
 arms with every expression of artless rapture, Emily 
 looking at him with shut lips and coldly contemptuous 
 eyes, his poor mother kissing him with blank despair 
 in her heart. For the seventy-and-seventh time it 
 was all to begin again. 
 
 Jack assured her, when they were alone, that he 
 had timed his return to welcome home the best friend 
 he ever had Rex Adamson, who was now about to 
 settle in business of some kind, and would surely put 
 him into a berth. With the utmost good humor he 
 rallied his mother upon the failure of her previous 
 projects to bring about a match between Euphrosyne 
 and Job Adamson's heir; told her that while there 
 was life there was hope in that respect ; and swore by 
 all that was holy that, with Rex's help, he meant to 
 turn over an entirely new leaf, work hard, rake in the 
 dollars, and make the Warriners again hold their 
 heads up with the best. 
 
 When he left her to go to call on Rex, Mrs. Warri- 
 ner sat bolt upright with a new apprehension. Was 
 Jack doing all this for the sake of that little pauper, 
 Lucy Hope?
 
 II 
 
 ES; Jack Warriner was a very pleas 
 ing figure of a man. Adamson, who 
 jumped up to meet him and pump- 
 handled his arm with enthusiastic 
 welcome, felt his blood warm at sight 
 of him. Jack declining even a sip of cognac or green 
 mint, but accepting a cigar, the two went off by 
 means of Job Adamson' s private lift (which he never 
 used) to the airy top story of the house, wherein Rex 
 had insisted upon having his own quarters fitted up. 
 So long had Jack been accustomed to enjoy the best 
 externals of life through others, it did not cost him a 
 pang to praise the luxurious and perfectly appointed 
 bachelor's suite Rex had to exhibit. He looked over 
 its treasures with a critic's eye, suggested some 
 changes, discussed others with his friend, and finally 
 dropped into an arm-chair before the fire, savoring 
 his cigar in a perfectly contented frame of mind. 
 
 " You see, I 've had some of these superfluous ser 
 vants of my father's up here all the afternoon un 
 packing the chests of rubbish I picked up and sent 
 ahead of me. That accounts for the litter of curios. 
 No doubt I '11 be sick of lots of 'em and chuck 'em into 
 the rubbish-heap before long. One always does. But 
 talk of not buying for one's self ! That 's half the fun
 
 132 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 getting set upon by those picturesque sharps who dive 
 out of odd corners and let you walk over their stomachs, 
 if you '11 only buy. I 've trotted about so much, 
 and seen so much, one would think I 'd get tired of 
 the play-toys of travel ; but, thank heaven, I 'm tired 
 of nothing yet. I enjoy life more every day. But 
 I 'm just a little bit scared at coming back home to 
 settle, Jack. I 'm afraid New York will fail to hold 
 me in its machine. And I can see by my father's 
 eye that he 's reached the last limit of patience with 
 having me a gentleman of leisure. He cabled me to 
 come over and ' learn the ropes.' He 's thinking he 's 
 getting old, and I must learn to take his place. Does 
 he believe, I wonder, that I expect to go down to that 
 dingy office every day of my life, and stay there till 
 nearly dark, piling up more money for what under 
 the heaven above us ? " 
 
 ''Oh, I don't know," said Jack, as if his pockets 
 were full of the thing so despised. " Money 's the 
 steam that makes the engines go. And one can 
 stand having a good lot of it." 
 
 " But he 's fabulously rich. I don't believe he 
 knows, himself, how much he has already. Long 
 ago I settled with him to give me a stated allowance 
 ample, I dare say, but not beyond the dreams of 
 avarice, by any means. If I ran short I waited till 
 the next instalment came round. I 've always been 
 a simple fellow in my tastes. This truck I 've piled 
 up here and my books represent my highest personal 
 expenditure. And I get the credit for fairly wallow 
 ing in wealth ! " 
 
 " Good Lord, Adamson ! To hear you talk ! " ex-
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 133 
 
 claimed the other, irrepressibly. "If I had your 
 chances I 'd know how to use 'em. Why, with the 
 money you '11 inherit you '11 be a king a king ! " 
 
 " My father 's a sovereign of finance, and his father 
 was before him. What has it profited either of 
 them? I suppose by multiplying enjoyments for 
 other people one may keep workmen industrious; 
 but I '11 give you my word, all I 've ever seen of plu 
 tocrat society here makes me want to keep out of it. 
 I got more joy from Oxford's halls and gardens, and 
 the Iffley, than I ever can from Fifth Avenue and 
 Central Park, and that awful grind down-town. One 
 of our nice old dons told me once there is real beauty, 
 though often a latent one, in whatever the human 
 mind creates upon necessity. I hope mine will cre 
 ate something before long." 
 
 "Strange how I brought an entirely different im 
 pression of Oxford to America. To me it was pleas 
 ant, but merely an episode into which I did n't exactly 
 fit. I always thought you 'd be the kind of fellow 
 who 'd be ruined by it for home, and now I know it. 
 Take my advice, Rex, and be a rose-leaf in a cup of 
 wine, like men. It 's easier than doing the Omar 
 Khayyam act and investigating the meanings of 
 things. I dare say in time you '11 settle down into a 
 model young millionaire, and feel exceedingly re 
 signed. If you want to study the law of contrasts, 
 however, begin first here, now. As usual, I 'm cleaned 
 out and at the bottom of the ladder, wondering how in 
 the deuce I 'm going to get up. By this time I 'm will 
 ing to take advantage of your various offers to set 
 me squarely upon my feet. Strange, fabulous, apoc-
 
 134 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 ryphal as it may seem, I want to begin work in ear 
 nestwork that will bring cash quickly, work that 
 will help me to keep straight, as I Ve done for six 
 months past, and look forward to better things." 
 
 " Jack, my dear boy, I 'm awfully glad to hear it ! " 
 exclaimed Rex, heartily. 
 
 He did not know exactly how to go on, and Jack, 
 with an angelic smile, saved him the trouble of 
 trying. 
 
 " I knew there would be joy in heaven, and all that 
 kind of thing, you know. Yes, I 'm in earnest now, 
 if I never was before. I Ve thrown over that beastly 
 photographing because it was n't fit for me, and I Ve 
 got an opening elsewhere that is, if somebody (not 
 to say the fellow who 's been ramming at me to go 
 and do it, off and on, for some years past) will step 
 forward and give me a start. And I '11 swear I '11 do 
 him credit. I Ve been trying to wring help out of 
 the home people, but they 're squeezed dry." 
 
 "You should have first come to me," said Rex, 
 simply. 
 
 Experience with Warriner had taught him many 
 things, but never that Jack would close down on him 
 for money in cold blood. Had this been the case, 
 their friendship had not hung together so long. 
 
 So they talked details, and Rex satisfied himself 
 that the rolling stone was at last really in a way to 
 come to a halt, where it would determine for itself 
 whether or not it would remain stationary. He felt a 
 new sense of the satisfaction that lies in power when 
 he planned to help his friend with both money and 
 influence and, in fancy, widened out Jack's plan to
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 135 
 
 include a push from Job Adamson that would hasten 
 matters with a bound. 
 
 When they had reached this point Rex surprised 
 on his companion's face a very startling apparition 
 almost as startling as the tearful expression worn by 
 his father when his ship touched the pier : Jack looked 
 genuinely humble and ashamed. 
 
 " I 'm not fit for the company I keep that 's clear," 
 said Mr. Warriner, getting up to pace the room, then 
 stopping before the fireplace and tossing back his 
 head. " Since I 'm in the melting mood to-night, old 
 chap, and you Ve shown the patience of a saint and 
 the friendship of oh, well, I can't express it, and I 
 won't try I '11 tell you the truth why I want to 
 straighten out and do my best and be a man again. 
 I Ve fallen in love." 
 
 11 1 've been waiting to hear that come out," said 
 Rex, surveying him curiously. " Cherchez la femme 
 occurred to me some time ago." 
 
 " I have known her always or, at least, that she was 
 there. Until last year, when she suddenly blossomed 
 out into a beauty, she was a lankish young female 
 with a club of hair tied up with a ribbon, a good deal 
 of black stocking, and an inordinate taste for tom 
 boy doings. Our families are connected or were, in 
 the dark ages of old New York. I believe one of 
 them had our ancestral property and then we got it 
 back much good it does us now, when there is n't 
 a beggarly store or warehouse left us in city real 
 estate, and only some barren acres of a run-to-seed 
 ' manor ' up the Hudson that nobody will buy. My 
 mater could tell you all about it, if she would, but just
 
 136 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 now she 's on her dignity with the Hopes, because 
 she suspects me of spooning in that direction." 
 
 "What! Laurence Hope's people the fellow I 
 crossed with ? " 
 
 "Just so. Of course you like Laurie; everybody 
 does. I do, in spite of his having been always held 
 up to me as a model. He 's what virtuous business 
 men call nervy, and wide-awake, and sure to get 
 ahead. The family needs him, since the Hopes have 
 not been of much consequence in the public eye for 
 many a long year. They don't get brief biographies, 
 and startling portraits with puffs attached in the 
 Sunday papers, I mean. Like us poor, played-out 
 Warriners, they 've dropped behind in this tremendous 
 foot-race of New York. The father 's a mild, cour 
 teous, Historical-Society and Sons-of-the-Cincinnati 
 kind of old fellow, perfectly satisfied with things as 
 they go, and with having enough to live on in the house 
 where he was born. But Mrs. Hope 's like my mother 
 and sisters and most women nowadays bitten with 
 ambition to get to the front. She was a Philadelphia 
 woman, with ancestors of Revolutionary date, and, I 
 presume, a pedigree stretching back to prehistoric 
 days in England. They tell me she 's banking largely 
 upon Lucy to did I tell you her name is Lucy ? " 
 
 "No; you omitted that particular. Sweet little 
 Wordsworthian praenom, that. Is she ' a violet by a 
 mossy stone, half hidden from the eye ' ? " 
 
 " She 's fresh enough and sweet enough for any 
 thing, but her mother does n't mean her to be hidden 
 long. She was to have made her formal appearance 
 in society in December did I tell you she 's just 
 nineteen ? "
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 137 
 
 " I '11 make a note of that, too," answered Rex, 
 smiling. It was something new to see Jack Warri- 
 ner hard hit. 
 
 " Well, somebody upped and died in their connec 
 tion recently, and the debut was put off worse luck 
 till now. Mrs. Hope is going to give a ' tea ' for her. 
 Do you know what a New York old family tea is, 
 Adarnson? If not, don't inquire! that is, make an 
 exception in the case of this particular function, 
 which occurs to-morrow afternoon. Another tax 
 upon your friendship. I want you to go there with 
 me as my friend my particular importation and 
 contribution to society. I suppose you never think, 
 Bex, such a dear old indifferent fellow as you are, 
 what a flutter in the dove-cote your coming home to 
 live has made here. You are actually the hero of the 
 hour. If I were n't afraid you 'd kick me down-stairs, 
 I 'd tell you about a paragraph announcing your re 
 turn that came out in this evening's papers." 
 
 " Great Scott, Warriner, you make me sick," said 
 Rex, turning red and shuddering. 
 
 " It 's true, old man ; and you can't get out of it. 
 You and this house are lauded together to the 
 skies, and by to-morrow all the match-makers will be 
 sharp-set in pursuit of you. If I take you to the 
 Hopes' I '11 be welcome as flowers in spring. Every 
 face will beam on me not that I care about any 
 body's beaming excepting Lucy's dear mama. It will 
 put the dragon in a good humor with me for the rest 
 of the season. She will give me the freedom of the 
 house. And it '11 cost you nothing but an hour of 
 boredom in your frock-coat."
 
 138 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 " If it could have been deferred," went on Rex, as 
 genuinely uncomfortable as a large-sized, fair-skinned, 
 anti-society man can be. " To plunge headlong into 
 vapidity" 
 
 "Come, brace up and take it like a good fellow. 
 I need your prestige to launch me ; and some day, if 
 Lucy and I ever see our way out of the snarl of cir 
 cumstancesby George, Eex, I can joke about almost 
 anything, I think, but I '11 stop right here ! I 'm mad 
 about that girl. To get her, I 'd do anything but lie 
 or steal. And I '11 own one thing to you, because 
 you are giving me this chance. We are engaged, 
 though the Lord only knows what '11 become of it. 
 
 " She does n't dare tell her parents, naturally nor 
 I my people. My poor madre has long ago given up 
 expecting me to realize her ambitions. I 'm a gone 
 coon, she thinks. But the Hopes, or Mrs. H., depend 
 on Lucy to conquer the world for them. She is 
 pretty beyond words, merry, light-hearted, daring, 
 and true as steel. Having pledged herself to me, 
 she 'd go through fire and water for me. Sometimes 
 my heart misgives me, and I fear that I was a cur to 
 let her pledge herself when she knew actually nothing 
 of the world. 
 
 " I 've feared it was all an impulse a girl's fancy 
 that she could reform me. Well, so far she has re 
 formed me. Since she promised herself to me last sum 
 mer at a country-house party where we met I 've 
 never touched a drop. I worked this winter till I 
 heard of this opening I told you of. And then I 
 threw the job overboard, resisting a strong impulse 
 to punch my employer's addled head, and came home
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 139 
 
 to meet you. Not a living soul knows about Lucy 
 and me, Rex, but you. The truth is, I 'm pretty 
 shaky, and I need you to help me to stand firm." 
 
 " I '11 help, Jack," said Rex, soberly. He was think 
 ing what an immense responsibility Jack had thrust 
 on him. His sympathy went out to the headlong, 
 loving, impulsive child who had taken up her part of 
 the burden without the faintest knowledge of what 
 Jack was, and had been. It seemed to Rex that what 
 he was asked to do was not exactly nice. But, on the 
 other hand, he could not withhold a hand to pull a 
 sinking comrade out of a quicksand. 
 
 All Jack's bravado, slang, and indifference had fled. 
 He stood up, facing Rex like a school-boy who has 
 forgotten his piece. If ever in his misspent life he 
 had been in earnest, it was now. He was mortally in 
 need of Rex. 
 
 And amid the lines traced by a thousand reckless 
 and unworthy acts upon Jack Warriner's face, there 
 remained the unquestionable indication that he had 
 been bo-rn a gentleman, and that he spoke the truth. 
 
 His smile when Rex, without a word, stretched out 
 his hand to him, was, despite his seven-and-twenty 
 years, a boy's ; and under its influence Rex ceased to 
 wonder at the self-devotion of Miss Lucy Hope to the 
 cause of Jack's reform. 
 
 WHEN, together, the two young men pushed 
 through the crowd at Mrs. Hope's, next afternoon, 
 Rex Adam son, during a halt enforced by those press 
 ing ahead of them to greet the hostess, chanced to 
 cast his eyes upon an old portrait on the wall oppo-
 
 140 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 site. Instantly his attention was riveted by it with 
 almost painful intensity. 
 
 In mysterious fashion not to be explained, he felt 
 that this face had previously held, would hold, over 
 him some influence of power. How strange and fan 
 tastic that he should be possessed with the idea those 
 features were to be intimately connected with his 
 fate, or had in some earlier stage of existence written 
 an inscription upon his mind ! 
 
 He could not cease from looking at the portrait. 
 It was that of a young woman in the radiancy of 
 beauty and happiness, dressed in the square-cut gown, 
 long waist, and topknots of a hundred years before. 
 The artist who had limned her was of the best of his 
 generation, clearly. The flesh-tints bloomed as in 
 life, the eyes sought his mischievously, the rosy mouth 
 was curved in an undying smile. 
 
 " G-ood heavens, what a beauty ! " he said, to cover 
 his confusion when he found Jack eying him side- 
 wise with an odd expression, half mockery, half pride. 
 " I never saw anything so vivid. One would swear 
 it is real flesh and blood peeping through a hole in 
 the canvas like Peg Woffington in Triplet's studio." 
 
 " Rex, are you an arch-diplomatist ? But I forget 
 how could you know ? Prepare for a surprise when 
 I name you to Mrs. and Miss Hope." 
 
 Verily a surprise ! " Miss Hope " was the lady of 
 the canvas, stepped out of her frame ! Rex had caught 
 but a passing glimpse of the fine-grained, faded mother, 
 who had given him a little hand covered with costly 
 old rings, with a greeting of the most gracious. His 
 gaze was all for Lucy.
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 141 
 
 He was unaware that the people round them had 
 widened to a circle that gazed at him with whispered 
 comments. He dimly heard Mrs. Hope's velvety voice 
 asking him to come to them in the future, when there 
 would be more chance to make his acquaintance. His 
 attention was rapt by the girl wearing a high white 
 gown and carrying a large bunch of white lilacs, who 
 had met him with such a kind and fearless look out 
 of her soft eyes. 
 
 His was the experience of a lifetime, that comes to 
 some lucky men. Without the possibility of a doubt 
 in his mind, he knew that he had met his ideal woman 
 the dream-maiden whose spell, for weal or woe, is 
 cast the moment one encounters her. 
 
 And she was Jack Warriner's betrothed, to screen 
 whose affair with his friend he had come here, all un 
 suspecting. 
 
 Rex Adamson's slow pulses quickened to a sudden 
 maddening gallop, and a mist passed over his brain. 
 To hide it he looked over again at the portrait, and said 
 some commonplace words regarding his mistake in 
 believing it to be an antique. 
 
 "But it is an antique not my portrait, but that 
 of my great-grandmama," she said, blushing. " Peo 
 ple who are in the habit of coming here are so ac 
 customed to the resemblance they 've stopped notic 
 ing it. The ' Lady of the Duel/ we 've always called 
 her; and I bear her name Lucilla Chester Hope. I 
 think Lucilla sounds foolish in these days, and I made 
 the girls at school call me Lucy. My brother Laurie 
 said you, too, are in revolt over your Christian name, 
 Mr. Adamson. I think we ought all to be numbered
 
 142 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 or lettered in our babyhood, and left to choose for 
 ourselves when we arrive at an age to think. Laurie 
 came out better in the deal than I." 
 
 " I must seem to you a blathering idiot," said Rex, 
 who had recovered his usual unperturbed exterior. 
 " But I '11 swear I feel as if I had known you, or 
 the ' Lady of the Duel/ somewhere. The conviction 
 strikes me with extraordinary force." 
 
 " It may be a case of reincarnation," said the girl. 
 " And in the old days you may have been her friend. 
 I hope so, I am sure." 
 
 " Hardly likely, since my people had not then ap 
 peared on the surface of social life." 
 
 " Don't say so. I mean to believe we were all on 
 the best of terms. Though it will make Mr. War- 
 riner feel uncomfortable, since his ancestor and mine 
 were not," she added, with a half -nervous attempt for 
 the first time to introduce Jack into the conversation. 
 
 "You know, Rex, or you don't know," said Jack, 
 " that tradition makes my forebear the one who fought 
 for that fair Lucilla on the wall, and unfortunately 
 lost her. But I don't care for those old Johnnies, 
 anyhow and in this generation," he added in a tone 
 that reached Lucy's ear alone, "the Warriners will 
 sing a different tune." 
 
 She did not answer him, but resumed her bantering 
 chat with his friend. 
 
 " By the way, Mr. Adamson, Laurie has done no 
 thing since he landed yesterday but extol your merits 
 as traveling companion. We had already asked him 
 to bring you to see us, but of course he would n't have 
 done so. Brothers always think it does n't pay their
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 143 
 
 friends to call on their own womenkind. Bad boy ! 
 He said he 'd be kept down-town this afternoon on 
 business for the firm. But dear ! we saw through 
 him in a moment. He would n't be caught at a tea 
 at home, though I will say he sent me a stunning 
 bouquet of orchids, which I call noble on the part of 
 my impoverished Laurie." 
 
 While speaking these careless words she lifted to 
 her face, as if merely to inhale their fragrance, the 
 white lilacs, evidently selected to be carried from 
 among the many tokens of the kind heaped around 
 her on mantelpiece, grand piano, and cabinets. Adam- 
 son could not help seeing that, with the daintiest of 
 touches, like a butterfly on and off, she at the same 
 time brushed them with her lips. He was amazed at 
 the frankness of character, the abandonment to loyal 
 feeling, this action betokened ; for at once, by the 
 dark-red flush arising in Jack Warriner's face, Rex 
 knew that it had been appropriated by her lover as 
 the answer she had withheld in words. 
 
 And then Mrs. Hope, who thought she had allowed 
 Mr. Adamson to absorb her daughter as long as un 
 written law permits on such an occasion, interposed 
 with a fresh batch of presentations to the debutante. 
 The young men had no recourse but to drift away into 
 the crowd, each trying to throw off an emotion he 
 did not wish the other to fathom. 
 
 Jack, rallying first, introduced his friend to a Mrs. 
 Arrowtip, a nimble-witted widow of a certain age, who 
 retained amid her trenchant views of contemporane 
 ous society good nature enough to keep her secure of 
 acceptance in the fashionable circles she contemned.
 
 144 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 As soon as they were left together she launched into 
 a stream of lively talk. 
 
 " Jack knew the Warriners are my cousins, you 
 must understand it is a nest of cousins here this 
 afternoon that, like everybody else, I was simply 
 dying to meet you, Mr. Adamson. We have been so 
 jealous of your never staying in America long enough 
 to make acquaintances. But it was clever of you. 
 There is nothing like it as a whet to a jaded appetite. 
 New York likes a man who can afford to turn his 
 back on it my New York, I mean, not the New York 
 of philosophers and political economists. You see, 
 you are not only an interesting personality, but a 
 social problem. Your father's son and your grand 
 father's grandson belongs to us. We expect to be 
 led by you some day soon, and are prepared to jump 
 after you over any fence you elect to take." 
 
 " Great heavens ! what have I done ? " asked Adam- 
 son. 
 
 "It was done for you by your predecessors, who 
 amassed a fortune that represents the highest Amer 
 ican ideal of romance and distinction. Every people 
 must have a sovereign of the imagination, and ours 
 is enormous wealth. To dwell upon you and your 
 doings will furnish amusement and recreation to hun 
 dreds of thousands of people who lead commonplace 
 lives all over our country. As to the newspapers " 
 
 " They will curse me from my eye-glass to my 
 trousers, as Kipling would say." 
 
 " Or praise you till you crave a curse. You will be 
 'copy' for many a day to come, Mr. Adamson." 
 
 "Can you wonder, then, that I Ve made myself
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 145 
 
 scarce this long, when all I ask is to be, like my father 
 before me, the most unassuming of private citizens?" 
 
 " But you can't, you see ! You are of that magic 
 ' third generation' from which all things are expected 
 here. You are young, highly educated, have been 
 everywhere, seen everything. You can't expect to slip 
 into your father's groove. Why, the woman you '11 
 choose for a wife will rise into a subject of national 
 importance." 
 
 " The nation will have to look elsewhere for excite 
 ments, then. Really, you rob life of the few aspects 
 in which it attracts me. The only comfort I have is 
 that wise men have said the grandfather makes a 
 fortune, the father enjoys it, and the grandchildren 
 scatter it to the winds. Unfortunately, I am a man 
 of simple tastes and modest ambitions. It 's too bad, 
 Mrs. Arrowtip, that I am destined to be such a disap 
 pointment to your community ; but I can't unmake 
 myself." 
 
 "Please don't," she said, casting an approving 
 glance upon his muscular form and fine, straightfor 
 ward face. " But dear me ! here am I keeping you 
 from all the other women who may want to know you." 
 
 " Nobody can be suffering from that complaint," he 
 said, laughing. " Don't leave me yet, I beg. If you 
 knew what a greenhorn I feel in a smart New York 
 house ! " 
 
 "Oh! but this is n't smart. The Hopes, too, are 
 my cousins, so I can be frank and tell the truth. If 
 you marry to-morrow and throw open that perfectly 
 beautiful house of yours which is already a pride to 
 
 the avenue your gathering will be distinctly smart. 
 10
 
 146 THE CIRCLE OP A CENTUEY 
 
 This is a mixture of old and new, the gently decadent 
 mingled with the conspicuously 'arrived.' I swing 
 like a pendulum betwixt the two sets, looking on with 
 an impersonal feeling at the passing show, and enjoy 
 ing all that comes to me from either side. But my 
 cousin, Mrs. Hope, has decided that she is aweary of 
 the old, and means to go over, neck and crop, among 
 the new. She wants to be taken out of humdrum. 
 Her husband bless his unworldly soul! will never 
 help -her. Her boy is just as bad, and all depends, 
 therefore, upon dear little Lucy, the most natural, 
 artless, and unspoiled girl I know. Our debutante, 
 for all she looks so childish, has studied, weighed, 
 measured, and thought over many things. Then, 
 she and her mother do not sympathize, and that 
 drives her into taking up odd notions and at 
 tempting impossibilities. Look at her now, talking 
 with Jack Warriner, who can't keep away from her 
 any more than he can keep his feelings out of his 
 face. It would be just like Lucy to take that cross 
 upon her shoulders, and it would result in certain 
 disaster. Bless me, I 'm fairly maundering ! Let me 
 introduce you to Miss Lancaster Miss Kate Lancas 
 terMr. Adamson " ; and she turned abruptly to two 
 sister stars of fashion who were patiently stationed at 
 her elbow. 
 
 " I have been coaching Mr. Adamson a little, girls, 
 and now I must run away and leave him to you, for 
 I ; ve an early dinner on. You '11 drop in some Satur 
 day after five and let me resume my monologue, won't 
 you, Mr. Adamson ? It 's the only way to prove to 
 me that you have not been bored to death."
 
 IN NEW YORE OF TO-DAY 147 
 
 When Mrs. Arrowtip had taken her plain, charm 
 ing face and striking figure away there was nothing 
 left Adamson but to abandon himself to the current. 
 In a short time he was surrounded, invited, flattered, 
 reminded of " Tuesdays" and "Thursdays," and "al 
 most any day, late," by at least half a hundred people 
 whom he had never laid eyes on till that afternoon. 
 
 " I say, Rex, I 'm eternally obliged to you," began 
 Jack, as the two men at last pulled out of it and 
 started to walk up the ice-bound avenue in long, 
 swinging strides. " Do you know, I 'm restored to 
 grace, and all through your agency? Mrs. Hope 
 beckoned me back just now to ask if you and I will 
 dine there with a 'very few friends' on Tuesday! 
 Since when have I partaken of bread and salt under 
 that roof -tree? I was to engage you by word of 
 mouth, as the notice is so short, and to let her know." 
 
 "Oh, I don't think so, Jack," replied his friend, 
 shortly, then paused at the blank expression of Jack's 
 face. "But, if you think it will be any good, I '11 
 show up, of course." 
 
 " It 's so hard for me to meet her, old fellow. Of 
 course you can't understand my feelings, but it 's 
 getting to be life and death to me to have these little 
 glimpses of her. She can't understand, either. How 
 should she a girl like that! When I asked her in a 
 whisper just now to meet me to-morrow in the street 
 somewhere and take a walk ever so short a one 
 she told me she would not do it ever." 
 
 " Right she is," said Rex, feeling much embarrassed. 
 He could not explain even to himself his feeling of 
 rejoicing at the moral courage of the girl whom his
 
 148 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 friend expected to make his wife a girl who a 
 couple of hours ago was nothing to him, and had sud 
 denly become of such vast importance that in ima 
 gination he had constituted himself her knight and 
 cavalier, to guard her from all evil and semblance of 
 wrong-doingto exalt her in other men's eyes, and 
 keep her purity a thing enskied. Certainly he had 
 no right to interfere to preach to a man who had 
 been so lucky as to win her love ; but, knowing Jack 
 as he did, the idea of connecting those two lives 
 seemed abhorrent. 
 
 To relieve himself, he dropped into one of his silent 
 fits, which Jack knew by experience were no more to 
 be penetrated than a mountainous iceberg by a wave. 
 They kept along together through an atmosphere 
 clear as a bell, amid the hurrying figures of the great 
 community at the end of a long day's work. Up 
 above the housetop a new moon showed in an opaline 
 sky. Far as the eye could reach ahead there was a 
 seemingly solid mass of pedestrians, focusing on the 
 sidewalks of the wide thoroughfare the life of the 
 people among whom his lot was cast. 
 
 Their varied types and nationalities appeared to 
 bring him in touch with those far places of earth 
 whence he had come reluctantly away. Mrs. Arrow- 
 tip's shafts concerning his position and responsibili 
 ties recurred to him. If what she had said were true, 
 he had too great a part to play in this world in min 
 iature of latter-day New York to let himself be thus 
 possessed by the double influence of a picture and a girl. 
 
 Before they reached the club where Jack turned in 
 and left him, he had given the promise Jack desired.
 
 Ill 
 
 HE days following his first meeting 
 with Lucy Hope found Adamson des 
 perately anxious lest something should 
 intervene to prevent the dinner at her 
 home to which he had been bidden. 
 Remembering his first scoff at the invitation, he 
 fairly trembled for fear fate would get even with 
 him by putting it out of his power to go. 
 
 He did not yet quite realize that the door had 
 opened for him into a new kingdom of delights and 
 woes, that he was in the grip of the most resistless 
 force of earth's experience. But he found himself 
 dwelling on the girl's image, and was ever and anon 
 thrilled by the sensation that had come to him 
 whether from her or from the old portrait he could 
 not tell that her face was linked to his destiny and 
 was to become an essential part of his future. 
 
 When Jack Warriner, blooming with cheerfulness 
 and health, arrived to go with Rex to the dinner, he 
 was surprised to see on his friend's ordinarily self- 
 contained countenance indications of an intensity of 
 eagerness which he did not understand and was wise 
 enough not to inquire into. Rex sprang into the 
 brougham that awaited them with the light step of a 
 school-boy. It was a long drive down-town to their 
 
 149
 
 150 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 destination, and more than once Rex leaned his head 
 out of the carriage window and chided the coachman 
 for not taking streets less encumbered with the 
 debris of the late snowfall. 
 
 Jack laughed at his companion's impatience. For 
 himself, seeing that he had been that morning in 
 stalled in the new venture in business which was to 
 carry him to a respectable place in the community, 
 an income sufficient for his wants, and, by a short cut, 
 to the moment when he could openly claim Lucy as 
 his affianced, the world seemed to be jogging com 
 fortably enough. Even Rex, knowing Jack as he did, 
 marveled at his airy indifference to the dark places 
 of his past career, his sublime assurance that the gifts 
 of fortune's cornucopia now being showered upon his 
 head were merited, or at least nothing more than he 
 might reasonably have expected. 
 
 They were first to arrive in the broad, old fashioned 
 drawing-room, with the curtains of deep-red plush 
 drawn together over its windows, book-shelves in the 
 recesses on either side of a fire of large lumps of coal, 
 vases of fresh flowers, and rather worn furniture in 
 tint and texture like the curtains. The warmth and 
 sparkle of this homelike interior seemed to Rex far 
 more attractive than the bald upholstery and group 
 ings of artistic furniture in his own home ; for from 
 the heart of its crimson glow rose to meet him a girl 
 tall and fair as an arum, clad in white satin closely 
 fitted to her perfect shape, her neck and arms bare, 
 her face smiling, her eyes all unconscious that they 
 " carried love." 
 
 The two men had but a word with her before others,
 
 IN NEW YOKE OF TO-DAY 151 
 
 entering on their heels, claimed her notice. Rex, who 
 knew not the art of looking happy when ennuied, 
 stood around in a large, lumbering, and disconsolate 
 way, waiting the summons to dinner, and admiring 
 Jack Warriner's facility for appearing at his best at 
 this critical moment when so much depended upon 
 his taking a fresh start in the good graces of the 
 Hope family. 
 
 Jack had selected for his opening shots into the 
 fortress the person of a plain cousin from Mrs. Hope's 
 native town, the success of whose social career in 
 New York during her visit to her relatives was their 
 unending care. To this pleasingly surprised young 
 woman he now devoted himself without flagging, 
 earning from the hostess, who had told him off to 
 take her poor, dear Adelaide in to dinner, a warmth 
 of regard long absent from her bosom so far as con 
 cerned him. 
 
 Rex, who had found out his own blessed fate in 
 Miss Hope's name written on a card and stuck into a 
 narrow envelop presented to him on arrival by the 
 butler in the hall, did not scruple to stand back and 
 desist from effort of any kind to be agreeable to 
 others in the interim. Although conscious that 
 he was a man of mark in this small, brilliant circle 
 of opinion-makers and critics, he was by nature so 
 devoid of ability to pose that he could not for the 
 life of him feign an interest he did not feel in 
 individuals. 
 
 He was not gauche, since conventional society of 
 the highest accepted type in many other countries 
 had already claimed him. London, Paris, Rome,
 
 152 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 Cairo, the Riviera, had all stretched out their gloved 
 right hands to welcome the heir of Job Adamson's 
 millions. Dames of lineage longer than any Amer 
 ica can show had signified their willingness to 
 adopt him into the intimacy of their home life ; and 
 from the whole glittering galaxy he had escaped 
 unscathed and indifferent. "A man's man," they 
 had called him, settling down to find an excuse for 
 this exasperating calm. 
 
 In secret he was trying to subdue the impatience 
 that possessed his soul at the delay necessary upon 
 the non-arrival of some missing guests; ready to 
 murder two respectable citizens who, to dine in the 
 Hopes' locality, had been obliged to drive down three 
 good miles of the avenue. When the couple finally 
 came in, the lady out of breath and flurried, the 
 husband slinking behind her with a hang-dog air, 
 both reiterating explanations that they did not yet 
 know how to allow for driving distances in Greater 
 New York, Rex Adamson felt a hot bound of the 
 heart. He was now at liberty to go over and take a 
 proprietary stand at Lucy's side. Directly, her hand 
 rested like a snowflake upon his coat-sleeve, and they 
 had fallen into line. 
 
 " I am rejoiced we are moving on for you," she 
 said mischievously. " I caught one glimpse of your 
 face just now, and, as plainly as words could speak, 
 it said, * I 'm simply ravening for my dinner.' Oh ! 
 don't protest. I feel for you half -past eight, nearly, 
 and you 've probably had no afternoon tea. I mean, 
 it's really cruel to men working-men though of 
 course you 're only a lily of the field the way our
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 153 
 
 hours are arranged. Laurie comes in half starved at 
 six, having had nothing but a sandwich or a plate of 
 soup since breakfast, and then, if he 's dining out, 
 has to dress and speed miles away before he can 
 get a mouthful at eight. 
 
 " He went to an eight-fifteen dinner the other night, 
 where there was to be some electrical surprise in the 
 dining-room to greet the guests as they went in. The 
 electricity would n't work, a mechanic had to be sent 
 for, the guests sat around in melancholy pairs in the 
 drawing-room and talked more and more feebly until 
 they were faint. Finally Laurie heard a man near 
 him say to his companion : 1 1 'm awfully sorry, but 
 when I have to wait for food it makes me positively 
 savage, and drives me to wish to take people's heads 
 off. So, if you don't mind, I won't try to answer 
 you.' She cried out : ' Oh, I 'm so glad ! I was just 
 thinking I 'd hate you if I had to say another word.' 
 Then neither spoke again. The company were just 
 praying that they 'd send around dinner-rolls or meat- 
 lozenges anything to save life when, at nine, the 
 dinner was announced. The result was, nobody 
 looked at the pretty show of lights and flowers in the 
 dining-room, everybody fell in an awful silence upon 
 bread and raw oysters, and when those were con 
 sumed resorted surreptitiously to the side-dishes of 
 little cakes and things." 
 
 " This is a proper rebuke for my stupid appear 
 ance. But my thoughts were guiltless of desire for 
 food. The truth is, I don't know how to be pliant 
 and appear unto men to be other than I am. And I 
 was so awfully impatient to be able to take you in."
 
 154 THE CIRCLE OP A CENTUEY 
 
 Never had a young sovereign of hearts a more 
 spontaneous compliment. The frankness of it was, 
 in Lucy's eyes, its most charming feature. She dim 
 pled with satisfaction, and in the midst of this emo 
 tion caught a glance from Jack, who, with the plain 
 cousin, had found places at the extreme end of the 
 table, whence he could see Lucy only by dodging 
 around a cluster of pink roses. Lucy shot back at 
 him a brief answering look, so different in quality to 
 the one just bestowed upon Rex that he, poor fellow, 
 fell as if from a balloon to earth. 
 
 It was a girl's look she gave Jack, altogether maid 
 enly, yet fond and trustful, as to one over whom she 
 exercised a sheltering influence, in whose successes 
 she rejoiced, for whose mischances she would always 
 sorrow. But, as no language could have done, it 
 convinced Rex of his own madness in yielding to the 
 charm of the moment and forgetting why he had 
 come into this house. Thenceforward Miss Lucy 
 should have from him no more pretty speeches. 
 
 With a directness that was part of her, she spoke 
 to him at once of Jack. 
 
 " If I had not heard of you from Laurie," she said, 
 "I should have welcomed you heartily on Jack's 
 account. He says I must trust you as his best friend 
 that without you none of this good luck would 
 have come to him. When mama told me you were 
 to take me in to-night I was delighted, Mr. Adamson. 
 I was longing for an opportunity to talk to you 
 about poor Jack. You can't think what faith I have 
 in him. His is such a beautiful nature, so generous, 
 so forgiving, so brave and no one has seemed to un-
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 155 
 
 derstand him or to give him credit for, any real pur 
 pose. But I do ! " she added triumphantly, turning 
 upon Rex her childlike gaze. "And you must, too, 
 since you are his best friend. You and I must be 
 friends also must n't we? If I could only speak of 
 him to Laurie, who 's like my other self, it would be 
 so good; but my brother holds back when Jack is 
 mentioned ; and as to my parents, they tolerate him 
 only because of family ties. We are terrible people 
 for family ties, Mr. Adamson. All of us make little 
 shrines and burn incense to our own kin though we 
 do reserve the right of having little spats among 
 ourselves. I don't think I could say how long ago 
 it was I began to take Jack's side long before he 
 noticed me. 
 
 " We were at Newport one summer, and something 
 had happened about Jack that I never could under 
 standno one would explain it to me. But the 
 whole family sat around and looked gloomy, and 
 hushed it up, and sighed when his name was spoken. 
 That was the first time I felt that I 'd like to stand 
 up for him before the world. I just spoke out at 
 table and said, ' He is a splendid fellow, and I '11 never 
 believe a word against him ' ; and then they scolded 
 me, and I cried and ran out of the room. Last sum 
 mer, when I met him in the country, I was almost in 
 society, but he seemed to have just discovered my 
 existence. It was rather mortifying, but oh ! I 
 know you know the rest," she added, blushing to her 
 hair. "He 's told me you are his only confidant, and 
 that I 'm to look to you, as he does, for good advice. 
 You may be sure I intend to do so ; for sometimes I
 
 156 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 feel so unhappy, you can't think. But to-night I am 
 happy, because I believe it 's all coming right at last 
 and Jack will win the place he deserves, and every 
 body will see him as he is. And it 's you we shall 
 have to thank ! " 
 
 Animating as she pursued her theme, fresh blushes 
 deepening the carmine of her round young cheeks, 
 her guileless eyes had sought his with an expression 
 of gratitude and confidence that knocked at the very 
 portals of his heart. Karely had he been brought 
 into contact with a girl so young, so absolutely with 
 out the art of concealing her emotion. The fervor 
 of her championship for her lover had in it, he dis 
 cerned, something of the spirit that would have 
 prompted her to dash to the defense of a favorite dog 
 set upon by others of his species and in danger of 
 being overmatched. 
 
 Bex almost groaned as the conviction of her utter 
 innocence concerning Jack's real self forced itself 
 upon him. What manner of man was he to take ad 
 vantage of it by coming into her home as a shield to 
 their entanglement ? 
 
 He tried to fancy .his feelings toward one who 
 would so act toward a young sister of his own. 
 
 " I believe I 'd shoot him on sight, the rascal ! " he 
 thought, while turning aside, in answer to a movement 
 from the lady on his left, to chat for a while with her. 
 
 Luckily this lady was Mrs. Arrowtip. 
 
 " I have been noticing that our little Lucy has had 
 the conversation all to herself," she said. " You must 
 remember that she 's not only a type of the American 
 young girl of gentle breeding in her primal freshness,
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 157 
 
 but a great darling in this household, who are in the 
 habit of listening and applauding when she speaks. 
 I 'm afraid she '11 lose that enthusiasm of tempera 
 ment soon enough, but she is n't spoiled yet ; and I 
 find her a thousand times more interesting than one 
 of those fashionable automata I most often meet, who 
 look wan and lifeless before their time." 
 
 " You would have enjoyed a discussion to which I 
 listened in the small hours at my club last night. 
 The subject was, in sum, the check of old-fashioned 
 courtship by the excessive artificiality of manners and 
 customs here. Of course I took no part in it, but 
 I received much light in my darkness of ignorance. 
 It appears that some of the fair maidens of high so 
 ciety in New York are so hedged in by conventional 
 rules, or so afraid of being mistaken for Daisy Millers, 
 or what not, they go season after season unclaimed, 
 if not fancy-free." 
 
 " That 's just about what those men would be likely 
 to think about it," said the widow, mockingly. " But 
 I '11 admit the girls and young men now seem to ' take 
 their amusements sadly,' according to the standards 
 of my day." 
 
 " By Jove, that 's it. Several of the fellows said 
 they had heard their fathers and mothers talking 
 about certain conditions of ahem social intercourse 
 between marriageable persons ' 
 
 "You render it in very noble language." 
 
 " Well, the amount of it was that there were lots 
 more chances in those days for men and girls to find 
 out they were in love with each other. The way it 
 is now is more French than American, and we have
 
 158 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 no fathers and mothers to put on white gloves and 
 do the needful popping for a fellow." 
 
 " Poor, timid creatures ! That accounts, then, for 
 the extraordinary languishment of engagements in a 
 certain set. The few the newspapers can get hold of 
 are a perfect boon." 
 
 " Not entirely. The men I talked with claim that 
 too much money on the girls' side and the lack of it 
 on the men's are most common obstacles. And even 
 a moderately well off fellow one in receipt of a fair 
 income earned by himself, I mean dare n't venture 
 to marry a girl brought up like one of those who 
 think themselves specially fitted to take any rank that 
 Europe can offer. How could he, without risking 
 eternal smash in a year or two ? The plain fact, Mrs. 
 Arrowtip, is that ours is the most undemocratic, the 
 most hedged in, little society of any capital I ever 
 saw. And I judge only in the most superficial man 
 ner, from what I 've seen here and heard said abroad. 
 You know, I 'm in every sense a new-comer." 
 
 "Monsieur le bienvenu," she said, bowing graciously, 
 and making Adamson feel, somehow, immediately at 
 ease. " You can't think how it interests me to get 
 impressions at first hand from a man who has been 
 bred abroad and has yet inborn sympathies with us. 
 I wish you would tell me if your views chime in with 
 mine in one particular. Are n't we and our class, I 
 mean at this fag-end of the century, although in 
 possession of material benefits undreamed of fifty 
 years ago, wholly dissatisfied with our lot ? I never 
 see what I call a perfectly happy } r oung face. It is 
 their elders, who have learned to take life as it comes,
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 159 
 
 who seem more in tune with destiny. The young 
 men again I mean of our especially small class- 
 appear to have no ambition to open the world's oyster 
 with their swords ; and the girls are restless, follow 
 ing out a hundred fads, yet doing nothing thoroughly. 
 It makes me sigh for the old times of my girlhood, 
 when we were a smaller band, more coalesced by 
 common interest, more easily amused; the days 
 when it was considered witty to declare, ' A man with 
 $500,000 is just as well off as if he were rich.' 
 
 " I have heard my father say that my grandfather 
 got hold of his first ' lump sum ' by simply foreseeing 
 that railroads were going to empty our West into Euro 
 pean markets; and that when he got it he did n't 
 know how to spend any more money than he was 
 already spending. He could n't imagine anything 
 else he wanted ! Then our war came along and cre 
 ated a new era, when everybody's ideas blossomed 
 out." 
 
 "And here we are on the brink of another war. 
 Perhaps that 's what we all need to clear the mental 
 and moral atmosphere. But I hope Heaven will be 
 merciful, and not allow our ideas of prodigality 
 and luxury to blossom out any further as a conse 
 quence. There are aspects in which it might be a 
 blessing. There would certainly be some call upon 
 the tremendous physical energies young fellows now 
 waste upon polo and golf and athletics of all kinds, 
 and it remains to be seen how they '11 meet it." 
 
 " I hope not to be put to the test in that way," 
 said he, modestly; "but I can fancy not holding 
 back."
 
 160 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 " If we get upon the subject of the De Lome inci 
 dent, and the Maine, our friendship will be swamped. 
 I can see that you 're conservative, and, as I 'm a ter 
 rible Jingo, we had better stop now. Do you observe 
 the man on my other side, who brought me in ? He 
 and I have n't spoken for a year. They rented my 
 cottage at Newport, and we had a difference about 
 a dumb-waiter. If you wish to alienate your bosom 
 friends, let them your house. They will attribute to 
 your personal malignity every hole in the bottom of 
 a saucepan, every dish smashed by their own domes 
 tics, and will not scruple to take away your good 
 name by gossip about you. By some accident my 
 card got into his envelop, and when he came to offer 
 me his arm I knew his knees were tottering with 
 fear. But I resolved to astonish him by my amia 
 bility, and have been so sweet that I fancy he '11 want 
 to rent my house again: However, I '11 draw back 
 before that crisis ; but here goes to continue his be 
 wilderment." 
 
 As she turned away with a comic arching of the 
 eyebrows, Rex was at leisure to resume his study of 
 his own particular comrade. Lucy's countenance, 
 when she again bestowed it on him, was so striking a 
 reproduction of the old portrait in the middle draw 
 ing-room that he could not resist again commenting 
 on the fact, and in so doing felt a betraying tremor 
 in his voice. 
 
 "Apropos of that picture, something very strange 
 has come to my knowledge since I first met you," she 
 said, speaking in a low tone. " It seems that your 
 intuition about it had some foundation in fact. After
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 161 
 
 you were here I asked my father some questions 
 about the ' Lady of the Duel,' and obtained his per 
 mission for the first time to overhaul an old box of 
 letters, tied in different parcels with faded ribbons, 
 which had belonged to the epoch of my great-grand- 
 mama. I spent a whole rainy day absorbing them 
 eagerly, but have been able to find no one in the 
 house who has time to listen to my story of their con 
 tents. Now, be surprised ! At the very end of the 
 collection I came upon three of the sweetest, quaint 
 est, saddest little letters, addressed to ' Mrs. Lucilla 
 Hope/ and signed * Eve Adamson ' I You don't 
 know how exciting this was to me. I read them again 
 and again, but could not make out much. They 
 were written in answer to some from Mrs. Hope, 
 who was then living at Warriner Manor up the Hud 
 son, an old place she had for life by her first hus 
 band's will. The subjects were principally health and 
 children and current events, the usual things be 
 tween friends, but in one of them Mrs. Adamson 
 says, as nearly as I can remember it : 'If your good 
 husband has not already enlightened you, let me dis 
 claim any right to your too flattering praise by say 
 ing that what I have received from his family in the 
 past is far more than God gave me strength to 
 render him in return. Your friendship alone would 
 have been rich requital, and I can only pray that this 
 tie will be ever continued betwixt mine and thine ! ' 
 She goes on to speak of her kind husband's prosperity 
 in business ; of her father's recent death ; and of her 
 three ' dear little boys/ who are ' passing delicate.' 
 Now, won't you please lend all the powers of your
 
 162 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 mind to finding out who ' Eve Adamson ' was ? And 
 I should be so much pleased if she were to turn out 
 to be somebody of your very own." 
 
 " Do you mean it ? " he said, with a thrill of pleasure ; 
 " for she was, in fact, my ancestress." 
 
 " Oh, how nice ! for there are Jack and you and 
 me brought together in this generation by hereditary 
 right." 
 
 " Oh, yes, of course," answered Rex, rather flatly. 
 " I had forgotten Jack's share in the combination." 
 
 " Why, he represents the villain of the piece. His 
 ancestor challenged mine because they were both in 
 love with the lady in the portrait, and mine got her. 
 Just where yours came in I don't know, but we will 
 both read up diligently and find out. Do you know, 
 Laurie does n't care a bit for genealogies and by 
 gones? He says those old people did nothing for 
 him, and I tell him he 's more interested in what 's 
 going on down-town to-day than in anything else in 
 the world. Except one thing. Did you find out 
 Laurie's soft spot while you were together on the 
 voyage, Mr. Adamson?" 
 
 ''His sister?" asked Rex, smiling. 
 
 "No-o; of course not! What is a sister but a 
 necessary incidental, to be walked over while a man 
 lives at home, and forsaken just as soon as he can 
 annex another fellow's sister? Is it possible you 
 did n't find out knowing Jack so intimately, too 
 that Laurie is far gone in love with Bessie War- 
 riner? They can't call themselves engaged, because 
 they 've nothing to marry on, and it 's awfully slow 
 for Laurie getting ahead. But nothing would tempt
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 163 
 
 either one of them to think of another person, 
 ever. 
 
 " Meantime, Mrs. Warriner and our mother preserve 
 an armed neutrality toward each other exchange 
 visits, and pretend they never heard of anything be 
 tween their respective treasures. Some of these days, 
 when Jack's and Laurie's ships come in Dear 
 me, how long ships take to come in, don't they?" 
 she added, with a sudden change from gay to grave, 
 heaving a little sigh. 
 
 Decidedly, Rex had never met any one who so com 
 bined childish artlessness with womanly intuition. 
 He looked at her with reverence, and pity, too, re 
 solving to speak no word that would shatter her 
 young beliefs. 
 
 " Laurie's ship will not be delayed much longer," 
 he said, chiming in with her fancy. " He is of the 
 stuff that makes our successful citizens. I envy him his 
 perfect adaptability to his surroundings, his content 
 ment with his lot, and his quiet determination to 
 push ahead. The short time that I have been at 
 home trying to fit myself into my father's affairs has 
 convinced me that for a young man to be happy in 
 New York he must have been born, bred, and edu 
 cated to its exactions. Our town is a good mother, 
 but a 'stony-hearted stepmother.' Imagine coming 
 home from a long absence to find life here going on 
 with the swing and relentless purpose of a huge ma 
 chine, no one stopping or turning aside to do more 
 than greet another in passing. If you idle, you are 
 scorned as a cumberer of the earth; and, indeed, if 
 you so much as pause by the way to wonder at cer-
 
 164 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 tain existing defects in legislation, or monopolies, or 
 chicanery in commerce, your fate is sealed. You are 
 a snob, a carper, an unreal product of your native 
 soil. I refused to converse with a man yesterday 
 who swooped down on me to participate in what I 
 took to be a rather disgraceful business scheme ; and 
 he went off warning me that I am already spoken of 
 as a degenerate scion of my father's house. If they 
 would only give me time to get my breath ! Your 
 brother, on the contrary, is 'inside.' He knows it 
 all, can draw conclusions at his ease, and need make 
 no mistakes. Depend upon it, it is he, not I, who 
 may be looked on as a patriotic prop of the twentieth 
 century. But this is not dinner-table chat for a 
 young lady in her first season." 
 
 "I can see you are in earnest, so I like it! " she 
 exclaimed candidly. " The idea of putting my poor 
 dear Laurie's prospects ahead of yours is most amus 
 ing. Why, to hear women talk, you are but I won't 
 turn your head. I want your best judgment to keep 
 Jack up to the mark, as he has begun. Don't you 
 really think, Mr. Adamson, that Jack has one of the 
 finest minds you know ? He could do anything, if he 
 only got started right. And now you have started 
 him, all will go well ; I am sure it will. I want some 
 day to be able to exhibit Jack triumphantly to the 
 unbelievers of my family as a steady, hard-working 
 business man. Then you and I will secretly rejoice 
 and plume ourselves, won't we, Mr. Adamson ? Do 
 you know, it is so nice having some one to whom I 
 can talk about poor Jack ! " 
 
 Jack, always Jack ! Adamson, while wincing, bore
 
 IN NEW YORK OP TO-DAY 165 
 
 it manfully. It was better that he should be kept in 
 mind. 
 
 When they left the table and the men adjourned to 
 a smoking-room up-stairs, Laurence Hope joined Rex 
 and took him off to a quiet corner where they could 
 talk undisturbed. 
 
 Lucy's second hero was a tall, open-faced youth, 
 without his sister's glowing beauty, but like her in 
 going straight to the point when there was anything 
 on his mind. 
 
 " I saw you talking to my sister at dinner, Adam- 
 son," the young man said, without affectation ; " and 
 knowing that you are friends with Warriner, and all 
 that, I think it only fair to suggest to you that I 
 hope you won't encourage her in her delusions about 
 him. How far they Ve gone I don't know ; but I do 
 know that if my father suspected what I do he 'd be 
 likely to order the door shut in that man's face. As 
 matters are, we being old friends, and part relations, 
 I believe, it 's very hard to draw the line against him. 
 The fact that he 's always fascinated silly women 
 makes me sick when I think that she may be fancy 
 ing herself taken with him. I had n't seen them to 
 gether for ages till to-night, when, by George ! I saw 
 a look passing between them that choked me. Adam- 
 son, I could n't rest till I warned you. I felt sure, 
 from her face when she was talking to you, that he 
 was the subject. There 's more than one reason why 
 the matter 's as difficult as a hedgehog for me to 
 handle. I can't go to him, as I would to another fel 
 low of his stripe, and tell him my plain opinion ; and 
 I can't inform on him to my father, still less set my
 
 166 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 mother on the scent. I ought rather to protect him, 
 and let him reap every benefit on God's earth that 's 
 likely to come to him from this chance you 've helped 
 him to get. But put yourself in my place, and say if 
 you would like your sister to a girl of nineteen, 
 who 's been shut in like a nun oh ! it 's impossible, 
 intolerable, and I can't even ask you to condemn 
 him ! Perhaps I 'm wronging you in suggesting that 
 you would voluntarily let her run upon this snag. 
 If you suspected anything, you could hardly Adam- 
 son, this is n't the place for such a talk, and I 'm in 
 my own house, while he 's my mother's guest; but 
 you and I know Jack Warriner down to the ground, 
 and you must believe that I '11 fight the world rather 
 than let him get hen." 
 
 Adamson, who had listened without stirring to 
 the young man's rapid, excited speech, tried to weigh 
 well the words in which to answer him. 
 
 Thus pondering, he looked Lucy's brother full in 
 the eyes. 
 
 " Oh, I say it was brutally rude of me to do this," 
 went on Laurie, before the other man could speak ; 
 " but I don't think I was ever more boiling angry 
 than this idea has made me; and I had to speak 
 it out. It is n't square to ask you to turn on him 
 here, now, under these circumstances. I beg your 
 pardon if I 've done a rather nasty thing. I sup 
 pose it was realizing what kind of a fellow you are, 
 and knowing that you 'd stuck by Jack as man to 
 man, without considering the things that have got 
 to rule me, that made me pour it out on you. No,
 
 IN NEW YOKK OF TO-DAY 167 
 
 don't answer me ; not a word ; what I 've said I Ve 
 said, and please consider there 's an end of it." 
 
 " If there were n't all these other people looking on 
 I 'd like to shake hands with you," said Adamson. 
 
 And then Mr. Hope, senior, caine up and dropped 
 into a chair beside the young magnate, whom he had 
 decided to be a very interesting jm de siecle study ; 
 and Laurie took his pangs and fears away.
 
 IV 
 
 RS. HOPE'S large, old-fashioned draw 
 ing-rooms were again thrown open to 
 her friends. This time the occasion was 
 a sewing-class of an unusually inter 
 esting variety. 
 It was not one of those opportunities to discuss 
 the fate of nations and the faults of man to slow mu 
 sic and slower recitations when night-gowns and 
 petticoats for the infant poor lie prone across silken 
 laps while conversation quickens in the air, and 
 when the hour of parting scatters to their carriages 
 devotees bearing off unfinished tasks to be concluded 
 by their maids at home. 
 
 In the morning sunshine, streaming through win 
 dows that looked out on a pleasant square, were 
 gathered fifty or more matrons, assorted in age and 
 size, but distinctly of the chaperoning, dinner-giving 
 set. From tables piled with neat rolls of flannel a 
 few organizing spirits were distributing to applicants, 
 as they came in, the abdominal bandages prescribed 
 by medical authority for the use of soldiers in a 
 tropic clime. Equipped with one of these to hem 
 and supply with tapes, each lady took her place in 
 the group of friends found by her to be most con 
 genial. Here were no languorous needles seen. All 
 
 168
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 169 
 
 was industry, and the swelling chorus of chat was 
 charged with an unwonted note of gravity in face of 
 the possible issue of the struggle for which they were 
 thus beginning to provide. 
 
 The great wave of popular resentment that had 
 swept over the length and breadth of the land after 
 the catastrophe of the Maine had been met in a more 
 hold-back spirit by New-Yorkers than by their breth 
 ren of the West and South. In clubs and dining- 
 rooms, down town and up, the matter was discussed 
 incessantly but with conservatism especially by the 
 elders of the community. 
 
 They did not yearn for a war with Spain in behalf 
 of suffering Cuba. To their minds, it looked as if the 
 starving reconcentrados would be all in their graves 
 before the American troops could be fitly prepared to 
 fight their battles. They were not sufficiently worked 
 up to righteous indignation against the oppressors of 
 their neighbors to crave sacrificing to it the health and 
 lives of their own beloved sons in the pestilential cli 
 mate of a Cuban summer. And perhaps they were 
 not satisfied that their leaders meant to carry on the 
 war solely for the benefit of the downtrodden race of 
 aliens, and without ulterior and selfish purposes. 
 
 But everywhere in the great cosmopolitan city im 
 petuous youth had arrayed itself against experi 
 enced age. No memories of the awful war between 
 the States, that, even at this late date, had still po 
 tency to grip the heart and chill the blood of those 
 who grew up amid its dread realities, could dissuade 
 a younger generation eager for a new fray at arms. 
 While to all the armories of the National Guard were
 
 170 THE CIRCLE OP A CENTURY 
 
 trooping applicants for admission to the ranks, young 
 fellows with whom their parents and kinsmen were 
 exhausting deterrent influence went about looking 
 sore and sick at heart with hope depressed. And 
 among girls, whose knowledge of what war may be 
 was a happy blank, were rehearsed eager expressions 
 of sympathy for those would-be warriors. They 
 could not understand why should they? any rea 
 son in the attempt to curb a martial spirit, to con 
 demn a young man's pride to bleed at home, instead 
 of allowing him to take the risk of sacrificing his 
 life among comrades in the field. 
 
 And, as usual, the young element overpowered the 
 old. The inevitable of history was accomplished. 
 The stir of the country at large reached the secluded 
 homes of the wealthy residents of New York, to find 
 them ready at a touch to yield up their best. Money 
 flowed like a river to establish an Ambulance Corps 
 and Red Cross auxiliaries. Young men who were 
 idling abroad came home, zealous to enlist as privates 
 in the ranks of the avenging army. Gently bred wo 
 men and girls stepped forward to offer themselves as 
 nurses and hospital attendants, however humble in 
 capacity. This was no child's play in the name of 
 patriotism, but self-sacrifice of the sort that effec 
 tually tests the souls of people. 
 
 The vote of Congress, early in March, to appro 
 priate fifty millions of money for national defense 
 startled every one, even to the last unbeliever and 
 scoffer, into realizing that war was at least in view. 
 
 What a strange cloud hovered all that spring of 
 1898 over a community seemingly unchanged in its
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 171 
 
 performance of the usual functions of every day! 
 People went on dressing, dining, theater-going, spec 
 ulating, money-making, wrangling about politics or re 
 ligion, abusing each other in print, taking thought 
 for the morrow of their business and pleasure 
 trying all the while to ignore the fact of the coming 
 crash of armed conflict. 
 
 The one outward visible sign of anxiety was eager 
 ness to devour and digest, if possible, the repeated 
 extras of the daily press. At all hours of the day 
 and night were these disturbers of the peace, with 
 their giant head-lines and gory imprints, brought into 
 homes and read between heart-beats. But until 
 April was well advanced nay, until the day the wires 
 flashed to a waiting world the final refusal jof Spain 
 to withdraw her troops from Cuba at America's de 
 mand there was always room for hope that the disas 
 ter was not to come ! 
 
 Thus may be explained an apparent levity in the 
 earlier attitude of many New-Yorkers regarding the, 
 situation. They were like children who had played 
 at wolf till they feared no longer, yet would have 
 been glad to put an end to the awesome sport. 
 
 Mrs. Hope, one of the directors of the sewing-class 
 here convened for special patriotic work, did not, on 
 the bright day of April when they met at her resi 
 dence, look as complacent as when we saw her 
 previously in the season. It was evident that her cup 
 of personal anxieties was overfull, and some of her 
 more intimate acquaintances had shrewd suspicions as 
 to the cause. To-day, when she was brought into the 
 very focus of public observation, many speculations
 
 172 THE CIRCLE OP A CENTURY 
 
 were hazarded as to the cause of her evident dis 
 quietude of spirit. 
 
 " It is all very well to put it down to her son 
 Laurie's being likely to go off with his troop," said a 
 lady in a group remote from the hostess's position by 
 the table. " That 's bad enough, as nobody knows 
 better than I, who can't sleep for thinking of my boy 
 in the Naval Reserve. 
 
 " Of course the navy will have to bear the brunt of 
 it. It will be a sea battle, my husband says, short and 
 sharp ; and that will be the end. But one is always 
 hoping the whole thing will blow by. They do say," 
 she went on, dropping her voice while threading a 
 gold-eyed needle, " Elizabeth Hope has discovered an 
 attachment between her idol, Laurie, and little Bessie 
 Warriner." 
 
 " And you think that 's all ? Is it possible you have 
 not heard of the story that 's just come out about 
 Lucy and that good-for-nothing Jack 1 " 
 
 " No. What ? Anything very recent ? " 
 
 " Yesterday, only, it got about. I 'm sure all the 
 others here are whispering about it, so why should n't 
 we ? The affair between Laurie and Bessie does n't 
 count in comparison with this other business." 
 
 " Oh, teU me ! Please don't delay." 
 
 " My daughters heard it at their Red Cross meet 
 ing, yesterday," put in an important-looking dame, 
 while the first speaker remained in an agony of sus 
 pended curiosity. " No one knows exactly how the 
 
 facts got out, but it happened at the Club, where 
 
 both young men belong. Laurie Hope had some 
 words with Jack Warriner, and, it is said, ordered him
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 173 
 
 not to come near this house again. Jack went off in 
 another one of those terrible drinking-fits, and told 
 everybody in hearing of his engagement to Lucy," 
 whispered the happy informant. " I see Lucy 's not 
 down-stairs to-day, so it must be true. It appears the 
 child is infatuated with Jack, and they 've been en 
 gaged for months. Should n't wonder if they had 
 her stepping out of the house, some fine day, and get 
 ting married to him in secret. Well, there is some 
 excuse for a little young thing like that losing her 
 head about such a perfectly handsome man. But 
 you remember, my dear, that affair at Newport 
 several years ago and other things. Oh, no ; he 's 
 no husband for a nice girl; and besides, they 'd 
 starve in a year, at best." 
 
 " Too bad ! too bad ! " commented the important- 
 looking dame, radiantly. "I always tell my girls 
 these young women who are set up for professional 
 beauties invariably make the worst matches in the 
 world. Everybody knows, too, that Mrs. Hope made 
 a tremendous attempt to catch young Adamson for 
 her daughter when he first came home. I 'm told 
 the young man who, dear knows, is exceedingly 
 snubby, and has no manners that I can see saw 
 through her in a minute, and simply stopped coming 
 to the house. No inducement could bring him here 
 now, they say." 
 
 "Don't talk to me about young Adamson!" ex 
 claimed the third lady of the group, stopping to hold 
 up her half-completed garment with an improving 
 air, and interpolating : " I 'm giving my best herring 
 bone to the poor, dear volunteers. A more spoiled,
 
 174 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 uppish, uninteresting creature than ' Rex/ as the girls 
 call him, I 've never seen. A complete disappoint 
 ment to society. I pity the woman who gets him for 
 a son-in-law ; and his wife will always have to dance 
 round to the tune of his exactions. I can fancy him 
 brutal, if his temper were roused. I told Mrs. War- 
 riner long ago, when she was credited with wanting 
 him for Euphrosyne, that my child would n't take 
 him for a gift. And what good does their wealth do 
 him or the public ? He spends nothing on himself or 
 anybody else." 
 
 " The papers this morning say young Mr. Adamson 
 will offer his splendid new yacht as a gift to the Gov 
 ernment before it 's been put in commission and I 
 know of a lot of big charities that he 's given to 
 most liberally," said a quiet spinster sitting by, who 
 had caught the final clause of the other's speech. 
 " It seems to me he has a very unusual sense of the 
 duties of a multi-millionaire. He does not succeed 
 in making friends with his followers generally, that 's 
 clear; and then, consider how many he 's had to 
 snub." 
 
 " Oh ! " answered the important lady, huffily. 
 
 Temporarily silenced, she soon returned to the 
 charge. 
 
 " Poor Mrs. Hope ! She looks twice her age to-day. 
 Such an effort as it must have been to push Lucy 
 on this winter, and the girl absolutely ungrateful ! 
 I 'm struck more and more with that idea of her run 
 ning off with Jack Warriner and getting married on 
 the sly. Since you suggested it, it has grown 1 upon 
 my mind."
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 175 
 
 " Then at the next sewing-class it will probably be 
 circulated as an accomplished fact," remarked the 
 quiet spinster, with an innocent expression. 
 
 " I don't know what you mean/' replied the impor 
 tant dame, freezingly, turning her back to pursue 
 her utterances before more sympathetic hearers, but 
 judging it wiser to refrain from further reference to 
 the Adamsons and Hopes. 
 
 " I had a letter from my niece, Lady Clevenden, to 
 day. She is having the greatest possible success, 
 and is in the smartest set not the Queen's, of course. 
 
 " Do you know, I 've written to my agent that I '11 
 not occupy my country house at all this summer ? It 
 is so near the coast, I should think it in the highest 
 degree unsafe. I should never trust those Spaniards 
 not to bombard us without mercy, if their squadron 
 should come in there. Even Newport 's in danger, 
 so they say. And to think how civil people were to 
 those bloodthirsty wretches only a few years back. 
 Treating their Eulalia as if she were good-looking ! 
 
 " Imagine any one having the heart to throw shells 
 among the lovely houses and lawns on the cliff at 
 Newport! My husband? Cured by absent treat 
 ment, my dear ; not a doubt of it, though our family 
 physician came three times a day, I think we should, 
 before all things, be broad and accept the new ideas. 
 Did you hear that Mrs. Midas has cut down her ball- 
 and-dinner-list to fifty ? Says she can't visit more than 
 that number ; and not one of them has less than ten 
 millions. I 'm told it 's a fact. She 's been mak 
 ing up tremendously to young Adamson ; and if no 
 duke presents himself for Miss Midas, perhaps young
 
 176 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 Adamson will be made to do. The conceit of Eliza 
 beth Hope thinking she was going to get him for 
 poor little Lucy! 
 
 "I really pity these people who fancy they can 
 keep up with society on the strength of a few rusty 
 old grandfathers' portraits on the wall and the 
 Warriners are worse even than the Hopes. Well, 
 I 've finished my stint, and must go. Thirty to lun 
 cheon to-day all the frumps and people I used to 
 know before we moved. Kill all my birds with one 
 stone, as I told my husband. My chef, who is the 
 most appreciative creature, understands things so 
 thoroughly that he brought me two or three of his 
 second-class menus to choose between for this lunch. 
 How tender it makes one feel to think that the work 
 of one's fingers is going to be worn by a soldier boy 
 battling for Cuba Libre ! I '11 just slip out this door 
 without letting any one else see me, so good-by ! " 
 
 " Insufferable woman ! " observed the quiet spin 
 ster to the two ladies remaining, who were naturally 
 not averse to hearing their late comrade disposed of. 
 " She is a bundle of pretenses, eaten up with petty 
 ambitions that are not gratified. Her sole claim to 
 public notice is her money." 
 
 " Oh, she will get there ! She is on the way," an 
 swered the busy worker with the gold-eyed needle. 
 " That enormous new house has turned her head, as 
 they generally do at first. But she 's more sure of 
 herself than she used to be, or she 'd never have ven 
 tured to pick holes in Elizabeth Hope. Last year she 
 hung round the Hopes' necks and toadied them no 
 end, because they stand for the old regime. There
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 177 
 
 comes Lucy at last pretty creature. But dear me ! 
 she looks very sad. I should n't have known the 
 child." 
 
 Poor Lucy ! While her affairs were being thus ar 
 ranged for her by the voces populi of " polite " society, 
 she was moving about the room very quietly and 
 graciously, greeting her mother's friends, and, as 
 quickly as might be, sat down under the wing of 
 Mrs. Arrowtip, who had tact enough to make no 
 comment upon her evidently nervous and over 
 strained condition of mind. 
 
 After Lucy had stitched vigorously for a while 
 upon the girdle of a brave defender, Mrs. Arrowtip 
 took the opportunity, when a friend on the other side 
 had turned away, to look again at the girl ; and then 
 addressed her casually : 
 
 " What was it this morning, Lucy ? Slumming or 
 calisthenics, drawing or Red Cross? You girls are 
 so taken up with occupations, one never presumes 
 to think of you as idling like the heroines of old, 
 who remained for hours in contemplation of a 
 rose." 
 
 " I 've been doing nothing better or worse than 
 listening to the sorrows of the housemaid," said 
 Lucy, trying to speak lightly. " I found that little 
 rosy German girl mama got last dissolved in tears 
 because her sweetheart is in the National Guard, and 
 he told her last night they expect soon to be ordered 
 to the South, to prepare for Cuba. I had to con 
 vince her that the war is not on yet. Mrs. Arrowtip," 
 she added in quite a different tone, " I want you to 
 
 do me the greatest favor in the world." 
 12
 
 178 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 The two sat apart from the others, and as Lucy 
 spoke Mrs. Arrowtip moved her chair into the bay- 
 window, pretending to need more light, and signaled 
 her to follow. 
 
 " There, now no one can hear us. What is it, my 
 dear ? " she asked, cheerfully. 
 
 " I suppose you know everybody seems to know- 
 that Laurie and Jack Warriner have had a quarrel 
 about me." 
 
 " Dear, dear ! these irrepressible Warriners and 
 Hopes ! " answered Mrs. Arrowtip, letting her gaze 
 rove to the portrait of Lucy's famous ancestress, the 
 " Lady of the Duel." " Why can't they desist from it, 
 I 'd like to know ? " 
 
 " Nothing can come of this but misery to me," said 
 the girl, drearily. " Laurie found out from me that 
 I promised to marry Jack some day, and, after speak 
 ing to me as I never supposed he could speak to the 
 sister who loves him so, went off and told Jack that 
 all must end between us on the spot. Then he came 
 home again and told my father and mother, and 
 and-" 
 
 " Take care ; don't go on till you can control your 
 voice. Should n't you think our soldiers are all to 
 be Daniel Lamberts, the size they have cut these 
 things ? And what man 's going to stop to tie tapes ? 
 A good, honest pair of safety-pins would be better. 
 Now you are all right ; go on again, little girl." 
 
 " They sided with Laurie, and it was terrible. No 
 one told me anything but ' it must be ' or ' it must not 
 be.' Even papa said, ' Believe me, you will thank us 
 for this one day.' Now, I submitted when it hap-
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 179 
 
 pened, night before last ; but since then I have made 
 up my mind to a different course." 
 
 " One moment, my child. How did the story get 
 abroad ? " 
 
 "I don't know," answered Lucy, artlessly. "Of 
 course Laurie did n't speak of it, and of course Jack 
 would be too proud, even if he did not wish to shel 
 ter me. Oh, Mrs. Arrowtip, if you refuse to help 
 me, I don't know where to turn. I must see Jack 
 once more and say good-by to him. He can't come 
 here, and I 've no place where I could meet him, if I 
 would. It is so strange he has never written me a 
 line or sent me a message, when he must know how 
 I have suffered ! Tell me the truth j do you think 
 they my people are doing right?" 
 
 " I 'm afraid I do, Lucy. But don't enter upon 
 that part of it. It is too much of a tax on your self- 
 restraint." 
 
 " Poor Jack ! The whole world is his enemy ! " 
 exclaimed Lucy, keeping back her tears. 
 
 " Poor Jack ! He is his own worst enemy ! " said 
 Mrs. Arrowtip, firmly. " Lucy, this had to come ; 
 and my sorrow is that you must bear it by yourself. 
 I know what you want me to do, dear, and I '11 try to 
 gratify you. When I go home from here now, I '11 
 send off a messenger with a note to Jack telling 
 him that you will be with me at five o'clock, and 
 that I rely on him as a gentleman to come there 
 only to say good-by. It may n't be wise, but I '11 
 risk it." 
 
 " Oh, how dear you are, Mrs. Arrowtip ! " exclaimed 
 the child, fervently, a gleam of the old-time joy com-
 
 180 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUKY 
 
 ing into her eyes. " I believe this will almost crush 
 him, coming just when he had made a new beginning 
 of his life. But poor Jack never has other people's 
 luck. Even this new business has not proved exactly 
 what he hoped. There has been something I don't 
 know what that has gone against him. Once or 
 twice he did not come here when he had promised to, 
 and when I saw him again he did not seem quite 
 quite himself. I 've half suspected, once or twice, 
 that his friend Mr. Adamson has not kept his 
 pledges to him." 
 
 " Put that out of your mind once and for all, my 
 dear," said Mrs. Arrowtip, " for I have been seeing 
 Mr. Adamson pretty steadily. We have many points 
 of common interest, and I begin to know him very 
 well. I think the best thing about Jack is the way 
 he has kept Adamson's friendship. Adamson has 
 been literally a rock for him to lean upon." 
 
 " Then why did Mr. Adamson behave so oddly 
 about giving me up ? " exclaimed Lucy, vigorously. 
 "After dining here that night long ago, he just left 
 cards at the door, and never came again. If he had 
 been Jack's friend he would have wanted to see more 
 of us. You can't think how it has hurt my feelings ; 
 it seemed almost a rebuke to me for my forwardness 
 in letting him know so much, on a first acquaintance. 
 But it was because there seemed so much in him for 
 me to trust. Then, too, I had found an old letter 
 that appeared to link us together, and and oh ! I 
 was dreadfully disappointed in Mr. Adamson ! " 
 
 " Keep to your first intuitions, my dear, and they 
 will guide you right. For my part, I can't imagine
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 181 
 
 any one more to be trusted than he. But surely 
 you Ve met him since ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! in an unsatisfactory sort of fashion. 
 Once he took me in to dinner at the Langleys', and 
 talked almost entirely to the girl on his other side. 
 I may as well tell you the truth. I was not only 
 puzzled, but piqued. I wanted him to like me for 
 myself, as well as because Jack had chosen me. I 
 even went out of my way a little to try to get him 
 to do so. But he would n't," she added in a 
 melancholy tone. 
 
 " Don't waste yourself in any further speculations, 
 my child," said Mrs. Arrowtip, gravely. " As matters 
 stand, I can only thank Heaven that circumstances, 
 even before your brother's manly action, have kept 
 you and Jack Warriner almost continually apart." 
 
 " You too, Mrs. Arrowtip ? " 
 
 " Yes, I too, little Lucy. But let us talk no more 
 of this. Come to me this afternoon at five, and I will 
 be with you while he says farewell. Under those 
 conditions only I consent. Now, dear, slip out and 
 run up to your room. Your eloquent face is be 
 ginning to show too plainly what we are talking 
 about. If I could only solve the mystery of how 
 Laurie's talk with Jack at the club had got 
 abroad" 
 
 " Laurie believed no one would know of it except 
 ourselves," said the girl, piteously. " And surely my 
 parents never would why, mama can't have any 
 idea that the affair has been talked about ! " 
 
 " No, no ; there is another reason pray Heaven it 
 may n't be what I fear : that Jack himself betrayed
 
 182 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 their secret, in his cups," her collocutor thought, 
 though she said nothing. 
 
 Prompt as she was kind, Mrs. Arrowtip sat down 
 before eating lunch and penned a note to the scape 
 grace. 
 
 A little later an envelop was put into her hands, 
 containing Jack Warriner's card, across which was 
 penciled, in wavering characters : "I ought not, but 
 I will come." 
 
 At five, Lucy, pale, a little frightened, but resolute, 
 arrived in the drawing-room of Mrs. Arrowtip's tiny 
 dwelling, where many a time of late Rex Adamson 
 had sat, unburdening himself to its owner of 
 thoughts and feelings of which he could never before 
 have deemed it possible to speak. Whether or not 
 Mrs. Arrowtip suspected his state of mind toward 
 Lucy, and the real reason for his keeping away 
 from the Hopes' home, she was not yet assured 
 of it. 
 
 While sitting there waiting for Lucy she could 
 hardly restrain a whimsical burst of rebellion 
 against fate for failing to decree that Lucy and Rex 
 should have met before Jack had claimed the homage 
 of the girl's imagination. 
 
 Hereafter, with Adamson's admiration for Lucy 
 held forcibly in check and Lucy's heroic notions of 
 remaining true to the memory of her first love, the 
 whole thing would be warped and might never be 
 straightened out. How tiresome lovers are ! Mrs. 
 Arrowtip did like Rex Adamson. He was so all- 
 deserving of a good wife. Lucy was of the kind to 
 love a man for himself, without reference to fortune,
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 183 
 
 and how hard this was going to be for Rex to find 
 elsewhere ! 
 
 But concerning the depth and permanency of 
 Lucy's love for Jack Mrs. Arrowtip was beginning to 
 feel uncomfortable. She was afraid the girl would 
 hold on to the idea of him till other opportunities 
 had drifted down the stream, till the best years of 
 her life were spent in clinging to a false ideal. Such 
 things had been might be. She recalled what the 
 girl had said about consoling the little housemaid. 
 
 What was that saying of the dear old autocrat? 
 "A real human heart with divine love in it beats with 
 the same glow under all the patterns of all earth's 
 thousand tribes." A tear came into her eyes. She, 
 too, had felt that " divine love," and lost it many 
 years before. She must curb her clever tongue, and 
 be gentle with Lucy. 
 
 " My dear girl," she said, rising to kiss her guest, 
 " he will be here ; but remember, I can give you no 
 more help with him than this. I think it is, before 
 all, your duty to let him go, and I believe you will 
 not fail. No, don't answer me. Only believe that I 
 love you and would spare you if I could." 
 
 Not feeling in the mood for speech, they sat down 
 in silence, one on either side of a miniature table 
 draped in convent lace, on which a silver kettle 
 bubbled cheerily. To make time fly, Mrs. Arrowtip 
 busied herself with her tea-making, urging upon 
 Lucy a cup, which was at once put down with its 
 contents untasted. Moments that seemed hours 
 passed before a sharp ring was heard, and then Lucy 
 sprang upon her feet with an electric thrill.
 
 184 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 " Courage, Lucy," she heard in her friend's clear, 
 softly modulated tones. 
 
 But at the man's step in the little hall Lucy 
 started in dismay, exclaiming : " That 's not he ! Oh, 
 I must go out ! I can't see any one but Jack ! " 
 
 Before she could cross the threshold to retreat 
 through the back room the visitor came in. It was 
 none other than Rex Adamson. 
 
 He looked sad and stern. His face wore an ex 
 pression neither woman could fathom. It was almost 
 that of shame. 
 
 Bowing to Mrs. Arrowtip, he went over at once to 
 arrest Lucy, who stood half withdrawn in the shadow 
 of the portiere through which she had meant to 
 vanish. 
 
 " Don't go, please. I have a message for you," 
 he said in the low, concentrated tone that " holds 
 passion in a leash." " And I don't think I ever had 
 one that cost me such pain to give." 
 
 " He is ill ? " she cried, her heart beating with dull 
 foreboding. 
 
 " No ; not ill, only not fit to be here. Indeed, I 
 believe he meant and desired to keep his promise to 
 come to you, but it is far better that he failed. He 
 asked me if he should, and I told him it was better 
 not." 
 
 " But I don't understand," she answered, in pained 
 bewilderment. "It must be something oh, Mrs. 
 Arrowtip, he won't speak; you must tell me what 
 this means ! " 
 
 "It means that the man you have thought you 
 love was never worthy of you, dear," said her friend,
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 185 
 
 coming behind her and putting an arm round her 
 shoulders, " and that Mr. Adamson naturally hesi 
 tates to speak words that will tell you the necessary 
 truth. Jack, kinsman of mine though he be, Lucy, 
 is a confirmed drunkard and debauche. How could 
 those who love you trust you in such hands? No 
 matter what he swears to you, he will never have 
 strength to keep it." 
 
 " Oh, don't ! " cried Lucy, bursting into tears. " I 
 can't listen ! It is too dreadful too treacherous to 
 him ! How can I believe you when I have never 
 seen him other than as I know him ? Is n't it enough 
 we should be parted, without having my life dark 
 ened by such cruel slanders against him? And 
 from you, Mr. Adamson who call yourself his 
 friend ! " 
 
 Eex Adamson's face grew very pale. 
 
 " You leave me no alternative," he said, taking out 
 of his pocket a crumpled scrap of paper, " but to give 
 you this, which I had hoped you might be spared." 
 
 Lucy tried to read through her tears the rough 
 scrawl in Jack's familiar handwriting, that yet did 
 not seem his own. When she could decipher them, 
 these lines seemed to blaze upon her sight : 
 
 It is all true what they say of me. I have gone under again 
 this time degrading you. After Laurie left me, I drank 
 myself mad and told every one our secret. Don't waste your 
 sympathy. I am beyond the pale. But I don't bear Laurie 
 any grudge if it had been my sister I 'd have done the same. 
 But for the man who will give you this, I believe I 'd shoot 
 myself now, and end it. I shall never want to meet your 
 eyes again. Forget me, and, when you can, forgive.
 
 186 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 When Lucy looked up from her long and bitter 
 sobbing she was alone. Presently Mrs. Arrowtip 
 came back and soothed and kissed her ; but neither 
 of them spoke of the contents of the note Lucy had 
 cast into the fire.
 
 AURIE! Laurie, I say! Wake up, 
 dear ! " 
 
 There was a gasp, a stir, a flounder 
 ing under a warm cover, and then a 
 pair of blue eyes opened in a sunburnt 
 face and gazed wildly at the speaker. Laurence Hope 
 became aware that his mother, in dressing-gown and 
 slippers, was standing beside his bed. 
 
 A little while before she, too, had been lying com 
 fortably enwrapped, for the time oblivious of a fear 
 that had scarcely left her since the spring set in. 
 Into her slumbers had come the strident summons of 
 their front door-bell ; again it sounded, and she only 
 of the household was broad awake. 
 
 A glance down from her window into the street re 
 vealed a diminutive telegraph-boy, in a blaze of elec 
 tric light, holding the usual yellow envelop. While 
 instinctively reckoning up the quarters whence bad 
 news might come, she hurriedly made ready to go 
 down-stairs and take it in. 
 
 Under the hall lantern the mother read an order to 
 her son to " report at the armory at once," signed by 
 the captain of the troop of the National Guard in 
 which Laurie had been proud to inscribe himself a 
 private. 
 
 187
 
 188 THE CIECLE OP A CENTURY 
 
 Since before midnight these telegrams of command 
 had been speeding everywhere in the twin cities 
 linked by the Brooklyn Bridge, in pursuit of hus 
 bands, brothers, sons. Clubs, theaters, ball-rooms, 
 homes, hotels, and lodging-houses were invaded by 
 the fateful missives. What though the summons 
 meant no more than a test of the readiness of volun 
 teers? It was the first actual touch New York had 
 of the rude red hand of war ! 
 
 " My tired boy ! " thought the mother. " He has 
 been working so hard at the office all to-day; I 
 thought his foot lagged as he went up to bed. If it 
 could only have been to-morrow ! " 
 
 " Laurie, it 's a telegram from your captain," she 
 said in a trembling voice. " They want you at the 
 armory at once." 
 
 " Yes, mother. Ten minutes, and I '11 be down." 
 
 One grievous, long-drawn yawn, a last tribute to 
 the sweet slumber from which he had been so rudely 
 torn, and the young man was alert and eager to be 
 off. Of small account seemed to him the comforts 
 of his home, the bed soon to be exchanged for a truss 
 of straw on the wet ground of Hempstead Plains, 
 the surroundings of civilized existence to be cast 
 away for life in a tent! 
 
 He was conscious only of an intense desire to go, 
 that made him hardly patient with the yearning 
 solicitude and repressed gloom of the family now 
 aroused and in action to speed him on his way. 
 
 Although for days past every necessary preparation 
 for a call to camp had been made, though a valise 
 in waiting held all and more than the minor equip-
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 189 
 
 merits for field service a pack of saddle-bags could 
 possibly be made to contain, there were still services 
 for loving hands to render the soldier they were send 
 ing to the front. Sandwiches were cut ; a flask was 
 filled with the best brandy in the house. Lucy, in her 
 pink peignoir with the floating laces, a coil of red- 
 brown hair loosened and tumbling down her back, 
 bent a grave face over the woolen socks she had 
 been marking with Laurie's number in the troop. 
 His father, half dressed, must needs see if the boy 
 had in hand enough money for immediate use. The 
 servants, in scant attire, fell over each other in their 
 zeal to perform some ministration for the new son of 
 Mars. And amid all this bustle, instituted to work 
 off the family depression of spirits, the trooper de 
 scended among them, his lithe figure clad in fatigue- 
 jacket and trousers of dark blue, a wisp of yellow 
 stuff knotted around his bare throat, booted and 
 spurred, gauntlets in hand, and in his eyes a light 
 that rebuked the dull aching of their hearts. 
 
 " What, mother and Lucy I Afraid, are you ? " he 
 cried, "and not a Dago nearer than the Caribbean 
 Sea. That 's a fine way to send me off, is n't it ? And 
 no doubt I '11 be sneaking home to-morrow, instead 
 of going into camp. Hang these eternal delays of 
 the powers that be ! All I mind is this getting you 
 good people out of bed at this unearthly hour." 
 
 He kissed them both, shook hands with his father, 
 and sped away light-footed, to be carried up-town on 
 a neighboring elevated railway. When the front 
 door closed upon her son, Mrs. Hope vanished, her 
 husband following to give her such reassurance as he
 
 190 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 might. Lucy, left alone, ran to a front window, 
 thinking to catch a last glimpse of Laurie, and 
 hoping he might look up. 
 
 She was just in time to see her brother met upon 
 the steps by a tall man in evening clothes, who, 
 grasping him by the hand, hurried off in his com 
 pany, their steps ringing through the quiet of the 
 street. 
 
 "Which of his fellow-troopers can it be who lives 
 near enough to call for Laurie?" she wondered. 
 "That back does n't look like Dick Masters, but I 
 suppose it 's he, rushing up to dress at the armory. 
 Dearest Laurie ! How his friends love him ! and who 
 could help it ? I 7 m glad he 's got Masters, to make 
 it jollier for him. Why it 7 s not Masters it 's " 
 
 She drew back quickly. Just as the two retreating 
 figures came under the glare of an arc-light they 
 had turned and were looking back at the house. 
 Laurie, seeing his sister, waved his cap with an old, 
 familiar gesture. And Laurie's tall comrade, who had 
 also caught a fleeting glimpse of the pink vision at the 
 window, stood bareheaded in full view. It was Rex 
 Adamson. 
 
 Lucy had never seen him since the day of their 
 poignant interview in Mrs. Arrowtip's little drawing- 
 room. At that time she had felt, indeed, that she 
 never wanted to see him again. A great wave of 
 shame and grief and misery had swept over her 
 head, and she had emerged from it sore at heart, be 
 lieving that happiness was not for her again. Her 
 pride had bled that Rex, in whom she had confided 
 her innocent trust in her unworthy lover, should have
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 191 
 
 been the one to witness her downfall of faith and 
 hope. 
 
 Later she had realized the infinite gentleness and 
 chivalry of his attitude, but not at first. She had 
 allowed him to see the revulsion of her feelings ; had 
 thrust away from her by a gesture and a look his 
 eager proffer of service. And she had seen him 
 gather himself together and retreat with dignity 
 from the attempt to be anything further in her life. 
 As far as she knew, he had given her up once and 
 for all. 
 
 With her father's and mother's consent, she had 
 written a final letter to Jack Warriner, definitely 
 sundering the bond that had been between them. 
 This missive, carried to her father in his library and 
 laid before him silently, had been read by Mr. Hope 
 with the expectation of finding much to criticize, 
 to restrain, and to advise to have rewritten. But 
 after submitting it to his wife, who perused the poor 
 little heartfelt scrawl with frank tears in her eyes, 
 he had handed it gravely back to his daughter, and 
 bade her send it as it was. 
 
 Everybody at home had been dearer than ever to 
 her since then, thought Lucy. They had forgiven 
 her concealment of the affair with Jack, had sympa 
 thized in deeds, not words, with her plucky fight to 
 keep up, and seemed now to be holding her more 
 closely to their hearts than ever. Even Laurie, from 
 whom in the course of their lifelong intimacy she had 
 rarely had a melting word, had spoken with her 
 briefly, but feelingly, concerning her hapless love- 
 venture and his own share in bringing it to wreck.
 
 192 THE CIECLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 Dear old Laurie ! He had acted according to his 
 best sense of protection of his only sister. She could 
 see that in every line of his face, when he broached 
 the painful subject. For his intervention had cost 
 Laurie dear. That Jack was his Bessie's brother had 
 but made his position more distressing. 
 
 Since the event, Bessie had sent for him and told 
 him that, in view of the new rupture between the 
 families, and the exposure of their affairs to the gos 
 sips of society, her mother had ordered her to give 
 him up. So Laurie, too, was cut adrift from his first 
 love. He had confided this fact to no one save his 
 sister. If his mother suspected it, she did not know. 
 Only Lucy knew how gladly her brother had answered 
 the call to march away to war. 
 
 Amid these troubles of the Hopes and Warriners, 
 Rex Adamson had not been forgotten by either 
 household. Mrs. Warriner, with whom he had a 
 painful interview, had thanked him fervently for 
 standing by her unfortunate son in the scandal 
 brought upon them by Jack's most recent fall from 
 grace. 
 
 As a first consequence Jack had withdrawn from 
 his club, where his resignation had been accepted 
 without a protesting voice. A few days later the 
 great business venture, in which he had embarked 
 with all sails set and colors flying, came to an end 
 in a fierce quarrel between the partners, Jack's senior 
 refusing utterly to put up with him, and the firm dis 
 solving by mutual consent. 
 
 Jack, stalking out of the office in a blank fury 
 with his associate, had yet controlled himself suffi-
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 193 
 
 ciently to arrange for the return to Rex Adamson of 
 funds embarked by him in their enterprise. And 
 after that no one knew where to find our poor sinner. 
 Another star had vanished in the black abyss. 
 
 Laurie Hope had meanwhile grown into closer re 
 lations of friendship with Adamson. Every day he 
 had had something new to report to the home people 
 concerning the quick progress of their intercourse. 
 Mrs. Hope, who a little while before would have 
 welcomed this alliance with delight, now, broken in 
 spirits by Lucy's misadventure, remained passive 
 when her boy quoted Rex. She was hardly even 
 moved to comment when Laurie, coming in one even 
 ing, announced that Adamson had been taken into 
 his company of the troop, the fellows rejoicing to 
 secure such a stalwart new recruit. But Lucy's eyes 
 had flashed quick approval. 
 
 " That is fine ! " she cried, with the old enthusiastic 
 ring in her tones. " I am glad you have him for a 
 comrade, and I hope it may be a tent-mate." 
 
 That night, on going to her room, Lucy took out 
 the old letters of Eve Adamson to Mrs. Lucilla 
 Hope, and read them with new light. Was it not 
 being answered through Rex and Laurie, the century- 
 old prayer for a continuance of friendship " betwixt 
 mine and thine " ? And she had often read them 
 since. 
 
 This matter of Rex calling for Laurie at such a late 
 hour of the night afforded her subject for the liveliest 
 speculation. It was most likely that the summons 
 had found him at a certain supper given, in their 
 neighborhood, by an officer of the National Guard to 
 
 13
 
 194 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 some of his fellow-volunteers. Eex, knowing Laurie 
 to be at home, must have come a little out of his 
 way to pick him up en route for the armory. But 
 why, seeing the house lighted on every floor, had 
 not he rung boldly, and asked for Laurie, instead of 
 hovering outside? 
 
 Ah, me ! She would have liked to give him, as 
 well as Laurie, a God-speed. Her heart warmed at 
 the notion of their setting off side by side. Rex, by 
 inheritance one of the princes of the earth, wrapped 
 in the purple, putting it all away to serve as a private 
 in the ranks ! What a dullard she had been always 
 to treat him as the friend of some one else, Jack's 
 first, then Laurie's, never as one deserving honor 
 because of his own strong manhood and individuality ! 
 
 The last resolution of her mind before she sank 
 into belated sleep was an ardent determination to do 
 Bex justice for the future. It seemed vain for her 
 to dwell on it, but there was no doubt he had lingered 
 a moment looking back at her window after Laurie 
 had pressed ahead. Little did she know that, driven 
 like a leaf before the blast, Rex had come there, not 
 in search of Laurie, but making that fraternal act an 
 excuse for a last glance at the house that enshrined 
 his ruling power before he could answer his country's 
 call to arms. 
 
 HEMPSTEAD PLAINS in May! A stretch of rolling 
 downs in the middle regions of Long Island, open to 
 the full sweep of breezes from the Atlantic. What 
 vernal promise in the description ! How could our 
 volunteers do better than rally there for their pre-
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 195 
 
 liminary training ? One pictured, on first hearing of 
 it, a canvas city of snow-white tents pitched amid 
 spring blossoms carpeting the hollows, and watered 
 by rivulets coursing to the sea ! A pleasant change, 
 truly, for city-bred and city-pent youths ! So thought 
 most parents and proprietors of the nation's defenders 
 then hastening to their baptism of fire. 
 
 As a matter of stern fact, there was no romance 
 about the famous site selected by the paternal gov 
 ernment at Albany for breaking into military life the 
 thousands of young clerks, professional men, and 
 mechanics taken out of their stove-heated homes 
 and steam-heated offices or factories; men who had 
 hung up their overcoats, rolled their umbrellas and 
 shelved their rubber shoes, and left them all behind 
 at home on the day they went into camp ! 
 
 It began raining soon after the place was chosen, 
 and continued to rain for not quite forty days and 
 nights, but long enough to cover the whole extent of 
 even that gravelly soil with thick mire, thoroughly 
 to saturate the troops, their tents, and their belong 
 ings, and to subdue the spirit of the most ardent pa 
 triot to the level of grim endurance. These men, who 
 had stepped so gaily out of civil life, were suddenly, 
 without preparation, subjected to the test of sleep 
 ing on wet ground, living in wet clothes, eating 
 food soggy with the water it had been cooked 
 with, and at first, through a refinement of mockery, 
 having no water to wash in and almost none to 
 
 O 
 
 drink. 
 
 After the camp had been established these facts 
 were evident to visitors from town, and there was
 
 196 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 despondency in many a home. It was only the men 
 themselves who made no moan. 
 
 A Long Island train going away from New York, 
 one morning when lightening clouds gave hope of a 
 day less drenching, carried a small party of intending 
 visitors to Camp Black, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Lucien Hope, their daughter, and Euphrosyne War 
 riner the latter dressed in garb rigidly simple and 
 suggestive of her calling as a trained nurse. 
 
 Euphrosyne had always kept friendship with Lucy, 
 despite the recent break between their families on 
 Jack's account. She considered herself emancipated 
 from ordinary social laws, and had touched Lucy's 
 generous heart by her high-minded grief over the 
 affair coming in person to lament it, when Mrs. 
 Warriner's other daughters obeyed their mother's 
 stern fiat of withdrawal from any intercourse with 
 the Hopes. 
 
 Nurse Warriner's present outing was in order to 
 get a glimpse of life in camp, after offering her ser 
 vices to the government. Lucy had an idea that a 
 sight of his lost love's sister would cheer Laurie, 
 who, however, since the enforced parting from Bes 
 sie, had given no sign to any one of his feeling* on 
 the subject. And then, Lucy had much in common 
 with Euphrosyne just now. She had lately been 
 visiting her at St. Jude's, trying to familiarize her 
 self with details of attendance on the patients. Her 
 secret longing, little suspected by her parents, was 
 to follow Euphrosyne's example and volunteer as a 
 war nurse. 
 
 Sitting opposite them in the car, the two girls had
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 197 
 
 espied a rusty little man in shabby clothes, bent in 
 the shoulders and buried in a newspaper, which he 
 read without looking up till the train slowed at the 
 station for Camp Black. While the Hopes were in 
 the act of engaging the last unoccupied vehicle, a 
 mud-bespattered old carryall with raw-boned horses 
 and a decrepit driver, they saw their fellow-traveler 
 looking about the station in an absent-minded way, 
 apparently much at a loss as to what he was to do 
 for a trap. Lucy called her near-sighted father's 
 attention to the fact, and Mr. Hope, with his usual 
 courtesy, made the stranger an offer ef the unused 
 seat in theirs. 
 
 " I 'm obliged to you, sir. If it won't incommode 
 you, I 'd be glad to take it. I am going to visit my 
 son," he added in an impersonal tone; "and I guess 
 I forgot to telegraph ahead." 
 
 As the rain began to fall anew, Lucy, in deference 
 to the stranger's age, insisted upon placing him in her 
 own seat next Euphrosyne, and sprang lightly up to 
 the more exposed perch beside the driver. On the 
 way to the camp her spirits rose with the thought of 
 meeting Laurie ; her cheeks glowed in the moist air ; 
 her hair, under the same influence, broke into little 
 fantastic rings on her neck and forehead. 
 
 While the others yielded themselves more or less to 
 the depressing nature of the experience, while the 
 wheels sank hub-deep into watery ruts and the horses 
 strained to perform their task, her lively sallies and 
 charming looks put heart into every one. Even their 
 dry old nut of an extra passenger relaxed now and 
 again into smiles that wrinkled his thin cheeks.
 
 198 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 After plowing ahead for a weary length of time, 
 they came abreast of the camp of an infantry regi 
 ment of greenhorns from the interior of the State. 
 Uniforms and tents having proved insufficient for 
 their numbers, many of these men, still wearing their 
 ordinary citizens' clothes, were seen either miserably 
 congregated under the shelter of rubber blankets, or 
 else exposed to the rain without so much as an over 
 coat or poncho. A sentry in check trousers, a water 
 logged jersey and a derby hat, walked on his beat 
 before the dismal throng. 
 
 " Oh, do go on, driver ! " exclaimed Mrs. Hope, 
 turning away her eyes. " I never dreamed of any 
 thing like this." 
 
 At every step forward the sad impression was 
 deepened, with fresh revelations of inadequacy in 
 provision of the most ordinary comforts for the vol 
 unteers. No outcast dog could have fared more piti 
 fully than these ill-equipped regiments, hurried on 
 from their native towns or country-sides amid the 
 cheers of sympathetic crowds gathered at every point 
 along their route. 
 
 Under a thin veil of gray drizzle, all the encamp 
 ments wore their most melancholy aspect ; but Mrs. 
 Hope could not but feel that her own boy's com 
 rades, representing the wealthy and well-bred fami 
 lies of their community, and possessed of abundant 
 private means, must be found in better plight. 
 
 When, finally / the driver reined in where he had 
 been told to stop, in her disappointment she gave a 
 little cry of dismay. 
 
 " Oh, Lucien ! " she exclaimed to her husband,
 
 IN^NEW YOKK OF TO-DAY 199 
 
 woefully. "It can't be here! Surely it is n't 
 here ! " 
 
 " I 'm afraid, ma'am, you '11 find it is," said the 
 rusty little man, turning around and speaking to her 
 for the first time. u I 've been before when ; t was 
 worse than this. But the boys will cheer ye up ! " 
 
 They had halted at one end of a row of large coni 
 cal tents so sodden with moisture as to resemble 
 structures of wet paper. In and out of these lurked a 
 few stray figures, but the chief animation visible was 
 over at the far end of the line, where a curl of blue 
 smoke announced the quarters of the cook. 
 
 The inclosure behind which that potentate stood, 
 amid his pots and kettles bubbling on iron grills 
 above pits full of burning logs, a mere counter of 
 rough boards, was the only mess-table this crack or 
 ganization could boast of. Thitherward the visitors 
 could now see trooping a procession of animated 
 scarecrows phantoms in blue overcoats, with collars 
 raised and tails flapping around booted legs, their 
 campaign hats with the brims turned down to shed 
 the rain, carrying each a tin cup and plate and spoon 
 to receive his rations. It was hard to detect in them 
 the flower of New York's fashion, the habitues of 
 clubs and opera-boxes, the leaders of cotillions, and 
 former targets for newspaper squibs calling them 
 effeminate and brainless fops ! 
 
 At a little distance off, horses in canvas blankets 
 were picketed to a rope, tails to the storm, and turn 
 ing their heads from side to side in a vain search for 
 an avenue of escape from the downpour of the skies. 
 Shelter the poor beasts had none A long pile of
 
 200 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 saturated straw was their bedding, and a kind word 
 and pat from their masters at feeding- and watering- 
 time the only consolation of their days and nights. 
 If ever the outlines of animals grouped together con 
 veyed a meaning, theirs was a protest against the 
 taking up of American arms for Cuba. 
 
 Up and down the length of his beat before the 
 tents paced a sentry in draggled blue uniform, his 
 musket trailing, his aspect as forlorn as that of any 
 tramp that ever asked for alms. When the carryall 
 had come to a full stop, and he approached them to 
 challenge their business at the camp, Lucy innocently 
 cried aloud: 
 
 " Why, Mr. Percival ! " 
 
 She had recognized in him a young man of her 
 acquaintance, a whilom frequenter of gay society, 
 whom she had last seen coming toward her at a ball, 
 carrying a favor of ribbon and tinsel, and asking her 
 to dance. 
 
 The sentry saluted, but did not relax official sever 
 ity. He called up the corporal of the guard, another 
 old friend of the Hope family, who, after stolidly un 
 dertaking to summon Laurie to his parents, inquired 
 of the stranger on the middle seat whom he would 
 like to see. 
 
 " Private Adamson. Tell him his father, please," 
 was the brief reply. 
 
 " Mr. Adamson, I beg your pardon ! " said Mr. 
 Hope, astonished, like the rest. " But for my poor 
 sight I should have identified you before. Although 
 we have never had a personal acquaintance, I know 
 you, of course, as everybody else does. My name is
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 201 
 
 Hope, and as our sons are friends and tent-mates, I 
 am doubly glad we had this opportunity to bring you 
 over." 
 
 " Pleased to meet you, sir," answered the magnate, 
 graciously ; " and I take it very kindly of your young 
 lady to have given me up her seat. Bad business, 
 this rain, for our men in camp." 
 
 While the elders talked, Mr. Percival, just then re 
 turned after relief from duty, devoted himself to the 
 general enlightenment of the girls. His tongue, to 
 avenge itself for previously enforced restraint, now 
 wagged industriously. 
 
 "So that 's Rex Adamson's father?" he asked, 
 lowering his tone. " I could tell him that his son is 
 over behind there digging a trench to bury the gar 
 bage from the kitchen ; but I don't know how he 
 would take it. We like our digging-bees better than 
 sitting in a wet tent 'polishing brasses and cleaning 
 boots on such a fine spring day as this. I can't ask 
 you ladies to get out, since there 7 s not a spot to be 
 discovered as dry as the shelter of your carriage. 
 You '11 find Laurie fit as a fiddle and jolly as a sand 
 boy, Miss Hope. He and Rex are in my tent that 
 one next the last in the row ; and if we do scrap some 
 times when the ten of us have to fit in it like wheel- 
 spokes, of a night, we have lots of fun." 
 
 "That that dingy, dripping rag? Laurie you 
 aD sleep in there ? " exclaimed Lucy, horrified. 
 
 " Indeed we do ; and if we only had a board floor 
 we 'd be proud as Punch. Here comes Laurie to 
 tell you all about it. They 've caught the lad in the 
 act of loading his plate with pork and beans, and
 
 202 THE CIRCLE OP A CENTURY 
 
 he 's bringing it along. If you '11 excuse me, Miss 
 Hope, I '11 run to get my own grub, and join you 
 again presently. We can't afford to stand on cere 
 mony here, where the food fires are the only ones that 
 burn." 
 
 He ran off laughing as Laurie joined them. Mrs. 
 Hope, giving one glance at her drenched and mud- 
 bespattered offspring to be sure she had made no 
 mistake, leaned out and threw both arms around his 
 neck in a fervent hug. Regardless of the rain, she 
 and the girls presently sprang down and surrounded 
 Laurie, who, in famous good spirits, poured upon 
 them a flood of merry chat. So absorbed were they 
 in hero-worship of their own, they did not notice the 
 arrival to greet his father of Rex Adamson, whose 
 great frame, in his working-shirt, and trousers tucked 
 into his boots, was literally caked in mud, his arms 
 bare, a spade still in hand, his face ruddy with health 
 and satisfaction. 
 
 Mr. Adamson took note with a twinkling eye that 
 his son, in passing a corporal, had received orders 
 of some kind from that functionary, who happened 
 to be a petty clerk in a bank with which Job had 
 much to do. He was pleased with the whimsicality 
 of the incident, and determined to have an eye on the 
 young man on his return to civil life. 
 
 Job was feeling passably cheerful on more than one 
 account. To begin with, he had attended, before 
 taking the train, a directors' meeting, where the sum 
 total of their fees of what should have been a ten- 
 dollar gold piece for each member of the board had 
 fallen, by regulation, to be divided between himself
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 203 
 
 and the only other director present. The conscious 
 ness of these unexpected yellow boys jingling in his 
 breeches-pocket was a distinctly satisfying one. And, 
 next, he had been decidedly struck by the revelation 
 of blooming young womanhood in Lucy Hope. It 
 was long since he had taken notice of a pretty girl's 
 back hair, or had been dazzled by the apparition of a 
 rosy face, bright eyes, and gleaming teeth. He recog 
 nized Miss Euphrosyne Warriner, although she had 
 failed to identify him. He had once seen a photo 
 graph of her belonging to his wife. And, dried-up 
 old specimen though he was, Job had inwardly con 
 fessed the attraction of beauty to be something supe 
 rior to mere worth. He was very glad " Mis' Adam- 
 son " had n't succeeded in introducing Etiphrosyne as 
 a permanent member of his family while there were 
 such "pretty ones" as Lucy still unwed. Lastly, Job 
 had a piece of news for Rex that he relished, while 
 hesitating to communicate it. A telegram had come 
 to him that morning from Washington with regard 
 to his late offer of a contribution to the emergency 
 funds that exceeded in amount the yearly revenues 
 of many a monarch, and a letter had reached him 
 from an old friend high in authority in government 
 saying that his son Rex was about to be appointed 
 to a post on the staff of a leading general. 
 
 Job knew that the appointment antedated his offer 
 to the government ; but he was sure, also, that Rex 
 would fight against the appearance of buying his 
 promotion, or of being exalted so early in the game, 
 before he had done anything to deserve it. It was 
 going to be a deuce of a struggle to get his son and
 
 204 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 heir out of this mud-hole a fact in which Job felt 
 a sense of secret pride that Rex had never given him 
 in all his life before. 
 
 When Mrs. Hope announced that, rain or no rain, 
 she would not go back to town without seeing where 
 her Laurie lived and slept, and the party set out 
 under umbrellas to pick their way over to the tent, 
 Lucy found herself bringing up the rear in company 
 with Rex, Euphrosyne and Laurie having a little 
 talk apart. 
 
 Lucy was struck by the bright and hopeful look 
 on Rex's face. Always heretofore she had fancied 
 it wore an expression of uncertainty whether or not 
 life were worth living. Now, though unseemly in 
 appearance, dirty tired, and hungry, he was distinctly 
 in tune with fate. He told her cheerily of their mili 
 tary ups and downs, hardships, amusements, jokes, 
 and quarrels ; then the by far harder experience of 
 the men of some of the regiments. He described 
 how their tent, owing to a friend of theirs who smug 
 gled it in to them, had one day enjoyed champagne 
 enough to wash in, but no water ; how, sickening of 
 pdtt de foie gras, they had fed it to their horses, sighed 
 for a slice of hot roast beef, then adjourned eagerly 
 to " salt-horse " and army bread. 
 
 To all of this Lucy listened fascinated, fixing her 
 eyes upon him with enormous pride in her privilege 
 of walking beside this glorious muddy being the 
 length of the camp before the gaze of men who 
 crowded out to meet her and tried to get her away 
 from him ! 
 
 They found Mrs. Hope peeping between the dog-
 
 IN NEW YOKE OF TO-DAY 205 
 
 eared flaps of " Laurie's tent " with a truly woebegone 
 expression. The floor the ground itself, covered 
 with wet straw under rubber blankets was littered 
 with novels, pipes, cards, tobacco, tins of biscuit, fruit, 
 and empty bottles of suggestive hue and shape. 
 Every available space was filled with reeking 
 garments, stacked arms, and wet boots. Fast asleep 
 upon his back, with his feet to the tent-pole, lay a 
 big trooper snoring off the previous night on guard. 
 Over his massive bulk his comrades had scattered 
 American Beauty roses the contents of a box sent 
 to him by a fair friend in New York. 
 
 " Makes a decent corpse, does n't he ? " grinned 
 Laurie ; but seeing his mother's distressed face, he 
 promptly carried her away to visit the cook and in 
 spect the commissary supplies. 
 
 " Thank you, oh, thank you ! " Lucy was saying to 
 Rex, when it was time to go. " I shall always 
 remember this, and be grateful that I was permitted 
 to have sight of a little, though never so little, of 
 your and Laurie's hardships. And it was so good 
 of you to let me taste your pork and beans ! I liked 
 them really I did ; and your bread was excellent. 
 I 'm sure you must get sick of all that fancy stuff 
 friends send you in boxes from town. Oh, I wish I 
 were a man ! It must be grand to be banded together 
 here, enduring things." 
 
 " Yet my father wants me to get out of it. He has 
 just told me that my promotion is on the way. Now 
 judge for me, Miss Hope. I told you, a moment ago, 
 why I hesitate to take my rise. If you were in my 
 place, would you go and be a bloated staff-officer,
 
 206 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 with insignia of rank on your collar, and have all 
 the world say you owe it to your father's money, 
 or would you stay here and dig trenches for the 
 cook ? " 
 
 " Do you really mean me to decide it ? " she said, 
 blushing a little. 
 
 " No ; that would n't be fair, when I Ve already 
 made up my mind. But I 'd dearly like to know if 
 you agree with me." 
 
 " Then for the present I 'd stay here," she said. 
 
 " That 's exactly what I mean to do. And I '11 
 promise you I ; 11 look out for Laurie, and keep him 
 from getting homesick, and see that he takes those 
 quinine capsules your mother gave him." 
 
 " Oh, will you ? How good ! " 
 
 " Yes ; you know, there is something behind us 
 three that should always keep us friends." 
 
 " ' Betwixt mine and thine ' ? " she asked, dimpling. 
 
 " When you said that, you were the very image of 
 the portrait. There ; everybody 's in the trap but you 
 and my father who has taken the greatest fancy to 
 you, by the way. All those other fellows look as 
 if they would chew me up for monopolizing you. 
 Good-by, then. What do you say to our having a 
 little sort of watchword between us, in token of our 
 friendship ? l Betwixt mine and thine/ for instance ? " 
 
 " That 's the very thing. Whenever I say that to 
 you it '11 mean that I exactly approve of everything 
 you 've done; and vice versa. Don't tell Laurie; he 
 would laugh. And I do hope I can get to Camp 
 Black some day when it does n't rain." 
 
 Euphrosyne, with a subdued sigh, made place beside
 
 IN NEW YOKE OF TO-DAY 207 
 
 her. Long ago resigned to Rex's indifference, it yet 
 cost her a pang to see Lucy with him. Lucy looked 
 back at him standing like a monolith where they had 
 left him. Her heart warmed even to the dried-up 
 Job, who surprised them, on arrival at the station, 
 by having the directors' car to meet him, and invit 
 ing their party to share its luxurious interior, with 
 afternoon tea served by an accomplished steward as 
 they sped through a dripping landscape back to 
 town.
 
 VI 
 
 NE Sunday afternoon late in May, 
 Brooklyn Bridge and its approaches 
 at the westerly end were crowded with 
 a solid mass of people who had been 
 waiting there for hours. 
 In the street leading across to the Jersey City 
 ferries some cabs and private carriages containing 
 well-known heads of the community were lined up 
 along the curbstone. But, for the most part, men 
 and women of all conditions were mingled afoot in 
 the restless, pushing throng. The great railroad 
 kings and financiers, judges, lawyers, surgeons, 
 clergymen, with their wives and daughters, were 
 hustled by East-Siders who had brought their families 
 to see the show. As usual, the East-Siders had the 
 best of it, monopolizing the advance-lines of the 
 sidewalks, and stationing their women and children 
 upon boxes, carried for the purpose, exactly where 
 the meek-spirited grandees would have to crane 
 their necks to peep between. 
 
 It was long after the time fixed by the newspapers 
 for the probable arrival of the two troops who had 
 been marching along country roads from camp, and 
 the day was drawing to a close, when a stir and a 
 thrill along the lines of weary watchers announced
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 209 
 
 the end of their ordeal. With the resulting forward 
 movement of the crowd, a lady with a young girl in 
 attendance was pushed irresistibly forward upon 
 a party of three people standing against the railing 
 of the footway, and overlooking the northerly road 
 of the bridge, in an excellent position to view the 
 pageant when it should pass by. 
 
 There was a protest from the lady, around whom 
 a protecting arm was thrown by the girl, but in vain. 
 Mrs. Warriner and her daughter Bessie were forced 
 into closest quarters with Mr. and Mrs. Lucien Hope 
 and Lucy, between whom and themselves no word 
 had passed since the break after Jack's last down 
 fall. 
 
 To Mrs. Warriner this unlooked-for accident was 
 especially distressing. How could she allow her 
 whilom friends to suppose she had brought her child 
 there for a last sight of their son Laurie going to 
 the war, because Bessie had pined and moped after 
 him until her mother's heart could no longer bear 
 the strain of it! And this, following the way her 
 unhappy Jack had treated their Lucy, and the pain 
 and misery that had ensued for all concerned ! 
 There was not, alas ! for the Warriners the excuse 
 of coming to see off a son and brother. 
 
 Jack, far away somewhere in the South, had 
 simply written them that he should volunteer in either 
 the army or the navy, and try to wipe out his dis 
 grace. It was not for his mother to look her last 
 upon his bonny face beaming with patriotic zeal 
 among his comrades as they passed ! 
 
 The poor lady, wrapping herself in her tatters of 
 
 H
 
 210 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 pride, saluted her old friends coldly, then looked 
 away on the bridge without speaking. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hope, in spite of their good reasons for resentment 
 against Jack's family, were struck by the wan and 
 forlorn look upon Letitia Warriner's face. They 
 bowed in return, without giving her evidence of 
 unkind feeling. Indeed, their hearts were too full 
 for anything but thinking of their own boy. 
 
 Lucy, at first sight of Bessie, had started, drawing 
 back as if from a touch on an old sore. She had not 
 yet put Jack out of her thoughts ; and Bessie's face 
 was his, softened into girlish tints and contours. But 
 in an instant the pang had subsided and the tenderer 
 thought of Laurie had taken its place. 
 
 She had at once divined what her father and mo 
 ther had been slower to penetrate: it was, indeed, 
 for a glimpse of her banished lover that little Bessie 
 had broken bounds to come here. And before either 
 girl knew how it happened, they had kissed, and were 
 standing, palpitating, hand in hand, in front of their 
 elders. 
 
 This was no time for resentments and old feuds. 
 A common current of feeling swayed the multitude 
 when over the big bridge, riding in a column of fours, 
 with a rhythmic clatter of hoofs and a jingle of 
 accoutrements, came two troops of cavalry, covered 
 with the dust of their all-day march from Hempstead, 
 every man of whom had some dear one belonging to 
 him in the crowd. 
 
 Off for Cuba ! as they thought and hoped ! Fine, 
 soldierly figures, bronzed by the sun and toughened 
 by the privations of their hard month at Camp
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 211 
 
 Black, sitting their saddles with the ease of old 
 campaigners, each man carrying in pack and saddle 
 bag his worldly all, save for the carbine, sword, pistol, 
 and canteen that hung about his body. 
 
 Their ride through Long Island had been accom 
 plished under just such conditions as the present, 
 everywhere shouts and cheers and cries to individuals, 
 and now the greeting of the foremost troop was to be 
 intensified in volume and in feeling. They were 
 passing their nearest and dearest. Hardly a trooper 
 of the lot but had turned his back upon the comforts, 
 even luxuries, of a home near by, and was inter 
 rupting for the cause a career well begun in civil 
 life, if not sacrificing a future of brilliant promise. 
 
 Then the cheering swelled into a roar. As familiar 
 faces began to come into sight, the two girls, Lucy 
 and Bessie, leaned forward, utterly oblivious of the 
 rest of the crowd, to search the column with strain 
 ing eyes. And Laurie, riding with Rex, Percival, and 
 another man, was presently upon them in almost 
 the suddenness of a surprise. 
 
 Laurie, by good luck, was nearest them in the 
 column. As he took in the unexpected juxtaposition 
 of his father and mother and Mrs. Warriner, stand 
 ing behind Bessie, who held Lucy's hand, his face 
 grew radiant. Mrs. Hope, accustomed to read her 
 boy's countenance like an open page, saw at once 
 what he supposed to be the case. And with a quick 
 impulse, her whole yearning heart in her gaze, she 
 gave him the assurance he craved by throwing her 
 arm around his Bessie's shoulder. 
 
 " God bless you, mother ! " he said in a low, happy
 
 212 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 tone, riding so close that he seemed almost within 
 reach of Bessie's hand, where he would have left the 
 flower from his hat-band. Next, in the momentary 
 pause of the column, delayed by some obstruction 
 farther forward, his eyes sought Mrs. Warriner's. 
 She, too, was smiling approval through her tears. 
 In that moment who could refuse a trooper any 
 thing? Her heart was melted to her girl, her ran 
 cor gone. Laurie, glowing with triumph, rode away 
 as the column moved again. 
 
 Lucy, absorbed in a brief, sudden pantomime that 
 meant so much to her brother's peace of mind, did 
 not at first observe that the trooper next Laurie in 
 the line was gazing at her as if he could not see 
 enough. When they had almost passed, she perceived 
 Rex and waved to him and wished she had done 
 more. 
 
 And that was all of it. 
 
 Another troop, in the same column of fours, fol 
 lowed theirs, and soon the last rider had gone by. 
 
 Amid the tramp of hoofs, the rattle of metal, the 
 wild cheering of the crowd, the cavalry had dis 
 appeared; and in many a woman's heart light was 
 succeeded by eclipse. 
 
 That night, when they were brought to a halt in 
 the Jersey City stock-yards, preparatory to taking 
 train for the South next morning, Laurie was put on 
 guard duty, and Rex, who had obtained leave to go 
 home for a few hours to make some last arrange 
 ments, had a little talk with his friend. 
 
 Laurie, who had neither envelop nor stamp, ^charged 
 him with conveying in safety to Miss Bessie Warriner
 
 213 
 
 some disreputable-looking loose pages of foolscap, 
 procured from a sympathetic cattle-man, on which 
 he had scribbled in pencil upon his knee. Rex, 
 promising that this token should be in the youug 
 lady's hands before she slept, went, as he was, to 
 deliver it at Mrs. Warriner's apartment conscious 
 that a more played out and unseemly looking 
 object than himself had rarely touched the bell 
 at a lady's door. 
 
 The elevator-man who had assisted his progress 
 into the upper regions of the house where Mrs. 
 Warriner abode a colored gentleman of exclusive 
 tastes, and already very tired of the prominence 
 given in polite circles to these shabby bluecoats had 
 treated him with scant civility. The heir of the 
 Adamson millions, the prospective owner of that 
 famous mansion facing the park to which Rex 
 would presently return for a bath and brief sleep, 
 had had to grovel before this haughty darky for 
 permission to be conveyed up to their floor to in 
 quire whether the ladies were at that late hour still 
 visible. 
 
 A like fate awaited him at the hands of Mrs. 
 Warriner's trim little white-capped maid, who 
 could n't understand what such a shabby figure of a 
 soldier would be doing there at ten o'clock at night. 
 She decided at once upon a scolding for the negro 
 for allowing him to come up; though while she 
 was reiterating with testy emphasis that she could on 
 no account disturb her young lady to speak with him, 
 relief came in the person of Euphrosyne Warriner, 
 who was at home for a night or two before setting
 
 214 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 off on her service in a military hospital on the far 
 Southern coast, and now stepped out into the little 
 vestibule. She led Mr. Adamson within, sent a sum 
 mons to Bessie, then said in a hesitating voice : 
 
 " If it 's a message from Laurie Hope, I think I 
 should tell you there 's some one else here who would 
 wish to hear it. Lucy has been spending the evening 
 with us, and is in Bessie's room talking over their 
 exciting day." 
 
 The start Rex gave was confirmation strong of Eu- 
 phrosyne's suspicions since their visit to the camp, 
 and for one moment this young woman, to whom it 
 had been allotted to find her joy only in others, 
 service, felt a throb of envy at Lucy's happy lot. 
 
 It had at no time been Rex's fortune or position 
 that had attracted Euphrosyne to him. Long ago 
 she had cared for him for himself, and now the fulfil 
 ment of his stalwart manhood had more than justi 
 fied the promise of his youth. If she had longed to 
 nurse the soldiers, it had been her hope and prayer 
 that, should Rex need her, she might find her way to 
 him. She even felt glad to think that Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hope had denied Lucy the privilege of going with 
 the Red Cross. 
 
 But, swallowing her emotions, she went out of 
 the room, quickly returning with both Lucy and Bes 
 sie, who bestowed on the caller a welcome so warm 
 that his steady brain yielded to the sweet influence, 
 and he lingered talking for an hour. Long after 
 Lucy's maid (who had come for her young lady in a 
 cab) had been announced, he sat there, hardly realizing 
 that Euphrosyne had gone off to talk with her mother,
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 215 
 
 and Bessie to read her letter again and again, and pen 
 an answer to its raptures. 
 
 How precious would ever be to Rex the memory of 
 this unlooked-for last talk with the girl he loved! 
 Though she would never know it, should he go down 
 in battle, hers would be the last image on his mind. 
 
 If he was tempted to tell her so, now when every 
 body's heart was on lip, belief in her continuing in 
 terest in poor, wandering, outlawed Jack restrained 
 him. Seeing her here amid Jack's family seemed to 
 make her more theirs than his. He would not open 
 her wound anew by letting her know of his. 
 
 Yet, how he longed to take with him only one of 
 such words as Bessie was pouring out in unstinted 
 measure to her Laurie ! If it might have been ! 
 
 Crushing down these thoughts, he told Lucy of 
 something concerning which it had been his inten 
 tion to write to her from a distance. A little time 
 before, in looking over an old family Bible of his fa 
 ther's line, he had come upon a half-sheet of paper 
 signed by his father's grandmother, Eve Adamson. 
 Upon this was written a request to her survivors to 
 seek out some opportunity of restoring to the de 
 scendants of " Captain Laurence Hope of Warriner 
 Manor" a certain sum of money given to her by 
 Hope's parents and later invested by her husband 
 in certain city lots, which she described. 
 
 " The whole thing was so informal and impalpable, 
 so evidently a rough draft only of expression of an 
 idea she meant to elaborate, that I had great trouble 
 in following it up. I got my father's leave to do 
 with it what I like, and for some weeks the investi-
 
 216 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 gation has been pushed hard by my lawyers. I 
 should tell you there is no legal claim upon my 
 father in the matter, and that if it were brought to 
 your father's notice he would probably pooh-pooh me 
 for an impertinent fellow. But I have traced the 
 thing to this conclusion : the city lots in question, 
 over on the East Side, adjoining what was once a 
 farm owned by Luke Watson, our ancestor, are still 
 in our possession. 
 
 " They do not amount to a king's ransom in value, 
 but the sale of them would bring in a sum that might 
 help out Master Laurie in his future housekeeping, 
 you see, I am counting on our safe return, and so 
 my father has promised to have them transferred to 
 Laurie's name. I want you to promise me that you 
 won't speak of this to any living soul till time shall 
 straighten out the snarl of the war. I can't tell you 
 what a pleasure it 's been for me to do it." 
 
 " It 's like a fairy-tale ! " cried she ; " and Laurie 
 knows nothing of it ? " 
 
 "Nothing!" 
 
 " It is much too much for you to do for him." 
 
 " Remember, ' betwixt mine and thine/ Miss Hope. 
 That idea of the old tie between our families coming 
 up again, and being strengthened, even in this small 
 way, appeals to me tremendously. Some day, if 
 you '11 let me, I 'd like to follow up these clues by 
 reading the letters of Eve Adamson that are in your 
 possession." 
 
 " We Hopes can never do enough to show our grati 
 tude to you Adamsons, if you carry out this wonderful 
 new plan. You have taken away my breath. That
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 217 
 
 sweet old Madam Eve seems to be our good genius, 
 and I can't tell whether it is she or you I must thank 
 for Laurie's sake." 
 
 She held out her hand with a charming gesture of 
 good will. 
 
 " Thank her, then, if you must ! " he exclaimed, 
 lifting her hand to kiss it. " But don't altogether for 
 get her descendant. I 'm staying an unconscionable 
 time, Miss Hope. But when I think that it 's my very 
 last chance of a talk with you" 
 
 " Oh ! but you had to wait for Bessie's letter," she 
 exclaimed, blushing. 
 
 Lucy could hardly believe in the transformation of 
 his face and manner. Something of this he had 
 shown in their first meetings, and the memory thus 
 evoked brought with it the inevitable one of Jack. 
 The answering glow in her own face and manner was 
 chilled, and a sigh escaped her lips. 
 
 Rex sprang upon his feet, clinking his spurs, stand 
 ing erect and self-conscious, his own emotion checked, 
 his hour of dalliance over. A carpet-knight was he 
 no longer, but a soldier on the way to the front- 
 Then Mrs. Warriner came in, with Emily, who said 
 small and civil things to him about the coming cam 
 paign, the hardships of the camp and march, etc. ; 
 and at last Bessie appeared, fetching her long letter 
 to Laurie after which he had no recourse but to 
 take his leave. 
 
 Then Bessie led Lucy back into her little sanctum. 
 By a common impulse the two fell into each other's 
 arms and relieved their surcharged feelings by what 
 girls call a " good long cry." Bessie stopped crying
 
 218 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 first. The idea of Laurie tramping up and down on 
 his beat in the Jersey City stock-yards, thinking about 
 her, was a beacon in her darkness. 
 
 Mrs. Warriner, of all the friends who had shared 
 in the emotions of the little episode on Brooklyn 
 Bridge, remained longest keeping vigil that Sunday 
 night. The true and brave son she had gained was 
 nothing by comparison with the dear sinner she had 
 lost. Wherever Jack might be, whether couched on 
 the ground under the stars shining upon a Southern 
 camp, or afloat in the bowels of a big battle-ship, 
 there was her faithful heart. The girl he had 
 loved and ill treated might learn to forget him and 
 choose another in his place; the sisters who had 
 cherished and shielded him might be weaned in time 
 from his memory; but the mother, never on God's 
 earth ! 
 
 WHILE Laurie Hope and his other brothers in arms 
 were still in a home camp, eating their hearts out 
 with the desire for action, Rex Adamson, appointed 
 to the modest position of second lieutenant in the 
 Regular Army, had been transferred to an infantry 
 regiment ordered to Santiago. 
 
 It was not his luck to be in the fight at Las 
 Guasimas on the 24th of June, but he heard from 
 a dozen sources of the distinguished valor shown 
 that day by dismounted Rough Rider Jack Warriner, 
 who had gone through it with the dash and light 
 spirit he would have put into playing foot-ball at 
 college or polo at Newport barely escaping death 
 once or twice, and emerging from many perils to
 
 IN NEW YOKE OF TO-DAY 219 
 
 receive promotion from his leader, together with the 
 brief speech of approval that Roosevelt's men craved 
 as English soldiers covet a V. C. 
 
 Rex had met Jack once, and exchanged a hand 
 shake with him afterward; but the toil of getting 
 files through that underbrush from Siboney to San 
 tiago, in heat like the blast of a fiery furnace, made 
 men forget everything but what they saw on either 
 side of them, and what they hoped to do ahead. 
 
 IN the forenoon of July 1 two badly wounded men 
 were panting, gasping, one stretched half across the 
 body of the other, on the slope of San Juan Hill, that 
 had just been carried by the American line. It was 
 an officer of infantry who lay underneath; the one 
 pinning him down wore the garb of the Rough Riders. 
 Corporal Jack Warriner had seen his friend, Lieu 
 tenant Adamson, fall, and found him shot through 
 the shoulder, bleeding and helpless. While bending 
 over, trying to give him the little water he had, Jack 
 was himself hit by a bullet across the back, that 
 struck the spine. The high, harsh grass wherein 
 they lay closed around them, and no relief had yet 
 come their way. To torturing thirst under the glare 
 of a merciless sun was added the ever-increasing 
 distress of their enforced posture. They had spoken 
 to each other, and were wondering when the thing 
 would end. When Jack found that Rex's voice was 
 giving out and his breath failing under the weight, 
 he envied him his prospect of dying first, but deter 
 mined, nevertheless, to make one final effort to relieve 
 the situation.
 
 220 THE CIECLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 "If I could move I think you 'd have a better 
 show," he said, "and I 'm going to try ! " 
 
 " No, no ! For God's sake, don't ! It 's only- 
 holding out a little bit longer for the two of us. 
 It must end soon." 
 
 " If there 's a chance for either, you ought to get 
 it ; so I 'm going to try," repeated Jack, gathering his 
 resolution. 
 
 " Jack ! dear old Jack don't ! I" 
 
 " If you see her" began Jack, but stopped. He 
 knew that he must save all his strength for the physi 
 cal struggle of moving his shattered and numbed 
 body. Even the resolve to do this had brought out 
 a thick sweat upon his forehead. Then he tried, 
 with the one arm of which he had some control, to 
 lift himself, and, with a groan of anguish, failed. 
 But he succeeded in giving a trifle of relief to Rex. 
 
 " No more, Jack. That 's all right. I tell you, it 's 
 all right," Rex said. 
 
 "Yes it is all right now," he heard Jack whisper; 
 and then there was another wrench, and by a supreme 
 effort the thing desired was accomplished. The body 
 of the Rough Rider rolled off his friend, and Jack 
 lay dead beside him. 
 
 By the time Rex fell into the hands of the surgeons 
 he was too far gone to know anything of what was 
 passing. 
 
 But in the second stage of a long ensuing illness, 
 in a rude little military hospital in the hills near 
 Santiago, he found his father at his side. He was 
 fairly convalescent before they ventured to tell him 
 that Jack was at rest under a soldier's monument a
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 221 
 
 couple of sticks in the form of a cross pending an 
 opportunity to send his body home; and that poor 
 Euphrosyne, after a career of self-devotion to the 
 fever patients in the hospital where she had been 
 detailed as nurse, had herself succumbed to the yel 
 low scourge, more fatal than Mauser bullets, and 
 was also buried in Cuban soil. 
 
 ONE beautiful soft day of autumn, when the High 
 lands of the Hudson were garlanded in many-colored 
 leaves, a handful of friends gathered around the 
 newly opened vault in the Manor graveyard where 
 Jack's forebears had for several generations been 
 entombed, to commit to their final resting-place the 
 last of the male Warriners and his heroic sister. 
 
 The two coffins were covered with one flag, and 
 upon Jack's were placed his old trooper's hat and 
 gauntlets, while Euphrosyne slept under a mass of 
 white roses. The short military service was soon 
 concluded. The echo of the volley fired after the 
 coffins were carried in had been taken up and re 
 peated gloriously by the hills round about ; and then 
 a bugler sounded taps. 
 
 Rex Adamson, gaunt as to person, hardly filling 
 his uniform, his face white and lined with grief, gave 
 his arm to Mrs. Warriner ; the sisters, Job Adamson, 
 Mrs. Arrowtip, and the Lucien Hopes gathered in the 
 background. Her parents had asked Lucy not to be 
 present, and Laurie was away in a distant camp, hav 
 ing not yet resigned from the Volunteer Army, in 
 which he had received a commission as captain in a 
 staff department before the occupation of Porto Rico.
 
 222 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTURY 
 
 FOE months after this pathetic reunion of Hopes 
 and Warriners and Adamsons at the Manor vault 
 none of them visited the spot. Then it began to be 
 noised about that the old place had been purchased 
 from the Warriners, and people went so far as to sur 
 mise that the new proprietor could be no other than 
 John Jeremiah Doyle, a millionaire stocking manu 
 facturer ambitious of intrenching himself among the 
 old families of New York, who had recently become 
 engaged to Miss Emily Warriner. 
 
 Authorities were even found competent to describe 
 the sumptuous mansion of white marble that would 
 soon be built to replace the old Manor-house. Then 
 public interest was claimed by the announcement of 
 Miss Bessie Warriner's engagement to Captain Lau 
 rence Hope, now returned to civil life and some 
 what reluctantly resuming his former practice of 
 the law. 
 
 The official declaration of Mr. Doyle's agents that 
 he had not purchased the Warriner estate, but would 
 build at Newport, put an end to speculation on this 
 point, and people declared that it was all a mistake, 
 and the Manor had not been sold at all. 
 
 Laurence Hope's future bride could have told a dif 
 ferent story. The Manor had been sold, but the pur 
 chaser was old Job Adamson, and he had bought it 
 as a wedding-present for Jack Warriner's youngest 
 sister. When Mrs. Warriner found out who had be 
 come the owner of her husband's ancestral acres, and 
 for what purpose, she went to call upon Mr. Adam- 
 son in his home, and protested against his generosity. 
 
 " I believe you remember, ma'am," he said in an-
 
 IN NEW YOEK OF TO-DAY 223 
 
 swer, " that your son gave his life in the effort to save 
 his friend, who is my son. And, if it wa'n't for that, 
 I 'd consider that every man who charged up that 
 slope at San Juan had earned the best we stay-at- 
 homes could give him. I mean to put the place in 
 proper repair before the young folks get into it ; and 
 it '11 be likely some time before they '11 calc'late to 
 live there, summers. But it 's right it should be 
 owned by a Hope, if not a Warriner " 
 
 " That last can never be ! " cried the forlorn mo 
 ther, bursting into tears. " There '11 be no more 
 Warriners ! " 
 
 " You were the mother of a hero, ma'am ; let that 
 comfort you," said old Job, solemnly. " And you may 
 just make yourself easy about any little thing I do 
 for you and the Hopes. My boy, who, since he 's been 
 getting back his strength, stays around the house a 
 good bit, has traced out our family story. And he 
 says it 's heredity that 's driven us we can't get out 
 of it we 're just bound to be friends. But there 's 
 one way you could favor me, ma'am, if you Ve a 
 mind to. 
 
 " I don't know what ails Rex, but he mopes con- 
 sid'able. If Mis' Adamson were living, she 'd likely 
 know what to do with him. My notion is, he 's 
 wantin' to get to stay by that little Lucy Hope, and I 
 don't blame him. I don't blame him worth a cent. 
 There ain't a girl I ever saw I 'd rather have for 
 him. But he thinks he has n't got a show, maybe. 
 'T would be a mighty obligation to me if you could find 
 out what the facts in the case are, Mis' Warriner 
 and let me know seeing Mis' Adanison's not
 
 224 THE CIRCLE OF A CENTUEY 
 
 The old man gulped, stopped speaking, and got up 
 to pace back and forth in the great library, that, 
 like the rest of his house, was lonely and chill in 
 its magnificence. 
 
 A light broke upon Letitia "Warriner's comprehen 
 sion. She recalled what Bessie had told her about 
 Rex thinking Lucy was set apart and devoted to 
 Jack's memory, and, jealous mother though she was, 
 she could not suffer that. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Adamson, I think I can help. "Will you 
 let me speak to your son will he think it a great 
 impertinence if I ? " 
 
 " I think not, ma'am," interrupted old Job, eagerly. 
 " I don't know for certain, but I believe you 'd be 
 welcome as flowers in May." 
 
 MRS. WARRINER had her talk with Rex, and that 
 selfsame afternoon, when Lucy was sitting by a little 
 fire in the middle drawing-room of her home, Rex 
 Adamson was announced. She trembled a good deal, 
 for during the morning Mrs. Arrowtip had been with 
 her. 
 
 The eloquence of that animated lady had almost 
 persuaded Lucy that she was pushing her reticence 
 with Rex " absurdly far." Mrs. Arrowtip had pre 
 viously told Rex the same thing with regard to his 
 attitude of keeping away from Lucy. But then, Mrs. 
 Arrowtip was not Jack Warriner's mother and could 
 not speak at first hand upon the point of how much 
 or how little Lucy owed to Jack's memory. Nor could 
 she convince Rex, as Mrs. Warriner did, that Lucy's
 
 IN NEW YORK OF TO-DAY 225 
 
 girlish fancy for Jack had never had proper food to 
 feed on, and so had withered in the bud. 
 
 " Must I answer ? " asked Lucy, at the end of a long 
 argument between the two. 
 
 " I really think so," said Rex, looking alternately 
 at her and at the "Lady of the Duel" on the wall, 
 wondering, as he did so, if ever man had such an en 
 chanting pair to stir his blood and set his pulses 
 racing and keep him in cruel uncertainty the while. 
 
 "Well, then, if it 's only to fulfil the behest of an 
 cestry don't you remember what we agreed on at 
 Camp Black?" 
 
 " ' Betwixt mine and thine,' " repeated Rex, dream 
 ily. " How strangely things are coming to us out 
 of the past ! I 'm afraid to believe what I want to. 
 You mean that you ? " 
 
 THEN the joy and glory of the present broke over 
 him, and he cared not for past or future, for anything, 
 but that he had found the clue to life which had so 
 long eluded him.
 
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