THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES EERTRAND SMITHS OKS M.UE GIRLS OF A FEATHER. Xfbrars of popular fiction *lo. 31 - GIRLS OF A FEATHER BY MRS. AMELIA E. BARR ' AUTHOR OF "THE BEADS OF TASMF.R," "THE MATE OF THE 'EASTER BELL,'" "FRIEND OLIVIA," "THE HOUSEHOLD OF MCNEIL," "A SISTER TO ESAU," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEREDITH NUGENT NEW YORK THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY PUBLISHERS' AGENTS ps OOPTEIOHT, 1893, BT BOBERT BONNKB'S SONS. (Att riglitt reterved.) GIRLS OF A FEATHER. CHAPTER I. "CAN YOU DOUBT IT?" " But men await the tale of love, And weary of the tale of Troy." NONE of the events of life seem to have such a pronounced fatality as those which refer to love and to death. Who among us has the oracle of his grave ? Who can tell under what skies it will be dug ; or at what time ? And the uncer tainty of dying is not greater than that of loving. A man may walk daily among the fairest women on earth and never know the meaning of the word. He may come to an age which fairly gives him warrant to assure himself that he is proof against the witch eries of women. He may even deplore his insensi bility to them ; and yet find that the bitterly-sweet experience has only been a little delayed that in an hour undreamed-of without premonition or prepara- 2061874 8 Girls of a Feather. tion, lie falls serenely and carelessly into the deepest depths of that half-divine condition. Perhaps no man in New York felt more certain of his position in this respect than Dr. Robert Carter, a physician of renown, a man of great wealth, very handsome, and still unmarried though nearly forty years old. He was accustomed to speculate on the circumstance ; and specially so when the claims of his profession took him to Adrian Van Buren's. He had been there one afternoon, and as his carriage joined the stream of vehicles coming down the Avenue, he soon became thoughtful, and the enforced slowness of his progress conduced to reflection : " What a noble woman she is ! How strong, how gentle and how wonderfully handsome ! Only, I do not feel her beauty. My heart beats no faster in her presence. I can forget her for weeks together. Yet I wish I could love her. I like her father ; she has no embarrassing female relatives ; and I ought to marry. Will is always telling me so ; and Will is right. But I know that there is such a thing as love. Professionally, I have met cases of ' love unto death.' Surely in the presence of Alida Van Buren a woman who is even physically divine I ought to feel love but I do not !" Engrossed with such thoughts, he had nearly reached his home, when he remembered that he had promised to call upon a sick gentleman living in a neighboring street. He knew him to be a reckless speculator, and he had a very shrewd idea as to his physical trouble. " I will wager my fee that he is dying of gold on the brain," he muttered as he went to the chamber of his patient. And he told him so plainly. Can You Doubt It?" " What have you to do with the money-market, Mr. Shepherd ?" he asked. " You, whose nervous system is all on the outside, and whose feelings are refined by prolonged culture. To men of your caliber, the money-market is only a common form of suicide." " What is the world but a money-market, doctor?" " It is a great deal more. Men who make colossal fortunes do not do so so much from choice as because it is their raison d' fare. When Nature produces a creature for the special purpose of making money, she does not burden him with nerves and with wants and desires that would scatter his forces." " Money-makers are necessary to progress, doctor." " Certainly they are. This is the industrial age, and there must be men who are great reservoirs of capital. How else could we build railroads and lay ocean cables ! But consider the men who make great sums of money, and you will see that in all business matters they act with the steadiness and the cer tainty of instincts. Culture impairs natural instincts, makes them hesitating and considerate. You are too cultured, Mr. Shepherd ; you will never succeed in making millions ; and I tell you, if you continue the effort, you will kill yourself. Go to the seaside to the woods to the mountains go anywhere but to the money-market." The sick man sighed and turned his head wearily to the wall. And Doctor Carter having done his duty, went slowly down-stairs. He was buttoning: his gloves and thinking of his dinner. As he passed through the hall, he was arrested by the opening of a door. A small, slight figure ; a woman's face,, young and lovely ; a soft, eager voice made poten tial reason for his delay. IO Girls of a Feather. " Doctor Carter, how is my father ? Is he very ill ?" The white, anxious face lifted to his face was very beautiful, but that was not the charm. It was the face for which he had been waiting ; it was the voice, which seemed to have half-forgotten echoes in his memory. No other woman had ever touched him in just the same way. He felt a right in her, and a determination to compass that right the moment she spoke to him. An unusual tenderness came into his heart, and the sick man acquired a sudden interest through the sick man's daughter. He sat down by her side and entered into explanations and directions not before thought necessary. He could have re mained with her all day. Her eyes drew him like magnets ; and when she gave him her hand at part ing he hardly knew how to escape from its clasp. When all had been said, he still held it ; and for a moment they looked silently at each other. In that moment her face was imprinted upon his heart. He knew that he must evermore carry the sweet im pression. Robert Carter was nearing forty years old, and ac customed to diagnosticate both mental and physical symptoms. He knew what had happened to him. i " I have fallen in love at last," he mused. " I was taken so absolutely unawares. However, in real life," he said decidedly to himself, " love is the most man ageable passion in the world." Then he wondered if he should tell his brother. He would, and then he would not ; and yet he knew his indecision was all a pretense of indifference. In his heart he was longing to describe the loveliness and sorrow which had subjugated him. There was indeed between Robert and Will Carter "Can You Doubt It?" n a brotherly affection which could not endure reserva tions, although no two men could have been more dissimilar in many respects. Robert lacked all sen timent and poetic tastes and was without spiritual discernments. No obstinate questions of "Why?" or " Where ?" ever troubled him, and no mere mat ter of feeling was ever likely to interfere with his " getting on " in the world. Will Carter cared very little for the world, but much for the unfathomable inner side of life. He was a lover of nature, a fine musician, a man who inhabited only his head and his heart and who put all fleshly desires under his feet. Yet, in spite of these radical oppositions in taste and in character, the brothers had a strong attach ment for each other. Accustomed to give all affairs of their lives a mutual confidence and discussion, they derived from the habit something of that moral discipline which a priest derives from " manifesting his conscience." And though Robert's many duties separated them from morning' to night, as soon as they were together again Will usually opened the conversation by asking : " What has happened to you to-day, Robert?" The answers to this question had a certain mo notony and yet a constant variety. Will saw the world through them. He had almost a child's curi osity in their recurrence, for was there not always the possibility of something wonderful to tell ? He seldom admitted that this wonderful element must be love, yet the thought and dream were always present. He had little unspoken disappointments in his brother's indifference to women ; for though his modest self-depreciation forbade any personal hope 1 2 Girls of a Feather. of marriage, he continually imagined for Robert some exquisite girl-wife, who would be good, pure and lovely as the angels in heaven. It grieved him when Robert smiled away such hopes. It grieved him still more to hear women slightingly spoken of. He never hesitated to rebuke such words and to remind his brother of the dead mother and sister whose memory still sweetened their pleasant home. But as year after year went by, he began to let the idea of Robert's marriage slip away a little. It grew fainter and fainter until the girl-wife, whom he had almost seen going through the house, filling it with love and sunshine, became a pale shadow of his first hope. He had even ceased to speak much to Robert on the subject. " We shall both wither away in the rooms our father built, and there will be none to come after us," he thought. For it seems a part of fruition that hope must first have been abandoned. Destiny loves surprises. Will was not that night even watching for his broth er. He was holding " large discourse " at the organ, In those abrupt shocks of startling melody which prelude the " Messiah " and arrest and inspire the mind with majestic contemplation. Will was quite voider their spell. He did not hear his brother enter the room, and he did not see him standing at the window, looking first at his own iridescent finger nails and then at the moving picture trampling down the avenue. Nor did Robert interrupt his brother. He had some sweet thoughts for entertainment, and it was near six o'clock. In a few minutes, he knew, the butler would have no hesitation in saying, no mat- Can You Doubt It?" ter what immortal melody was ringing through the room : " Mr. Will, the dinner is served, sir." And even as he remembered this certain interruption it was accomplished ; and Will, with the look of a man suddenly awakened from sleep, came down from the clouds to the dining-room. He went to his brother's side with something of the affectionate confidence of a child, and as soon as they were alone he asked his usual question : " What has happened to you to-day, Robert ?" " I have made calls and delivered my lecture. And you? What have you been doing, Will ?" " I have read and written and walked. But it is hard to walk in the city now. I want to go to the woods. I want solitude. I want it a hundred miles thick on every side. I saw a starling shoot through the square, swift, straight and resolute. I knew he was going to the country. I made a rendezvous with him there." " To-day I also made a rendezvous in the country. But it was with a young lady." " Robert ! You made a rendezvous with a young; lady ! Who is she ? What is her name ? Where is. her habitation ?" "She is Mr. Ambrose Shepherd's daughter. I do not know her personal name yet. She lives in the next street. Ambrose Shepherd is very ill. I have advised his removal into the country, and his daugh ter asked me if I would visit her father there. I said I would." " But then ? That is not all !" " Not quite." " For you never go out of town to see patients. Robert, I ant amazed ! I have no proper words to 14 Girls of a Feather. express my amazement. I can only use the inartic ulate formula in ' Little Dorrit :' ' It du ! It really du ! ! It du, indeed! / /' Is Miss Shepherd pretty ?" " She has a captivating face and manner. I am afraid, Will, she has almost persuaded me to fall in love with her." " Robert ! Do fall in love with her ! I hope you cannot help falling in love ! ' I du ! I really du ! I du, indeed !' " " Sensible people can always help folly, Will. Do you suppose I shall allow myself to fall in love on unknown ground ? And if I do fall in love, I need not therefore marry." "You are talking uncommon nonsense, Robert. If Miss Shepherd should take it into her head to marry you ? Then where would you be ?" " Just where I am, I suppose." " Oh, no, indeed ! In such a case you would be as certain to marry Miss Shepherd as you would be to arrive at Washington if you got into a train going to Washington. And just think, Robert, how charm ing it would be to have a lovely woman going about these rooms ! How charming to hear her calling your name ! To see her, exquisitely dressed, sitting at your side at this very table ! What excellent din ners we should have ! And how perfectly the house would then be ordered ! For one of the miracles about women even young girls is that they make the most outrageous servants behave themselves and do their duty. You know that both of us are afraid of the servants. Yes, we are, Robert. Do fall in love, then ! It would be such happiness for both of us !" " Tell me, Will, why should a man sacrifice every 11 Can You Doubt It?" 15 other consideration to one single condition of happi ness ? And it is by no means sure that domestic life is the highest form of human bliss and aspiration." " As far as women are concerned, perhaps not. The woman of to-day is such a miracle. If John Milton wrote now, he would be compelled to make man, and not woman, ' the defect of nature.' Women are so much in advance of us now. What degrees they take ! What books they write ! How eloquent they are for the best side of everything !" " If Miss Shepherd is one of these miracles, I shall not go to the country to see her. I greatly disap prove of women who lecture and write books. I could not love a woman who always met me at intel lectual sword-point. I like a girl to have the bloom of womanhood upon her." " Does the girl who writes a book lose .any more ' bloom ' than the girl who reads what is written ? The highest education for women " " Is the education that best fits them for married life. Marriage is a woman's highest destiny." " Very good, Robert. The men ought to hold a similar doctrine of predestination about their own destiny : Man's highest education is that which best fits him for married life. The one theory supposes the other." " Will, why do you not fall in love ? You seem to have progressive ideas on the subject." " I have been very near it often. I would dare the experience gladly if I could find a suitable com panion to dare it with me. I am not handsome. I am very different to you, Robert." " You are rich." " Love is not bought in the market-place." 1 6 Girls of a Feather. "Oh! Oh! O'h! That is just where you are wrong, Will." " A wedding-ring may be bought ; but love ? No ! Love has no earthly equivalent. May God send those together who would fain be loved !" With these words he rose from the table and be gan to light his cigar ; but he accompanied his move ment to a murmur of songs, which had such a swing of march and melody that Robert felt it impossible to resist the curious interest with which it inspired him. "What are you singing, Will?" he asked. "It sounds like some incantation. Whatever are you doing with your syllables ?" " I am singing four lines from the ' Eve of Venus.' I wonder if it is near her advent ? Listen, Robert, to the commands of the great goddess : " ' Lovers become ; and begin to-morrow, You that have notever loved before. Aye, and to-morrow again be lovers, You that have lovedand love no more. 1 " The music was sharp and poignant to the very last note, and when it had rung itself out, Robert also rose. He went to the window and flung it open. The words and melody affected him strangely. They were fastened in his memory like a nail in a sure place. He wished to change the subject entirely, and he asked his brother : " When do you go to the country, Will ?" " In a day or two. It is very warm and the city is already empty." " Perhaps ; but the country is still emptier.' "You do not like the country, Robert?" " No ! I do not like the country, and life is too "Can You Doubt It?" 17 short to spend any part of it in a place that is dis- agreeable to you. I like the city. I like the greet- ings in the market-place and the jargon of the clubs and the gossip in the wide office of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. I like the questing and the guessing and the eager, angry, imperious struggles of life." "And so you wear your heart and nerves and brain away." " Precisely but I live. Did you hear that Calvert has fled with a lot of money ?" " What folly to steal when it is so much more lucrative to cheat." " But when a man lends himself half a million at once ?" " He is a poor fellow. Suppose you advise Am brose Shepherd to go to Stromberg. I am going there, and I could look after him a little. I should like to know his daughter." " Stromberg is as good a place as any other. He simply wants to get beyond the jingle of gold and the financial slang of the Street. But that is the difficulty." " There ought to be a Lotus-land for our worn-out financiers, Robert. A land in which it should be always afternoon, without any afternoon newspaper." " What nonsense ! How could you make mild- eyed, melancholy lotus-eaters out of New York stock jobbers? If you took them to a veritable land of Tennyson, they would scramble up those 'three silent pinnacles of snow ;' they would measure the height of each peak and build a hut at the limits of the snow-line. Very soon they would organize a joint-stock hotel company, put up a monster building and incite the lazy inhabitants to be^cine guides and 1 8 Girls of a Feather. keepers of livery-stables. And there would be a morning paper, of course, full of financial schemes and real-estate booms. In short, Lotus-land would soon become a miniature New York." " Lovers of nature " I tell you, Will, lovers of nature are born so. They are a ready-made article. I am always bored to death in the country." " How can a man be bored anywhere, with all the resources of our high civilization ?" " I assure you, Will, that a capacity for being bored is a proof of our high civilization. The degree in which you feel ennui is the actual measure of your active power running to waste. A country boor full of beer and bacon is not bored. He is happy enough if he may sit still and convert beer and bacon into flesh and blood." They pursued this conversation, until Will arrived at the millennium. Robert threw no impediments in his way there. He found apparent listening a good opportunity for giving his thoughts their free will ; and he regarded the fact with some interest, that they had instantly flown to the girl he had seen for the first time that afternoon. He did not analyze her beauty ; he preferred to realize it in its entirety. To consider her features, her form, her air, her voice, separately, was like pulling a rose to pieces, to count its petals or to find out to what botanical family it belonged. All in all, the maiden was sweet and lovely ; and Robert Carter, as he sat in the gloam ing, half listening to his brother's theories and quite absorbed in love's delicious dreaming, was inclined to let his heart lead him. But even philosophical philanthropists get tired "Can You Doubt It?" 19 eventually of their eloquence ; and when Will Carter had traced the growth of brotherly love until it brought forth the millennium, he said : " I may as well stop, Robert. I do not think you are as interested in the millennium as you ought to be." " It was a kind of Northwest passage there, Will. And, after all, the millennium is so far away, while the probabilities of our ever reaching it seem to grow less and less every year. However, nothing pre vents our going to sleep and dreaming it is here." But such was not the dream Robert Carter be spoke ; for as he went loitering and thoughtfully about the room, preparing himself for rest, he was softly humming the invocation of a far older lover : "Come, Sleep ! But, mind you, if you come without The little girl that I would dream about, By Jove ! I would not give you half a crown For all your poppy-heads and all your down !" And when the great mystery of sleep wrappeth a man like a garment, how shall he order what is to befall him in that condition? For though Robert entered it full of pleasant hopes and plans, he awoke weary and sad, with a heart aching with a nameless apprehension. He spoke to his brother jestingly of the matter. " It was the /#//, Will. There could have been no other reason. I was thinking of Miss Shepherd all the evening. What fools we mortals be, sleeping or waking." " We may be fools, waking, Robert ; but in sleep, we get very close to the truth about ourselves. One- fourth of our time is spent in sleeping and dream ing ; is it likely, then, that the whole matter is of no 2O Girls of a Feather. consequence ? Besides, our dreams are as individual as our thoughts." " You could not prove such an assertion as that, Will." " Oh, but I can ! You told me last week one of your horrible dreams after vivisection ; and at the very same hour I was dreaming of wandering in a great wood and listening to the green finches, who were laughing and talking back to each other. We are such stuff as our dreams are made of, Robert." " All right. I see Horace Key is going to Con gress. At least the Herald says so." " And truth is absolute in the pages of the Herald. Why should Horace go to Congress ? Such a gay- hearted fellow !" " Congress is generally considered a good thing." " But it is not a cheerful thing. Multitudes of people go to sleep there." " All business is, I suppose, rather dull." " I think so. If I call on Fred Lenox, I feel the weight of his office on my heart for days afterward the files of big books, the desks of awful height, the bills and papers, the silent men writing, writing, writing are a kind of nightmare." " And yet, what thought, decision and action are recorded in those dull books ! Every line is the work of a considering brain and a patient hand. If one could read between the figures, what romances there are in those dull books ! What records of ad venture and hard labor !" " You speak as if work was a man's highest con dition." "Is it not?" " No. If you had listened to my theory of the "Can You Doubt It?" 21 millennium, you would understand that the great point of the labor question will be solved in it ; that is, men and women will have time to work for their souls as well as their bodies. Work, for the sake of gold, is the superstition of an age infatuated with money. It kills every way. Look at Ambrose Shep herd ! Are you going there this morning ?" " No." The negative was sharp and final in sound, and Robert Carter thought it expressed his fixed deter mination. He was in that depressed condition which often precedes some great change, and whose domi nant symptom is a dread of change. To hold fast to life just as it was, in every petty detail, appeared to him at that hour the chief part of wisdom. But as the day went on and he began to take his part in its duty and struggle, the other-worldness was driven away, as the mist is driven away before the advancing sun. Then some pleasant thing hap pened, and he had the mental tonic necessary. About noon he called himself "coward " for running away from an obvious duty, because there was a woman in the way. So that he finally rang the Shepherds' door-bell in a state of virtuous control, which he be lieved to be invincible. He saw no one in the hall but the servant who ad mitted him. An air of silence and loneliness per vaded the house. It had a certain effect on him, and he went softly upstairs. He knew his patient's room and he pushed aside the door. There was a decided and intentional gloom there, and at first he could see nothing. But in a few moments the in terior was clear enough. Shepherd was in a deep sleep on his bed, and his daughter sat motionless at 22 Girls of a Feather. his side. A closed book, was in her hand, and her head was thrown back against the white-linen cover of the large chair in which she sat. Robert looked steadily at the sleeping man, and then put out his hand to the girl. She took it, and he led her out of the room. They went silently down the stairs together. His feet moved with her feet, and every step sent him deeper and deeper into that abyss of delicious foolishness which is often the heart's highest wisdom. He had frequently held women's hands before, but never yet had any hand so wondrously thrilled his being, so soft, so warm, so natural in his own it seemed. Holding it, he found a link which hitherto he had not missed but which now he could never endure to lose again a link that was a magical conductor of sweet, vague tremors and rosy hopes and delightful fears and darings. They went into a parlor and sat down. He felt the silence awkward, but he had no mind to break it ; and so far the sleeping patient had been excuse enough for its enthralling eloquence. Miss Shepherd took the initiative. She said shyly : " I read father to sleep." " I see the book in your hand." She rose and laid it on the table. " Father wanted the newspapers. I said they were not good for him. A novel always puts him to sleep." " Sleep is the best physician." " Mrs. Shepherd has gone to Stromberg to-day. We intend to rent a furnished house there." " At Stromberg? I am glad of that." " Father was born near Stromberg. When you Can You Doubt It?" 23 said he must go to the country, he would hear of no other place." " It is the best of all places. Native air has a sin gular potency. I know 'a man who goes three thou sand miles every year to breathe his native air. He believes it renews his life." " You said you would come to the country to see my father. Is Stromberg too far away?" " Not if you wish me to come." " I do wish you to come." " Then no distance is too far." " Thank you. You are very kind." " My brother Will is going to Stromberg also. He is the best of good fellows, and I am sure you will find him a pleasant friend." " I am sure of it. But you will come also ?" " Can you doubt it ?" Her eyes were cast down ; her cheeks aflame ; her white hands lying upon her lap. A rose at her throat dropped its white petals upon them. He lifted the fragrant leaves and laid them in her palm, and as he did so his eyes said what words would have been a clumsy vehicle for said in a moment more than he could have spoken in an hour. CHAPTER II. DID NOT ANSWER HIS CASE. "Ofair! O sweet ! As the sweet apple-blooms on the bough ; High on the highest ; forgot of the gatherers; So thou ! So thou ! Yet not so, nor forgot of the gatherers ; High o'er their reach in the golden air, O sweet ! O fair !" "Your father is much better this morning, Am. brosia?" These were Mrs. Shepherd's words as she entered the breakfast-room on the day following Doctor Car ter's second visit. And Ambrosia, having expressed her pleasure, the two women sat down to drink their coffee. The feeling between them was a happy and confidential one, though they were not mother and daughter, nor had the pretense of this relationship ever been assumed. When Ambrosia was sixteen years old, Miss Clara Vaughn had come to the motherless girl as her teacher and companion ; and when Ambrose Shep herd made her his wife, the romantic attachment [24] Did Not Answer His Case. 25 which Ambrosia had for her teacher was not unfav orably affected by the new position. Clara was now thirty years old, and Ambrosia was twenty. They were both beautiful. In other respects their unity arose from their differences. Clara was of Puritan lineage. She had been brought up in an atmosphere of severe economy, and taught from her childhood to keep her will and her desires under control. Her manner was therefore serene and full of womanly dignity ; and though she was moved by her reason, her sense of duty and of justice, she was quite capa ble of great affection and of a supreme self-denial. On the contrary, Ambrosia was moody and uncer tain as an April day. She was also impulsive, un reasonable and a little tyrannical. Her father adored her, and she expected from him such continual black mail as selfish youth considers the best evidence of love trinkets, sweetmeats and plenty of pocket- money. In return, she firmly believed that she loved her father and her step-mother. She loved them as a girl loves those who give her pleasure and who, as yet, have demanded nothing from her in return. Whether she could have resigned for their sake her own will, her own happiness or her own interests was an undetermined question. Many characters are thought to be storm-proof which shrink at the first wetting. For Ambrosia as yet looked at life from a senti mental point of view. She was at that mental stage which finds Moore and Byron interpreters of their soul-pangs ; and so, theoretically, she believed all the world well lost for love. But there was also a prac tical side to the girl's nature, and, in the long run, it would possibly carry the day ; for Ambrosia was 28 Girls of a Feather. " No, they do not. I know lots of good men who have flirted through the alphabet. Some are bold, open flirts ; some insinuating ; some sentimental, like the curate of St. Azarius, who asked me last week, in a languishing way, if I believed in love- marriages, and did I really think it better to have loved and lost, etc., etc. ? Now, how can a girl meet such men but with their own weapons ? However, I do not think Doctor Carter is a ' flirt.' I think he fell honestly in love with me. Men even yet tumble into love at once, over head and heart. And when they do that kind of thing any sensible girl knows the fact and respects it." " Love ! Love ! Love ! Whence does it spring ? Is it not wonderful, amid the shams and worries of our every-day life, what a constant charm and fresh ness the subject has? I cannot understand it." " I do not think it makes any difference whether we understand it or not. Some things are nicer and sweeter for not being understood. I was reading yesterday that Robert Burns was once entreated by his publisher to make the language of his songs so that he could understand them. Burns answered that he did not care whether the publisher under stood them or not, adding that he did not always understand them himself. That is the truth about love-making, Clara. Often we do not understand it ourselves, any more than Burns understood his own singing. And I like a feeling that has the largeness of mystery." "You talk beyond me, Amber. I acknowledge myself vanquished. I suppose I must leave your affairs in your own hands." And she rose with the words and hurriedly left the room. Did Not Answer His Case. 29 Ambrosia sat still. She was smiling to herself and crimping with neat little pinches the drooping lace around her sleeves. She had found out from Nora many things she did not think it necessary to tell her step-mother. And her imagination had been stimulated by the reported life of the two brothers. For Nora had gossiped with a grand indifference to facts, or rather to the perversion of them Robert and Will Garter's lives ,being a constant source of wonder to their S'rtvarits. For solitude is something the vulgar and illiterate never can understand ; and a splendid solitude, not arranged for the world to see but as a simple adjunct to personal enjoyment, affected them as the lonely palaces of the " Arabian Nights " affect more cultured minds. This morning Ambrosia greatly strengthened her influence over the handsome doctor, and she knew that when he reluctantly left her presence she held him by a power as invisible as the air and just as vital. He had remained with her until all excuses for delay were absurd, and, on leaving, he had pro posed to return about five o'clock and drive her in the Park. He tried to say that her confinement to the sick-room had lowered the tone of her nerves, and that driving would be a physical tonic. Then meeting Ambrosia's clear, mirthful gaze, he quickly added : " But, indeed, it is for my own delight I ask you. I am afraid I am altogether selfish. I hope you are not angry with me." " When you deserve it I will be angry with you. I cannot tell the time when that will happen. But it will not be until I have forgotten what your skill has done for my father." And she made him a grace- 30 Girls of a Feather. ful movement, keeping her eyes, bright and tender, fixed upon his face. What can a man do under the fire of such glances ? He is as powerless as were the waxen images of the enchanters before their magical fire. When a woman has a lover in this condition, if she only sing the right song to her charming, there is no pain that is not sweet and no trouble that is -not rest for her sake. And Robert Carter was ndt^c?Le of those lovers trained on the hard race-course of' society. From such no one expects self-forgetfulness, devotion or the folly of loving for love's sake, any more than they expect flowers to grow on the street pavement. Robert Carter had still the capacity of loving with all his heart and soul. The constant society of his brother had kept him within touch of the divinity. He was flushing and blushing to his hopes and fears as naturally as if he were only twenty years old, when he bid Ambrosia "good morning," when he promised to call for her at five o'clock. Instead of going to his next patient, he went to a florist's and bought the loveliest of his flowers, and sent them to Ambrosia. He went to Tiffany's and looked at some trinkets, hoping that at some time he would have the right to buy them for her. He went to his tailor's and ordered a new suit of clothes, and was so fastidious that the man felt himself to be already discussing the wedding garments. For the first time in all his professional career, the sufferings and complaints of his patients bored him. Ambrosia had seemed pleased with his admiration, but he was not sure that she was in earnest, and until he had resolved this question all others appeared Did Not Answer His Case. 31 tiresome and uninteresting. Yet he had only known her three days, and she seemed to have come into his heart long, long, long ago. He wondered most of all at this feeling, for he had not considered that real love is of the nature of God and therefore eternal. The heart always knows its own, and it al ways will know. Into its best affection there will come much of remembrance, a sense of familiarity, the tolerance for foibles which in some way or other seem to be kindred. Robert hoped in some measure that night to satisfy his restless feelings. He intended, as they rode home in the twilight, to say to Ambrosia : " I love you. Can I teach you to love me ?" He intended to tell her how bewitching she was. Above all, he wished to assure her that she had the first real hom age of his heart. He told her the last two things first ; which was unwise. Ambrosia knew she was bewitching. Others had felt her charm, and in many ways had told her so. She had been two years in society, and flowers and evening drives were not strange pleasures to her. The passionate feeling which led Robert Car ter to offer them was understood by Ambrosia, and not altogether trusted. Men did such things far oftener than they justified them by one or two simple questions. And as for being his first love, the idea almost shook her confidence in him. All men said precisely the same thing. Jenny Fellowes who had married a rich old admiral had been asked to believe an ex actly similar statement from the roving sailor. Jenny had told her so. It suddenly struck Ambrosia that the affair was maturing too rapidly. 30 Girls of a Feather. ful movement, keeping her eyes, bright and tender, fixed upon his face. What can a man do under the fire of such glances ? He is as powerless as were the waxen images of the enchanters before their magical fire. When a woman has a lover in this condition, if she only sing the right song to her charming, there is no pain that is not sweet and no trouble that is not rest for her sake. And Robert Carter was noT v